Part 30 (1/2)
Delos, the emporium of Roman commerce, was taken, and twenty thousand Italians ma.s.sacred. Most of the small free States of Greece entered into alliance with him-the Achaeans, Laconians, and Botians. So commanding was his position, that an emba.s.sy of Italian insurgents invited him to land in Italy.
The position of the Roman government was critical. Asia Minor, h.e.l.las, and Macedonia were in the hands of Mithridates, while his fleet sailed without a rival. The Italian insurrection was not subdued, and political parties divided the capital.
(M977) At this crisis Sulla landed on the coast of Epirus, but with an army of only thirty thousand men, and without a single vessel of war. He landed with an empty military chest. But he was a second Alexander-the greatest general that Rome had yet produced. He soon made himself master of Greece, with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the Piraeus, into which the generals of Mithridates had thrown themselves. He intrenched himself at Eleusis and Megara, from which he commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and commenced the siege of Athena. This was attended with great difficulties, and the city only fell, after a protracted defense, when provisions were exhausted. The conqueror, after allowing his soldiers to pillage the city, gave back her liberties, in honor of her ill.u.s.trious dead.
(M978) But a year was wasted, and without s.h.i.+ps it was impossible for Sulla to secure his communications. He sent one of his best officers, Lucullus, to Alexandria, to raise a fleet, but the Egyptian court evaded the request. To add to his embarra.s.sments, the Roman general was without money, although he had rifled the treasures which still remained in the Grecian temples. Moreover, what was still more serious, a revolution at Rome overturned his work, and he had been deposed, and his Asiatic command given to M. Valerius Flaccus.
Sulla was unexpectedly relieved by the resolution of Mithridates to carry on the offensive in Greece. Taxiles, one of the lieutenants of the Pontic king, was sent to combat Sulla with an army of one hundred thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry.
(M979) Then was fought the battle of Chaeronea, B.C. 86, against the advice of Archelaus, in which the Romans were the victors. But Sulla could not reap the fruits of victory without a fleet, since the sea was covered with Pontic s.h.i.+ps. In the following year a second army was sent into Greece by Mithridates, and the Romans and Asiatics met once more in the plain of the Cephissus, near Orchomenus. The Romans were the victors, who speedily cleared the European continent of its eastern invaders. At the end of the third year of the war, Sulla took up his winter quarters in Thessaly, and commenced to build s.h.i.+ps.
(M980) Meanwhile a reaction against Mithridates took place in Asia Minor.
His rule was found to be more oppressive than that of the Romans. The great mercantile cities of Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and Sardis were in revolt, and closed their gates against his governors. The h.e.l.lenic cities of Asia Minor had hoped to gain civil independence and a remission of taxes, and were disappointed. And those cities which were supposed to be secretly in favor of the Romans were heavily fined. The Chians were compelled to pay two thousand talents. Great cruelties were also added to fines and confiscations. Lucullus, unable to obtain the help of an Alexandrian fleet, was more fortunate in the Syrian ports, and soon was able to commence offensive operations. Flaccus, too, had arrived with a Roman army, but this incapable general was put to death by a mob-orator, Fimbria, more able than he, who defeated a Pontic army at Miletopolis. The situation of Mithridates then became perilous. Europe was lost; Asia Minor was in rebellion; and Roman armies were pressing upon him.
(M981) He therefore negotiated for peace. Sulla required the restoration of all the conquests he had made: Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, the h.e.l.lenic cities, the islands of the sea, and a contribution of three thousand talents. These conditions were not accepted, and Sulla proceeded to Asia, upon which Mithridates reluctantly acceded to his terms.
(M982) Sulla then turned against Fimbria, who commanded the Roman army sent to supplant him, which, as was to be expected, deserted to his standard. Fimbria fled to Pergamus, and fell on his own sword. Sulla intrusted the two legions which had been sent from Rome under Flaccus to the command of his best officer, Murena, and turned his attention to arrange the affairs of Asia. He levied contributions to the amount of twenty thousand talents, reduced Mithridates to the rank of a client king, richly compensated his soldiers, and embarked for Italy, leaving Lucullus behind to collect the contributions.
(M983) Thus was the Mithridatic war ended by the genius of a Roman general, who had no equal in Roman history, with the exception of Pompey and Julius Caesar. He had distinguished himself in Africa, in Spain, in Italy, and in Greece. He had defeated the barbarians of the West, the old Italian foes of Rome, and the armies of the most powerful Oriental monarch since the fall of Persia. He had triumphed over Roman factions, and supplanted the great Marius himself. He was now to contend with one more able foe, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who represented the revolutionary forces which had rallied under the Gracchi and Marius-the democratic elements of Roman society.
When Sulla embarked for the Mithridatic war, Cinna, supported by a majority of the College of Tribunes, concerted a reaction against the rule which Sulla had re-established-the rule of the aristocracy. But Cinna, a mere tool of the revolutionary party,-a man without ability,-was driven out of the city by the aristocratic party, and outlawed, and L. Cornelia Mesula was made consul in his stead. The outlaws fled to the camp before Nola. The Campanian army, democratic and revolutionary, recognized Cinna as the leader of the republic. Gaius Marius, then an exile in Numidia, brought six thousand men, whom he had rallied to his standard, to the disposal of the consul, and was placed by Cinna in supreme command at Etruria. A storm gathered around the capitol. Cinna was overshadowed by the greatness of that plebeian general who had defeated the Cimbrians, and who was bent upon revenge for the mortification and insults he had received from the Roman aristocracy. Famine and desertion soon made the city indefensible, and Rome capitulated to an army of her own citizens.
(M984) Marius, now master of Rome, entered the city, and a reign of terror commenced. The gates were closed, and the slaughter of the aristocratic party commenced. The consul Octavius was the first victim, and with him the most ill.u.s.trious of his party. The executioners of Marius fulfilled his orders, and his revenge was complete. He entered upon a new consulate, execrated by all the leading citizens. But in the midst of his victories he was seized with a burning fever, and died in agonies, at the age of seventy, in the full possession of honor and power. Cinna succeeded him in the consuls.h.i.+p and Rome was under the government of a detested tyrant. For four years his reign was absolute, and was a reign of terror, during which the senators were struck down, as the French n.o.bles were in the time of Robespierre. Cinna, like Robespierre, reigned with the mightiest plenitude of power, united with incapacity.
In this state of anarchy Sulla's wife and children escaped with difficulty, and Sulla himself was deprived of his command against Mithridates. But Cinna, B.C. 84, was killed in a mutiny, and the command of the revolutionists devolved on Carbo. The situation of Sulla was critical, even at the head of his veteran forces. In the spring of the year following the death of Cinna, he landed in Brundusium, where he was re-enforced by partisans and deserters. The Senate made advances to Sulla, and many patricians joined his ranks, including Cneius Pompeius, then twenty-three years of age.
(M985) Civil war was now inaugurated between Sulla and the revolutionary party, at the head of which were now the consul Carbo and the younger Marius. Carbo was charged with Upper Italy, while Marius guarded Rome at the fortress of Praeneste. At Sacriportus Sulla defeated Marius, and entered Rome. But the insurgent Italians united with the revolutionary forces of Rome, and seventy thousand Samnites and Lucanians approached the capital. At the Colline gate a battle was fought, in which Sulla was victorious. This ended the Social war, and the subjugation of the revolutionists soon followed.
(M986) Sulla was now made dictator, and the ten years of revolution and insurrection were at an end in both West and East. The first use which Sulla made of his absolute power was to outlaw all his enemies. Lists of the proscribed were posted at Rome and in the Italian cities. It was a fearful visitation. A second reign of terror took place, more fearful and systematic than that of Marius. Four thousand seven hundred persons were slaughtered, among whom were forty senators, and one thousand six hundred equites.
(M987) The next year Sulla celebrated his magnificent triumph over Mithridates, and was saluted by the name of Felix. The despotism at which the Gracchi were accused of aiming was introduced by a military conqueror, aided by the aristocracy.
(M988) Sulla then devoted himself to the reorganization of the State. He conferred citizens.h.i.+p upon all the Italians but freedmen, and bestowed the sequestered estates of those who had taken side against him or his soldiers. The office of judices was restored to the Senate, and the equites were deprived of their separate seats at festivals. The Senate was restored to its ancient dignity and power, and three hundred new members appointed. The number of praetors was increased to eight. The government still rested on the basis of popular election, but was made more aristocratic than before. The Comitia Centuriata was left in possession of the nominal power of legislation, but it could only be exercised upon the initiation of a decree of the Senate. The Comitia Tributa was stripped of the powers by which it had so long controlled the Senate and the State.
Tribunes of the people were selected from the Senate. The College of Pontiffs was no longer filled by popular election, but by the choice of their own members. A new criminal code was made, and the several courts were presided over by the praetors. Such, in substance, were the Cornelian laws to restore the old powers of the aristocracy.
(M989) Having effected this labor, Sulla, in the plenitude of power, retired into private life. He retired, not like Charles V., wearied of the toils of war, and disgusted with the vanity of glory and fame, nor like Was.h.i.+ngton, from lofty patriotic motives, but to bury himself in epicurean pleasures. In the luxury of his c.u.maenon villa he divided his time between hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, and the enjoyments of literature, until, worn out with sensuality, he died in his sixtieth year, B.C. 78. A grand procession of the Senate he had saved, the equites, the magistrates, the vestal virgins, and his disbanded soldiers, bore his body to the funeral pyre, and his ashes were deposited beside the tombs of the kings. A splendid monument was raised to his memory, on which was inscribed his own epitaph, that no friend ever did him a kindness, and no enemy a wrong, without receiving a full requital.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
ROME FROM THE DEATH OF SULLA TO THE GREAT CIVIL WARS OF CaeSAR AND POMPEY.-CICERO, POMPEY, AND CaeSAR.
On the death of Sulla, the Roman government was once more in the hands of the aristocracy, and for several years the consuls were elected from the great ruling families. But, in spite of all the conquests of Sulla and all his laws, the State was tumbling into anarchy, and was convulsed with fresh wars.
(M990) Sulla was alive when M. Lepidus came forward as the leader of the democratic party against C. Lutatius Catulus-a man without character or ability, who had deserted from the optimates to the popular party, to escape prosecution for the plunder of Sicily. The fortune he acquired in his government of that province enabled Lepidus to secure his election as consul, B.C. 78, and he even attempted to deprive Sulla of his funeral honors. A conspiracy was organized in Etruria, where the Sullan confiscation had been most severe. Lepidus came forward as an avenger of the old Romans whose fortunes had been ruined. The Senate, fearing convulsions, made Lepidus and Catulus, the consuls, swear not to take up arms against each other; but at the expiration of the consuls.h.i.+p of Lepidus, went, as was usual, to the province a.s.signed to him. This was Gaul, and here the war first broke out. An attempt on Rome was frustrated by Catulus, who defeated Lepidus, and the latter soon died in Sardinia, whither he had retired.
(M991) Sertorius was then in command of the army in Spain,-a man who had risen from an obscure position, but who possessed the hardy virtues of the old Sabine farmers. He served under Marius in Gaul, and was praetor when Sulla returned to Italy. When the cause of Marius was lost in Africa, he organized a resistance to Sulla in Spain. His army was re-enforced by Marian refugees, and he was aided by the Iberian tribes, among whom he was a favorite. For eight years this celebrated hero baffled the armies which Rome, under the lead of the aristocracy, sent against him, for he undertook to restore the cause of the democracy.
(M992) Against Sertorius was sent the man who, next to Caesar, was destined to play the most important part in the history of those times-Cn.
Pompeius, born the same year as Cicero, B.C. 106, who had enlisted in the cause of Sulla, and early distinguished himself against the generals of Marius. He gained great successes in Sicily and Africa, and was, on his return to Rome, saluted by the dictator Sulla himself with the name of _Magnus_, which t.i.tle he ever afterward bore. He was then a simple equestrian, and had not risen to the rank of quaestor, or praetor, or consul. Yet he had, at the early age of twenty-four, without enjoying any curule office, the honor of a triumph, even against the opposition of Sulla.