The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Milo
Killing of Clodius
Milo, endowed with physical courage, with a certain talent for intrigue
and for contracting debt, and above all with an ample amount
of native assurance which had been carefully cultivated,
had made himself a name among the political adventurers
of the time, and was the greatest bully in his trade next to Clodius,
and naturally therefore through rivalry at the most deadly feud
with the latter. As this Achilles of the streets had been acquired
by the regents and with their permission was again playing the ultra-
democrat, the Hector of the streets became as a matter of course
an aristocrat! And the republican opposition, which now would have
concluded an alliance with Catilina in person, had he presented
himself to them, readily acknowledged Milo as their legitimate
champion in all riots. In fact the few successes, which they
carried off in this field of battle, were the work of Milo
and of his well-trained band of gladiators. So Cato and his friends
in return supported the candidature of Milo for the consulship;
even Cicero could not avoid recommending one who had been his enemy's
enemy and his own protector during many years; and as Milo himself
spared neither money nor violence to carry his election,
it seemed secured. For the regents it would have been not only
a new and keenly-felt defeat, but also a real danger; for it was
to be foreseen that the bold partisan would not allow himself
as consul to be reduced to insignificance so easily as Domitius
and other men of the respectable opposition. It happened that Achilles
and Hector accidentally encountered each other not far from the capital
on the Appian Way, and a fray arose between their respective bands,
in which Clodius himself received a sword-cut on the shoulder
and was compelled to take refuge in a neighbouring house.
This had occurred without orders from Milo; but, as the matter
had gone so far and as the storm had now to be encountered at any rate,
the whole crime seemed to Milo more desirable and even less dangerous
than the half; he ordered his men to drag Clodius forth
from his lurking place and to put him to death (13 Jan. 702).
Anarchy in Rome
The street leaders of the regents' party--the tribunes of the people
Titus Munatius Plancus, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and Gaius
Sallustius Crispus--saw in this occurrence a fitting opportunity
to thwart in the interest of their masters the candidature of Milo
and carry the dictatorship of Pompeius. The dregs of the populace,
especially the freedmen and slaves, had lost in Clodius
their patron and future deliverer;(11) the requisite excitement
was thus easily aroused. After the bloody corpse had been exposed
for show at the orators' platform in the Forum and the speeches
appropriate to the occasion had been made, the riot broke forth.
The seat of the perfidious aristocracy was destined as a funeral pile
for the great liberator; the mob carried the body to the senate-house,
and set the building on fire. Thereafter the multitude proceeded
to the front of Milo's house and kept it under siege, till his band
drove off the assailants by discharges of arrows. They passed
on to the house of Pompeius and of his consular candidates,
of whom the former was saluted as dictator and the latter as consuls,
and thence to the house of the interrex Marcus Lepidus, on whom
devolved the conduct of the consular elections. When the latter,
as in duty bound, refused to make arrangements for the elections
immediately, as the clamorous multitude demanded, he was kept
during five days under siege in his dwelling house.
Dictatorship of Pompeius
But the instigators of these scandalous scenes had overacted
their part. Certainly their lord and master was resolved to employ
this favourable episode in order not merely to set aside Milo,
but also to seize the dictatorship; he wished, however, to receive it
not from a mob of bludgeon-men, but from the senate. Pompeius brought
up troops to put down the anarchy which prevailed in the capital,
and which had in reality become intolerable to everybody;
at the same time he now enjoined what he had hitherto requested,
and the senate complied. It was merely an empty subterfuge,
that on the proposal of Cato and Bibulus the proconsul Pompeius,
retaining his former offices, was nominated as "consul without
colleague" instead of dictator on the 25th of the intercalary
month(12) (702)--a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring
under a double incongruity(13) for the mere purpose of avoiding
one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us
of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede
to the plebeians not the consulship, but only the consular power.(14)
Changes of in the Arrangement of Magistracies and the Jury-System
Thus in legal possession of full power, Pompeius set to work
and proceeded with energy against the republican party which was
powerful in the clubs and the jury-courts. The existing enactments
as to elections were repeated and enforced by a special law;
and by another against electioneering intrigues, which obtained
retrospective force for all offences of this sort committed
since 684, the penalties hitherto imposed were augmented.
Still more important was the enactment, that the governorships,
which were by far the more important and especially by far
the more lucrative half of official life, should be conferred
on the consuls and praetors not immediately on their retirement
from the consulate or praetorship, but only after the expiry
of other five years; an arrangement which of course could only
come into effect after four years, and therefore made the filling up
of the governorships for the next few years substantially dependent
on decrees of senate which were to be issued for the regulation
of this interval, and thus practically on the person or section
ruling the senate at the moment. The jury-commissions were left
in existence, but limits were put to the right of counter-plea,
and--what was perhaps still more important--the liberty of speech
in the courts was done away; for both the number of the advocates
and the time of speaking apportioned to each were restricted
by fixing a maximum, and the bad habit which had prevailed of adducing,
in addition to the witnesses as to facts, witnesses to character
or -laudatores-, as they were called, in favour of the accused
was prohibited. The obsequious senate further decreed on the suggestion
of Pompeius that the country had been placed in peril by the quarrel
on the Appian Way; accordingly a special commission was appointed
by an exceptional law for all crimes connected with it,
the members of which were directly nominated by Pompeius.
An attempt was also made to give once more a serious importance
to the office of the censors, and by that agency to purge
the deeply disordered burgess-body of the worst rabble.
All these measures were adopted under the pressure of the sword.
In consequence of the declaration of the senate that the country
was in danger, Pompeius called the men capable of service
throughout Italy to arms and made them swear allegiance
for all contingencies; an adequate and trustworthy corps
was temporarily stationed at the Capitol; at every stirring
of opposition Pompeius threatened armed intervention, and during
the proceedings at the trial respecting the murder of Clodius
stationed contrary to all precedent, a guard over the place
of trial itself.
Humiliation of the Republicans
The scheme for the revival of the censorship failed, because
among the servile majority of the senate no one possessed
sufficient moral courage and authority even to become a candidate
for such an office. On the other hand Milo was condemned
by the jurymen (8 April 702) and Cato's candidature for the consulship
of 703was frustrated. The opposition of speeches and pamphlets
received through the new judicial ordinance a blow from which
it never recovered; the dreaded forensic eloquence was thereby
driven from the field of politics, and thenceforth felt
the restraints of monarchy. Opposition of course had not disappeared
either from the minds of the great majority of the nation
or even wholly from public life--to effect that end the popular elections,
the jury-courts, and literature must have been not merely restricted,
but annihilated. Indeed, in these very transactions themselves,
Pompeius by his unskilfulness and perversity helped the republicans
to gain even under his dictatorship several triumphs which
he severely felt. The special measures, which the rulers took
to strengthen their power, were of course officially characterized
as enactments made in the interest of public tranquillity and order,
and every burgess, who did not desire anarchy, was described
as substantially concurring in them. But Pompeius pushed
this transparent fiction so far, that instead of putting
safe instruments into the special commission for the investigation
of the last tumult, he chose the most respectable men of all parties,
including even Cato, and applied his influence over the court essentially
to maintain order, and to render it impossible for his adherents
as well as for his opponents to indulge in the scenes of disturbance
customary in the courts of this period. This neutrality of the regent
was discernible in the judgments of the special court. The jurymen
did not venture to acquit Milo himself; but most of the subordinate
persons accused belonging to the party of the republican opposition
were acquitted, while condemnation inexorably befell those
who in the last riot had taken part for Clodius, or in other words
for the regents, including not a few of Caesar's and of Pompeius' own
most intimate friends--even Hypsaeus his candidate for the consulship,
and the tribunes of the people Plancus and Rufus, who had directed
the -emeute- in his interest. That Pompeius did not prevent
their condemnation for the sake of appearing impartial, was one specimen
of his folly; and a second was, that he withal in matters
quite indifferent violated his own laws to favour his friends--
appearing for example as a witness to character in the trial of Plancus,
and in fact protecting from condemnation several accused persons
specially connected with him, such as Metellus Scipio. As usual,
he wished here also to accomplish opposite things; in attempting
to satisfy the duties at once of the impartial regent
and of the party-chief, he fulfilled neither the one nor the other,
and was regarded by public opinion with justice as a despotic regent,
and by his adherents with equal justice as a leader who either
could not or would not protect his followers.
But, although the republicans were still stirring and were even refreshed
by an isolated success here and there, chiefly through the blunders
of Pompeius, the object which the regents had proposed
to themselves in that dictatorship was on the whole attained,
the reins were drawn tighter, the republican party was humbled,
and the new monarchy was strengthened. The public began
to reconcile themselves to the latter. When Pompeius not long after
recovered from a serious illness, his restoration was celebrated
throughout Italy with the accompanying demonstrations of joy
which are usual on such occasions in monarchies. The regents
showed themselves satisfied; as early as the 1st of August 702
Pompeius resigned his dictatorship, and shared the consulship
with his client Metellus Scipio.
Chapter IX
Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers
Crassus Goes to Syria
Marcus Crassus had for years been reckoned among the heads
of the "three-headed monster," without any proper title
to be so included. He served as a makeweight to trim the balance
between the real regents Pompeius and Caesar, or, to speak
more accurately, his weight fell into the scale of Caesar
against Pompeius. This part is not a too reputable one;
but Crassus was never hindered by any keen sense of honour
from pursuing his own advantage. He was a merchant and was open
to be dealt with. What was offered to him was not much;
but, when more was not to be got, he accepted it, and sought
to forget the ambition that fretted him, and his chagrin
at occupying a position so near to power and yet so powerless,
amidst his always accumulating piles of gold. But the conference
at Luca changed the state of matters also for him; with the view
of still retaining the preponderance as compared with Pompeius
after concessions so extensive, Caesar gave to his old confederate
Crassus an opportunity of attaining in Syria through the Parthian war
the same position to which Caesar had attained by the Celtic war
in Gaul. It was difficult to say whether these new prospects
proved more attractive to the ardent thirst for gold which had now become
at the age of sixty a second nature and grew only the more intense
with every newly-won million, or to the ambition which had been
long repressed with difficulty in the old man's breast
and now glowed in it with restless fire. He arrived in Syria as early
as the beginning of 700; he had not even waited for the expiry
of his consulship to depart. Full of impatient ardour he seemed desirous
to redeem every minute with the view of making up for what he had lost,
of gathering in the treasures of the east in addition to those
of the west, of achieving the power and glory of a general
as rapidly as Caesar, and with as little trouble as Pompeius.
Expedition against Parthia Resolved on
He found the Parthian war already commenced. The faithless conduct
of Pompeius towards the Parthians has been already mentioned;(1)
he had not respected the stipulated frontier of the Euphrates
and had wrested several provinces from the Parthian empire
for the benefit of Armenia, which was now a client state of Rome.
King Phraates had submitted to this treatment; but after he had been
murdered by his two sons Mithradates and Orodes, the new king
Mithradates immediately declared war on the king of Armenia, Artavasdes,
son of the recently deceased Tigranes (about 698).(2) This was
at the same time a declaration of war against Rome; therefore
as soon as the revolt of the Jews was suppressed, Gabinius,
the able and spirited governor of Syria, led the legions
over the Euphrates. Meanwhile, however, a revolution had occurred
in the Parthian empire; the grandees of the kingdom, with the young,
bold, and talented grand vizier at their head, had overthrown
king Mithradates and placed his brother Orodes on the throne.
Mithradates therefore made common cause with the Romans
and resorted to the camp of Gabinius. Everything promised
the best results to the enterprise of the Roman governor,
when he unexpectedly received orders to conduct the king of Egypt
back by force of arms to Alexandria.(3) He was obliged to obey;
but, in the expectation of soon coming back, he induced the dethroned
Parthian prince who solicited aid from him to commence the war
in the meanwhile at his own hand. Mithradates did so; and Seleucia
and Babylon declared for him; but the vizier captured Seleucia
by assault, having been in person the first to mount the battlements,
and in Babylon Mithradates himself was forced by famine to surrender,
whereupon he was by his brother's orders put to death.
His death was a palpable loss to the Romans; but it by no means
put an end to the ferment in the Parthian empire, and the Armenian war
continued. Gabinius, after ending the Egyptian campaign,
was just on the eve of turning to account the still favourable
opportunity and resuming the interrupted Parthian war, when Crassus
arrived in Syria and along with the command took up also the plans
of his predecessor. Full of high-flown hopes he estimated
the difficulties of the march as slight, and the power of resistance
in the armies of the enemy as yet slighter; he not only spoke
confidently of the subjugation of the Parthians, but was already
in imagination the conqueror of the kingdoms of Bactria and India.
Plan of the Campaign
The new Alexander, however, was in no haste. Before he carried
into effect these great plans, he found leisure for very tedious
and very lucrative collateral transactions. The temples of Derceto
at Hierapolis Bambyce and of Jehovah at Jerusalem and other rich shrines
of the Syrian province, were by order of Crassus despoiled
of their treasures; and contingents or, still better, sums of money
instead were levied from all the subjects. The military operations
of the first summer were limited to an extensive reconnaissance
in Mesopotamia; the Euphrates was crossed, the Parthian satrap
was defeated at Ichnae (on the Belik to the north of Rakkah),
and the neighbouring towns, including the considerable one of Nicephorium
(Rakkah), were occupied, after which the Romans having left garrisons
behind in them returned to Syria. They had hitherto been in doubt
whether it was more advisable to march to Parthia by the circuitous route
of Armenia or by the direct route through the Mesopotamian desert.
The first route, leading through mountainous regions under the control
of trustworthy allies, commended itself by its greater safety;
king Artavasdes came in person to the Roman headquarters
to advocate this plan of the campaign. But that reconnaissance
decided in favour of the march through Mesopotamia. The numerous
and flourishing Greek and half-Greek towns in the regions
along the Euphrates and Tigris, above all the great city
of Seleucia, were altogether averse to the Parthian rule;
all the Greek townships with which the Romans came into contact had now,
like the citizens of Carrhae at an earlier time,(4) practically shown
how ready they were to shake off the intolerable foreign yoke
and to receive the Romans as deliverers, almost as countrymen.
The Arab prince Abgarus, who commanded the desert of Edessa and Carrhae
and thereby the usual route from the Euphrates to the Tigris,
had arrived in the camp of the Romans to assure them in person
of his devotedness. The Parthians had appeared to be wholly unprepared.
The Euphrates Crossed
Accordingly (701) the Euphrates was crossed (near Biradjik).
To reach the Tigris from this point they had the choice
of two routes; either the army might move downward along the Euphrates
to the latitude of Seleucia where the Euphrates and Tigris
are only a few miles distant from each other; or they might
immediately after crossing take the shortest line to the Tigris
right across the great Mesopotamian desert. The former route
led directly to the Parthian capital Ctesiphon, which lay opposite
Seleucia on the other bank of the Tigris; several weighty voices
were raised in favour of this route in the Roman council of war;
in particular the quaestor Gaius Cassius pointed to the difficulties
of the march in the desert, and to the suspicious reports arriving
from the Roman garrisons on the left bank of the Euphrates
as to the Parthian warlike preparations. But in opposition to this
the Arab prince Abgarus announced that the Parthians were employed
in evacuating their western provinces. They had already packed up
their treasures and put themselves in motion to flee to the Hyrcanians
and Scythians; only through a forced march by the shortest route
was it at all possible still to reach them; but by such a march
the Romans would probably succeed in overtaking and cutting up at least
the rear-guard of the great army under Sillaces and the vizier,
and obtaining enormous spoil. These reports of the friendly Bedouins
decided the direction of the march; the Roman army, consisting
of seven legions, 4000 cavalry, and 4000 slingers and archers,
turned off from the Euphrates and away into the inhospitable plains
of northern Mesopotamia.
The March in the Desert
Far and wide not an enemy showed himself; only hunger and thirst,
and the endless sandy desert, seemed to keep watch at the gates
of the east. At length, after many days of toilsome marching, not far
from the first river which the Roman army had to cross,
the Balissus (Belik), the first horsemen of the enemy were descried.
Abgarus with his Arabs was sent out to reconnoitre; the Parthian
squadrons retired up to and over the river and vanished
in the distance, pursued by Abgarus and his followers. With impatience
the Romans waited for his return and for more exact information.
The general hoped here at length to come upon the constantly
retreating foe; his young and brave son Publius, who had fought
with the greatest distinction in Gaul under Caesar,(5) and had been sent
by the latter at the head of a Celtic squadron of horse to take part
in the Parthian war, was inflamed with a vehement desire
for the fight. When no tidings came, they resolved to advance
at a venture; the signal for starting was given, the Balissus
was crossed, the army after a brief insufficient rest at noon
was led on without delay at a rapid pace. Then suddenly the kettledrums
of the Parthians sounded all around; on every side their silken
gold-embroidered banners were seen waving, and their iron helmets
and coats of mail glittering in the blaze of the hot noonday sun;
and by the side of the vizier stood prince Abgarus with his Bedouins.
Roman and Parthian Systems of Warfare
The Romans saw too late the net into which they had allowed themselves
to be ensnared. With sure glance the vizier had thoroughly seen
both the danger and the means of meeting it. Nothing could
be accomplished against the Roman infantry of the line
with Oriental infantry; so he had rid himself of it, and by
sending a mass, which was useless in the main field of battle,
under the personal leadership of king Orodes to Armenia,
he had prevented king Artavasdes from allowing the promised
10,000 heavy cavalry to join the army of Crassus, who now painfully
felt the want of them. On the other hand the vizier met the Roman
tactics, unsurpassed of their kind, with a system entirely different.
His army consisted exclusively of cavalry; the line was formed of the
heavy horsemen armed with long thrusting-lances, and protected, man
and horse, by a coat of mail of metallic plates or a leathern doublet
and by similar greaves; the mass of the troops consisted of mounted
archers. As compared with these, the Romans were thoroughly inferior
in the corresponding arms both as to number and excellence. Their
infantry of the line, excellent as they were in close combat, whether
at a short distance with the heavy javelin or in hand-to-hand combat
with the sword, could not compel an army consisting merely of cavalry
to come to an engagement with them; and they found, even when they
did come to a hand-to-hand conflict, an equal if not superior
adversary in the iron-clad hosts of lancers. As compared with an
army like this Parthian one, the Roman army was at a disadvantage
strategically, because the cavalry commanded the communications;
and at a disadvantage tactically, because every weapon of close
combat must succumb to that which is wielded from a distance,
unless the struggle becomes an individual one, man against man.
The concentrated position, on which the whole Roman method of war
was based, increased the danger in presence of such an attack;
the closer the ranks of the Roman column, the more irresistible
certainly was its onset, but the less also could the missiles
fail to hit their mark. Under ordinary circumstances,
where towns have to be defended and difficulties of the ground
have to be considered, such tactics operating merely with cavalry
against infantry could never be completely carried out;
but in the Mesopotamian desert, where the army, almost like a ship
on the high seas, neither encountered an obstacle nor met
with a basis for strategic dispositions during many days' march,
this mode of warfare was irresistible for the very reason
that circumstances allowed it to be developed there in all its purity
and therefore in all its power. There everything combined to put
the foreign infantry at a disadvantage against the native cavalry.
Where the heavy-laden Roman foot-soldier dragged himself toilsomely
through the sand or the steppe, and perished from hunger or still more
from thirst amid the pathless route marked only by water-springs
that were far apart and difficult to find, the Parthian horseman,
accustomed from childhood to sit on his fleet steed or camel,
nay almost to spend his life in the saddle, easily traversed
the desert whose hardships he had long learned how to lighten
or in case of need to endure. There no rain fell to mitigate
the intolerable heat, and to slacken the bowstrings and leathern thongs
of the enemy's archers and slingers; there amidst the deep sand
at many places ordinary ditches and ramparts could hardly be formed
for the camp. Imagination can scarcely conceive a situation
in which all the military advantages were more on the one side,
and all the disadvantages more thoroughly on the other.
To the question, under what circumstances this new style
of tactics, the first national system that on its own proper ground
showed itself superior to the Roman, arose among the Parthians,
we unfortunately can only reply by conjectures. The lancers
and mounted archers were of great antiquity in the east, and already
formed the flower of the armies of Cyrus and Darius; but hitherto
these arms had been employed only as secondary, and essentially
to cover the thoroughly useless Oriental infantry. The Parthian armies
also by no means differed in this respect from the other Oriental ones;
armies are mentioned, five-sixths of which consisted of infantry.
In the campaign of Crassus, on the other hand, the cavalry
for the first time came forward independently, and this arm
obtained quite a new application and quite a different value.
The irresistible superiority of the Roman infantry in close combat
seems to have led the adversaries of Rome in very different parts
of the world independently of each other--at the same time
and with similar success--to meet it with cavalry and distant weapons.
What as completely successful with Cassivellaunus in Britain(6)
and partially successful with Vercingetorix in Gaul(7)--
what was to a certain degree attempted even by Mithradates Eupator(8)--
the vizier of Orodes carried out only on a larger scale
and more completely. And in doing so he had special advantages:
for he found in the heavy cavalry the means of forming a line; the bow
which was national in the east and was handled with masterly skill
in the Persian provinces gave him an effective weapon for distant combat;
and lastly the peculiarities of the country and the people
enabled him freely to realize his brilliant idea. Here, where
the Roman weapons of close combat and the Roman system of concentration
yielded for the first time before the weapons of more distant warfare
and the system of deploying, was initiated that military revolution
which only reached its completion with the introduction of firearms.