Part 10 (1/2)
Yet it is said that Cra.s.sus never showed himself so great as in this disaster. Pa.s.sing along the ranks, he shouted, 'This grief touches me, and none besides, but by your success alone can the honour and glory of Rome be preserved inviolate and unconquered.
If you pity me for the loss of a gallant son, prove it by your fury against the enemy. Take from them their triumph, punish their ferocity, do not be cast down by our loss. Great aims are never realized without some suffering. Lucullus did not overthrow Tigranes without bloodshed, nor Scipio Antiochus; our ancestors lost a thousand s.h.i.+ps off the coast of Sicily, and in Italy many dictators and generals; but never did these defeats prevent them from crus.h.i.+ng the conquerors. It is not by good luck, but by endurance and courage in the face of peril, that Rome has risen to its height of power.'
Plutarch, x.x.xix. 26.
Faulty generals.h.i.+p had brought the Roman army into a position whence no courage could save it. In the second day's battle a terrible defeat was sustained: no less than thirty thousand Romans perished in the disaster of Carrhae (53). Cra.s.sus himself was killed in a parley afterwards.
It is said that a few days after the battle, before the news of it had reached him, the Parthian king was witnessing a performance of the Bacchae of Euripides in which there is a scene where one of the dancers comes in bearing a bleeding head. The actor who took this part carried the head of Cra.s.sus, which he cast, amid shouts of joy, at the king's feet.
Such was the tragic end of the millionaire Cra.s.sus. The news of his death and defeat came to Rome but caused no excitement there. The city was more interested in the street brawls of Clodius and Milo. The politicians were watching the growing conflict between Caesar and Pompeius. Cra.s.sus had dropped out of the Triumvirate. The stage was cleared for the great duel.
XII
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Of none of the men of his own time do we know so much as of Marcus Tullius Cicero. His contemporaries we know from the accounts given and judgements pa.s.sed by others: Cicero we know from his own. He was the first speaker of his age, and his speeches deal largely with the politics and people of his time, as he defended or attacked the men and their acts. Cicero was anything but impartial; yet it is from what he says that much of our picture of Caesar and Cra.s.sus, Pompeius, Antonius, Catiline, Clodius, Cato, Brutus and a host of others are drawn. In all the long gallery of portraits he has painted none is so sharp and vivid as his own. It comes to us not only through his speeches but through all his writings--and he wrote admirably on many philosophical and semi-philosophical subjects--and above all through his letters. These letters are addressed for the most part to his intimate friend the banker Pomponius Atticus, but also to others including most of the prominent men of his time, and to his daughter Tullia, to whom he was devotedly attached. They give a day-to-day picture of the life of Rome and also of the man who wrote them. Cicero was immersed, like most men of his time, in politics. He rose, to his own ineffable delight (a delight which he expresses again and again with childlike complacency), to be consul. But the explanation of a character that at times amused and at times exasperated his contemporaries, and has caused the same mixture of feelings to much later admirers, is that he was, in his essence, an artist. He wanted, as do many artists, to be and do other things. He was more vain of his dubious success in politics than of the splendour of his oratory or the beauty of his writing. In action he was timid, uncertain, and quite unable to cope with the great currents of his time, sn.o.bbish and constantly mistaken in his judgements of people, and alternately elated and despairing in his view of public events. When he takes up his pen he is a master.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CICERO]
Cicero was in some ways typical of the new men in Rome. He was born at Arpinum, where his family belonged to the Italian middle cla.s.s. His parents were sufficiently well-to-do for the young man to receive an excellent education, completed, like that of other well-bred young men of the time, by attending lectures in Athens on literature and philosophy. His father's death brought him a fortune that though not large was sufficient, together with a small estate at Arpinum and a house in Rome.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ARPINUM.
Cicero's birthplace]
But Cicero had no mind for a life of fas.h.i.+onable idleness. For a middle-cla.s.s provincial there was little chance in politics, so long as Sulla's laws stood. He therefore turned to the law courts. There he soon made himself a great name, the more distinguished since he kept up the old custom of refusing fees. A wealthy marriage increased his consequence. His honesty and ability made him respected by all sorts of people. Cicero used his gifts in the most honourable way by defending the people of the provinces, who before his time had hardly ever got a hearing, against the rapacity of some of the Roman tax collectors.
A case which made his name known throughout the Roman world was the prosecution of Caius Verres which he undertook on behalf of the people of Sicily. Verres, once an officer in Marius's army, was a man of notoriously bad character. Like other praetors he looked on his governors.h.i.+p simply as an opportunity to make money for himself and his friends; it was freely said, even in Rome, that his misrule was ruining Sicily. And Sicily was one of the chief granaries of Rome. The greatest excitement was aroused over the case because the Democratic party took it up as a means of discrediting the Government; and at the same time brought in a Bill for the reform of the law courts by making the jurors not senators only, but, as before Sulla's time, men belonging to the Equestrian Order. This frightened the Conservatives: they saw that much hung on the case of Verres. Quintus Hortensius, the most famous advocate of his time, agreed to defend him.
Cicero went to Sicily to collect evidence. He was quick to feel, in all his sensitive nerves, the tense atmosphere of excitement gathering round the case. It was to make or mar him. His genius rose delighted to the great occasion. He understood, as the Conservatives did not, the feelings that were dumbly stirring the mind of the ordinary decent Roman, and could give them voice. As the evidence he had collected was unrolled the story of the greed of Verres and the suffering of the people of Sicily was laid bare step by step. Excitement and anger against the cla.s.s in power who did and defended such things grew and grew. Each day an enormous crowd thronged the Forum and at times its feelings made it positively dangerous. One witness told how a Roman citizen had been crucified: his appeal, 'Civis Roma.n.u.s sum--I am a Roman citizen', had fallen on deaf ears. At this the hearers were stirred to such rage that Verres was only saved from being torn to pieces by the adjournment of the hearing. After fourteen days the defendants realized that their case was lost; no judge dared acquit Verres. He fled the city and was never heard of again. Cicero was the hero of the hour.
The man who appears and feels himself a hero when addressing a great crowd, who can work their feelings and his own into tempestuous enthusiasm, is often a weak reed, swayed by every impulse and incapable of the long slow effort required to carry a purpose into action. This was the case with Cicero. When speaking he was carried away by his own pa.s.sion. Then he appeared to know exactly what he thought. Alone, however, he was moody, a prey to fearful doubt and depression, one day full of enthusiasm, the next despairing. He was at once vain and timid; uncertain of himself and turned this way and that by the praise or blame of others. His great desire was to be admired by every one. His comparatively humble origin made him feel any attention from the n.o.bles far more flattering than it was.
In a good sense as well as in a bad he was a Conservative. His study of history made him feel full of respect for any inst.i.tution that had lasted a long time, and for men belonging to ancient families. He felt this even at a time when his writings and speeches were making him known throughout Italy and admired by men whose praise was worth having. The rich men and many of the aristocrats were far inferior to Cicero in brains and character; yet he longed and strove to get into 'society'.
Society at the time was extravagant, frivolous, vicious, and hard-hearted. Cicero was modest and frugal in his personal habits, serious in the bent of his mind, a man of high moral principle and tender domestic affections. Yet nothing pleased him more than an invitation to one of the houses of the smart set; nothing vexed him more than to be thought old-fas.h.i.+oned or middle-cla.s.s in his ideas.
All these feelings made him regard his own election to the consuls.h.i.+p, and the support he received as candidate from the n.o.ble Conservatives, as the most wonderful affair. Yet the real reason why the Conservatives supported him was not that they loved Cicero but that they loathed Catiline, the third strong candidate, and were prepared to go to great lengths to keep him out. Antonius, who was elected as Cicero's colleague, though a friend of Cra.s.sus, was considered to be harmless.
This consuls.h.i.+p was the turning point in Cicero's life. He had always wanted to stand well with all parties. Now he was compelled to take his place definitely on the Conservative side. More than that, it finally caused him to lose his sense of balance altogether and to think of himself as a statesman: a part for which he was ill fitted. He was so much impressed with his own importance that he bought a vast house on the Palatine. To do so he had to borrow money and thus got into debt.
Before he had been free, after his consuls.h.i.+p he became entangled and embarra.s.sed.
This was the case with many of the leading politicians and men of all parties, and hampered their actions in countless ways. In order to win popular favour they spent huge sums on shows and gave feasts and presents to the populace. They lived altogether in a way expensive and showy beyond their means. To do this they had to borrow money at exorbitant terms, and were thus helplessly in the power of the rich men who lent to them. Caesar at this time was fearfully in debt and constantly in difficulties on this account. So were innumerable fas.h.i.+onable young aristocrats. The Roman laws of debt were still extremely harsh and all acted against the unfortunate debtor. Prices were steadily rising: the vast wealth of the few made the lot of the many increasingly hard. While Lucullus was in the East there had been a serious financial crisis in Rome, and the effects of this lasted for a long time.
As a consequence of this state of things a vast number of people of all cla.s.ses were stirred to wild excitement and enthusiasm when Catiline, who was determined to be consul and by no means inclined to sit down under one rebuff, set out a programme of which the chief item was a wiping off of a large part of all outstanding debts. The poorer people were on his side in this almost to a man. So were a great many needy aristocrats, especially among the younger men. The rich, on the other hand, especially the cla.s.s of Knights, to which most of the big financiers and trading houses belonged, were furious. They were ready to throw all their influence and the great power of the purse on to the side of the Conservatives, who cried that Catiline's programme meant revolution. On both sides the wildest excitement and the most extreme bitterness of feeling was stirred up.
Catiline was a man of low character, and of very bad record, quite reckless. But he was by no means without ability. There was something to be said for his programme if nothing for the man who proposed it.
Certainly the law of debt needed to be reformed. The rich did not argue against it: they fell into a panic. They saw that popular feeling and popular votes would be on Catiline's side. But they had money and could bribe. They did bribe so effectively that when it came to the election he was beaten again.
The alarm of the propertied cla.s.ses did not, however, die down, or the excitement of the disappointed. People had talked of revolution and civil war so loud and long during the elections that they began to believe in it. Cicero had been going about for days with a cuira.s.s under his toga. He really believed that grave plots were on foot. He spent his time listening to spies and informers. One day he came down to the Senate with a very long face declaring that he 'knew all'. He produced no proofs, but most people were too much excited to ask for proofs. The word plot was enough. A state of siege was proclaimed in the city.
Soon afterwards news came that a follower of Catiline had actually got some soldiers together in Etruria. Catiline, however, was still in Rome.