The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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The Aristocracy Submits
It was now therefore the turn of the aristocracy to make good
their high gage, and to wage war as boldly as they had boldly
declared it. But there is no more pitiable spectacle
than when cowardly men have the misfortune to take a bold resolution.
They had simply exercised no foresight at all. It seemed to have
occurred to nobody that Caesar would possibly stand on his defence,
or that Pompeius and Crassus would combine with him afresh
and more closely than ever. This seems incredible; but it becomes
intelligible, when we glance at the persons who then led
the constitutional opposition in the senate. Cato was still absent;(4)
the most influential man in the senate at this time was Marcus Bibulus,
the hero of passive resistance, the most obstinate and most stupid
of all consulars. They had taken up arms only to lay them down,
so soon as the adversary merely put his hand to the sheath;
the bare news of the conferences in Luca sufficed to suppress
all thought of a serious opposition and to bring the mass
of the timid--that is, the immense majority of the senate--
back to their duty as subjects, which in an unhappy hour
they had abandoned. There was no further talk of the appointed
discussion to try the validity of the Julian laws; the legions raised
by Caesar on his own behalf were charged by decree of the senate
on the public chest; the attempts on occasion of regulating
the next consular provinces to take away both Gauls or one of them
by decree from Caesar were rejected by the majority (end of May 698).
Thus the corporation did public penance. In secret the individual lords,
one after another, thoroughly frightened at their own temerity,
came to make their peace and vow unconditional obedience--
none more quickly than Marcus Cicero, who repented too late
of his perfidy, and in respect of the most recent period of his life
clothed himself with titles of honour which were altogether
more appropriate than flattering.(5) Of course the regents agreed
to be pacified; they refused nobody pardon, for there was nobody
who was worth the trouble of making him an exception. That we may
see how suddenly the tone in aristocratic circles changed
after the resolutions of Luca became known, it is worth while
to compare the pamphlets given forth by Cicero shortly before
with the palinode which he caused to be issued to evince publicly
his repentance and his good intentions.(6)
Settlement of the New Monarchical Rule
The regents could thus arrange Italian affairs at their pleasure
and more thoroughly than before. Italy and the capital
obtained practically a garrison although not assembled in arms,
and one of the regents as commandant. Of the troops levied for Syria
and Spain by Crassus and Pompeius, those destined for the east no doubt
took their departure; but Pompeius caused the two Spanish provinces
to be administered by his lieutenants with the garrison hitherto
stationed there, while he dismissed the officers and soldiers
of the legions which were newly raised--nominally for despatch
to Spain--on furlough, and remained himself with them in Italy.
Doubtless the tacit resistance of public opinion increased,
the more clearly and generally men perceived that the regents
were working to put an end to the old constitution and with as much
gentleness as possible to accommodate the existing condition
of the government and administration to the forms of the monarchy;
but they submitted, because they were obliged to submit.
First of all all the more important affairs, and particularly
all that related to military matters and external relations,
were disposed of without consulting the senate upon them,
sometimes by decree of the people, sometimes by the mere good
pleasure of the rulers. The arrangements agreed on at Luca respecting
the military command of Gaul were submitted directly to the burgesses
by Crassus and Pompeius, those relating to Spain and Syria by the tribune
of the people Gaius Trebonius, and in other instances the more important
governorships were frequently filled up by decree of the people.
That the regents did not need the consent of the authorities
to increase their troops at pleasure, Caesar had already sufficiently
shown: as little did they hesitate mutually to borrow troops;
Caesar for instance received such collegiate support from Pompeius
for the Gallic, and Crassus from Caesar for the Parthian, war.
The Transpadanes, who possessed according to the existing constitution
only Latin rights, were treated by Caesar during his administration
practically as full burgesses of Rome.(7) While formerly
the organization of newly-acquired territories had been managed
by a senatorial commission, Caesar organized his extensive Gallic
conquests altogether according to his own judgment, and founded,
for instance, without having received any farther full powers
burgess-colonies, particularly Novum-Comum (Como) with five thousand
colonists. Piso conducted the Thracian, Gabinius the Egyptian,
Crassus the Parthian war, without consulting the senate,
and without even reporting, as was usual, to that body;
in like manner triumphs and other marks of honour were accorded
and carried out, without the senate being asked about them.
Obviously this did not arise from a mere neglect of forms, which would
be the less intelligible, seeing that in the great majority of cases
no opposition from the senate was to be expected. On the contrary,
it was a well-calculated design to dislodge the senate from the domain
of military arrangements and of higher politics, and to restrict
its share of administration to financial questions and internal
affairs; and even opponents plainly discerned this and protested,
so far as they could, against this conduct of the regents by means
of senatorial decrees and criminal actions. While the regents
thus in the main set aside the senate, they still made some use
of the less dangerous popular assemblies--care was taken that in these
the lords of the street should put no farther difficulty in the way
of the lords of the state; in many cases however they dispensed
even with this empty shadow, and employed without disguise
autocratic forms.
The Senate under the Monarchy
Cicero and the Majority
The humbled senate had to submit to its position
whether it would or not. The leader of the compliant majority
continued to be Marcus Cicero. He was useful on account
of his lawyer's talent of finding reasons, or at any rate words,
for everything; and there was a genuine Caesarian irony
in employing the man, by means of whom mainly the aristocracy
had conducted their demonstrations against the regents,
as the mouthpiece of servility. Accordingly they pardoned him
for his brief desire to kick against the pricks, not however
without having previously assured themselves of his submissiveness
in every way. His brother had been obliged to take the position
of an officer in the Gallic army to answer in some measure
as a hostage for him; Pompeius had compelled Cicero himself
to accept a lieutenant-generalship under him, which furnished
a handle for politely banishing him at any moment. Clodius
had doubtless been instructed to leave him meanwhile at peace,
but Caesar as little threw off Clodius on account of Cicero
as he threw off Cicero on account of Clodius; and the great saviour
of his country and the no less great hero of liberty entered
into an antechamber-rivalry in the headquarters of Samarobriva,
for the befitting illustration of which there lacked, unfortunately,
a Roman Aristophanes. But not only was the same rod kept in suspense
over Cicero's head, which had once already descended on him
so severely; golden fetters were also laid upon him. Amidst
the serious embarrassment of his finances the loans of Caesar
free of interest, and the joint overseership of those buildings
which occasioned the circulation of enormous sums in the capital,
were in a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration
for the senate was nipped in the bud by the thought of Caesar's agent,
who might present a bill to him after the close of the sitting.
Consequently he vowed "in future to ask no more after right and honour,
but to strive for the favour of the regents," and "to be as flexible
as an ear-lap." They used him accordingly as--what he was good for--
an advocate; in which capacity it was on various occasions
his lot to be obliged to defend his very bitterest foes
at a higher bidding, and that especially in the senate,
where he almost regularly served as the organ of the dynasts
and submitted the proposals "to which others probably consented,
but not he himself"; indeed, as recognized leader of the majority
of the compliant, he obtained even a certain political importance.
They dealt with the other members of the governing corporation
accessible to fear, flattery, or gold in the same way as they had dealt
with Cicero, and succeeded in keeping it on the whole in subjection.
Cato and the Minority
Certainly there remained a section of their opponents, who at least
kept to their colours and were neither to be terrified nor to be won.
The regents had become convinced that exceptional measures,
such as those against Cato and Cicero, did their cause
more harm than good, and that it was a lesser evil to tolerate
an inconvenient republican opposition than to convert their opponents
into martyrs for the republic Therefore they allowed Cato to return
(end of 698) and thenceforward in the senate and in the Forum,
often at the peril of his life, to offer a continued opposition
to the regents, which was doubtless worthy of honour, but unhappily
was at the same time ridiculous. They allowed him on occasion
of the proposals of Trebonius to push matters once more
to a hand-to-hand conflict in the Forum, and to submit to the senate
a proposal that the proconsul Caesar should be given over
to the Usipetes and Tencteri on account of his perfidious conduct
toward those barbarians.(8) They were patient when Marcus Favonius,
Cato's Sancho, after the senate had adopted the resolution
to charge the legions of Caesar on the state-chest, sprang to the door
of the senate-house and proclaimed to the streets the danger
of the country; when the same person in his scurrilous fashion
called the white bandage, which Pompeius wore round his weak leg,
a displaced diadem; when the consular Lentulus Marcellinus,
on being applauded, called out to the assembly to make diligent use
of this privilege of expressing their opinion now while they were
still allowed to do so; when the tribune of the people
Gaius Ateius Capito consigned Crassus on his departure for Syria,
with all the formalities of the theology of the day, publicly
to the evil spirits. These were, on the whole, vain demonstrations
of an irritated minority; yet the little party from which they issued
was so far of importance, that it on the one hand fostered and gave
the watchword to the republican opposition fermenting in secret,
and on the other hand now and then dragged the majority of the senate,
which ithal cherished at bottom quite the same sentiments with reference
to the regents, into an isolated decree directed against them.
For even the majority felt the need of giving vent, at least
sometimes and in subordinate matters to their suppressed indignation,
and especially--after the manner of those who are servile
with reluctance--of exhibiting their resentment towards the great foes
in rage against the small. Wherever it was possible, a gentle blow
was administered to the instruments of the regents; thus Gabinius
was refused the thanksgiving-festival that he asked (698);
thus Piso was recalled from his province; thus mourning was put on
by the senate, when the tribune of the people Gaius Cato hindered
the elections for 699 as long as the consul Marcellinus belonging
to the constitutional party was in office. Even Cicero, however humbly
he always bowed before the regents, issued an equally envenomed
and insipid pamphlet against Caesar's father-in-law. But both these
feeble signs of opposition by the majority of the senate
and the ineffectual resistance of the minority show only
the more clearly, that the government had now passed from the senate
to the regents as it formerly passed from the burgesses to the senate;
and that the senate was already not much more than a monarchical
council of state employed also to absorb the anti-monarchical
elements. "No man," the adherents of the fallen government complained,
"is of the slightest account except the three; the regents
are all-powerful, and they take care that no one shall remain
in doubt about it; the whole senate is virtually transformed
and obeys the dictators; our generation will not live to see
a change of things." They were living in fact no longer
under the republic, but under monarchy.
Continued Oppositon at the Elections
But if the guidance of the state was at the absolute disposal
of the regents, there remained still a political domain separated
in some measure from the government proper, which it was more easy
to defend and more difficult to conquer; the field of the ordinary
elections of magistrates, and that of the jury-courts. That the latter
do not fall directly under politics, but everywhere, and above all
in Rome, come partly under the control of the spirit dominating
state-affairs, is of itself clear. The elections of magistrates
certainly belonged by right to the government proper of the state;
but, as at this period the state was administered substantially
by extraordinary magistrates or by men wholly without title,
and even the supreme ordinary magistrates, if they belonged
to the anti-monarchical party, were not able in any tangible way
to influence the state-machinery, the ordinary magistrates sank
more and more into mere puppets--as, in fact, even those of them
who were most disposed to opposition described themselves frankly
and with entire justice as powerless ciphers--and their elections
therefore sank into mere demonstrations. Thus, after the opposition
had already been wholly dislodged from the proper field of battle,
hostilities might nevertheless be continued in the field of elections
and of processes. The regents spared no pains to remain victors
also in this field. As to the elections, they had already
at Luca settled between themselves the lists of candidates
for the next years, and they left no means untried to carry
the candidates agreed upon there. They expended their gold primarily
for the purpose of influencing the elections. A great number
of soldiers were dismissed annually on furlough from the armies
of Caesar and Pompeius to take part in the voting at Rome.
Caesar was wont himself to guide, and watch over, the election movements
from as near a point as possible of Upper Italy. Yet the object
was but very imperfectly attained. For 699 no doubt Pompeius
and Crassus were elected consuls, agreeably to the convention of Luca,
and Lucius Domitius, the only candidate of the opposition who persevered
was set aside; but this had been effected only by open violence,
on which occasion Cato was wounded and other extremely scandalous
incidents occurred. In the next consular elections for 700,
in spite of all the exertions of the regents, Domitius was
actually elected, and Cato likewise now prevailed in the candidature
for the praetorship, in which to the scandal of the whole burgesses
Caesar's client Vatinius had during the previous year beaten him
off the field. At the elections for 701 the opposition succeeded
in so indisputably convicting the candidates of the regents,
along with others, of the most shameful electioneering intrigues
that the regents, on whom the scandal recoiled, could not do otherwise
than abandon them. These repeated and severe defeats of the dynasts
on the battle-field of the elections may be traceable in part
to the unmanageableness of the rusty machinery, to the incalculable
accidents of the polling, to the opposition at heart of the middle
classes, to the various private considerations that interfere
in such cases and often strangely clash with those of party;
but the main cause lies elsewhere. The elections were at this time
essentially in the power of the different clubs into which the aristocracy
had grouped themselves; the system of bribery was organized by them
on the most extensive scale and with the utmost method.
The same aristocracy therefore, which was represented in the senate,
ruled also the elections; but while in the senate it yielded
with a grudge, it worked and voted here--in secret and secure
from all reckoning--absolutely against the regents. That the influence
of the nobility in this field was by no means broken by the strict
penal law against the electioneering intrigues of the clubs,
which Crassus when consul in 699 caused to be confirmed by the burgesses,
is self-evident, and is shown by the elections of the succeeding years.
And in the Courts
The jury-courts occasioned equally great difficulty to the regents.
As they were then composed, while the senatorial nobility was here
also influential, the decisive voice lay chiefly with the middle class.
The fixing of a high-rated census for jurymen by a law proposed
by Pompeius in 699 is a remarkable proof that the opposition
to the regents had its chief seat in the middle class properly
so called, and that the great capitalists showed themselves here,
as everywhere, more compliant than the latter. Nevertheless
the republican party was not yet deprived of all hold in the courts,
and it was never weary of directing political impeachments,
not indeed against the regents themselves, but against
their prominent instruments. This warfare of prosecutions
was waged the more keenly, that according to usage the duty of accusation
belonged to the senatorial youth, and, as may readily be conceived,
there was more of republican passion, fresh talent, and bold delight
in attack to be found among these youths than among the older members
of their order. Certainly the courts were not free; if the regents
were in earnest, the courts ventured as little as the senate
to refuse obedience. None of their antagonists were prosecuted
by the opposition with such hatred--so furious that it almost
passed into a proverb--as Vatinius, by far the most audacious
and unscrupulous of the closer adherents of Caesar; but his master
gave the command, and he was acquitted in all the processes
raised against him. But impeachments by men who knew how to wield
the sword of dialectics and the lash of sarcasm as did
Gaius Licinius Calvus and Gaius Asinius Pollio, did not miss
their mark even when they failed; nor were isolated successes wanting.
They were mostly, no doubt, obtained over subordinate individuals,
but even one of the most high-placed and most hated adherents
of the dynasts, the consular Gabinius, was overthrown in this way.
Certainly in his case the implacable hatred of the aristocracy,
which as little forgave him for the law regarding the conducting
of the war with the pirates as for his disparaging treatment
of the senate during his Syrian governorship, was combined
with the rage of the great capitalists, against whom he had when governor
of Syria ventured to defend the interests of the provincials,
and even with the resentment of Crassus, with whom he had stood
on ceremony in handing over to him the province. His only protection
against all these foes was Pompeius, and the latter had every reason
to defend his ablest, boldest, and most faithful adjutant at any price;
but here, as everywhere, he knew not how to use his power
and to defend his clients, as Caesar defended his; in the end
of 700 the jurymen found Gabinius guilty of extortions
and sent him into banishment.
On the whole, therefore, in the sphere of the popular elections
and of the jury-courts it was the regents that fared worst.
The factors which ruled in these were less tangible, and therefore
more difficult to be terrified or corrupted than the direct organs
of government and administration. The holders of power encountered
here, especially in the popular elections, the tough energy
of a close oligarchy--grouped in coteries--which is by no means
finally disposed of when its rule is overthrown, and which is
the more difficult to vanquish the more covert its action.
They encountered here too, especially in the jury-courts,
the repugnance of the middle classes towards the new monarchical rule,
which with all the perplexities springing out of it they were
as little able to remove. They suffered in both quarters a series
of defeats. The election-victories of the opposition had,
it is true, merely the value of demonstrations, since the regents
possessed and employed the means of practically annulling any magistrate
whom they disliked; but the criminal trials in which the opposition
carried condemnations deprived them, in a way keenly felt,
of useful auxiliaries. As things stood, the regents could neither
set aside nor adequately control the popular elections
and the jury-courts, and the opposition, however much it felt itself
straitened even here, maintained to a certain extent the field of battle.
Literature of the Opposition
It proved, however, yet a more difficult task to encounter
the opposition in a field, to which it turned with the greater zeal
the more it was dislodged from direct political action. This was
literature. Even the judicial opposition was at the same time
a literary one, and indeed pre-eminently so, for the orations
were regularly published and served as political pamphlets.
The arrows of poetry hit their mark still more rapidly and sharply.
The lively youth of the high aristocracy, and still more energetically
perhaps the cultivated middle class in the Italian country towns,
waged the war of pamphlets and epigrams with zeal and success.
There fought side by side on this field the genteel senator's son
Gaius Licinius Calvus (672-706) who was as much feared
in the character of an orator and pamphleteer as of a versatile poet,
and the municipals of Cremona and Verona Marcus Furius Bibaculus
(652-691) and Quintus Valerius Catullus (667-c. 700) whose elegant
and pungent epigrams flew swiftly like arrows through Italy
and were sure to hit their mark. An oppositional tone prevails
throughout the literature of these years. It is full of indignant
sarcasm against the "great Caesar," "the unique general,"
against the affectionate father-in-law and son-in-law,
who ruin the whole globe in order to give their dissolute favourites
opportunity to parade the spoils of the long-haired Celts
through the streets of Rome, to furnish royal banquets with the booty
of the farthest isles of the west, and as rivals showering gold
to supplant honest youths at home in the favour of their mistresses.
There is in the poems of Catullus(9) and the other fragments
of the literature of this period something of that fervour of personal
and political hatred, of that republican agony overflowing
in riotous humour or in stern despair, which are more prominently
and powerfully apparent in Aristophanes and Demosthenes.
The most sagacious of the three rulers at least saw well
that it was as impossible to despise this opposition as to suppress
it by word of command. So far as he could, Caesar tried
rather personally to gain over the more notable authors.
Cicero himself had to thank his literary reputation in good part
for the respectful treatment which he especially experienced
from Caesar; but the governor of Gaul did not disdain to conclude
a special peace even with Catullus himself through the intervention
of his father who had become personally known to him in Verona;
and the young poet, who had just heaped upon the powerful general
the bitterest and most personal sarcasms, was treated by him
with the most flattering distinction. In fact Caesar was gifted enough
to follow his literary opponents on their own domain and to publish--
as an indirect way of repelling manifold attacks--a detailed report
on the Gallic wars, which set forth before the public, with happily
assumed naivete, the necessity and constitutional propriety
of his military operations. But it is freedom alone that is absolutely
and exclusively poetical and creative; it and it alone is able
even in its most wretched caricature, even with its latest breath,
to inspire fresh enthusiasm. All the sound elements of literature
were and remained anti-monarchical; and, if Caesar himself
could venture on this domain without proving a failure, the reason
was merely that even now he still cherished at heart the magnificent
dream of a free commonwealth, although he was unable to transfer it
either to his adversaries or to his adherents. Practical politics
was not more absolutely controlled by the regents than literature
by the republicans.(10)
New Exceptional Measures Resolved on
It became necessary to take serious steps against this opposition,
which was powerless indeed, but was always becoming more troublesome
and audacious. The condemnation of Gabinius, apparently,
turned the scale (end of 700). The regents agreed to introduce
a dictatorship, though only a temporary one, and by means of this
to carry new coercive measures especially respecting the elections
and the jury-courts. Pompeius, as the regent on whom primarily devolved
the government of Rome and Italy, was charged with the execution
of this resolve; which accordingly bore the impress of the awkwardness
in resolution and action that characterized him, and of his singular
incapacity of speaking out frankly, even where he would and could
command. Already at the close of 700 the demand for a dictatorship
was brought forward in the senate in the form of hints,
and that not by Pompeius himself. There served as its ostensible ground
the continuance of the system of clubs and bands in the capital,
which by acts of bribery and violence certainly exercised
the most pernicious pressure on the elections as well as
on the jury-courts and kept it in a perpetual state of disturbance;
we must allow that this rendered it easy for the regents to justify
their exceptional measures. But, as may well be conceived,
even the servile majority shrank from granting what the future dictator
himself seemed to shrink from openly asking. When the unparalleled
agitation regarding the elections for the consulship of 701
led to the most scandalous scenes, so that the elections
were postponed a full year beyond the fixed time and only took place
after a seven months' interregnum in July 701, Pompeius found
in this state of things the desired occasion for indicating
now distinctly to the senate that the dictatorship was the only means
of cutting, if not of loosing the knot; but the decisive
word of command was not even yet spoken. Perhaps it would have
still remained for long unuttered, had not the most audacious
partisan of the republican opposition Titus Annius Milo
stepped into the field at the consular elections for 702
as a candidate in opposition to the candidates of the regents,
Quintus Metellus Scipio and Publius Plautius Hypsaeus, both men
closely connected with Pompeius personally and thoroughly devoted to him.