Caesar and the Roman Empire E-Book

W. Warde Fowler

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 511

Beschreibung

ITALY, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF European lands, has also been the richest in men whom the world has acknowledged as great. Long indeed is the list of her men of letters, her artists, her men of action, and her great priests. Of the world's six greatest poets she has produced two, Virgil and Dante. And twice at least, in ages of general confusion and chaos, it has fallen to Italy to provide a leader strong enough to put an end to anarchy, and by virtue of a powerful personality, to assert the force of a unifying principle...

Leseprobe

CAESAR AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE

W. Warde Fowler

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by W. Warde Fowler

Published by Jovian Press

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ISBN: 9781537803432

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BIRTH, FAMILY, AND EDUCATION. 102-89 B.C.

BOYHOOD DURING THE CIVIL WARS—EARLIEST POLITICAL EXPERIENCES. 89-82 B.C.

EARLY LIFE UNDER THE SULLAN GOVERNMENT. 81-70 B.C.

QUÆSTORSHIP; AND SUPREMACY OF POMPEIUS. 69-66 B.C.

ÆDILESHIP; CONSPIRACY OF CATILINA. 65-63 B.C.

PRAETORSHIP, AND FORMATION OF TRIUMVIRATE. 62-60 B.C.

CAESAR’S FIRST CONSULSHIP. 59 B.C.

THE DEFENCE OF TRANSALPINE GAUL. 58 B.C.

THE DEFEAT OF THE GERMANS. 58 B.C.

THE CONQUEST OF NORTH-WESTERN GAUL. 57 B.C.

CONFERENCE AT LUCCA, AND CAMPAIGN IN BRITTANY. 56 B.C.

INVASIONS OF GERMANY AND BRITAIN.55-54 B.C.

THE GALLIC REBELLIONS. 54-52 B.C.

PACIFICATION OF GAUL AND OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR. 52-49 B.C.

CIVIL WAR IN ITALY AND SPAIN. 49 B.C.

DYRRHACHIUM AND PHARSALUS. 48 B.C.

CAESAR’S LAST WARS.48-45 B.C.

CAESAR’S USE OF ABSOLUTE POWER. 49-44 B.C.

THE END. 44. B.C.

EPILOGUE.

EPILOGUE II.

BIRTH, FAMILY, AND EDUCATION. 102-89 B.C.

~

ITALY, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF European lands, has also been the richest in men whom the world has acknowledged as great. Long indeed is the list of her men of letters, her artists, her men of action, and her great priests. Of the world’s six greatest poets she has produced two, Virgil and Dante. And twice at least, in ages of general confusion and chaos, it has fallen to Italy to provide a leader strong enough to put an end to anarchy, and by virtue of a powerful personality, to assert the force of a unifying principle.

In the Middle Ages, this principle was the spiritual supremacy of the Church, and the man who enforced it was Hildebrand, the greatest of the Popes. Eleven centuries earlier, Julius Caesar, personifying the principle of intelligent government by a single man, had made it possible for the Roman dominion, then on the point of breaking up, to grow into a great political union, and so eventually to provide a material foundation for modern civilisation. It might seem indeed at first sight as if the work done by each of these men depended for its vitality on their own genius, and barely survived them. But the ideas they represented and enforced continued to govern the course of history for centuries after they had passed away; and they affect us in some measure even now.

To understand adequately the position, the power, and the ideas of either of these Italians, and especially of the one whose life we are to trace, it is necessary to have at least some acquaintance with the history of the city of Rome for many generations before they came into the world. The influence of Italy on civilisation is in fact mainly due to the marvellous fortunes of the city on the Tiber. Not indeed that many of the greatest Italians have been natives of Rome : from Virgil downwards they have sprung from all parts of the peninsula, and from a variety of races. But to the fortunes of Rome, and to the discipline, the tenacity of purpose, and the political skill of her earliest rulers, the Italians owe their position as, in a sense, a chosen people.

In order to place Caesar in his right position in the history of Rome and of the world, it is hard to dispense with a review of the growth of the Roman dominion, of the Roman constitution, and of Roman society, up to the date of his birth. But this: volume must be occupied by Caesar himself and his work, and we must be content with the very briefest outline of the evolution of the Roman power, down to that age of storm and peril, when the greatest of Romans—himself of the purest Roman descent— seized forcibly on the helm, and pointed out the state’s true course.

The city of Rome was originally one of those little communities, consisting of a walled town with a small adjoining territory, the nature of which we learn best from Greek history, and from the writings of Greek philosophers. The Greeks lived entirely in such cities, which were for the most part quite independent of each other, self-subsisting, self-governing; federations and empires were violations of the spirit of independence which they cherished, and they never grew, or wished to grow, into a nation united by political ties. In Italy this passion for autonomy was less strong, though it was not absent. Leagues or federations, for the mutual support of a group of towns, were not unknown. When history dawns, we find the city on the Tiber in league with the other cities of the Latin race which lay around it, and in course of time it won a position as their leader and champion. When they rebelled against its increasing power, they were put down; and Rome began to be a mistress whose will other cities obeyed.

Some were absorbed into her own body politic, some were left to govern themselves in their own way; but all had to fight for her as she gradually increased her dominion. In course of time Rome, with the aid of the Latins, had overcome all the peoples of Italy up to the river Po. They were treated in different ways, as the Latins had been; but whatever their political status, they all had to supply soldiers to the Roman armies. Thus this wonderful city went forward, steadily storing up material strength; and wherever she went she took lands from the conquered, built fortified towns, establishing in them a Roman or Latin population, and connected these with herself by indestructible military roads. And after a long struggle with the Phoenician city of Carthage, in the course of which she learnt the art of naval warfare, she conquered also the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, the natural appendages of Italy.

At last it seemed that her downfall was at hand. In the sixth century of her existence (218 B.C.) the greatest military genius of antiquity, Hannibal the Carthaginian, invaded Italy from Spain, bent on her destruction. He annihilated one Roman army after another, and reduced her to the last gasp. But her vitality was marvellous; she kept him at bay for fourteen years, forced him to leave Italy, followed him to Africa, and broke the power of Carthage, taking from her all her possessions in Spain, which were added to the Roman dominion. Hannibal then tried to enlist the King of Macedonia in his life-long effort to war down Rome; but the Romana crossed the Adriatic, and in time both Macedonia and Greece acknowledged her sway. When in 146 B.C., she finally razed Carthage to the ground, she was the acknowledged arbiter of all the peoples living around the Mediterranean Sea. Twenty-five years later she was mistress not only of Italy, Spain, the Carthaginian territory in Africa, Macedonia, Greece, and Illyria, but also of a considerable portion of Asia Minor, and of a valuable territory in what is now the south of France.

This wonderful growth of a single city into a vast empire is without a parallel in the world’s history; and it raised problems unparalleled for complexity and extent. It had been achieved partly by the stern and steady character of the conquering race, by their habits of self-denial and obedience, bred in them through their rigid family life and religion, and by their talent for political organisation; partly also by the nature of their constitution, which had grown in the last two centuries into a narrow and compact but shrewd and hard-working oligarchy. The outward expression of this oligarchy was the Senate or Council of Three Hundred, of which all or nearly all the members had seen state-service, and understood the work they had to do. In the course of the long wars this great council had shown extraordinary administrative ability and tenacity of purpose. The magistrates, who were elected for one year only, gradually lost their independence, and willingly obeyed the decisions of a body whose function was in theory only to advise them. When their year of office expired they became practically life members of the Senate; and thus it may be said that this wonderful council rep. resented all the gathered wisdom and experience of the state. The people, theoretically sovereign, elected the magistrates from families of senatorial renown, and ratified laws which the Senate ap. proved; but the Roman democracy was unrealised, and the senatorial oligarchy was supreme.

Such an oligarchy as this is better suited to rule in time of war than in time of peace. When the great wars were at last coming to an end, it was found that power, and the wealth which that power had brought with it, had corrupted the ancient virtue of the rulers of Rome. They owned half the soil of Italy; as magistrates, sent out to govern the conquered territories, they oppressed the conquered and enriched themselves. Their wealth made them luxurious and enfeebled them; they began to let the discipline of their armies go to ruin abroad, and at home their political efforts were all of a self-seeking kind. And now too the old Roman family life began to show signs of breaking up, and the old religion lost its hold. Greek rhetoric and Greek philosophy came in, and with them the love of art and literature; but these could not supply the place of the old faith and the old morality for men whose duty was to govern the world. Things began to grow worse and worse, and it was clear that some change in the government was at hand.

In 133 B.C., Tiberius Gracchus, by developing the latent power of the people, and of the Tribunate of the Plebs, an ancient and anomalous magistracy which the Senate had subordinated to its own ends, struck a severe blow at this oligarchy and its wealth; but he was young and inexperienced, used violence, and was repaid with violence. Ten years after his death his brother Gaius succeeded for two years in displacing the Senate from supremacy; but he was forced to rule himself, and his personal influence, unsupported by an army, was not enough to save him from his brother’s fate. But Gaius sounded the note of revolution, and gave a practical example of better government, which was never forgotten.

Then followed a long reaction, in which the corruption of the oligarchy is seen at its highest pitch. Two great wars, grossly mismanaged by the Senate, produced at last a great general from among the people, who revolutionised the Roman army and was the first to make it a great factor in politics. For some months in the year 100 B.C., Rome was in the hands of Marius; but the Senate was again too strong, and he was ignorant of politics. He yielded to senatorial prestige, and the oligarchy was established once more.

This man was a native of the Italian town of Arpinum; but he had had the discretion to marry into one of the oldest and most famous Roman families. His wife was Julia, the sister of C. Julius Caesar, and the aunt of the great man whose career we are about to trace. Her nephew, Gaius Julius Cæsar, was probably born 0n the 12th day of the month Quinctilis, which ever since his death has borne his gentile name, in the year 102 B.C., when his kinsman was drawing to a close that splendid military career, in which he saved Rome for the time from invasion and ruin, and began a new period of glory for the Roman armies.

Caesar was thus born into a world full of doubt and insecurity, with problems confronting the statesman which few could understand, much less attempt to solve. The frontiers of this unwieldy empire had to be protected, and the generals to whom this task was committed had to be controlled. The conquered territories, or provinces as they were called, must be governed equitably, and gradually Romanised, if they were to be held together in any strong bond of union. Italy itself was disaffected, and demanding admission to the privileges of Roman citizenship. The capital was swarming with a mongrel, idle, and hungry population, who claimed to be the Roman people, and to legislate for the whole empire. The senatorial constitution was falling to pieces, and the only alternatives were mob rule or military rule. The distribution of wealth was fearfully unequal; capital and pauperism faced each other menacingly, and both were bred and maintained on a slave system unparalleled in its degradation. The slaves themselves constituted a permanent danger to the state. Piracy abounded on the seas, brigandage and murder in Italy. Lastly, the ideas of loyalty, obedience, self-restraint, were growing steadily rarer among the rulers at the very time they were most called for. The outlook was a terrible one. Rome and her empire must surely come to an end, unless some statesman should arise, able enough to comprehend the problems, and strong enough to put his hand to their solution.

The family of the Caesars descended from one of the oldest and purest of Roman stocks, and it was one of the many truly Roman characteristics of its greatest scion, that he set a high value on his noble descent, and knew how to turn it to advantage in pursuing his political aims. The Julii believed themselves to be descended from Ascanius or Julus, the founder of Alba Longa, the son of Æneas and grandson of Venus and Anchises, and thus carried back the legend of their origin to a period long before the foundation of Rome. Caesar never lost an opportunity of bringing this splendid tradition before the minds of his contemporaries. When he delivered the funeral oration over his aunt, Julia, wife of Marius, he reminded, his hearers of her divine ancestry. In the two pitched battles which decided his political fortunes, Pharsalus and Munda, he chose the name of Venus Genetrix as the watchword of the day. The image of his ancestral deity may still be seen stamped on many of his coins, and his own head, together with that of his ancestor Æneas, is found on those of the city of Ilium, which in the days of his supreme power he distinguished with special favour as the ancient legendary home of his race. The glory of a great ancestry passed on from

Cæsar himself, by the fiction of adoption, to the plebeian Augustus, and had its due influence in building up the prestige of the imperial system , and it still lives on, inseparably combined with the story of the fortunes of Rome, in the verses of Rome’s greatest poet.

Hanc adspice gentem

Romanosque tuos.

Hic Cæsar, et omnis Iuli

Progenies, magnum cæli ventura sub axem.

Of the various families belonging to the gens Julia, some were patrician, some probably plebeian; that one which, at least since the war with Hannibal, had borne the cognomen or surname of Cæsar, was undoubtedly patrician. The distinction implied by these terms had ceased to be of any real political significance long before the age with which this biography has to deal. The struggles between patricians and plebeians, or the originally privileged and unprivileged inhabitants of Rome, had ceased for over two centuries before Caesar’s birth, and the aristocracy of his day was composed chiefly of plebeian families, whose ancestors had won distinction by good service to the state either at home or in the field. When we speak therefore of Caesar, Sulla, or Catilina, as patricians, we mean nothing more than that they traced their descent from one of those families which, in days of yore, had exercised the whole power of government in the state. Patrician descent was a proof of pure Roman birth, but in political life was of no more advantage in the last century of the Republic than is at the present day in Swiss politics the patriciate of the ancient republic of Bern. In one respect at least it might be reckoned a disadvantage, for a patrician was disqualified from holding the powerful office of tribune of the plebs, through which so many young men of energy or ability entered public life; nor could he vote in the plebeian legislative or judicial assemblies over which the tribune presided.

The family of the Caesars, however, belonged not only to the old patriciate, but to the newer nobility, of which the test had been not so much either birth or wealth as honourable service rendered to the state. A Julius Caesar had been consul in 157 B.C., another in 90 B.C., who was afterwards also censor; another had been praetor in the eventful year when G. Gracchus was for the first time tribune. Caesar’s uncle was consul in another critical year (91 B.c.), when another great tribune, Livius Drusus, failed in a noble attempt to remedy the evils of the time. His father and grandfather both held the praetorship; but nothing further is recorded of either than that the younger died suddenly at Pisa in the year 84 B.C., when his great son was just entering into manhood. Of these, as of the other Caesars who attained to high office, we can only conjecture that they were ordinary Romans of industry and integrity; nothing is recorded against them in an age of rapidly increasing corruption and degeneracy.

Caesar’s mother also probably belonged to an ancient family of high reputation, the Aurelii, who bore the surname of Cotta. Of this lady we are not wholly ignorant, for she survived her husband thirty years, and lived to hear the news of her son’s great exploits in Gaul; and what little we know of her is such as to make us wish for more. Plutarch tells us that she was a discreet woman; and it is a pleasing guess, though no more than a guess, that some of those personal traits in Caesar’s character, which place him as a man so far above the majority of his contemporaries, were due to her example and precept. On her fell the task of completing his education, and throughout his life she seems to have remained his true friend. The story was told that in the year 63, when the son was a candidate for the office of Pontifex Maximus, he kissed his mother when he left his house on the morning of the election, and told her that he would return successful or not at all. When Clodius two years later crept into Caesar’s house at the women’s festival of the Bona Dea, with the object, as it was said, of corrupting Caesar’s wife Pompeia, it was by Aurelia’s vigilance that he was discovered and identified. We may imagine her as a Roman matron of the older type, strong, self-repressed, but yet womanly; devoted to her only son’s best interests, and watching his career with anxiety and admiration.

In this, if it was indeed her aim, she was in the long run successful. Though Caesar was the foremost man of what must be called a Graeco-Roman age, there was very little of the Greek in him. As it was his special task in life to bring the western peoples into prominence in the world’s history, and to start them on a career in which they were to leave behind them the effete and effeminate Hellenistic world, so it was also his lot to fight down in himself, with the help of ten years’ sojourn in the West, the demoralising influences of a city steeped in pseudo-Greek ways of living and thinking. His character never became finally undermined; and if in this respect he rises far above the level of men like Catilina, Clodius, Caelius, and many other contemporaries who will be mentioned in these pages, it may not be going too far to attribute this in part at least to a mother’s influence for good—the best chance for a youthful Roman of that unbridled age.

Of Caesar’s education in the ordinary modern sense of the word, we know hardly anything; and this is only what might be expected, for the bringing-up of the Roman noble was not a sufficiently important matter to invite a biographer’s research. And indeed there was probably little to discover. Plutarch, whose aim in writing his “ Lives “ was an ethical one, and who was specially interested in education, has recorded little or nothing of Caesar’s early training. What we learn from other sources can be very briefly summarised. Suetonius in his work “On Grammarians” has given us some information about the man who was tutor to Caesar when a boy. This man, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, was a Gaul by birth—i. e., probably from the north of Italy. He was not a slave, as was usually the case with the tutors of the day; his ability and powers of memory were remarkable, and he was skilled both in the Latin and Greek languages; his manners were courteous and his disposition a happy one. At what time he began to teach Caesar we do not know; but as Suetonius expressly tells us that he resided in the family, and only at a later time opened a school in a house of his own, it is at least probable that his pupil was then quite a young boy.

It is certainly remarkable that Caesar, at that impressible age, should have been under the charge of a man of Gallic and not of Greek extraction. It is quite possible that his interest in the Gallic character and in Gauls, whether within or beyond the Alps, may have been first stimulated by Gnipho. The influence of an able and agreeable tutor living in the house with his pupil must far exceed that of a master to whose school the boy goes daily for lessons only; and when we reflect that Gnipho’s tutorship must have extended over the very years of the Social and Civil wars and of the settlement of the great question of the extension of the citizenship to the Italians and the Gauls of northern Italy, we seem fairly entitled to assume that Caesar’s width of view in political matters was in part at least due to the nationality and character of his teacher. That he was fortunate in the society of a man of accomplishments and good breeding admits of no doubt.

This is practically all we know of his education in the strict sense of the word; for it was not until he was probably twenty-six years old that he studied rhetoric, as we shall see in the next chapter, under a famous Greek master of that indispensable art, in the island of Rhodes. We do not even know who were his boyish companions. It has indeed been conjectured that Cicero was one of them; for Cicero was a fellow-townsman of Marius, who had married Caesar’s aunt, and the younger Marius, Caesar’s first cousin, was probably intimate with both lads. In the year 56 B.C., when supporting the renewal of Caesar’s Gallic command, Cicero took occasion to allude to the early intimacy of himself and his brother with Caesar; and though the passage must not be pressed too far (for it was the speaker’s interest on that occasion to make the most of their friendship), it is beyond doubt that a personal goodwill existed between the two men throughout their lives, with rare intervals, which may very well have originated in boyhood.

The reader cannot fail to be struck, at this point, not only with the total want of interest in the training of the great men of that age shown by contemporary writers, but by the complete failure of the Romans to grasp the importance of education as a means of preparing their statesmen for their vast duties and responsibilities as rulers of the civilised world. It had not been so in the life of the old Greek republics. Though seldom approaching to a realisation of the ideal schemes of the philosophers, the education of youth in a Greek state was certainly intended to preserve the trite state-character, to fit the rising generation to fulfil the civic duties which would devolve on it; and it is not to be doubted that human excellence and happiness, so far as it could be realised within the narrow limits of the city-state, could only be made durable by such means. Now even if Rome be regarded as no more than a city in this sense, without taking into account the extraordinary duties that devolved on her, it must still be allowed that she made no proper provision for the education of her sons. There had indeed been once a strict traditional morality in the old Roman family, in which there was much that was worth keeping; there was “ the power of conduct “ in a high degree; there were the ideas of justice, obedience, self-sacrifice; and for many generations the influence of example and habit, and the healthy discipline of the patria potestas, were sufficient to maintain the reality of these virtues. They were also adequate to the needs of Rome until she became the arbiter of nations; and even then they might have been of infinite value, if they had not melted away in the strong heat of power and prosperity.

But in Caesar’s day some wider virtues were called for than those of a soldier-citizen; some more rational education than the patria potestas. To use the terms of Greek philosophy, the ἐθισμός had been tried, and had been useful in its day, but the λόγος was needed to make the rulers of the world into thinking beings. They dabbled, it is true, in Greek literature and philosophy, but only in idle hours, or because it was the fashion. Boys were given into the charge of slaves, who may have taught them something, but hardly their duties as Romans; and if these supplanted the Roman mothers, they did far more harm than good. And the “ humaner letters,” the more liberal education that makes men gentle and generous, and which is its own object and reward, was almost unknown at Rome. The Roman had indeed succeeded to his world-wide inheritance long before he was intellectually of age. He had not yet begun to think when he was called upon to think for the world; but his nature was not a thinking one, nor was his training of a kind to remedy his deficiency. The power of grasping great political problems, the power of self-command in dealing with them, the sense of justice and duty, the love of truth and right dealing,—these were not qualities easily to be developed in a Roman of the last century of the Republic.

Caesar, then, though apparently fortunate in his early home-life, in the influence of mother and tutor, must for the most part have had to educate himself. That he did so, and intentionally, we may regard as certain; but the details of the process, which in the biography of a modern statesman would be full of interest, are entirely hidden from us. In one sense, however, his education was a life-long task. We can see him steadily growing, in self-restraint, in humanity, and in the sense of duty and in the love of work, as well as in political wisdom, in knowledge of human nature, and in the skilful adaptation of means to ends. Up to the time of his first consulship, when he was over forty years of age, we do not see much in him that places him apart from the ordinary Roman of his day, unless it be a certain tendency to reserve his strength, an apparent inclination to watch and wait; and the stories that are told of his conduct and morals by Suetonius, though utterly untrustworthy as evidence of fact, are at least sufficient to show what the popular belief ascribed to him. But from his first campaign in Gaul to the end of his life, during fifteen years of continual labour, whether military or administrative, he was always learning, noting, and advancing. No one can doubt this who reads his “ Commentaries “ carefully, with the object of discovering something of the nature of the man who wrote them. And he who in middle life, and in an age so giddy and exciting, could turn to the utmost advantage the opportunities offered by new duties and new experiences, who could gather in a harvest of knowledge from his sojourn among hitherto unknown peoples, and when absolute power was in his hands, could use it with consummate skill and moderation, must, in earlier life, however richly gifted by nature, have spent some time and thought on the education of his own mind.

It may be convenient at once to describe briefly the personal appearance of the man whose life we are to trace. All such descriptions must rest solely on the evidence of Suetonius, which probably represents the popular tradition, and on that of the busts and coins, which are numerous and not self-contradictory. He was tall for a Roman; but the Italian standard of height was probably then, as now, considerably below that of the northern races. His complexion was pale or fair; his eyes black and lively; his mouth somewhat large; the lips, as they are represented in the coins and busts, being firmly set together, with the corners slightly drawn downwards. His forehead was high, and appeared still higher in consequence of a premature baldness, which he is said to have tried to hide by combing his hair forwards. His nose was aquiline and rather large. The contour of his head, as represented in the well-known marble in the British Museum, is extremely massive and powerful; and the expression of the face is keen, thoughtful, and somewhat stern. It is the likeness of a severe schoolmaster of the world, whose tenderer side, with its capability of affection for friends and devotion towards women, is hardly traceable in the features.

His health was good, though late in life he was subject to some kind of seizure. He was capable of the most unremitting activity; his limbs were big and strongly made. Suetonius tells us that he was an extremely skilful swordsman and horseman, and a good swimmer. All his contemporaries agreed that he was very abstemious in regard to wine, though they would not allow him the virtues of which such moderation is usually the accompaniment. All were also agreed as to the steadiness and coolness of his temper and the courteousness of his manner and bearing, indicating the possession of that high breeding which the Romans aptly termed “ humanitas.” On the whole we may picture him to ourselves as a man the dignity of whose bodily presence was in due proportion to the greatness of his mental powers; and the words which Plutarch employed of Gaius Gracchus, “ that he always maintained a certain seriousness of manner in combination with a good will towards his fellow-men,” seem to be in the same degree applicable, among the many prominent figures of the Roman Revolution, to his great successor only.

BOYHOOD DURING THE CIVIL WARS—EARLIEST POLITICAL EXPERIENCES. 89-82 B.C.

~

WE SAW THAT IN THE year of Caesar’s birth, Marius, his aunt’s husband, was at the height of his military glory. It was in that summer that he utterly destroyed a vast host of wandering Germans, who for several years had been imperilling the very existence of the Roman Empire in the West. The battle was fought at Aquae Sextiae (Aix in southern France), in the same Gallic province which Caesar himself was destined to rule so long, and to protect, like his uncle, from barbarian inroads. Next year (101 B.C.), in conjunction with the aristocrat Catulus, Marius destroyed another army of invaders, who had penetrated by the Brenner Pass into northern Italy, and were actually within a few days’ march of Rome. Italy was saved, and the conqueror was elected consul for the sixth successive year.

It is hard for us to appreciate the full value of these victories. We are apt to think of the Roman Empire as a system of marvellous stability, and of Rome as the Eternal City. We do not easily grasp the fact that, at this time and for many years afterwards, the Empire was often in a condition of the utmost peril. As we shall see, the northern barbarians were not the only enemies of Rome who seemed likely to change the course of history. Mithridates, the great King of Pontus, was soon to overrun her territory in the East. Internal discord and civil war were to sap her material strength and destroy what little moral force was left in her. He who would judge truly of Caesar’s place in the history of the world must understand that the Empire, during all the earlier part of his life, was terribly deficient both in stability and unity.

But at the time of his birth the immediate danger was passing away. Two years later (100 B.C.) the wars were over, and Marius was supreme in Rome. It turned out, however, that this great master of armies was helpless as a statesman. He was a man of the people, and the re-assertion of democracy seemed inevitable; but he bungled, hesitated, and finally subordinated himself to the Senate. After his year of office he left Rome, and disappeared from politics for many years. A senatorial reaction followed; and ten years later there broke out a terrible struggle between Rome and her Italian subjects, who united to obtain by force of arms that Roman citizenship which they had so long coveted and sought for in vain. Once more Rome was in the direst extremity. Face to face with the Italians, she was as weak materially as her position was morally unjust. By their help she had been adding for more than a century to her dominion and her wealth, yet she made no sign of renewing for their benefit the old policy of absorption which had raised her to her supremacy in Italy. Now that her citizenship had far outstripped in value that of all other states, and was indeed the only one worth having in the world for men of business, of pleasure, or of ambition, she would not share it even with those who had done so much to make her what she was. Real statesmen like Gaius Gracchus had urged it on her, but both senate and people had turned a deaf ear. Selfish motives, which this is not the place to examine, had prevailed over a large-minded and liberal policy.

It was soon shown how weak she was without her Italian supports. Everywhere her armies were beaten by their old comrades; one disgrace followed another. At the first gleam of returning fortune, the Senate seized the opportunity to yield the whole point at issue; bills were passed which, in conjunction with other measures taken later, had the effect of enrolling the whole Italian population south of the Po on the register of Roman citizens.

We may not pause here to consider the immense importance of those measures in the history of Rome and of the world. But in a sketch of Caesar’s life, it is necessary to point out that they were very far from removing all difficulty in the relations between Rome and her new citizens. Though the question of citizenship had been settled, other questions of adjustment and organisation at once arose. How was the local government of these Italian communities to be co-ordinated with the imperial government in the city of Rome ? How were the Italians to find time and means to come and vote in the elections of the Roman magistrates who were now to govern them ? How were these city magistrates to discharge the business of all Italy ? A complete re-organisation was called for; a task of great difficulty, for the position was an entirely novel one, and no such problem had ever yet confronted either Greek or Roman statesman. Nor was it really grappled with until Caesar himself put his hand to it more than forty years later.

The storm of civil war broke out in Caesar’s thirteenth year; he was therefore too young to take any part in the struggle. He probably only assumed the toga virilis, or mark of Roman manhood, in 87 B.c., when his older contemporaries, Pompeius and Cicero, had already seen their first military service. But if his youth prevented his bearing arms in these wars, whose mercilessness must have vitiated many noble natures and hardened many generous hearts, his political instincts were now assuredly generated and growing rapidly into definite opinions resting on principles never to be abandoned while he lived. Boys were doubtless apt, then as now, to take the colour of their political ideas from family tradition, and from relations and teachers who could win their admiration and worship. Both these influences were at work on the youthful Caesar, and secured him once and for ever for the cause of popular government as against the Senate, for the Many as against the Few. Though his relations were not uniformly “ Populares,” the marriage of his aunt with Marius, which must have taken place long before the outbreak of civil war, makes it probable that in his own family circle the views held were not of the narrow oligarchic type. And when this Marius, who was the greatest soldier Rome had yet produced, and the saviour of his country from barbarian enemies, now became the victim of exile, persecution, and degradation, in the cause of Italian liberty, he must at once have become a hero in Caesar’s boyish mind.

It is not to be supposed that Caesar then fully understood the principle of the policy for which the Marian party were struggling; it is indeed unlikely enough that Marius understood it himself. But as Caesar’s later life shows plainly not only that he eventually came to understand it, but that he understood it more effectually than any of his contemporaries, it will be as well once for all to place it succinctly before the reader, as the solidly laid foundation-stone of all Caesar’s political training.

Just as in a modern state there can be found, underlying the varying phases of action of a political party, some deeply rooted principle which permanently but secretly governs them, so at Rome, even in that unreasoning age, both sides in the political battle had a basis of reasoned conviction, on which, in the minds of the better men at least, their immediate aims were supported and steadied. Among those who were called “ Optimates,” this might almost be described as a definite rule of faith, inherited from the fathers of their constitution. They believed that the Senate, as embodying all the gathered wisdom and experience of the State, and as exercising supervision over the magistrates elected by the people, was alone capable of administering the business of the city and her dependents in Italy; to this axiom, which had in former times been proved sound, they had naturally enough added the conviction that the vast territories which had been acquired since the war with Carthage could likewise only be governed by the same machinery. This political creed, coinciding with and confirming their own material interests, floated them on a course of dogmatic selfishness which has rarely been equalled in history; but that creed was a perfectly natural and intelligible one, and was rooted not only in the accumulated experience of their own countrymen, but also in the whole history and philosophy of the ancient city-state.

The views of the Populares, on the other hand, which were newer and less definitely shaped, were based on the conviction that in the task of government which had fallen to the lot of Rome the material interests and well-being of the governed must be taken into account, as well as the convenience and glory of the governors. This party in fact, or the leaders of it, was dimly aware that Rome had vast responsibilities; that the whole condition of the civilised world had changed, and that it lay with her to accept the position, and accustom herself to the ideas—new then in the political world— of progress and development. Such views, unpractical and unreasoned as they must have been, and often obscured by the selfish aims and personal bitterness of the leaders who held them, can nevertheless be traced in almost every great measure of reform proposed by this party, from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus onwards. Whether the question of the moment were the better distribution of land, the reform of corrupt law-courts, or the extension of the citizenship to the Italians, the true interests of the mass of the governed were in the minds of the more thoughtful of the leaders of this party, and guided their policy steadily in one direction, in spite of checks and back-currents.

When Caesar was growing towards manhood, and beginning to understand politics, under the influence, as we may suppose, of his hero Marius, a new question arose in which the convictions of both parties, not unadulterated by personal aims, came into such violent collision that civil war at once broke out afresh.

The two parties, forced into a temporary union by the death-struggle of the Social war, had, as we saw, combined to bestow the full citizenship upon all Italians who chose to claim it within sixty days of the passing of the bill. But the Senate had been strong enough to introduce a provision which greatly modified the practical effect of this resolution. All new citizens were to be enrolled, not in the thirty-five “ tribes “ into which the whole Roman population was divided, but in eight new tribes; and as all questions were decided, not by a majority of the whole citizens, but by a majority of tribe-votes, their influence both in legislation and in elections would be comparatively small. It was an insult to men who had been for generations serving bravely in the Roman armies, and who had remained faithful to Rome in this terrible struggle, to deal with them in this niggardly spirit; and in 88 B.C. the Marian party put up Sulpicius, a tribune of extraordinary eloquence, to propose the abolition of the new eight tribes, and the distribution of the new citizens in the old thirty-five. The result of this, and of a simultaneous proposal to give Marius the command against Mithridates, was that the aristocratic consul Sulla marched on Rome with his army and broke the power of the Populares at a single blow. Sulpicius was murdered, Marius fled into exile, the laws were abrogated, and the senatorial constitution was set on a firm basis by Sulla. But when Sulla left Italy early in the following year for the East, the Marians returned, and re-enacted the law of Sulpicius, which was never again called in question. The person who brought it forward on this second occasion was the consul of that year, L. Cornelius Cinna, who on the death of Marius in January, 86 B.C., became the leader of the party, and established himself for the next three years, not only as self-elected consul, but as absolute master of Rome.

This crucial question, whether the new Italian citizens should or should not be placed fairly and frankly on a level with the rest, was thus the first in which Caesar’s youthful mind must have been actively interested. It was he who, long afterwards, was to put the finishing touch to Cinna’s work by extending the full citizenship to the Gauls living north of the river Po. That he at once became a hot partisan is hardly to be doubted. He had already been noticed by Marius, who had caused him to be nominated Flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter); and after Marius’ death he entered into the most intimate relations with Cinna himself. Discarding the project of a wealthy marriage which had been arranged for him, he boldly and successfully sought the hand of Cornelia, Cinna’s daughter, who lived with him, happily as far as we know, until her death some sixteen years later.

Under the absolutism of his father-in-law, and no doubt in the closest intimacy with him, Caesar lived during the three years of comparative quiet in which the Marian policy was supreme, and the Senate bowed to its yoke. But unfortunately we know as little of him at this time as we know of Cinna and his rule. Cinna is one of the lost characters of history; these years are hidden from us in deeper shadow than any others in the history of the Revolution. But we can at least be sure that these three years familiarised the young Caesar with the sight of power wielded by a single man, and with the spectacle of a senate feeble and cowardly enough to submit to a self-appointed consul. And from this time forward he was bound with the closest ties, personal and political, to the party and principles of the Populares.

These ties were strengthened by the misfortunes that befell him when in the year 82 B.c., on the triumphant return of Sulla, the power of the Marian party melted rapidly away, and their enemies chastised the people with scorpions. His father-in-law was killed by his own soldiers; Sertorius, the only other capable leader of the party, fled in despair to Spain, to keep the Marian watch-fires smouldering in the far West for many a year, till Caesar himself had grown to mature manhood. In the course of a year Sulla had crushed all opposition in Italy, shut up the younger Marius in Praeneste, fought his way into Rome, and as dictator, with absolute power so long as he chose to keep it, and with a vast army of veterans at his beck and call, had begun the grim task of reprisals by killing off every prominent Marian.

Caesar was then barely twenty, too young to be a victim. Sulla contented himself with ordering him to put away Cinna’s daughter, as he had made his lieutenant Pompeius put away his wife Antistia. Pompeius obeyed him; so did M. Piso, who had just married Cinna’s widow. Caesar would not obey; but he suffered for his disobedience. He lost his wife’s dowry and his own property, and was deprived of the priesthood of Jupiter, to which Marius had had him appointed. Then he fled in disguise into the mountains of Samnium. Here he was pursued and captured by the Sullan bloodhounds, who were everywhere; and the story ran that he bribed his captor to set him free with a gift of two talents. He ventured back to Rome, where his friends were bringing influence to bear on Sulla on his behalf; his uncle, Aurelius Cotta, and, as we are told, the college of Vestal Virgins, who probably had had relations with him in his priesthood, succeeded in obtaining his pardon. Sulla was unwilling and ungracious, but he yielded. “ I grant you this boon,” he is reported to have said to the petitioners, “ but I charge you look after this youth who wears his belt so loosely.”

By Sulla’s advent to power, Caesar’s opening career was suddenly cut short. Sulla was absolute, and used his absolutism to prevent all future possibility of another democratic reaction. He had put to death all the prominent members of the democratic party on whom he could lay his hands; he now sought to make it impossible for youthful aspirants like Caesar to set on foot a fresh democratic agitation. He saw that the old constitution, which had never been defined by statute, but rested almost entirely on custom and tradition, held both oligarchic and democratic elements in solution. He saw that so long as this was the case, it might be worked in an oligarchic or a democratic sense, as each party happened to be uppermost. He knew that the history of the last half century had been a history of repeated oscillations, from oligarchy to democracy, and back again; that in the course of these struggles, democracy had shown a strong tendency to generate monarchy, and that oligarchy had degenerated into weak and corrupt government, while both sides had lost all sense of law and order, of duty and self-restraint, as the bitterness of the strife increased. He saw clearly that the constitution must be fixed once for all, and secured by legislative enactment.

Sulla rejected monarchy, though he was himself for the time monarch; democracy he detested. By birth and feeling an aristocrat, he set about recast ing the constitution in an oligarchic form, and securing it by definite legislation. The Senate was made once more supreme by a series of arrangements which subordinated to it the ordinary magistrates, the tribunes of the plebs, the popular assemblies, the administration of the law, and, so far as was possible, the provincial governors and their armies. It was not indeed the old Senate, for it was increased in numbers, and was henceforth to be recruited from ex-magistrates only, i. e., indirectly by popular election. But as a working power in the constitution, it was now placed in a far stronger position than it had ever occupied since its moral ascendancy began to wane. That position was now fenced all round by a series of legal enactments, which would have to be removed by legislation if the constitution was to be once more changed; and Sulla so contrived that neither popular agitator nor statesman of genius could pass laws in a democratic sense without encountering obstacles almost insurmountable.

This is not the place to explain these arrangements, or to enter on a description of this singular man’s work and character. This much, however, must be grasped by everyone who would follow Caesar’s career intelligently : that Sulla thus gave the oligarchy one more chance, and that an excellent one, to show what mettle they still had in them.

He gave the reins into their hands, and invited them to govern adequately. He placed them in an almost impregnable stronghold, and bade them make good use of their defences. Then he laid down his absolute power, retired into private life, and left the machine he had so elaborately constructed to work by itself. How it did work, and how the oligarchy acquitted itself, we shall see in the next chapter. As our story proceeds we shall also have occasion to note that Sulla’s work was in many respects incomplete. Wonderful as it was, and however lasting its contribution to the progress of Roman law and to the conduct of the business of the Empire, it hardly touched some of the greatest problems that were now urgently calling for solution. It needed a greater than Sulla to see that the problem of constitutional re-organisation was only one among many, and that even that needed to be dealt with in a more humane and intelligent spirit.

EARLY LIFE UNDER THE SULLAN GOVERNMENT. 81-70 B.C.

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CÆSAR DID NOT STAY LONG in Rome to risk the Dictator’s wrath a second time; and he was indeed now old enough to serve his first campaign, a duty still obligatory on all young men of his age. He sailed for Asia Minor in the year 81 B.C., and remained in the East until Sulla’s death. The war with Mithridates, the formidable enemy whom Sulla had driven to a doubtful peace, had broken out afresh the year before, and was still smouldering; and there was always plenty to do on the Asiatic coasts, for the pirates of Cilicia were hovering round every port, and as yet entirely unbridled.

It was an important part of the military education of a young Roman of high birth, that he should serve his first campaign under the immediate eye of a commander-in-chief, living with him in his tent as a kind of page or youthful aide-de-camp, and learning from him the traditions of the arts of warfare and provincial government. If the general were a man of character and ability, much might be learnt by the youth thus pleasantly associated with him, besides the details of business and the military art. But of the character of Caesar’s first military master we unfortunately know nothing. As Sulla’s legatus it is not likely that Minucius Thermus was a congenial companion to the young Marian. But we know that at the siege of Mytilene, the last town that held out for Mithridates, he bestowed on his pupil the “ civic crown “ for saving the life of a fellow-soldier; and thus Caesar began his military career under no imputation of effeminacy, such as was invented for him in later times.

This exploit was in 80 B.C.; how he was employed in the following year we are not told. In 78 B.c., apparently in search of active service, he joined the fleet of an able commander, Servilius Isauricus, who was operating against the pirates on the Cilician coast; but he had not been long at sea when the news arrived of Sulla’s death, and he felt himself at liberty to return at once to Rome. There he found agitation and mutiny already beginning to threaten the constitution which Sulla had set up; and the question which confronted him at once, and continued to confront him during the next eight years, was whether he should openly join the agitators and mutineers.

The reader has already been made acquainted with the leading features of Sulla’s reconstruction of the senatorial government. The plan of his work was elaborate and in itself admirable, but the new constitution was insecure from the outset, because it had no foundation in the good-will or moral force of the people either in the city or in Italy. The constitution was like an ingenious and complicated machine, whose inventor has died without training a successor to work it. The true Sullan partisans were not numerous, and they had no men of real political ability among them. And nothing but the strength and cohesion of the machinery itself could have saved it from the repeated efforts to pull it to pieces, which were made by the popular party during the eight years succeeding Sulla’s death.

Almost before Sulla was in his grave, Lepidus, the Sullan consul, began to play his master false. Caesar and his advisers did not yield to the temptation to join him. They probably knew the man well : he had changed sides once before, and was a mere weathercock. His proposals, calculated to please the mob for the moment, had no reference to the constitution, and would not unlock the fetters that Sulla had placed on all popular action. They could not impose on Caesar, who, as Suetonius tells us, “ withheld himself from Lepidus’ company, though invited with the most favourable promises, for he distrusted the man’s disposition and talents.” He saw Lepidus decline to free the tribunate from its bondage—the one essential preliminary to the undoing of Sulla’s work,—and he probably guessed that the consul’s real object was only to turn himself into a monarch.

This danger passed away, for Lepidus, who through the folly of the Senate had been able to raise an army in Etruria, was defeated outside the walls of Rome, and crossed over to Sardinia, where he died. No further attempt was made to break down Sulla’s machinery by force. There remained the ordinary method of legislation, with its accompaniment of popular oratory; and though the Sullan restrictions on the tribunate had made it difficult either to get any law promulgated, or to obtain a hearing for any would-be orator without the sanction of the all-powerful senate, it was none the less to these expedients that the opposition now looked with confidence for ultimate success. Young Cicero had already made his mark, and had even ventured to beard Sulla himself in the admirable speech for Roscius of Ameria. Caesar, too, now began to turn his attention seriously to oratory. Perhaps he was urged to this by the example, possibly even by the precept, of his talented and versatile friend, who was a few years older than himself; but in any case it was the only course open to a young man who had determined to work his way to the front rank.

He appears for the first time this same year (77 B.C.) as counsel in a criminal trial, and in the most important of the standing law-courts which Sulla had organised. He took charge of the prosecution of Dolabella, lately proconsul of Macedonia, for illegal extortion during his government; and though he lost his case, he is said to have been applauded, and to have left an impression on the public mind that the senatorial judges were corrupt. The next year he tried his hand again, and in the same court, by prosecuting C. Antonius, who during the Mithridatic war had enriched himself in Greece by plunder. That this man was guilty is certain, for he was ejected from the senate by the censors six years later on the same grounds; but again Caesar’s oratory failed to move the consciences of interested judges. Whether bribed or not, they had at least to defend the prestige of their order, and to secure for it an advantageous immunity from the ordinary consequences of thieving.

After the second failure Caesar seems to have determined to learn the art of rhetoric from its best living master; and though this would compel him to leave Rome for some time, he was probably not unwilling to leave the political situation to develop itself without his aid. He started for Rhodes, where the great rhetorician Molo was then teaching. On his way he was caught by some of the pirates who were then swarming on the seas and laughing at the clumsiness and venality of the Roman naval commanders; and Plutarch has given us a picturesque account of his adventures as their prisoner, which was certainly not his own invention, and probably represents something like the truth. Suetonius, who wrote somewhat later than Plutarch, has the same story with less detail. Both tell us that Caesar had with him at the time three companions; either of whom may have preserved the recollection of what happened. The rest of his suite had been despatched to obtain the necessary ransom; and meanwhile, during thirty-eight days of captivity, “ he behaved to them as if they were his body-guard, rather than his captors, and joined in their games and exercises with perfect unconcern.” He amused himself by writing poems and speeches, and by reading them to his pirate audience; and when they were slow in applauding, he called them illiterate barbarians, and threatened laughingly to hang them all. The story runs that he afterwards carried out his threat literally. For when the ransom came and he was set free, he manned some ships at Miletus, and surprised and captured most of them; and failing to get the immediate sanction of the governor of the province, he took the law into his own hands, and crucified all the prisoners.