The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61
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.