Part 16 (2/2)
At length, however, his preparations were completed, and he found himself at the head of an army of 36,000 men and a considerable fleet.
But during his illness disaffection had made rapid progress among his followers. The full extent of his schemes was probably communicated to few; but enough had transpired to alarm the mult.i.tude, and a formidable conspiracy was organized by Pharnaces, the favorite son of Mithridates.
He was quickly joined both by the whole army and the citizens of Panticapaeum, who unanimously proclaimed him king, and Mithridates saw that no choice remained to him but death or captivity. Hereupon he took poison, which he constantly carried with him; but his const.i.tution had been so long inured to antidotes that it did not produce the desired effect, and he was compelled to call in the a.s.sistance of one of his Gaulish mercenaries to dispatch him with his sword.
Pompey now devoted his attention to the settlement of affairs in Asia.
He confirmed Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, in the possession of the kingdom of Bosporus; Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia, was rewarded with an extension of territory; and Ariobarzanes, king of Cappadocia, was restored to his kingdom. After an absence of seven years, Pompey arrived in Italy toward the end of B.C. 62. His arrival had been long looked for by all parties with various feelings of hope and fear. It was felt that at the head of his victorious troops he could easily play the part of Sulla, and become the ruler of the state. Important events had taken place at Rome during the absence of Pompey, of which it is necessary to give an account before following him to the city.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cicero.]
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
INTERNAL HISTORY, FROM THE CONSULs.h.i.+P OF POMPEY AND CRa.s.sUS TO THE RETURN OF POMPEY FROM THE EAST.--THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE. B.C. 69-61.
Notwithstanding the restoration of the Tribunate and the alteration in the judicial power in Pompey's Consuls.h.i.+p, the popular party had received such a severe blow during Sulla's supremacy, that the aristocracy still retained the chief political influence during Pompey's absence in the East. But meantime a new leader of the popular party had been rapidly rising into notice, who was destined not only to crush the aristocracy, but to overthrow the Republic and become the undisputed master of the Roman world.
C. JULIUS CaeSAR, who was descended from an old Patrician family, was six years younger than Pompey, having been born in B.C. 100. He was closely connected with the popular party by the marriage of his aunt Julia with the great Marius, and he himself married, at an early age, Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, the most distinguished of the Marian leaders. Sulla commanded him to divorce his wife, and on his refusal he was included in the list of the proscription. The Vestal virgins and his friends with difficulty obtained his pardon from the Dictator, who observed, when they pleaded his youth and insignificance, ”that that boy would some day or another be the ruin of the aristocracy, for that there were many Mariuses in him.”
This was the first proof which Caesar gave of the resolution and decision of character which distinguished him throughout life. He went to Asia in B.C. 81, where he served his first campaign under M. Minucius Thermus, and was rewarded, at the siege of Mitylene, with a civic crown for saving the life of a fellow-soldier. On his return to Rome he accused (B.C. 77) Cn. Dolabella of extortion in his province of Macedonia.
Dolabella was acquitted by the senatorial judges; but Caesar gained great reputation by this prosecution, and showed that he possessed powers of oratory which bade fair to place him among the foremost speakers at Rome. To render himself still more perfect in oratory, he went to Rhodes, which was then celebrated for its school of rhetoric, but in his voyage thither he was captured by pirates, with whom the seas of the Mediterranean then swarmed. In this island he was detained by them till he could obtain fifty talents from the neighboring cities for his ransom. Immediately on obtaining his liberty, he manned some Milesian vessels, overpowered the pirates, and conducted them as prisoners to Pergamus, where he shortly afterward crucified them--a punishment he had frequently threatened them with in sport when he was their prisoner. He then repaired to Rhodes, where he studied under Apollonius for a short time, but soon afterward crossed over into Asia, on the outbreak of the Mithridatic war in B.C. 74. Here, although he held no public office, he collected troops on his own authority, and repulsed the commander of the king, and then returned to Rome in the same year, in consequence of having been elected Pontiff during his absence. His affable manners, and, still more, his unbounded liberality, won the hearts of the people.
Caesar obtained the Quaestors.h.i.+p in B.C. 68. In this year he lost his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, and his own wife Cornelia. He p.r.o.nounced orations over both of them in the forum, in which he took the opportunity of pa.s.sing a panegyric upon the former leaders of the popular party. At the funeral of his aunt he caused the images of Marius to be carried in the procession: they were welcomed with loud acclamations by the people, who were delighted to see their former favorite brought, as it were, into public again.
Caesar warmly supported the Gabinian and Manilian Laws, which bestowed upon Pompey the command against the pirates and Mithridates. These measures, as we have already seen, were opposed by the aristocracy, and widened still farther the breach between them and Pompey. In B.C. 65 Caesar was Curule aedile along with M. Bibulus, and still farther increased his popularity by the splendid games which he exhibited. He now took a step which openly proclaimed him the leader of the Marian party. He caused the statues of Marius and the Cimbrian trophies, which had been all destroyed by Sulla, to be privately restored and placed at night in the Capitol. In the morning the city was in the highest state of excitement; the veterans of Marius cried with joy at beholding his countenance once more, and greeted Caesar with shouts of applause. Q.
Catulus brought the conduct of Caesar before the notice of the Senate, but the popular excitement was so great that they thought it better to let the matter drop.
In Caesar's aediles.h.i.+p the first Catilinarian conspiracy occurred, and from this time his history forms a portion of that of the times. But before pa.s.sing on, the early life of another distinguished man, the greatest of Roman orators, also claims our notice.
M. TULLIUS CICERO was born at Arpinum in B.C. 106, and consequently in the same year as Pompey. His father was of the Equestrian order, and lived upon his hereditary estate near Arpinum, but none of his ancestors had ever held any of the offices of state. Cicero was therefore, according to the Roman phraseology, a New Man (see p. 128)(Fourth paragraph of Chapter XVIII.--Transcriber). He served his first and only campaign in the Social War (B.C. 89), and in the troubled times which followed he gave himself up with indefatigable perseverance to those studies which were essential to his success as a lawyer and orator. When tranquillity was restored by the final discomfiture of the Marian party, he came forward as a pleader at the age of twenty-five. The first of his extant speeches in a civil suit is that for P. Quintius (B.C. 81); the first delivered upon a criminal trial was that in defense of s.e.x.
Roscius of Ameria, who was charged with parricide by Chrysogonus, a freedman of Sulla, supported, as it was understood, by the influence of his patron. In consequence of the failure of his health, Cicero quitted Rome in B.C. 79, and spent two years in study in the philosophical and rhetorical schools of Athens and Asia Minor. On his return to the city he forthwith took his station in the foremost rank of judicial orators, and ere long stood alone in acknowledged pre-eminence; his most formidable rivals--Hortensius, eight years his senior, and C. Aurelius Cotta, who had long been kings of the bar--having been forced, after a short but sharp contest for supremacy, to yield.
Cicero's reputation and popularity already stood so high that he was elected Quaestor (B.C. 76), although, comparatively speaking, a stranger, and certainly unsupported by any powerful family interest. He served in Sicily under s.e.x. Peducaeus, Praetor of Lilybaeum. In B.C. 70 he gained great renown by his impeachment of Verres for his oppression of the Sicilians, whom he had ruled as Praetor of Syracuse for the s.p.a.ce of three years (B.C. 73-71). The most strenuous exertions were made by Verres, backed by some of the most powerful families, to wrest the case out of the hands of Cicero, who, however, defeated the attempt, and having demanded and been allowed 110 days for the purpose of collecting evidence, he instantly set out for Sicily, which he traversed in less than two months, and returned attended by all the necessary witnesses.
Another desperate effort was made by Hortensius, now Consul elect, who was counsel for the defendant, to raise up obstacles which might have the effect of delaying the trial until the commencement of the following year; but here again he was defeated by the prompt.i.tude and decision of his opponent, who opened the case very briefly, proceeded at once to the examination of the witnesses and the production of the depositions and other papers, which, taken together, const.i.tuted a ma.s.s of testimony so decisive that Verres gave up the contest as hopeless, and retired at once into exile without attempting any defense. The full pleadings, however, which were to have been delivered had the trial been permitted to run its ordinary course, were subsequently published by Cicero.
In B.C. 69 Cicero was aedile, and in 66 Praetor. In the latter year he delivered his celebrated address to the people in favor of the Manilian Law. Having now the Consuls.h.i.+p in view, and knowing that, as a new man, he must expect the most determined opposition from the n.o.bles, he resolved to throw himself into the arms of the popular party, and to secure the friends.h.i.+p of Pompey, now certainly the most important person in the Republic.
In the following year (B.C. 65) the first conspiracy of Catiline occurred. The circ.u.mstances of the times were favorable to a bold and unprincipled adventurer. A widespread feeling of disaffection extended over the whole of Italy. The veterans of Sulla had already squandered their ill-gotten wealth, and longed for a renewal of those scenes of blood which they had found so profitable. The mult.i.tudes whose estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been proscribed were eagerly watching for any movement which might give them a chance of becoming robbers and murderers in their turn. The younger n.o.bility, as a cla.s.s, were thoroughly demoralized, for the most part bankrupts in fortune as well as in fame, and eager for any change which might relieve them from their embarra.s.sments. The rabble were restless and discontented, filled with envy and hatred against the rich and powerful.
Never was the executive weaker. The Senate and Magistrates were wasting their energies in petty disputes, indifferent to the interests of the Republic. Pompey, at the head of all the best troops of the Republic, was prosecuting a long-protracted war in the East; there was no army in Italy, where all was hushed in a treacherous calm.
Of the profligate n.o.bles at this time none was more profligate than L.
SERGIUS CATILINA. He was the descendant of an ancient patrician family which had sunk into poverty, and he first appears in history as a zealous partisan of Sulla. During the horrors of the proscription he killed his brother-in-law, Q. Caecilius, and is said to have murdered even his own brother. His youth was spent in the open indulgence of every vice, and it was believed that he had made away with his first wife, and afterward with his son, in order that he might marry the profligate Aurelia Orestilla, who objected to the presence of a grown-up step-child. Notwithstanding these crimes, he acquired great popularity among the younger n.o.bles by his agreeable address and his zeal in ministering to their pleasures. He possessed extraordinary powers of mind and body, and all who came in contact with him submitted more or less to the ascendency of his genius. He was Praetor in B.C. 68; was Governor of Africa during the following year; and returned to Rome in B.C. 66, in order to press his suit for the Consuls.h.i.+p. The election for B.C. 65 was carried by P. Autronius Paetus and P. Cornelius Sulla, both of whom were soon after convicted of bribery, and their places supplied by their compet.i.tors and accusers, L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. Catiline, who was desirous of becoming a candidate, had been disqualified in consequence of an impeachment for oppression in his province preferred by P. Clodius Pulcher. Exasperated by their disappointment, Autronius and Catiline formed a project, along with Cn.
Calpurnius Piso, another profligate young n.o.bleman, to murder the new Consuls upon the first of January, when offering up their vows in the Capitol, after which Autronius and Catiline were to seize the fasces, and Piso was to be dispatched with an army to occupy the Spains. This extraordinary design is said to have been frustrated solely by the impatience of Catiline, who gave the signal prematurely before the whole of the armed agents had a.s.sembled.
Encouraged rather than disheartened by a failure which had so nearly proved a triumph, Catiline was soon after left completely unfettered by his acquittal upon trial for extortion, a result secured by the liberal bribes administered to the accuser as well as to the jury. From this time he proceeded more systematically, and enlisted a more numerous body of supporters. In the course of B.C. 64 he had enrolled several Senators in his ranks, among others P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura, who had been Consul in B.C. 71, and C. Cornelius Cethegus, distinguished throughout by his impetuosity and sanguinary violence. He proposed that all debts should be canceled, that the most wealthy citizens should be proscribed, and that all offices of honor and emolument should be divided among his a.s.sociates. He confidently antic.i.p.ated that he should be elected Consul for the next year along with C. Antonius, having formed a coalition with him for the purpose of excluding Cicero. The orator, however, was supported, not only by the Equites and Pompey's friends, but even by the Senate, who, though disliking a New Man, were compelled to give him their support in order to exclude Catiline. The consequence was that Cicero and Antonius were returned, the former nearly unanimously, the latter by a small majority over Catiline. As soon as Cicero entered upon his Consuls.h.i.+p he renounced his connection with the popular party, and became a stanch supporter of the aristocracy. He successfully opposed an agrarian law proposed by the Tribune Rullus, and defended C. Rabirius, who was now accused by the Tribune Labienus of having been concerned in the death of Saturninus nearly forty years before. Caesar took an active part in both these proceedings. But the attention of Cicero was mainly directed to Catiline's conspiracy. He gained over his colleague Antonius by resigning to him the province of Macedonia. Meantime he became acquainted with every detail of the plot through Fulvia, the mistress of Q. Curius, one of Catiline's intimate a.s.sociates. Thus informed, Cicero called a meeting of the Senate on the 21st of October, when he openly denounced Catiline, charged him broadly with treason, and a.s.serted that the 28th was the period fixed for the murder of the leading men in the Republic. The Senate thereupon invested the Consuls with dictatorial power. The Comitia for the election of the Consuls was now held.
Catiline, again a candidate, was again rejected. Driven to despair by this fresh disappointment, he resolved at once to bring matters to a crisis. On the night of the 6th of November he summoned a meeting of the ringleaders at the house of M. Porcius Laeca, and made arrangements for an immediate outbreak. Cicero, being immediately informed of what took place, summoned, on the 8th of November, a meeting of the Senate in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and there delivered the first of his celebrated orations against Catiline. Catiline, who upon his entrance had been avoided by all, and was sitting alone upon a bench from which every one had shrunk, rose to reply, but had scarcely commenced when his words were drowned by the shouts of ”enemy” and ”parricide” which burst from the whole a.s.sembly, and he rushed forth with threats and curses on his lips. He now resolved to strike some decisive blow before troops could be levied to oppose him, and accordingly, leaving the chief control of affairs at Rome in the hands of Lentulus and Cethegus, he set forth in the dead of night, and proceeded to join Manlius at Faesulae.
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