The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives
the version current in the government circles, and the credibility
of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking
it, be left an open question. As to the main matter--the participation
of Caesar and Crassus--the testimony of their political opponents
certainly cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of it. But their
notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness
to the secret action which this report ascribes to them. The attempt
of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to enrol
the Transpadanes in the burgess-list(9) was of itself directly
a revolutionary enterprise. It is still more remarkable,
that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol
Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,(10) and that Caesar
about the same time (689 or 690) got a proposal submitted
by some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt,
in order to reinstate king Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians
had expelled. These machinations suspiciously coincide
with the charges raised by their antagonists. Certainty cannot be
attained on the point; but there is a great probability that Crassus
and Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the military
dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius; that Egypt was selected
as the basis of this democratic military power; and that, in fine,
the insurrectionary attempt of 689 had been contrived to realize
these projects, and Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands
of Crassus and Caesar.
Resumption of the Conspiracy
For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill. The elections
for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar renewing their
attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been
partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader
of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently
employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate
for the consulship. But the reports from Asia urged them to make
haste. The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already
completely arranged. However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as terminated
by the capture of the king, and that it was therefore necessary
to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things
to keep aloof from Syria(11)--Pompeius, not concerning himself
about such talk, had set out in the spring of 690 from Armenia
and marched towards Syria. If Egypt was really selected
as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost;
otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax
and timid measures of repression, was again astir when the consular
elections for 691 approached. The persons were, it may be
presumed, substantially the same, and the plan was but little
altered. The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.
On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship
Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator
and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account
some years before by the democratic party and ejected
from the senate(12)--otherwise an indolent, insignificant man,
in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt--
willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize
of the consulship and the advantages attached to it. Through these
consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government,
to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius. On the first news of the blow struck in the capital,
the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection
in Hither Spain. Communication could not be held with him by way
of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas. For this purpose
they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy--
among whom there was great agitation, and who would of course have
at once received the franchise--and, further, on different Celtic
tribes.(13) The threads of this combination reached as far as
Mauretania. One of the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius
Sittius from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments
to keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes there
and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a leader of free-lances
in western Africa, where he had old commercial connections.
Consular Elections
Cicero Elected instead of Catalina
The party put forth all its energies for the struggle
of the election. Crassus and Caesar staked their money--whether their
own or borrowed--and their connections to procure the consulship
for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every
nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies
and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents,
and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew,
would keep his word. The aristocracy was in great perplexity,
chiefly because it was not able even to start counter-candidates.
That such a candidate risked his head, was obvious; and the times
were past when the post of danger allured the burgess--now even
ambition was hushed in presence of fear. Accordingly the nobility
contented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check
electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting
the purchase of votes--which, however, was thwarted by the veto
of a tribune of the people--and with turning over their votes
to a candidate who, although not acceptable to them, was at least
inoffensive. This was Marcus Cicero, notoriously a political
trimmer,(14) accustomed to flirt at times with the democrats,
at times with Pompeius, at times from a somewhat greater distance
with the aristocracy, and to lend his services as an advocate to every
influential man under impeachment without distinction of person
or party (he numbered even Catilina among his clients); belonging
properly to no party or--which was much the same--to the party
of material interests, which was dominant in the courts
and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly and witty
companion. He had connections enough in the capital and the country
towns to have a chance alongside of the candidates proposed
by the democracy; and as the nobility, although with reluctance,
and the Pompeians voted for him, he was elected by a great
majority. The two candidates of the democracy obtained almost
the same number of votes; but a few more fell to Antonius, whose family
was of more consideration than that of his fellow-candidate.
This accident frustrated the election of Catilina and saved Rome
from a second Cinna. A little before this Piso had--it was said
at the instigation of his political and personal enemy Pompeius--
been put to death in Spain by his native escort.(15) With the consul
Antonius alone nothing could be done; Cicero broke the loose bond
which attached him to the conspiracy, even before they entered
on their offices, inasmuch as he renounced his legal privilege
of having the consular provinces determined by lot, and handed over
to his deeply-embarrassed colleague the lucrative governorship
of Macedonia. The essential preliminary conditions of this project
also had therefore miscarried.
New Projects of the Conspirators
Meanwhile the development of Oriental affairs grew daily
more perilous for the democracy. The settlement of Syria rapidly
advanced; already invitations had been addressed to Pompeius
from Egypt to march thither and occupy the country for Rome;
they could not but be afraid that they would next hear of Pompeius
in person having taken possession of the valley of the Nile.
It was by this very apprehension probably that the attempt of Caesar
to get himself sent by the people to Egypt for the purpose of aiding
the king against his rebellious subjects(16) was called forth;
it failed, apparently, through the disinclination of great and small
to undertake anything whatever against the interest of Pompeius.
His return home, and the probable catastrophe which it involved,
were always drawing the nearer; often as the string of the bow
had been broken, it was necessary that there should be a fresh
attempt to bend it. The city was in sullen ferment; frequent
conferences of the heads of the movement indicated that some
step was again contemplated.
The Servilian Agrarian Law
What they wished became manifest when the new tribunes
of the people entered on their office (10 Dec. 690), and one of them,
Publius Servilius Rullus, immediately proposed an agrarian law,
which was designed to procure for the leaders of the democrats
a position similar to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence
of 2the Gabinio-Manilian proposals. The nominal object
was the founding of colonies in Italy. The ground for these, however,
was not to be gained by dispossession; on the contrary all existing
private rights were guaranteed, and even the illegal occupations
of the most recent times(17) were converted into full property.
The leased Campanian domain alone was to be parcelled out
and colonized; in other cases the government was to acquire
the land destined for assignation by ordinary purchase. To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain-land was successively
to be brought to sale; which was understood to include the former
royal hunting domains in Macedonia, the Thracian Chersonese,
Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and also the territories of the cities
acquired in full property by right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily,
Hellas, and Cilicia. Everything was likewise to be sold
which the state had acquired in moveable and immoveable property
since the year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus. For the same purpose
all subject communities, with the exception of the towns with Latin
rights and the other free cities, were burdened with very high
rates of taxes and tithes. Lastly there was likewise destined
for those purchases the produce of the new provincial revenues,
to be reckoned from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty
not yet legally applied; which regulations had reference
to the new sources of taxation opened up by Pompeius in the east
and to the public moneys that might be found in the hands of Pompeius
and the heirs of Sulla. For the execution of this measure decemvirs
with a special jurisdiction and special -imperium- were to be nominated,
who were to remain five years in office and to surround themselves
with 200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the election
of the decemvirs only those candidates who should personally
announce themselves were to be taken into account, and,
as in the elections of priests,(18) only seventeen tribes to be fixed
by lot out of the thirty-five were to make the election. It needed
no great acuteness to discern that in this decemviral college it
was intended to create a power after the model of that of Pompeius,
only with somewhat less of a military and more of a democratic hue.
The jurisdiction was especially needed for the sake of deciding
the Egyptian question, the military power for the sake of arming
against Pompeius; the clause, which forbade the choice of an absent
person, excluded Pompeius; and the diminution of the tribes entitled
to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting were designed
to facilitate the management of the election in accordance
with the views of the democracy.
But this attempt totally missed its aim. The multitude, finding
it more agreeable to have their corn measured out to them
under the shade of Roman porticoes from the public magazines
than to cultivate it for themselves in the sweat of their brow,
received even the proposal in itself with complete indifference.
They soon came also to feel that Pompeius would never acquiesce
in such a resolution offensive to him in every respect, and that matters
could not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm
condescended to offers so extravagant. Under such circumstances
it was not difficult for the government to frustrate the proposal;
the new consul Cicero perceived the opportunity of exhibiting
here too his talent for giving a finishing stroke to the beaten party;
even before the tribunes who stood ready exercised their veto,
the author himself withdrew his proposal (1 Jan. 691).
The democracy had gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson,
that the great multitude out of love or fear still continued
to adhere to Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain
to fail which the public perceived to be directed against him.
Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria
Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming without result,
Catilina determined to push the matter to a decision and make
an end of it once for all. He took his measures in the course
of the summer to open the civil war. Faesulae (Fiesole),
a very strong town situated in Etruria--which swarmed with
the impoverished and conspirators--and fifteen years before the centre
of the rising of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters
of the insurrection. Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the capital
implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means; there arms
and soldiers were collected; and there an old Sullan captain, Gaius
Manlius, as brave and as free from scruples of conscience
as was ever any soldier of fortune, took temporarily the chief command.
Similar though less extensive warlike preparations were made
at other points of Italy. The Transpadanes were so excited
that they seemed only waiting for the signal to strike. In the Bruttian
country, on the east coast of Italy, in Capua--wherever great
bodies of slaves were accumulated--a second slave insurrection
like that of Spartacus seemed on the eve of arising. Even in the capital
there was something brewing; those who saw the haughty bearing
with which the summoned debtors appeared before the urban praetor,
could not but remember the scenes which had preceded the murder
of Asellio.(19) The capitalists were in unutterable anxiety;
it seemed needful to enforce the prohibition of the export
of gold and silver, and to set a watch over the principal ports.
The plan of the conspirators was--on occasion of the consular
election for 692, for which Catilina had again announced himself--
summarily to put to death the consul conducting the election
as well as the inconvenient rival candidates, and to carry
the election of Catilina at any price; in case of necessity, even
to bring armed bands from Faesulae and the other rallying points
against the capital, and with their help to crush resistance.
Election of Catalina as Consul again Frustrated
Cicero, who was always quickly and completely informed by his
agents male and female of the transactions of the conspirators,
on the day fixed for the election (20 Oct.) denounced the conspiracy
in the full senate and in presence of its principal leaders.
Catilina did not condescend to deny it; he answered haughtily that,
if the election for consul should fall on him, the great headless
party would certainly no longer want a leader against the small
party led by wretched heads. But as palpable evidences of the plot
were not before them, nothing farther was to be got from the timid
senate, except that it gave its previous sanction in the usual way
to the exceptional measures which the magistrates might deem
suitable (21 Oct.). Thus the election battle approached--
on this occasion more a battle than an election; for Cicero too
had formed for himself an armed bodyguard out of the younger men,
more especially of the mercantile order; and it was his armed force
that covered and dominated the Campus Martius on the 28th October,
the day to which the election had been postponed by the senate.
The conspirators were not successful either in killing the consul
conducting the election, or in deciding the elections according
to their mind.
Outbreak of the Insurrection in Etruria
Repressive Measures of the Government
But meanwhile the civil war had begun. On the 27th Oct. Gaius
Manlius had planted at Faesulae the eagle round which the army
of the insurrection was to flock--it was one of the Marian eagles
from the Cimbrian war--and he had summoned the robbers
from the mountains as well as the country people to join him.
His proclamations, following the old traditions of the popular
party, demanded liberation from the oppressive load of debt
and a modification of the procedure in insolvency, which, if the amount
of the debt actually exceeded the estate, certainly still involved
in law the forfeiture of the debtor's freedom. It seemed as though
the rabble of the capital, in coming forward as if it were
the legitimate successor of the old plebeian farmers and fighting
its battles under the glorious eagles of the Cimbrian war, wished
to cast a stain not only on the present but on the past of Rome.
This rising, however, remained isolated; at the other places
of rendezvous the conspiracy did not go beyond the collection of arms
and the institution of secret conferences, as resolute leaders
were everywhere wanting. This was fortunate for the government;
for, although the impending civil war had been for a considerable time
openly announced, its own irresolution and the clumsiness
of the rusty machinery of administration had not allowed it to make
any military preparations whatever. It was only now that the general
levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to the several
regions of Italy that each might suppress the insurrection
in his own district; while at the same time the gladiatorial slaves
were ejected from the capital, and patrols were ordered on account
of the apprehension of incendiarism.
The Conspirators in Rome
Catilina was in a painful position. According to his design
there should have been a simultaneous rising in the capital
and in Etruria on occasion of the consular elections; the failure
of the former and the outbreak of the latter movement endangered
his person as well as the whole success of his undertaking.
Now that his partisans at Faesulae had once risen in arms against
the government, he could no longer remain in the capital; and yet
not only did everything depend on his inducing the conspirators
of the capital now at least to strike quickly, but this had to be
done even before he left Rome--for he knew his helpmates too well
to rely on them for that matter. The more considerable
of the conspirators--Publius Lentulus Sura consul in 683, afterwards
expelled from the senate and now, in order to get back into
the senate, praetor for the second time, and the two former praetors
Publius Autronius and Lucius Cassius--were incapable men; Lentulus
an ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but slow
in conception and irresolute in action; Autronius distinguished
for nothing but his powerful screaming voice; while as to Lucius
Cassius no one comprehended how a man so corpulent and so simple
had fallen among the conspirators. But Catilina could not venture
to place his abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius
Cethegus and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius
Capito, at the head of the movement; for even among the conspirators
the traditional hierarchy of rank held its ground, and the very
anarchists thought that they should be unable to carry the day
unless a consular or at least a praetorian were at their head.
Therefore, however urgently the army of the insurrection might
long for its general, and however perilous it was for the latter
to remain longer at the seat of government after the outbreak
of the revolt, Catilina nevertheless resolved still to remain
for a time in Rome. Accustomed to impose on his cowardly opponents
by his audacious insolence, he showed himself publicly in the Forum
and in the senate-house and replied to the threats which were
there addressed to him, that they should beware of pushing him
to extremities; that, if they should set the house on fire, he would
be compelled to extinguish the conflagration in ruins. In reality
neither private persons nor officials ventured to lay hands
on the dangerous man; it was almost a matter of indifference
when a young nobleman brought him to trial on account of violence,
for long before the process could come to an end, the question could not
but be decided elsewhere. But the projects of Catilina failed;
chiefly because the agents of the government had made their way
into the circle of the conspirators and kept it accurately informed
of every detail of the plot. When, for instance, the conspirators
appeared before the strong Praeneste (1 Nov.), which they had hoped
to surprise by a -coup de main-, they found the inhabitants warned
and armed; and in a similar way everything miscarried. Catilina
with all his temerity now found it advisable to fix his departure
for one of the ensuing days; but previously on his urgent exhortation,
at a last conference of the conspirators in the night between
the 6th and 7th Nov. it was resolved to assassinate the consul Cicero,
who was the principal director of the countermine, before the departure
of their leader, and, in order to obviate any treachery,
to carry the resolve at once into execution. Early on the morning
of the 7th Nov., accordingly, the selected murderers knocked
at the house of the consul; but they found the guard reinforced
and themselves repulsed--on this occasion too the spies
of the government had outdone the conspirators.
Catalina Proceed to Etruria
On the following day (8 Nov.) Cicero convoked the senate.
Even now Catilina ventured to appear and to attempt a defence against
the indignant attacks of the consul, who unveiled before his face
the events of the last few days; but men no longer listened to him,
and in the neighbourhood of the place where he sat the benches became
empty. He left the sitting, and proceeded, as he would doubtless
have done even apart from this incident, in accordance
with the agreement, to Etruria. Here he proclaimed himself consul,
and assumed an attitude of waiting, in order to put his troops
in motion against the capital on the first announcement
of the outbreak of the insurrection there. The government declared
the two leaders Catilina and Manlius, as well as those of their
comrades who should not have laid down their arms by a certain day,
to be outlaws, and called out new levies; but at the head
of the army destined against Catilina was placed the consul Gaius
Antonius, who was notoriously implicated in the conspiracy,
and with whose character it was wholly a matter of accident whether
he would lead his troops against Catilina or over to his side.
They seemed to have directly laid their plans towards converting
this Antonius into a second Lepidus. As little were steps taken
against the leaders of the conspiracy who had remained behind
in the capital, although every one pointed the finger at them
and the insurrection in the capital was far from being abandoned
by the conspirators--on the contrary the plan of it had been settled
by Catilina himself before his departure from Rome. A tribune
was to give the signal by calling an assembly of the people;
in the following night Cethegus was to despatch the consul Cicero;
Gabinius and Statilius were to set the city simultaneously
on fire at twelve places; and a communication was to be established
as speedily as possible with the army of Catilina, which should
have meanwhile advanced. Had the urgent representations of Cethegus
borne fruit and had Lentulus, who after Catilina's departure
was placed at the head of the conspirators, resolved on rapidly
striking a blow, the conspiracy might even now have been successful.
But the conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their
opponents; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no decisive issue.
Conviction and Arrest of the Conspirators in the Capital
At length the countermine brought about a decision. Lentulus
in his tedious fashion, which sought to cover negligence in regard
to what was immediate and necessary by the projection of large
and distant plans, had entered into relations with the deputies
of a Celtic canton, the Allobroges, now present in Rome; had attempted
to implicate these--the representatives of a thoroughly disorganized
commonwealth and themselves deeply involved in debt--in the conspiracy;
and had given them on their departure messages and letters to his
confidants. The Allobroges left Rome, but were arrested in the night
between 2nd and 3rd Dec. close to the gates by the Roman authorities,
and their papers were taken from them. It was obvious
that the Allobrogian deputies had lent themselves as spies
to the Roman government, and had carried on the negotiations only
with a view to convey into the hands of the latter the desired proofs
implicating the ringleaders of the conspiracy. On the following
morning orders were issued with the utmost secrecy by Cicero
for the arrest of the most dangerous leaders of the plot,
and executed in regard to Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius,
and Statilius, while some others escaped from seizure by flight.
The guilt of those arrested as well as of the fugitives
was completely evident. Immediately after the arrest the letters seized,
the seals and handwriting of which the prisoners could not avoid
acknowledging, were laid before the senate, and the captives
and witnesses were heard; further confirmatory facts, deposits of arms
in the houses of the conspirators, threatening expressions
which they had employed, were presently forthcoming; the actual
subsistence of the conspiracy was fully and validly established,
and the most important documents were immediately on the suggestion
of Cicero published as news-sheets.