6. The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.

7. II. VII. Latins. To this was added the peculiar aggravation that, while in other instances the right of the Latins, like that of the -peregrini-, implied membership in a definite Latin or foreign community, in this case—just as with the later freedmen of Latin and deditician rights (comp. IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations. n.)—it was without any such right of urban membership. The consequence was, that these Latins were destitute of the privileges attaching to an urban constitution, and, strictly speaking, could not even make a testament, since no one could execute a testament otherwise than according to the law of his town; they could doubtless, however, acquire under Roman testaments, and among the living could hold dealings with each other and with Romans or Latins in the forms of Roman law.

8. IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

9. That Sulla's assessment of the five years' arrears and of the war expenses levied on the communities of Asia (Appian, Mithr. 62 et al.) formed a standard for the future, is shown by the facts, that the distribution of Asia into forty districts is referred to Sulla (Cassiodor. Chron. 670) and that the Sullan apportionment was assumed as a basis in the case of subsequent imposts (Cic. pro Flacc. 14, 32), and by the further circumstance, that on occasion of building a fleet in 672 the sums applied for that purpose were deducted from the payment of tribute (-ex pecunia vectigali populo Romano-: Cic. Verr. l. i. 35, 89). Lastly, Cicero (ad Q. fr. i. i, ii, 33) directly says, that the Greeks "were not in a position of themselves to pay the tax imposed on them by Sulla without -publicani-."

10. III. XI. Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

11. IV. III. Insignia of the Equites. Tradition has not indeed informed us by whom that law was issued, which rendered it necessary that the earlier privilege should be renewed by the Roscian theatre-law of 687 (Becker-Friedlander, iv, 531); but under the circumstances the author of that law was undoubtedly Sulla.

12. IV. VI. Livius Drusus

13. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

14. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

15. How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not known. In 487 the number stood at eight—two urban, two military, and four naval, quaestors (II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet, II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries); to which there fell to be added the quaestors employed in the provinces (III. III. Provincial Praetors). For the naval quaestors at Ostia, Cales, and so forth were by no means discontinued, and the military quaestors could not be employed elsewhere, since in that case the consul, when he appeared as commander-in-chief, would have been without a quaestor. Now, as down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and moreover two quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found as many as eighteen quaestors in existence. But as the number of the supreme magistrates of this period was considerably less than that of their functions (p. 120), and the difficulty thus arising was constantly remedied by extension of the term of office and other expedients, and as generally the tendency of the Roman government was to limit as much as possible the number of magistrates, there may have been more quaestorial functions than quaestors, and it may be even that at this period no quaestor at all was sent to small provinces such as Cilicia. Certainly however there were, already before Sulla's time, more than eight quaestors.

16. III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

17. We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators. Though the censors before Sulla prepared on each occasion a list of 300 persons, there always fell to be added to this list those non- senators who filled a curule office between the time when the list was drawn up and the preparation of the next one; and after Sulla there were as many senators as there were surviving quaestorians But it may be probably assumed that Sulla meant to bring the senate up to 500 or 600 members; and this number results, if we assume that 20 new members, at an average age of 30, were admitted annually, and we estimate the average duration of the senatorial dignity at from 25 to 30 years. At a numerously attended sitting of the senate in Cicero's time 417 members were present.

18. II. III. The Senate. Its Composition

19. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

20. III. XI. Interference of the Community in War and Administration

21. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

22. II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation of Offices

23. IV. II. Attempts at Reform

24. To this the words of Lepidus in Sallust (Hist. i. 41, 11 Dietsch) refer: -populus Romanus excitus... iure agitandi-, to which Tacitus (Ann. iii. 27) alludes: -statim turbidis Lepidi rogationibus neque multo post tribunis reddita licentia quoquo vellent populum agitandi-. That the tribunes did not altogether lose the right of discussing matters with the people is shown by Cic. De Leg. iii. 4, 10 and more clearly by the -plebiscitum de Thermensibus-, which however in the opening formula also designates itself as issued -de senatus sententia-. That the consuls on the other hand could under the Sullan arrangements submit proposals to the people without a previous resolution of the senate, is shown not only by the silence of the authorities, but also by the course of the revolutions of 667 and 676, whose leaders for this very reason were not tribunes but consuls. Accordingly we find at this period consular laws upon secondary questions of administration, such as the corn law of 681, for which at other times we should have certainly found -plebiscita-.

25. II. III. Influence of the Elections

26. IV. II. Vote by Ballot

27. For this hypothesis there is no other proof, except that the Italian Celt-land was as decidedly not a province—in the sense in which the word signifies a definite district administered by a governor annually changed—in the earlier times, as it certainly was one in the time of Caesar (comp. Licin. p. 39; -data erat et Sullae provincia Gallia Cisalpina-).

The case is much the same with the advancement of the frontier; we know that formerly the Aesis, and in Caesar's time the Rubico, separated the Celtic land from Italy, but we do not know when the boundary was shifted. From the circumstance indeed, that Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus as propraetor undertook a regulation of the frontier in the district between the Aesis and Rubico (Orelli, Inscr. 570), it has been inferred that that must still have been provincial land at least in the year after Lucullus' praetorship 679, since the propraetor had nothing to do on Italian soil. But it was only within the -pomerium- that every prolonged -imperium- ceased of itself; in Italy, on the other hand, such a prolonged -imperium- was even under Sulla's arrangement—though not regularly existing—at any rate allowable, and the office held by Lucullus was in any case an extraordinary one. But we are able moreover to show when and how Lucullus held such an office in this quarter. He was already before the Sullan reorganization in 672 active as commanding officer in this very district (p, 87), and was probably, just like Pompeius, furnished by Sulla with propraetorian powers; in this character he must have regulated the boundary in question in 672 or 673 (comp. Appian, i. 95). No inference therefore may be drawn from this inscription as to the legal position of North Italy, and least of all for the time after Sulla's dictatorship. On the other hand a remarkable hint is contained in the statement, that Sulla advanced the Roman -pomerium- (Seneca, de brev. vitae, 14; Dio, xliii. 50); which distinction was by Roman state-law only accorded to one who had advanced the bounds not of the empire, but of the city—that is, the bounds of Italy (i. 128).

28. As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two attached to the consuls in conducting war, and the four quaestors of the fleet continued to subsist, nineteen magistrates were annually required for this office. The department of the twentieth quaestor cannot be ascertained.

29. The Italian confederacy was much older (II. VII. Italy and The Italians); but it was a league of states, not, like the Sullan Italy, a state-domain marked off as an unit within the Roman empire.

30. II. III. Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods

31. II. III. Combination of The Plebian Aristocracy and The Farmers against The Nobility

32. III. XIII. Religious Economy

33. IV. X. Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

34. e. g. IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions

35. IV. II. Vote by Ballot

36. IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

37. II. II. Intercession

38. IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

39. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

40. II. VII. Subject Communities

41. IV. X. Cisapline Gaul Erected into A Province

42. IV. VII. Preparations for General Revolt against Rome

43. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

44. IV. IX. Government of Cinna

45. IV. VII. Decay of Military Discipline

46. IV. VII. Economic Crisis

47. IV. VII. Strabo

48. IV. VIII. Flaccus Arrives in Asia

49. IV. IX. Death of Cinna

50. IV. IX. Nola

51. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

52. Euripides, Medea, 807:— —Meideis me phaulein kasthenei nomizeto Meid eisuchaian, alla thateron tropou Bareian echthrois kai philoisin eumenei—.

53. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

54. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates, IV. X. Re-establishment of Constitutional Order

55. Not -pthiriasis-, as another account states; for the simple reason that such a disease is entirely imaginary.



Chapter XI

1. IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome, IV. V. The Romans Cross the Eastern Alps

2. IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

3. IV. V. And Reach the Danube

4. -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted with the Italian "allies and kinsmen" (-socii nominisve Latini-).

5. III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances

6. III. XII. Mercantile Spirit

7. IV. III. Jury Courts, IV. III. Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

8. This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land. The former was let in Sicily, and was fixed once for all; the latter—especially that of the territory of Leontini—was let by the censors in Rome, and the proportion of produce payable and other conditions were regulated at their discretion (Cic. Verr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21, 53; de leg. agr. i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48). Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730.

9. The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of the tax. Thus in Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement of Sulla and Caesar the tenth sheaf was levied (Appian. B. C. v. 4); thus the Jews by Caesar's edict contributed every second year a fourth of the seed (Joseph, iv. 10, 6; comp. ii. 5); thus in Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was paid 5 per cent from estate (Appian. Syr. 50), and in Africa also an apparently similar tax was paid—in which case, we may add, the estate seems to have been valued according to certain presumptive indications, e. g. the size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of head of children and slaves (-exactio capitum atque ostiorum-, Cicero, Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; —phoros epi tei gei kai tois somasin—, Appian. Pun. 135, with reference to Africa). In accordance with this regulation the magistrates of each community under the superintendence of the Roman governor (Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. 1, 8; SC. de Asclep. 22, 23) settled who were liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by each tributary ( -imperata- —epikephalia—, Cic. ad Att. v. 16); if any one did not pay this in proper time, his tax-debt was sold just as in Rome, i. e. it was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to collect it (-venditio tributorum-, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; —onas— -omnium venditas-, Cic. ad Att. v. 16). The produce of these taxes flowed into the coffers of the leading communities—the Jews, for instance, had to send their corn to Sidon—and from these coffers the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to Rome. These taxes also were consequently raised indirectly, and the intermediate agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of the produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own substance; the distinction between this mode of raising and the other by means of the -publicani- lay merely in the circumstance, that in the former the public authorities of the contributors, in the latter Roman private contractors, constituted the intermediate agency.

10. IV. III. Jury Courts

11. III. VII. Administration of Spain

12. IV. X. Regulation of the Finances

13. For example, in Judaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 -modii- of corn, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes; to which fell to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment destined for the Romans. In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman tenth, a very considerable local taxation was raised from property.

14. IV. VI. The New Military Organization

15. IV. II. Vote by Ballot

16. III. VII. Liguria

17. IV. V. Province of Narbo

18. IV. V. In Illyria

19. IV. I. Province of Macedonia

20. III. XI. Italian Subjects, III. XII. Roman Wealth

21. IV. V. Taurisci

22. III. IV. Pressure of the War

23. IV. VII. Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

24. IV. IX. Preparations on Either Side

25. III. XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

26. IV. V. Conflicts with the Ligurians. With this may be connected the remark of the Roman agriculturist, Saserna, who lived after Cato and before Varro (ap. Colum. i. 1, 5), that the culture of the vine and olive was constantly moving farther to the north.—The decree of the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (IV. II. The Italian Farmers) belongs also to this class of measures.

27. IV. II. Slavery and Its Consequences

28. IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

29. IV. I. Destruction of Carthage, IV. I. Destruction of Corinth

30. IV. V. The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy of the Restoration

31. IV. IV. The Provinces

32. IV. VII. Economic Crisis

33. IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws

34. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

35. IV. IX. Government of Cinna

36. IV. VIII. Orders Issued from Ephesus for A General Massacre

37. IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

38. IV. VI. Roman Intervention

39. III. XII. Roman Wealth

40. IV. V. Taurisci

41. III. VI. Pressure of the War

42. II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value

43. III. VI. Pressure of the War

44. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

45. IV. X. Proscription-Lists

46. III. III. Autonomy, III. VII. the State of Culture in Spain, III. XII. Coins and Moneys

47. III. XII. Coins and Moneys

48. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

49. In the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1); which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital, yields nearly the above amount. This was a cheap dwelling. That a rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital is called a high one in the case of the year 629 (Vell. ii. 10) must have been due to special circumstances.

50. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

51. IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

52. "If we could, citizens"—he said in his speech—"we should indeed all keep clear of this burden. But, as nature has so arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort."



Chapter XII

1. IV. XI. Money-Dealing and Commerce

2. IV. X. The Roman Municipal System

3. IV. I. The Subjects

4. IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

5. IV. I. The New Organization of Spain

6. IV. VII. Second Year of the War

7. The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (—technitai—) and athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix. 22), and Greek flute-players, tragedians, and pugilists in 587 (Pol. xxx, 13).

8. III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit

9. A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis, iii. 12, 13.

10. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste

11. In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," he sarcastically set forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after puppets and effigies.

12. III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration

13. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

14. IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges

15. IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

16. III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia

17. Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more respectfully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense it is said in Lucilius:—

-Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre Utilior mihi, quam sapiens-.

18. IV. XII. Panaetius



Chapter XIII

1. Thus in the -Paulus-, an original piece, the following line occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium (III. X. Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna):—

-Qua vix caprigeno generi gradilis gressio est-.

And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the following description—

-Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera, Capite brevi, cervice anguina, aspectu truci, Eviscerata inanima cum animali sono-.

To which they naturally reply—

-Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod conjectura sapiens aegre contuit; Non intellegimus, nisi si aperte dixeris-.

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to task by the Middle Comedy.

2. Perhaps the only exception is in the -Andria- (iv. 5) the answer to the question how matters go:—

"-Sic Ut quimus," aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet-"

in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also imitated from a Greek proverb:—

-Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis-.

The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by the theatrical authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius. The gentle expression of gratitude is characteristic.

3. A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Phorm. prol. 4), may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of the goat and the ape (Merc, ii. 1). Such excrescences are ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (e. g. Eurip. Hec. 90).

4. Micio in the -Adelphi- (i. i) praises his good fortune in life, more particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those (the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune."

5. In the prologue of the -Heauton Timorumenos- he puts the objection into the mouth of his censors:—

-Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio fretum, haud natura sua-.

And in the later prologue (594) to the -Adelphi- he says—

-Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Eum adiutare, adsidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse existimant Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet Qui vobis universis et populo placent; Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio, Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia-.

As early as the time of Cicero it was the general supposition that Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were designated which were alleged to proceed from them; stories were told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to their estates near Rome; and it was reckoned unpardonable that they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his financial circumstances. But the power which creates legend is, as is well known, nowhere more potent than in the history of literature. It is clear, and even judicious Roman critics acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius who was not much older. Others with at least more judgment thought of the poets of quality Quintus Labeo (consul in 571) and Marcus Popillius (consul in 581), and of the learned patron of art and mathematician, Lucius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588); but this too is evidently mere conjecture. That Terence was in close relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi- and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius.

6. IV. XI. Token-Money

7. III. XIV. National Comedy

8. External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in bringing about this change. After all the Italian communities had obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it was no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any such community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground or to choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated abroad. Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account even in the production of the older comedies, exercised an unfavourable effect on the national comedy.

9. I. XV. Masks

10. With these names there has been associated from ancient times a series of errors. The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that these farces were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with justice universally rejected; but it is, on a closer consideration, little short of impossible to bring these pieces, which are laid in the midst of Latin town and country life, into relation with the national Oscan character at all. The appellation of "Atellan play" is to be explained in another way. The Latin farce with its fixed characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery: the fool- world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation. Of course under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the -togatae- to these. But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with Capua in 543 (III. VI. Capua Capitulates, III. VI. In Italy), continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose. This conjecture is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue, which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye of the law-such as the -Campani- of Pomponius and perhaps also his -Adelphi- and his -Quinquatria- in Capua, and the -Milites Pometinenses- of Novius in Suessa Pometia—while no existing community was subjected to similar maltreatment. The real home of these pieces was therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection. The statement that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper actors performed by "Atellan players" and was therefore called -personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view: the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically, and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were formerly termed "masked players" (-personati-).

An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of Fescennium," which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan. That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village, cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from the silence of inscriptions.

11. The close and original connection, which Livy in particular represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura- with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable. The difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was just about as great as is at present the difference between a professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced. The drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied nearly the place of the Greek chorus. This course of development nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce, which was performed by amateurs.

12. In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549). The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16). This view is not inconsistent with the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that the Atellana was no longer performed, in the country towns for instance, by unpaid amateurs, and the privilege therefore still remained applicable,

13. It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only especially at home in Lower Italy, but that several of its pieces (e. g. among those of Sopater, the "Lentile-Porridge," the "Wooers of Bacchis," the "Valet of Mystakos," the "Bookworms," the "Physiologist") strikingly remind us of the Atellanae. This composition of farces must have reached down to the time at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name and wrote a farce "Saturnus."

14. According to Eusebius, Pomponius flourished about 664; Velleius calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and Marcus Antonius (611-667). The former statement is probably about a generation too late; the reckoning by -victoriati- (p. 182) which was discontinued about 650 still occurs in his -Pictores-, and about the end of this period we already meet the mimes which displaced the Atellanae from the stage.

15. It was probably merry enough in this form. In the -Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:—

-Sume arma, iam te occidam clava scirpea-, Just as Menander's —Pseudeirakleis— makes his appearance.

16. Hitherto the person providing the play had been obliged to fit up the stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sum assigned to him or at his own expense, and probably much money would not often be expended on these. But in 580 the censors made the erection of the stage for the games of the praetors and aediles a matter of special contract (Liv. xli. 27); the circumstance that the stage- apparatus was now no longer erected merely for a single performance must have led to a perceptible improvement of it.

17. The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks may be inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl (Parerg. i. 227, xx.) has discussed the question of the seats; but it is probable (according to Plautus, Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were not -capite censi- had a claim to a seat. It is probable, moreover, that the words of Horace that "captive Greece led captive her conqueror" primarily refer to these epoch-making theatrical games of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).

18. The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus, v. Claudiana, p. 57).

19. Among the few minor poems preserved from this epoch there occurs the following epigram on this illustrious actor:—

-Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans, Cum subito a laeva Roscius exoritur. Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra; Mortalis visust pulchrior esse deo-.

The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the Cimbri, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652.

20. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

21. -Quam lepide —legeis— compostae ut tesserulae omnes Arte pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato-.

22. The poet advises him—

-Quo facetior videare et scire plus quant ceteri—-to say not -pertaesum- but -pertisum-.

23. IV. III. Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus

24. The following longer fragment is a characteristic specimen of the style and metrical treatment, the loose structure of which cannot possibly be reproduced in German hexameters:—

-Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu' potesse; Virtus est homini scire quo quaeque habeat res; Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum, Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum; Virtus quaerendae finem rei scire modumque; Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse; Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori, Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum, Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum, Hos magni facere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum; Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare, Deinde parentum, tertia iam postremaque nostra-.

25. IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements, second note

26. III. X. Measures of Security in Greece

27. IV. I. Greece

28. Such scientific travels were, however, nothing uncommon among the Greeks of this period. Thus in Plautus (Men. 248, comp. 235) one who has navigated the whole Mediterranean asks—

-Quin nos hinc domum Redimus, nisi si historiam scripturi sumus-?

29. III. XIV. National Opposition

30. The only real exception, so far as we know, is the Greek history of Gnaeus Aufidius, who flourished in Cicero's boyhood (Tusc, v. 38, 112), that is, about 660. The Greek memoirs of Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul in 649) are hardly to be regarded as an exception, since their author wrote them in exile at Smyrna.

31. IV. XI. Hellenism and Its Results

32. IV. XII. Education

33. IV. XII. Latin Instruction

34. The assertion, for instance, that the quaestors were nominated in the regal period by the burgesses, not by the king, is as certainly erroneous as it bears on its face the impress of a partisan character.

35. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

36. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

37. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

38. IV. X. Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-

39. Cato's book probably bore the title -De iuris disciplina- (Gell. xiii. 20), that of Brutus the title -De iure civili- (Cic. pro Cluent. 51, 141; De Orat. ii. 55, 223); that they were essentially collections of opinions, is shown by Cicero (De Orat. ii. 33, 142).

40. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces, pp. 84, 205

41. IV. XII. Roman Stoa f.

42. IV. XI. Buildings



End of Book IV



* * * * *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK V

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy



Preparer's Notes

This work contains many literal citations of and references to words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. This English language Gutenberg edition, constrained within the scope of 7-bit ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:

1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized in the original text published in 1903; but which in the intervening century have become "naturalized" into English; words such as "de jure", "en masse", etc. are not given any special typographic distinction.

2) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents, are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus, —xxxx—. Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound form such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as —xxx-xxx—

4) Simple non-ideographic references to vocalic sounds, single letters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic references are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x, or -xxx.

5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion of alphabetic evolution in Ch. XIV: Measuring and Writing). Ideographic references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for "ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture based on the "xxxx" following the colon. "xxxx" may represent a single symbol, a word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters. E. g. —"id:GAMMA gamma"— indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form Followed by the form in lowercase. Such exotic parsing is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages, or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different times. Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to another one of lowercase. Also, a construct such as —"id:E" indicates a symbol that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase "E", but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

6) The numerous subheading references, of the form "XX. XX. Topic" found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as "proximate" rather than topical indicators. That is, the information contained in the endnote indicates primarily the location in the main text of the closest indexing "handle", a subheading, which may or may not echo congruent subject matter.

The reason for this is that in the translation from an original paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost. In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles" of sub-chapter scale. Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages. Therefore, it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.

7) The attentive reader will notice occasional typographic or syntactic anomalies and errors. In almost all cases this conscious and due to an editorial decision for the first Gutenberg edition to transmit transparently all but the most egregious flaws found in the source text Scribner edition of 1903. Furthermore, a number of sentences may be virtually unintelligible to the English reader due to the architecture of relative clauses, prepositions, and verbs as carried over from the original German. It is the preparer's ambition for a second Gutenberg edition of the History of Rome to reconstruct and clarify the most turgid specimens.

8) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.; that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C. To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between the two systems.



CONTENTS

BOOK V: The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

CHAPTER

I. Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

II. Rule of the Sullan Restoration

III. The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

IV. Pompeius and the East

V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius

VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

VII. The Subjugation of the West

VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

IX. Death of Crassus—Rupture between the Joint Rulers

X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy

XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art



BOOK FIFTH

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy



Wie er sich sieht so um und um, Kehrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum, Wie er wollt' Worte zu allem finden? Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall verbinden? Wie er mocht' immer muthig bleiben So fort und weiter fort zu schreiben?

Goethe.



CHAPTER I

Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

The Opposition Jurists Aristocrats Friendly to Reform Democrats

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. It was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs. There were the men of positive law who neither mingled in nor understood politics, but who detested the arbitrary procedure of Sulla in dealing with the lives and property of the burgesses. Even during Sulla's lifetime, when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists resisted the regent; the Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated in judicial decisions as null and void; and in like manner the courts held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of war and sold into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited. There was, further, the remnant of the old liberal minority in the senate, which in former times had laboured to effect a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and was now in a similar spirit inclined to modify the rigidly oligarchic constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares. There were, moreover, the Populares strictly so called, the honestly credulous narrow-minded radicals, who staked property and life for the current watchwords of the party-programme, only to discover with painful surprise after the victory that they had been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase. Their special aim was to re-establish the tribunician power, which Sulla had not abolished but had divested of its most essential prerogatives, and which exercised over the multitude a charm all the more mysterious, because the institution had no obvious practical use and was in fact an empty phantom—the mere name of tribune of the people, more than a thousand years later, revolutionized Rome.

Transpadanes Freedmen Capitalists Proletarians of the Capital The Dispossessed The Proscribed and Their Adherents

There were, above all, the numerous and important classes whom the Sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whose political or private interests it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665(1) as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess-bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations—whether they like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arretines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially, were reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers in the woods. Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family connections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court and in the army of Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile; for, according to the strict family-associations that governed the political feeling of this age, it was accounted a point of honour(2) that those who were left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and, in the case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to the latter of their paternal estate. More especially the immediate children of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced in point of law to political Pariahs,(3) had thereby virtually received from the law itself a summons to rise in rebellion against the existing order of things.

Men of Ruined Fortunes Men of Ambition

To all these sections of the opposition there was added the whole body of men of ruined fortunes. All the rabble high and low, whose means and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar debauchery; the aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark of quality than their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent's fiat could transform into landholders but not into husbandmen, and who, after squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed, were longing to succeed to a second—all these waited only the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed on it. From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent, in search of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion, and who therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx and to break through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority by means of popular favour, but also the more dangerous men, whose ambition aimed at something higher than helping to determine the destinies of the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues. On the advocates' platform in particular—the only field of legal opposition left open by Sulla—even in the regent's lifetime such aspirants waged lively war against the restoration with the weapons of formal jurisprudence and combative oratory: for instance, the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd January 648), son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made himself a name by the mingled caution and boldness of his opposition to the dictator. Such efforts were not of much importance, if the opponent desired nothing farther than by their means to procure for himself a curule chair, and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life. No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for life or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself any such lofty aim.

Power of the Opposition

Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than Sulla himself probably expected, been thrown by his death on its own resources. The task was in itself far from easy, and it was rendered more difficult by the other social and political evils of this age—especially by the extraordinary double difficulty of keeping the military chiefs in the provinces in subjection to the supreme civil magistracy, and of dealing with the masses of the Italian and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital, and of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto freedom, without having troops at disposal. The senate was placed as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened on all sides, and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue. But the means of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and lasting; and although the majority of the nation was manifestly disinclined to the government which Sulla had installed, and even animated by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very well maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against the distracted and confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed either as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up into a hundred fragments. Only it was necessary that it should be determined to maintain its position, and should bring at least a spark of that energy, which had built the fortress, to its defence; for in the case of a garrison which will not defend itself, the greatest master of fortification constructs his walls and moats in vain.

Want of Leaders Coterie-Systems

The more everything ultimately depended on the personality of the leading men on both sides, it was the more unfortunate that both, strictly speaking, lacked leaders. The politics of thisperiod were thoroughly under the sway of the coterie-system in its worst form. This, indeed, was nothing new; close unions of families and clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic organizationof the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome. But it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful, for it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was attested rather than checked by legal measures of repression.

All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less than the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae; the mass of the burgesses likewise, so far as they took any regular part in political events at all, formed according to their voting-districts close unions with an almost military organization, which found their natural captains and agents in the presidents of the districts, "tribe- distributors" (-divisores tribuum-). With these political clubs everything was bought and sold; the vote of the elector especially, but also the votes of the senator and the judge, the fists too which produced the street riot, and the ringleaders who directed it—the associations of the upper and of the lower ranks were distinguished merely in the matter of tariff. The Hetaeria decided the elections, the Hetaeria decreed the impeachments, the Hetaeria conducted the defence; it secured the distinguished advocate, and in case of need it contracted for an acquittal with one of the speculators who pursued on a great scale lucrative dealings in judges' votes. The Hetaeria commanded by its compact bands the streets of the capital, and with the capital but too often the state. All these things were done in accordance with a certain rule, and, so to speak, publicly; the system of Hetaeriae was better organized and managed than any branch of state administration; although there was, as is usual among civilized swindlers, a tacit understanding that there should be no direct mention of the nefarious proceedings, nobody made a secret of them, and advocates of repute were not ashamed to give open and intelligible hints of their relation to the Hetaeriae of their clients. If an individual was to be found here or there who kept aloof from such doings and yet did not forgo public life, he was assuredly, like Marcus Cato, a political Don Quixote. Parties and party-strife were superseded by the clubs and their rivalry; government was superseded by intrigue. A more than equivocal character, Publius Cethegus, formerly one of the most zealous Marians, afterwards as a deserter received into favour by Sulla,(4) acted a most influential part in the political doings of this period—unrivalled as a cunning tale-bearer and mediator between the sections of the senate, and as having a statesman's acquaintance with the secrets of all cabals: at times the appointment to the most important posts of command was decided by a word from his mistress Praecia. Such a plight was only possible where none of the men taking part in politics rose above mediocrity: any man of more than ordinary talent would have swept away this system of factions like cobwebs; but there was in reality the saddest lack of men of political or military capacity.

Phillipus Metellus, Catulus, the Luculli

Of the older generation the civil wars had left not a single man of repute except the old shrewd and eloquent Lucius Philippus (consul in 663), who, formerly of popular leanings,(5) thereafter leader of the capitalist party against the senate,(6) and closely associated with the Marians,(7) and lastly passing over to the victorious oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and commendation,(8) had managed to escape between the parties. Among the men of the following generation the most notable chiefs of the pure aristocracy were Quintus Metellus Pius (consul in 674), Sulla's comrade in dangers and victories; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in the year of Sulla's death, 676, the son of the victor of Vercellae; and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus, of whom the former had fought with distinction under Sulla in Asia, the latter in Italy; not to mention Optimates like Quintus Hortensius (640-704), who had importance only as a pleader, or men like Decimus Junius Brutus (consul in 677), Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus (consul in 677), and other such nullities, whose best quality was a euphonious aristocratic name. But even those four men rose little above the average calibre of the Optimates of this age. Catulus was like his father a man of refined culture and an honest aristocrat, but of moderate talents and, in particular, no soldier. Metellus was not merely estimable in his personal character, but an able and experienced officer; and it was not so much on account of his close relations as a kinsman and colleague with the regent as because of his recognized ability that he was sent in 675, after resigning the consulship, to Spain, where the Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh. The two Luculli were also capable officers—particularly the elder, who combined very respectable military talents with thorough literary culture and leanings to authorship, and appeared honourable also as a man. But, as statesmen, even these better aristocrats were not much less remiss and shortsighted than the average senators of the time. In presence of an outward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless, proved themselves useful and brave; but no one of them evinced the desire or the skill to solve the problems of politics proper, and to guide the vessel of the state through the stormy sea of intrigues and factions as a true pilot. Their political wisdom was limited to a sincere belief in the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation, and to a cordial hatred and courageous execration of demagogism as well as of every individual authority which sought to emancipate itself. Their petty ambition was contented with little. The stories told of Metellus in Spain—that he not only allowed himself to be delighted with the far from harmonious lyre of the Spanish occasional poets, but even wherever he went had himself received like a god with libations of wine and odours of incense, and at table had his head crowned by descending Victories amidst theatrical thunder with the golden laurel of the conqueror— are no better attested than most historical anecdotes; but even such gossip reflects the degenerate ambition of the generations of Epigoni. Even the better men were content when they had gained not power and influence, but the consulship and a triumph and a place of honour in the senate; and at the very time when with right ambition they would have just begun to be truly useful to their country and their party, they retired from the political stage to be lost in princely luxury. Men like Metellus and Lucius Lucullus were, even as generals, not more attentive to the enlargement of the Roman dominion by fresh conquests of kings and peoples than to the enlargement of the endless game, poultry, and dessert lists of Roman gastronomy by new delicacies from Africa and Asia Minor, and they wasted the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious idleness. The traditional aptitude and the individual self-denial, on which all oligarchic government is based, were lost in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristocracy of this age; in its judgment universally the spirit of clique was accounted as patriotism, vanity as ambition, and narrow-mindedness as consistency. Had the Sullan constitution passed into the guardianship of men such as have sat in the Roman College of Cardinals or the Venetian Council of Ten, we cannot tell whether the opposition would have been able to shake it so soon; with such defenders every attack involved, at all events, a serious peril.

Pompeius

Of the men, who were neither unconditional adherents nor open opponents of the Sullan constitution, no one attracted more the eyes of the multitude than the young Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at the time of Sulla's death twenty-eight years of age (born 29th September 648). The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as for the admirers; but it was natural. Sound in body and mind, a capable athlete, who even when a superior officer vied with his soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a vigorous and skilled rider and fencer, a bold leader of volunteer bands, the youth had become Imperator and triumphator at an age which excluded him from every magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired the first place next to Sulla in public opinion; nay, had obtained from the indulgent regent himself—half in recognition, half in irony— the surname of the Great. Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means corresponded with these unprecedented successes. He was neither a bad nor an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created by nature to be a good sergeant, called by circumstances to be a general and a statesman. An intelligent, brave and experienced, thoroughly excellent soldier, he was still, even in his military capacity, without trace of any higher gifts. It was characteristic of him as a general, as well as in other respects, to set to work with a caution bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority over his opponent. His culture was the average culture of the time; although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect, when he went to Rhodes, dutifully to admire, and to make presents to, the rhetoricians there. His integrity was that of a rich man who manages with discretion his considerable property inherited and acquired. He did not disdain to make money in the usual senatorial way, but he was too cold and too rich to incur special risks, or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace, on that account. The vice so much in vogue among his contemporaries, rather than any virtue of his own, procured for him the reputation—comparatively, no doubt, well warranted—of integrity and disinterestedness. His "honest countenance" became almost proverbial, and even after his death he was esteemed as a worthy and moral man; he was in fact a good neighbour, who did not join in the revolting schemes by which the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their domains through forced sales or measures still worse at the expense of their humbler neighbours, and in domestic life he displayed attachment to his wife and children: it redounds moreover to his credit that he was the first to depart from the barbarous custom of putting to death the captive kings and generals of the enemy, after they had been exhibited in triumph. But this did not prevent him from separating from his beloved wife at the command of his lord and master Sulla, because she belonged to an outlawed family, nor from ordering with great composure that men who had stood by him and helped him in times of difficulty should be executed before his eyes at the nod of the same master:(9) he was not cruel, thoughhe was reproached with being so, but—what perhaps was worse— he was cold and, in good as in evil, unimpassioned. In the tumult of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in civil life he was a shy man, whose cheek flushed on the slightest occasion; he spoke in public not without embarrassment, and generally was angular, stiff, and awkward in intercourse. With all his haughty obstinacy he was— as indeed persons ordinarily are, who make a display of their independence—a pliant tool in the hands of men who knew how to manage him, especially of his freedmen and clients, by whom he had no fear of being controlled. For nothing was he less qualified than for a statesman. Uncertain as to his aims, unskilful in the choice of his means, alike in little and great matters shortsighted and helpless, he was wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision under a solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle game, simply to deceive himself with the belief that he was deceiving others. By his military position and his territorial connections he acquired almost without any action of his own a considerable party personally devoted to him, with which the greatest things might have been accomplished; but Pompeius was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party, and, if it still kept together, it did so—in like manner without his action—through the sheer force of circumstances. In this, as in other things, he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all artificial great men. His political position was utterly perverse. He was a Sullan officer and under obligation to stand up for the restored constitution, and yet again in opposition to Sulla personally as well as to the whole senatorial government. The gens of the Pompeii, which had only been named for some sixty years in the consular lists, had by no means acquired full standing in the eyes of the aristocracy; even the father of this Pompeius had occupied a very invidious equivocal position towards the senate,(10) and he himself had once been in the ranks of the Cinnans(11)—recollections which were suppressed perhaps, but not forgotten. The prominent position which Pompeius acquired for himself under Sulla set him at inward variance with the aristocracy, quite as much as it brought him into outward connection with it. Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed with such dangerous rapidity and ease. Just as if he would himself ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel with the most poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five hundred senators of Rome. In reality, no one was more fitted to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than Pompeius. His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality, his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius and the mass of the burgesses and the senate. Even in his own age he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position had he contented himself with being the general of the senate, for which he was from the outset destined. With this he was not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing to be something else than he could be. He was constantly aspiring to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself, he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him, and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought of undertaking anything unconstitutional. Thus constantly at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Crassus

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy. He is a personage highly characteristic of this epoch. Like Pompeius, whose senior he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank, and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla in the Italian war. Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts, literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance with which he strove to possess everything and to become all-important. Above all, he threw himself into speculation. Purchases of estates during the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth; but he disdained no branch of gain; he carried on the business of building in the capital on a great scale and with prudence; he entered into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings; he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or by his agents; he advanced money to his colleagues in the senate, and undertook— as it might happen—to execute works or to bribe the tribunals on their account. He was far from nice in the matter of making profit. On occasion of the Sullan proscriptions a forgery in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs of state: he did not refuse to accept an inheritance, because the testamentary document which contained his name was notoriously forged; he made no objection, when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own. He avoided open collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style. In this way Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary senatorial fortune to be the master of wealth which not long before his death, after defraying enormous extraordinary expenses, still amounted to 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds). He had become the richest of Romans and thereby, at the same time, a great political power. If, according to his expression, no one might call himself rich who could not maintain an army from his revenues, one who could do this was hardly any longer a mere citizen. In reality the views of Crassus aimed at a higher object than the possession of the best-filled money-chest in Rome. He grudged no pains to extend his connections. He knew how to salute by name every burgess of the capital. He refused to no suppliant his assistance in court. Nature, indeed, had not done much for him as an orator: his speaking was dry, his delivery monotonous, he had difficulty of hearing; but his tenacity of purpose, which no wearisomeness deterred and no enjoyment distracted, overcame such obstacles. He never appeared unprepared, he never extemporized, and so he became a pleader at all times in request and at all times ready; to whom it was no derogation that a cause was rarely too bad for him, and that he knew how to influence the judges not merely by his oratory, but also by his connections and, on occasion, by his gold. Half the senate was in debt to him; his habit of advancing to "friends" money without interest revocable at pleasure rendered a number of influential men dependent on him, and the more so that, like a genuine man of business, he made no distinction among the parties, maintained connections on all hands, and readily lent to every one who was able to pay or otherwise useful. The most daring party-leaders, who made their attacks recklessly in all directions, were careful not to quarrel with Crassus; he was compared to the bull of the herd, whom it was advisable for none to provoke. That such a man, so disposed and so situated, could not strive after humble aims is clear; and, in a very different way from Pompeius, Crassus knew exactly like a banker the objects and the means of political speculation. From the origin of Rome capital was a political power there; the age was of such a sort, that everything seemed accessible to gold as to iron. If in the time of revolution a capitalist aristocracy might have thought of overthrowing the oligarchy of the gentes, a man like Crassus might raise his eyes higher than to the -fasces- and embroidered mantle of the triumphators. For the moment he was a Sullan and adherent of the senate; but he was too much of a financier to devote himself to a definite political party, or to pursue aught else than his personal advantage. Why should Crassus, the wealthiest and most intriguing man in Rome, and no penurious miser but a speculator on the greatest scale, not speculate also on the crown? Alone, perhaps, he could not attain this object; but he had already carried out various great transactions in partnership; it was not impossible that for this also a suitable partner might present himself. It is a trait characteristic of the time, that a mediocre orator and officer, a politician who took his activity for energy and his covetousness for ambition, one who at bottom had nothing but a colossal fortune and the mercantile talent of forming connections—that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of coteries and intrigues, could deem himself on a level with the first generals and statesmen of his day, and could contend with them for the highest prize which allures political ambition.

Leaders of the Democrats

In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives and among the Populares, the storms of revolution had made fearful havoc. Among the former, the only surviving man of note was Gaius Cotta (630-c. 681), the friend and ally of Drusus, and as such banished in 663,(12) and then by Sulla's victory brought back to his native land;(13) he was a shrewd man and a capable advocate, but not called, either by the weight of his party or by that of his personal standing, to act more than a respectable secondary part. In the democratic party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 652?(14)), drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius, he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal of the youth who had scarce outgrown the age of boyhood to send a divorce to his young wife Cornelia at the bidding of the dictator, as Pompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla; his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened, and which was with difficulty averted by the intercession of his relatives; his bravery in the conflicts before Mytilene and in Cilicia, a bravery which no one had expected from the tenderly reared and almost effeminately foppish boy; even the warnings of Sulla regarding the "boy in the petticoat" in whom more than a Marius lay concealed—all these were precisely so many recommendations in the eyes of the democratic party. But Caesar could only be the object of hopes for the future; and the men who from their age and their public position would have been called now to seize the reins of the party and the state, were all dead or in exile.

Lepidus

Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence of a man with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any one who might please to give himself forth as the champion of oppressed popular freedom; and in this way it came to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan, who from motives more than ambiguous deserted to the camp of the democracy. Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as governor of Sicily, so scandalously plundered the province that he was threatened with impeachment, and, to evade it, threw himself into opposition. It was a gain of doubtful value. No doubt the opposition thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either in council or in the field. Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him, and the new leader of the democrats succeeded not only in deterring his accusers from prosecuting the attack on him which they had begun, but also in carrying his election to the consulship for 676; in which, we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of Pompeius to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this occasion what he could do. Now that the opposition had, on the death of Sulla, found a head once more in Lepidus, and now that this their leader had become the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.

The Emigrants in Spain Sertorius

But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain. The soul of this movement was Quintus Sertorius. This excellent man, a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was from the first of a tender and even soft organization—as his almost enthusiastic love for his mother, Raia, shows—and at the same time of the most chivalrous bravery, as was proved by the honourable scars which he brought home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars. Although wholly untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession of his address. His remarkable military and statesmanly talent had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party with statesmanlike energy. His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in war. He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare talent of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness in attracting foreign nations to his interest and making them serviceable to his ends, by his prudence in success and misfortune, by the quickness of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories and averting the consequences of his defeats. It may be doubted whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period, or of the present, can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius. After Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain,(15) he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war, with the Cilician pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains of the roving tribes of Libya. The victorious Roman restoration had pursued him even thither: when he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers), a corps under Pacciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help of the prince of the town; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated, and Tingis was taken by Sertorius. On the report of such achievements by the Roman refugee spreading abroad, the Lusitanians, who, notwithstanding their pretended submission to the Roman supremacy, practically maintained their independence, and annually fought with the governors of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius in Africa, to invite him to join them, and to commit to him the command of their militia.

Renewed Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection Metellus Sent to Spain

Sertorius, who twenty years before had served under Titus Didius in Spain and knew the resources of the land, resolved to comply with the invitation, and, leaving behind a small detachment on the Mauretanian coast, embarked for Spain (about 674). The straits separating Spain and Africa were occupied by a Roman squadron commanded by Cotta; to steal through it was impossible; so Sertorius fought his way through and succeeded in reaching the Lusitanians. There were not more than twenty Lusitanian communities that placed themselves under his orders; and even of "Romans" he mustered only 2600 men, a considerable part of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus or Africans armed after the Roman style. Sertorius saw that everything depended on his associating with the loose guerilla-bands a strong nucleus of troops possessing Roman organization and discipline: for this end he reinforced the band which he had brought with him by levying 4000 infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion and the swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans. The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius, who through his absolute devotion to Sulla—well tried amidst the proscriptions—had risen from a subaltern to be propraetor; he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field of battle. Messengers in all haste summoned the governor of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus, to check the farther advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared (675) also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain. But they did not succeed in mastering the revolt. In the Ebro province not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius, but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed the Pyrenees with three legions to the help of his colleague, was totally defeated by the same brave leader. With difficulty Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence to his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes. In Further Spain Metellus penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth of the Tagus) in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush, and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory. Sertorius followed him, defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in- chief himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.

Organizations of Sertorius

These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant, that they were not achieved merely by arms and were not of a mere military nature. The emigrants as such were not formidable; nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians under this or that foreign leader of much moment. But with the most decided political and patriotic tact Sertorius acted, whenever he could do so, not as condottiere of the Lusitanians in revolt against Rome, but as Roman general and governor of Spain, in which capacity he had in fact been sent thither by the former rulers. He began(16) to form the heads of the emigration into a senate, which was to increase to 300 members and to conduct affairs and to nominate magistrates in Roman form. He regarded his army as a Roman one, and filled the officers' posts, without exception, with Romans. When facing the Spaniards, he was the governor, who by virtue of his office levied troops and other support from them; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the provincials to Rome and to himself personally. His chivalrous character rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish habits, and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so kindred with their own. According to the warlike custom of personal following which subsisted in Spain as among the Celts and the Germans, thousands of the noblest Spaniards swore to stand faithfully by their Roman general unto death; and in them Sertorius found more trustworthy comrades than in his countrymen and party-associates. He did not disdain to turn to account the superstition of the ruder Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess. Throughout he exercised a just and gentle rule. His troops, at least so far as his eye and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline. Gentle as he generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil. Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of the condition of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped. For the children of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca), in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome, learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga—a remarkable measure, which was by no means designed merely to take from the allies in as gentle a form as possible the hostages that in Spain were inevitable, but was above all an emanation from, and an advance onthe great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic party for gradually Romanizing the provinces. It was the first attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by extirpating the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants, but by Romanizing the provincials themselves. The Optimates in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian army, the last of the robber-band of Carbo; the sorry taunt recoiled upon its authors. The masses that had been brought into the field against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers, and 6000 cavalry. Against this enormous superiority of force Sertorius had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts and victories, but had also reduced the greater part of Spain under his power. In the Further province Metellus found himself confined to the districts immediately occupied by his troops; hereall the tribes, who could, had taken the side of Sertorius. In the Hither province, after the victories of Hirtuleius, there no longer existed a Roman army. Emissaries of Sertorius roamed through the whole territory of Gaul; there, too, the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began to make the Alpine passes insecure. Lastly the sea too belonged quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government, since the allies of the former—the pirates—were almost as powerful in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war. At the promontory of Diana (now Denia, between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established for the corsairs a fixed station, where they partly lay in wait for such Roman ships as were conveying supplies to the Roman maritime towns and the army, partly carried away or delivered goods for the insurgents, and partly formed their medium of intercourse with Italy and Asia Minor. The constant readiness of these men moving to and fro to carry everywhere sparks from the scene of conflagration tended in a high degree to excite apprehension, especially at a time when so much combustible matter was everywhere accumulated in the Roman empire.

Death of Sulla and Its Consequences

Amidst this state of matters the sudden death of Sulla took place (676). So long as the man lived, at whose voice a trained and trustworthy army of veterans was ready any moment to rise, the oligarchy might tolerate the almost (as it seemed) definite abandonment of the Spanish provinces to the emigrants, and the election of the leader of the opposition at home to be supreme magistrate, at all events as transient misfortunes; and in their shortsighted way, yet not wholly without reason, might cherish confidence either that the opposition would not venture to proceed to open conflict, or that, if it did venture, he who had twice saved the oligarchy would set it up a third time. Now the state of things was changed. The democratic Hotspurs in the capital, long impatient of the endless delay and inflamed by the brilliant news from Spain, urged that a blow should be struck; and Lepidus, with whom the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own characteristic frivolity. For a moment it seemed as if the torch which kindled the funeral pile of the regent would also kindle civil war; but the influence of Pompeius and the temper of the Sullan veterans induced the opposition to let the obsequies of the regent pass over in peace.

Insurrection of Lepidus

Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth made to introduce a fresh revolution. Daily the Forum resounded with accusations against the "mock Romulus" and his executioners. Even before the great potentate had closed his eyes, the overthrow of the Sullan constitution, the re-establishment of the distributions of grain, the reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their former position, the recall of those who were banished contrary to law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly indicated by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at which they aimed. Now communications were entered into with the proscribed; Marcus Perpenna, governor of Sicily in the days of Cinna,(17) arrived in the capital. The sons of those whom Sulla had declared guilty of treason—on whom the laws of the restoration bore with intolerable severity—and generally the more noted men of Marian views were invited to give their accession. Not a few, such as the young Lucius Cinna, joined the movement; others, however, followed the example of Gaius Caesar, who had returned home from Asia on receiving the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans of Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted with the character of the leader and of the movement prudently withdrew. Carousing and recruiting went on in behalf of Lepidus in the taverns and brothels of the capital. At length a conspiracy against the new order of things was concocted among the Etruscan malcontents.(18)

All this took place under the eyes of the government The consul Catulus as well as the more judicious Optimates urged an immediate decisive interference and suppression of the revolt in the bud; the indolent majority, however, could not make up their minds to begin the struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible by a system of compromises and concessions. Lepidus also on his part at first entered into it. The suggestion, which proposed a restoration of the prerogatives taken away from the tribunes of the people, he as well as his colleague Catulus repelled. On the other hand, the Gracchan distribution of grain was to a limited extent re-established. According to it not all (as according to the Sempronian law) but only a definite number— presumably 40,000—of the poorer burgesses appear to have received the earlier largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five -modii- monthly at the price of 6 1/3 -asses- (3 pence)—a regulation which occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least 40,000 pounds.(19) The opposition, naturally as little satisfied as it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession, displayed all the more rudeness and violence in the capital; and in Etruria, the true centre of all insurrections of the Italian proletariate, civil war already broke out, the dispossessed Faesulans resumed possession of their lost estates by force of arms, and several of the veterans settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult. The senate on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two consuls thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the insurrection.(20) It was impossible to adopt a more irrational course. The senate, in presence of the insurrection, evinced its pusillanimity and its fears by the re-establishment of the corn-law; in order to be relieved from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious head of the insurrection with an army; and, when the two consuls were bound by the most solemn oath which could be contrived not to turn the arms entrusted to them against each other, it must have required the superhuman obduracy of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting such a bulwark against the impending insurrection. Of course Lepidus armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrection— sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had taken bound him only for the current year. The senate put the oracular machinery in motion to induce him to return, and committed to him the conduct of the impending consular elections; but Lepidus evaded compliance, and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official year drew to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army. When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677), the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience, and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power, the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this, his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words, the -tyrannis- in legal form.

Outbreak of the War Lepidus Defeated Death of Lepidus

Thus war was declared. The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus, upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus, Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed in Etruria. At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus. While Pompeius speedily accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm. The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able even to cross the river. The decisive battle was fought on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city. But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria, while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself into the fortress of Alba. Thereupon the rising was substantially atan end. Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was, notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently put to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a long siege, reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed. Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital, and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents. But the governor of the island opposed to him a vigorous resistance; and he himself died, not long after his landing, of consumption (677), whereupon the war in Sardinia came to an end. A part of his soldiers dispersed; with the flower of the insurrectionary army and with a well-filled chest the late praetor, Marcus Perpenna, proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to join the Sertorians.