The history of Rome. Book V

by Theodor Mommsen

  The conflict lasted long, and many brave men fell on both sides; Catilina, who before the beginning of the battle had sent back his horse and those of all his officers, showed on this day that nature had destined him for no ordinary things, and that he knew at once how to command as a general and how to fight as a soldier. At length Petreius with his guard broke the centre of the enemy, and, after having overthrown this, attacked the two wings from within. This decided the victory. The corpses of the Catilinarians - there were counted 3000 of them - covered, as it were in rank and file, the ground where they had fought; the officers and the general himself had, when all was lost, thrown themselves headlong on the enemy and thus sought and found death (beginning of 692). Antonius was on account of this victory stamped by the senate with the title of Imperator, and new thanksgiving-festivals showed that the government and the governed were beginning to become accustomed to civil war.

  Attitude of Crassus and Caesar toward the Anarchists

  The anarchist plot had thus been suppressed in the capital as in Italy with bloody violence; people were still reminded of it merely by the criminal processes which in the Etruscan country towns and in the capital thinned the ranks of those affiliated to the beaten party, and by the large accessions to the robber-bands of Italy - one of which, for instance, formed out of the remains of the armies of Spartacus and Catilina, was destroyed by a military force in 694 in the territory of Thurii. But it is important to keep in view that the blow fell by no means merely on the anarchists proper, who had conspired to set the capital on fire and had fought at Pistoria, but on the whole democratic party. That this party, and in particular Crassus and Caesar, had a hand in the game on the present occasion as well as in the plot of 688, may be regarded - not in a juristic, but in a historical, point of view - as an ascertained fact. The circumstance, indeed, that Catulus and the other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader of the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot, and that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only be urged by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his participation in the plans of Catilina. But a series of other facts is of more weight.

  According to express and irrefragable testimonies it was especially Crassus and Caesar that supported the candidature of Catilina for the consulship. When Caesar in 690 brought the executioners of Sulla before the commission for murder[20] he allowed the rest to be condemned, but the most guilty and infamous of all, Catilina, to be acquitted. In the revelations of the 3rd of December, it is true, Cicero did not include among the names of the conspirators of whom he had information those of the two influential men; but it is notorious that the informers denounced not merely those against whom subsequently investigation was directed, but "many innocent" persons besides, whom the consul Cicero thought proper to erase from the list; and in later years, when he had no reason to disguise the truth, he expressly named Caesar among the accomplices. An indirect but very intelligible inculpation is implied also in the circumstance, that of the four persons arrested on the 3rd of December the two least dangerous, Statilius and Gabinius, were handed over to be guarded by the senators Caesar and Crassus; it was manifestly intended that these should either, if they allowed them to escape, be compromised in the view of public opinion as accessories, or, if they really detained them, be compromised in the view of their fellow-conspirators as renegades.

  The following scene which occurred in the senate shows significantlyhow matters stood. Immediately after the arrest of Lentulus and his comrades, a messenger despatched by the conspirators in the capital to Catilina was seized by the agents of the government, and, after having been assured of impunity, was induced to make a comprehensive confession in a full meeting of the senate.

  But when he came to the critical portions of his confession and in particular named Crassus as having commissioned him, he was interrupted by the senators, and on the suggestion of Cicero it was resolved to cancel the whole statement without farther inquiry, but to imprison its author notwithstanding the amnesty assured to him, until such time as he should have not merely retracted the statement, but should have also confessed who had instigated him to give such false testimony! Here it is abundantly clear, not merely that that man had a very accurate knowledge of the state of matters who, when summoned to make an attack upon Crassus, replied that he had no desire to provoke the bull of the herd, but also that the majority of the senate with Cicero at their head were agreed in not permitting the revelations to go beyond a certain limit. The public was not so nice; the young men, who had taken up arms to ward off the incendiaries, were exasperated against no one so much as against Caesar, on the 5th of December, when he left the senate, they pointed their swords at his breast and even now he narrowly escaped with his life on the same spot where the fatal blow fell on him seventeen years afterwards; he did not again for a considerable time enter the senate-house.

  Any one who impartially considers the course of the conspiracy will not be able to resist the suspicion that during all this time Catilina was backed by more powerful men, who - relying on the want of a legally complete chain of evidence and on the lukewarmness and cowardice of the majority of the senate, which was but half-initiated and greedily caught at any pretext for inaction - knew how to hinder any serious interference with the conspiracy on the part of the authorities, to procure free departure for the chief of the insurgents, and even so to manage the declaration of war and the sending of troops against the insurrection that it was almost equivalent to the sending of an auxiliary army. While the course of the events themselves thus testifies that the threads of the Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and Catilina, it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much later period, when Caesar had got to the head of the state, he was in the closest alliance with the only Catilinarian still surviving, Publius Sittius the leader of the Mauretanian free bands, and that he modified the law of debt quite in the sense that the proclamations of Manlius demanded.

  All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough; but, even were it not so, the desperate position of the democracy in presence of the military power - which since the Gabinio-Manilian laws assumed by its side an attitude more threatening than ever - renders it almost a certainty that, as usually happens in such cases, it sought a last resource in secret plots and in alliance with anarchy. The circumstances were very similar to those of the Cinnan times. While in the east Pompeius occupied a position nearly such as Sulla then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise over against him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna had possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better than they had done. The way to this result lay once more through terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way Catilina was certainly the fitting man. Naturally the more reputable leaders of the democracy kept themselves as far as possible in the background, and left to their unclean associates the execution of the unclean work, the political results of which they hoped afterwards to appropriate. Still more naturally, when the enterprise had failed, the partners of higher position applied every effort to conceal their participation in it. And at a later period, when the former conspirator had himself become the target of political plots, the veil was for that very reason drawn only the more closely over those darker years in the life of the great man, and even special apologies for him were written with that very object[21].

  Total Destruction of the Democratic Party

  For five years Pompeius stood at the head of his armies and fleets in the east; for five years the democracy at home conspired to overthrow him. The result was discouraging. With unspeakable exertions they had not merely attained nothing, but had suffered morally as well as materially enormous loss. Even the coalition of 683 could not but be for democrats of pure water a scandal, although the democracy at that time only coalesced with two distinguished men of the opposite party and bound these to its programme.

  But now the democratic party had made common cause with a band of mu
rderers and bankrupts, who were almost all likewise deserters from the camp of the aristocracy; and had at least for the time being accepted their programme, that is to say, the terrorism of Cinna. The party of material interests, one of the chief elements of the coalition of 683, was thereby estranged from the democracy, and driven into the arms of the Optimates in the first instance, or of any power at all which would and could give protection against anarchy. Even the multitude of the capital, who, although having no objection to a street-riot, found it inconvenient to have their houses set on fire over their heads, became in some measure alarmed. It is remarkable that in this very year (691) the full re-establishment of the Sempronian corn-largesses took place, and was effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato. The league of the democratic leaders with anarchy had obviously created a breach between the former and the burgesses of the city; and the oligarchy sought, not without at least momentary success, to enlarge this chasm and to draw over the masses to their side. Lastly, Gnaeus Pompeius had been partly warned, partly exasperated, by all these cabals; after all that had occurred, and after the democracy had itself virtually torn asunder the ties which connected it with Pompeius, it could no longer with propriety make the request - which in 684 had had a certain amount of reason on its side - that he should not himself destroy with the sword the democratic power which he had raised, and which had raised him.

  Thus the democracy was disgraced and weakened; but above all it had become ridiculous through the merciless exposure of its perplexity and weakness. Where the humiliation of the overthrown government and similar matters of little moment were concerned, it was great and potent; but every one of its attempts to attain a real political success had proved a downright failure. Its relation to Pompeius was as false as pitiful. While it was loading him with panegyrics and demonstrations of homage, it was concocting against him one intrigue after another; and one after another, like soap-bubbles, they burst of themselves. The general of the east and of the seas, far from standing on his defence against them, appeared not even to observe all the busy agitation, and to obtain his victories over the democracy as Herakles gained his over the Pygmies, without being himself aware of it. The attempt to kindle civil war had miserably failed; if the anarchist section had at least displayed some energy, the pure democracy, while knowing doubtless how to hire conspirators, had not known how to lead them or to save them or to die with them. Even the old languid oligarchy, strengthened by the masses passing over to it from the ranks of the democracy and above all by the - in this affair unmistakeable - identity of its interests and those of Pompeius, had been enabled to suppress this attempt at revolution and thereby to achieve yet a last victory over the democracy. Meanwhile king Mithradates was dead, Asia Minor and Syria were regulated, and the return of Pompeius to Italy might be every moment expected.

  The decision was not far off; but was there in fact still room to speak of a decision between the general who returned more famous and mightier than ever, and the democracy humbled beyond parallel and utterly powerless? Crassus prepared to embark his family and his gold and to seek an asylum somewhere in the east; and even so elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed on the point of giving up the game as lost. In this year (691) occurred his candidature for the place of pontifex maximus;[22] when he left his dwelling on the morning of the election, he declared that, if he should fail in this also, he would never again cross the threshold of his house.

  Chapter VI

  Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

  Pompeius in the East

  When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second time the diadem at his feet. For long the development of the Roman commonwealth had been tending towards such a catastrophe; it was evident to every unbiassed observer, and had been remarked a thousand times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy should be brought to an end, monarchy was inevitable. The senate had now been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition and by the power of the soldiery; the only question remaining was to settle the persons, names, and forms for the new order of things; and these were already clearly enough indicated in the partly democratic, partly military elements of the revolution. The events of the last five years had set, as it were, the final seal on this impending transformation of the commonwealth. In the newly-erected Asiatic provinces, which gave regal honours to their organizer as the successor of Alexander the Great, and already received his favoured freedmen like princes, Pompeius had laid the foundations of his dominion, and found at once the treasures, the army, and the halo of glory which the future prince of the Roman state required.

  The anarchist conspiracy, moreover, in the capital, and the civil war connected with it, had made it palpably clear to every one who studied political or even merely material interests, that a government without authority and without military power, such as that of the senate, exposed the state to the equally ludicrous and formidable tyranny of political sharpers, and that a change of constitution, which should connect the military power more closely with the government, was an indispensable necessity if social order was to be maintained. So the ruler had arisen in the east, the throne had been erected in Italy; to all appearance the year 692 was the last of the republic, the first of monarchy.

  The Opponents of the Future Monarchy

  This goal, it is true, was not to be reached without a struggle. The constitution, which had endured for five hundred years, and under which the insignificant town on the Tiber had risen to unprecedented greatness and glory, had sunk its roots into the soil to a depth beyond human ken, and no one could at all calculate to what extent the attempt to overthrow it would penetrate and convulse civil society. Several rivals had been outrun by Pompeius in the race towards the great goal, but had not been wholly set aside. It was not at all beyond reach of calculation that all these elements might combine to overthrow the new holder of power, and that Pompeius might find Quintus Catulus and Marcus Cato united in opposition to him with Marcus Crassus, Gaius Caesar, and Titus Labienus. But the inevitable and undoubtedly serious struggle could not well be undertaken under circumstances more favourable.

  It was in a high degree probable that, under the fresh impression of the Catilinarian revolt, a rule which promised order and security, although at the price of freedom, would receive the submission of the whole middle party - embracing especially the merchants who concerned themselves only about their material interests, but including also a great part of the aristocracy, which, disorganized in itself and politically hopeless, had to rest content with securing for itself riches, rank, and influence by a timely compromise with the prince; perhaps even a portion of the democracy, so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit to hope for the realization of a portion of its demands from a military chief raised to power by itself. But, whatever might be the position of party-relations, of what importance, in the first instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all in presence of Pompeius and his victorious army? Twenty years previously Sulla, after having concluded a temporary peace with Mithradates, had with his five legions been able to carry a restoration runningcounter to the natural development of things in the face of the whole liberal party, which had been arming en masse for years, from the moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down to the anarchists. The task of Pompeius was far less difficult.

  He returned, after having fully and conscientiously performed his different functions by sea and land. He might expect to encounter no other serious opposition save that of the various extreme parties, each of which by itself could do nothing, and which even when leagued together were no more than a coalition of factions still vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough variance. Completely unarmed, they were without a military force and without a head, without organization in Italy, without support in the provinces, above all, without a general; there was in their ranks hardly a soldier of note - to say nothing of an
officer - who could have ventured to call forth the burgesses to a conflict with Pompeius. The circumstance might further be taken into account, that the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was visibly burning out and verging of itself to extinction. It was very doubtful whether the attempt to arm the Italians for party interests would now succeed, as it had succeeded with Cinna and Carbo. If Pompeius exerted himself, how could he fail to effect a revolution of the state, which was chalked out by a certain necessity of nature in the organic development of the Roman commonwealth?