VII
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY AND THE RULE OF POMPEY
Despite all perils, the Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault on it by Lepidus and Sertorius had been repulsed with little loss. True, the government had neglected to finish the half-completed building in the energetic spirit of its creator. Characteristically, it neither parceled out the lands which Sulla had earmarked for distribution, nor abandoned its claim to them, but left the former owners in a provisional possession, and indeed even allowed individuals to take over various undistributed tracts according to the old occupation system which had been abolished by the Gracchan reforms.
Whatever Sullan enactments were inconvenient for the Optimates were ignored or canceled.1 But though these violations of the Sullan ordinances by the government helped to shake the entire structure, there was no revival of the Sempronian laws.
Many men sought to re-establish the Gracchan constitution, or to achieve piecemeal what Lepidus and Sertorius had sought through revolution. Under pressure from Lepidus the government had already consented soon after Sulla’s death to a limited revival of the grain distribution, doing what it could to satisfy the populace on this vital question. When despite those distributions the high price of grain (occasioned chiefly by piracy) produced such a scarcity in Rome as to lead to street rioting in 75 B.C., extraordinary purchases of Sicilian grain by the government relieved the most severe distress; and a grain law introduced by the consuls for 73 B.C. regulated the purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished the government, although at the expense of the provincials, with better means of preventing similar evils.
But in less material questions—restoring the power of the tribunes, and setting aside the senatorial tribunals—the government offered more decided resistance. The dispute over the tribuneship was begun as early as 76 B.C., immediately after the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same name who had first held this office over four hundred years earlier; but it failed before the resistance of the active consul Gaius Curio. In 74 B.C. Lucius Quinctius resumed the agitation, but was persuaded to stop by the authority of the consul Lucius Lucullus. The matter was raised the following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer, who—characteristic of the period—carried his literary studies into public life, and (just as he had read in the Annals) counseled the citizens to disobey the conscription laws.
There were also well-founded complaints regarding the administration of justice by the senatorial jurymen. A man of any influence could hardly be convicted. Not only did accused senators find understandable sympathy among their colleagues, who often had been or were likely to be accused; the jurymen’s votes were also frequently for sale. Several senators had been convicted of this crime. Men pointed with the finger at others equally guilty, and the most respected Optimates, such as Quintus Catulus, granted in open session that the complaints were quite well-founded. Individual glaring cases compelled the Senate on several occasions, as in 74 B.C., to discuss means for checking the venality of juries, but only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the matter could be allowed to slip out of sight.
This wretched administration of justice resulted especially in a system of plundering and torturing the provincials which made previous outrages seem tolerable and moderate. Robbery had been somewhat legitimized by custom, so that the commission on extortions might be regarded as an institution for taxing the senators returning from the provinces for the benefit of their colleagues at home. But when an esteemed Sicilian was condemned to death by the Roman governor in absentia and without a hearing, because he had been unwilling to become the governor’s accomplice in a crime; when even Roman citizens, if they were not equites or senators, were no longer safe in the provinces from the rods and axes of the Roman provincial magistrate; when the oldest right in Roman democracy, security of life and person, began to be trodden underfoot by the ruling oligarchy—then even the public in the Forum began to listen to the complaints regarding its magistrates in the provinces, and the unjust judges who shared the moral responsibility for such misdeeds.
The opposition of course did not fail to assail its opponents in the tribunals, almost the only ground left to it. The young Gaius Caesar, who also (so far as his age allowed) agitated zealously for the re-establishment of the tribunician power, in 77 B.C. brought to trial one of the most respected partisans of Sulla, the consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year another Sullan officer, Gaius Antonius. Marcus Cicero in 70 B.C. called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most wretched of Sulla’s creatures and one of the worst scourges of the provincials. Again and again the dark picture of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings of the provincials, and the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice were unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp and bitterness of Italian rhetoric and sarcasm, and the departed conqueror as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly exposed to wrath and scorn. The re-establishment of the tribunician power (with which the freedom, might and prosperity of the republic seemed somehow magically bound up), the reintroduction of the “stern” equestrian tribunals, and the renewal of the censorship for cleansing the supreme governing board of its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily and loudly demanded by the orators of the popular party.
But all this got nowhere. There was scandal and outcry enough, but exposing the government up to and beyond its just deserts yielded no real result. In the absence of military interference the material power still lay with the citizens of the capital; and the “people” that thronged its streets and made magistrates and laws were in fact no better than the governing Senate. The government doubtless had to come to terms with the multitude, where its own immediate interest was at stake: this was the reason for reviving the Sempronian grain law. But it was inconceivable that this populace would have earnestly supported an idea or even a judicious reform.
What Demosthenes said of his Athenians was justly applicable to the Romans of this period—the people were zealous for action so long as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms; but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had heard in the market place. However the democratic agitators might stir the fire, it was purposeless in the absence of inflammable material. The government knew this, and made no concessions on important questions of principle. At the utmost it consented (about 72 B.C.) to grant amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
What concessions were made came less from democratic pressure than from the mediating attempts of the moderate aristocracy. But of the two laws which the single surviving leader of this section, Gaius Cotta, carried in his consulate of 75 B.C., that concerning the tribunals was set aside again the very next year; and the second, which repealed the Sullan enactment disqualifying for other offices those who had held the tribunate (but retained the other limitations) excited like all half-measures the displeasure of both parties. The conservative reform party lost its most notable head in the death of Cotta (about 73 B.C.), and thereafter was steadily compressed between the extremes, which were becoming daily more marked. But of these extremes the government party, wretched and remiss as it was, naturally held the advantage against the equally wretched and incapable opposition.
But this favorable situation changed when differences sharpened between the government on one hand and its more ambitious supporters on the other. First among these stood Pompey. He was doubtless a Sullan; but we have already shown how little he was at home among his own party, how his lineage, his history, and his hopes separated him from the nobility whom he was officially regarded as protecting. The breach had been widened irreparably during the general’s Spanish campaigns. Only under pressure had the reluctant government associated him with their true representative, Quintus Metellus; and he in turn accused the Senate, probably not without cause, of having by careless or malicious neglect brought about the defeats of the Spanish armies and endangered the expedition. Now he returned victorious over his open and secret foes at the head of a veteran army wholly devoted to him, desiring assignments of land for his soldiers and a triumph and the consulship for himself.
The latter demands collided with the law. Pompey, though several times invested in an extraordinary way with supreme official authority, had not yet held any ordinary magistracy and was still not even a member of the Senate; and only those who had held the lesser magistracies could become consul, only those who had been invested with the ordinary supreme power could triumph. The Senate was legally entitled, if he sought to become consul, to bid him begin with the quaestorship; and if he requested a triumph, it might remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain. Pompey was also dependent constitutionally on the good will of the Senate to obtain the lands promised to his soldiers.
However, even if the Senate (as in its feebleness was very conceivable) should grant Pompey the triumph, the consulate, and the assignments of land, in return for his executioner’s service against the democratic chiefs, the best the 36-year-old general might hope for would be burial in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful senatorial Imperators. What his heart really longed for—command in the Mithradatic war—he could never expect the Senate voluntarily to bestow. In obvious self-interest the oligarchy could not permit him to swell his African and European trophies with those of a third continent; the laurels to be plucked copiously and easily in the East were reserved for pure aristocrats.
But if the celebrated general did not find support among the oligarchy, there remained (since neither the time nor Pompey’s temperament was suited for setting up a purely personal rule) no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party. No personal interest bound him to the Sullan constitution. He could pursue his personal objects as well (if not better) with a more democratic one. On the other hand, he found all that he needed in the democratic party. Its adroit leaders were ready and able to relieve the somewhat wooden hero of the cares of political leadership, and yet were much too insignificant to be able or even willing to vie with the celebrated general for the titular leadership and especially for the supreme military control. Even Gaius Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a young man who had gained a name far more by his daring exploits and fashionable debts than by his fiery eloquence, and who could not but feel greatly honored when the world-renowned Imperator allowed him to be his political adjutant. That popularity to which men like Pompey, with pretensions greater than their abilities, usually attach more value than they are willing to confess would surely fall in fullest measure to the young general who brought victory to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy. The rewards sought for himself and his soldiers would then follow of themselves.
In general it seemed that if the oligarchy were overthrown, the complete lack of any democratic chiefs of consequence would enable Pompey himself to determine his future position. It could also hardly be doubted that adding the victorious general, whose army still stood compact and unbroken in Italy, to the opposition party must necessarily overturn the existing order of things. Government and opposition were equally powerless; so soon as the latter could back up its words with the sword of a victorious general, the government would surely be overcome, perhaps even without a struggle.
Pompey and the democrats thus found themselves impelled into coalition. Personal dislikes were probably not lacking on either side. The victorious general could hardly love the street orators, nor could these hail with pleasure the executioner of Carbo and Brutus as their chief; but political necessity outweighed all moral scruples for the moment.
The democrats and Pompey, however, were not the sole parties to the league. Marcus Crassus was in a similar situation with Pompey. Although also a Sullan, his politics were quite as personal as those of Pompey, and by no means those of the ruling oligarchy. He, too, was now in Italy at the head of a large and victorious army, with which he had just suppressed the rising of the slaves. Having to choose whether he would enter the coalition or ally himself with the oligarchy against it, he chose the latter as doubtless the safer course. With his colossal wealth and his influence on the political clubs of the capital he was in any case a valuable ally. But under the existing circumstances it was an incalculable gain when the only army which could have defended the Senate against the troops of Pompey also joined the attackers. And the democrats, who were probably somewhat uneasy at their alliance with the too powerful general, were not displeased at the appearance of Marcus Crassus as a counterpoise and perhaps a future rival.
Thus, in the summer of 71 B.C., the first coalition took place between the popular party and the two Sullan generals. The generals adopted the democratic party program, and immediately were promised in return the consulships for the coming year. Pompey was also to have a triumph and the desired allotments of land for his soldiers, while Crassus as the conqueror of Spartacus would at least be granted the honor of a solemn entrance into the capital.
To oppose this coalition of the two Italian armies, the great capitalists, and the popular party the Senate had nothing save perhaps the second Spanish army under Quintus Metellus. But Sulla had truly predicted that what he did could not be done a second time. Metellus, by no means inclined to involve himself in a civil war, had discharged his soldiers immediately after crossing the Alps. So nothing was left for the oligarchy but to submit to the inevitable. The Senate granted the dispensations necessary for the consulship and triumph, and Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls for 70 B.C. without opposition, while their armies encamped before the city on pretext of awaiting their triumph. Even before taking office, Pompey gave his public and formal adherence to the democratic program at an assembly of the people held by the tribune Marcus Lollius Palicanus. The change of the constitution was thus in principle decided.
Now the Sullan institutions were attacked in earnest. First of all the tribuneship regained its earlier authority. Pompey himself as consul introduced the law which gave back to the tribunes their time-honored prerogatives, and in particular the initiative of legislation. It was a singular gift indeed from the hand of a man who had done more than anyone living to despoil the community of its ancient freedoms.
With regard to jurymen, Sulla’s regulation that the roll of the senators was to serve as the list of jurymen was doubtless abolished. However, this by no means led to a simple restoration of the Gracchan equestrian courts. The new Aurelian law stipulated that the jury rolls were to consist of one-third senators and two-thirds men of the equestrian census, and that half of the latter must have filled the office of district president. This last was a further concession to the democrats, since according to it at least a third of the criminal jurymen were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes. The reason why senators were not totally excluded is probably due partly to Crassus’ relations with the Senate, but also to the support of the coalition by the senatorial middle party—as indicated by the introduction of the new law by the praetor Lucius Cotta, the brother of the deceased moderate leader.
Equally important was the abolition of Sulla’s arrangements for the taxation of Asia. The governor of Asia at that time, Lucius Lucullus, was directed to re-establish the system of farming the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus. Thus this important source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.
Lastly, the censorship was revived. The elections for it which the new consuls fixed soon after taking office fell, in obvious mockery of the Senate, on the two consuls for 72 B.C., Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been stripped of their commands by the Senate because of their wretched management of the war against Spartacus. It may readily be conceived that these men used all the powers of their important office to annoy the Senate and curry favor with the new holders of power. The unparalleled number of 64 senators, at least an eighth of the Senate, were deleted from the rolls, including Gaius Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar, Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul in 71 B.C., and probably a further number of the more obnoxious creatures of Sulla.
Thus in 70 B.C. affairs had reverted in the main to the situation that prevailed before the Sullan restoration. Again the populace of the capital was fed by the state, in other words by the provinces. Again the tribunician authority gave every demagogue legal license to thwart the administration of the state. Again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue and possessors of judicial control over the governors, raised their heads alongside the government as powerful as ever. Again the Senate trembled before the verdict of equestrian jurymen and before the censorial censure.
The system of Sulla, based on the monopoly of power by the nobility to the complete exclusion of the mercantile aristocracy and of the populace, was thus completely overthrown. Leaving out some subordinate enactments, which were not abolished till later, only two groups of Sulla’s general ordinances survived. One was the concessions he found it necessary to make to the opposition, such as the recognition of the Roman franchise of all the Italians. The other comprised those nonpartisan enactments with which even judicious democrats found no fault, such as the restriction of the freedmen, the regulation of the spheres of the magistrates, and the reform of the criminal law.
The coalition was more agreed regarding these questions of principle than with respect to the personal questions which such a political revolution raised. As might be expected, the democrats were not content with the general recognition of their program. They now demanded a restoration in their sense—revival of the commemoration of their dead, punishment of the murderers, recall of the proscribed from exile, removal of the political disqualification that lay on their children, restoration of the estates confiscated by Sulla, and indemnification at the expense of the heirs and assistants of the dictator. These would certainly be the logical consequences of a pure democratic victory, but the victory of the coalition of 71 B.C. was very far from being such. The democrats gave it their name and their program, but it was the officers who had joined the movement, and above all Pompey, who gave it powder and completion. These could never yield their consent to a reaction which would not only have shaken the existing state of things to its foundations, but would ultimately have turned against themselves. Men still had a lively recollection of whose blood Pompey had shed, and how Crassus had laid the foundation of his enormous fortune.
It was therefore natural, but at the same time symbolic of the democratic weakness, that the coalition of 71 B.C. took not the slightest step towards giving the democrats revenge or even rehabilitation. The supplementary collection of all money still owed for confiscated estates bought by auction, or even remitted to the purchasers by Sulla (for which the censor Lentulus provided in a special law) can hardly be regarded as an exception. For while not a few Sullans were thereby severely affected in their personal interests, yet the measure itself was essentially a confirmation of the Sullan confiscations.
The work of Sulla was thus destroyed; but what was to be the future order of things was a question raised rather than decided by that destruction. The coalition, kept together solely by the common object of setting aside the restoration, dissolved effectively if not formally when that object was attained. The question of who was to have the predominant power seemed on the verge of an equally speedy and violent solution. The armies of Pompey and Crassus still lay before the city’s gates. The former had indeed promised to disband his soldiers after his triumph on the last day of December, 71 B.C. However, he had at first omitted to do so, in order to complete the revolution under the pressure which his army applied on the city and the Senate—a course which the army of Crassus had also followed. This reason existed no longer, but still the dissolution of the armies was postponed. It looked as if one of the two generals allied with the democracy would seize the military dictatorship and place oligarchs and democrats in the same chains.
This one could only be Pompey. From the first Crassus had played a subordinate part in the coalition. He had been obliged to propose himself, and even owed his consular election mainly to the proud intercession of Pompey. Far the stronger, Pompey was obviously master of the situation. If he availed himself of it, it seemed as if he must surely become what the popular instinct even now considered him—the absolute ruler of the mightiest state in the civilized world. Already the whole fawning multitude crowded around the future monarch. Already his weaker opponents played their last gambit by seeking a new coalition. Crassus, full of old and recent jealousy towards the younger rival who had so thoroughly outstripped him, made overtures to the Senate and attempted by unprecedented largesses to attach to himself the multitude—as if the oligarchy which Crassus himself had helped to break down, and the ever ungrateful multitude, could have stood off the veterans of the Spanish army. For a moment it appeared that the forces of Pompey and Crassus might come to blows before the gates of the capital.
But the democrats averted this catastrophe by their sagacity and their pliancy. For their party no less than for the Senate and Crassus, it was all-important that Pompey should not seize the dictatorship. With a truer discernment of their own weakness, and of the character of their powerful opponent, the democratic leaders tried the method of conciliation. Pompey lacked no qualification for the crown save the first of all—kingly courage. We have already described the man with his effort to be at once a loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself under the boast of independence. This was the first great trial to which destiny subjected him, and he failed to stand it.
The pretext under which Pompey refused to dismiss his army was that he distrusted Crassus, and therefore could not take the initiative in disbanding the soldiers. The democrats induced Crassus to make gracious advances in the matter, and to offer the hand of peace to his colleague before the eyes of all. In public and in private they entreated Pompey to add to his double merit of having vanquished the enemy and reconciled the parties a third and yet greater service of preserving internal peace and banishing the fearful threat of civil war. Whatever could tell on a vain, unskillful, vacillating man—all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm—was put in motion to obtain the desired result. And what was most important, the well-timed offer of Crassus left Pompey no alternative but to come forward openly as tyrant or to retire.
Thus at length he yielded, and consented to disband his troops. The command in the Mithradatic war, which he had doubtless hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be chosen consul for 70 B.C., he could not now desire, since Lucullus seemed to have practically ended that war. He thought it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province assigned him by the Senate under the Sempronian law, and Crassus followed his example. Accordingly, when Pompey resigned his consulship on the last day of 70 B.C., he retired wholly from public affairs, at least officially, and declared that he wished thenceforth to lead a life of quiet leisure as a simple citizen. He had assumed a position in which he was obliged to grasp at the crown; being unwilling to do so, he had no part left but the empty one of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions.
The retirement of the man to whom the first place belonged reproduced a political situation similar to that of the Gracchan and Marian epochs. Sulla had strengthened the senatorial government, but had not created it. By the same token, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla had fallen the Senate nevertheless continued, in the main, to rule, although the constitution with which it governed (virtually the restored Gracchan constitution) was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy. The democrats had re-established the Gracchan system, but without a new Gracchus it was a body without a head; and recent events had shown anew that neither Pompey nor Crassus could permanently be such a head. Thus the democratic opposition, for want of a leader who could take the helm, had to content itself with hampering and annoying the government at every step.
Between the oligarchy and the democracy, however, there now appeared the capitalist party, which in the recent crisis had made common cause with the latter, but which the oligarchs now zealously sought to draw over as a counterpoise to the democracy. Courted on both sides, the moneyed lords did not neglect to profit from their advantageous position. By decree of the people in 67 B.C. they regained the last of their former privileges, the fourteen benches reserved for the equestrian order in the theater. On the whole, they again drew closer to the Senate without breaking abruptly with the democrats. The relations of the Senate to Crassus and his followers point in this direction. However, the closer feeling between the Senate and the capitalist interests seems to have been brought about chiefly by the Senate’s withdrawal of the administration of the province of Asia from Lucius Lucullus, the ablest of the senatorial officers. The change was made at the instance of the tax farmers whom he had so sorely annoyed.
But while the factions in Rome indulged in their customary quarrels without reaching any decision, events in the East followed the fatal course already described; and these events produced a new crisis in the politics of the capital. Both by land and sea the war had taken a most unfavorable turn. At the beginning of 67 B.C. the Pontic army of the Romans was destroyed, and their Armenian army was falling apart during its retreat. All their conquests were lost, the sea was wholly in the power of the pirates, and the price of grain in Italy had thereby so much increased that there was fear of actual famine. To be sure, these calamities were partly the fault of the generals, especially the utter incapacity of the admiral Marcus Antonius and the temerity of the otherwise able Lucius Lucullus. The popular opposition had also by its revolutionary agitations materially contributed to the breakup of the Armenian army. But of course the government was held solely responsible for all the mischief which had arisen, and the indignant hungry multitude desired nothing so much as an opportunity to settle accounts with the Senate.
It was a decisive crisis. The oligarchy, though degraded and disarmed, was not yet overthrown, for the management of public affairs remained in the hands of the Senate. But it would fall if its opponents should take over that management, especially the superintendence of military affairs; and this was now possible. If proposals for a different and better management of the war were submitted to the populace in its present mood, the Senate was obviously not in a position to prevent their passing; and interference by the citizens in these crucial questions amounted practically to deposing the Senate and transferring the conduct of the state to the opposition.
Once more the configuration of events put the decision into the hands of Pompey. For over two years the famous general had lived as a private citizen in the capital. His voice was seldom heard in the senate house or in the Forum. In the former he was unwelcome and without decisive influence; in the latter he was inept in the stormy proceedings of the factions. But when he did show himself, it was with his full retinue of hangers-on, high and low, and the very solemnity of his reserve impressed the multitude. If he, still surrounded with the full luster of his extraordinary successes, should now offer to go to the East, the citizens would doubtless readily invest him with all the mililtary and political power he might ask.
For the oligarchy, which saw in the political-military dictatorship their certain ruin, and in Pompey himself their most hated foe, this was an overwhelming prospect. But the democratic group too could take little comfort in the situation. However desirable in itself might be the ending of the government of the Senate, for it to take place in this way made it less a triumph for their faction than a personal victory for their overpowerful ally. The latter might easily become much more dangerous to the democratic group than the Senate had been. The danger fortunately avoided a few years before, when the Spanish army was disbanded and Pompey had retired, would recur in increased measure if Pompey should now be placed at the head of the armies of the East.
On this occasion, however, Pompey acted, or at least allowed others to act, on his behalf. In 67 B.C. two laws were proposed, one of which, besides decreeing the long-demanded discharge of the soldiers of the Asiatic army who had served their terms, also replaced its commander-in-chief Lucius Lucullus with one of the consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius Glabrio. The second revived and extended the plan proposed by the Senate seven years earlier for clearing the sea of pirates. A single general was to be named by the Senate from the exconsuls to command the whole Mediterranean from the Pillars of Hercules to the coasts of Pontus and Syria, and to exercise by land, concurrently with the respective Roman governors, supreme command over the coasts for fifty miles inland. His tenure of office was three years.
This extraordinary commander was granted a staff such as Rome had never seen—twenty-five lieutenants of senatorial rank, all invested with praetorian insignia and powers, and two sub-treasurers with quaestorian prerogatives, all to be appointed by the commander-in-chief. He was allowed to raise as many as 120,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 500 warships, and for this purpose to dispose absolutely of the means of the provinces and protectorates. Moreover, the existing fleet and a considerable number of troops were handed over to him at once. The state treasure of the capital, the provinces, and the dependent communities were placed absolutely at his command; and despite the severe financial distress, a sum of 144,000,000 sesterces was to be paid to him at once from the state chest.
It is clear that this law, especially its clauses relating to the expedition against the pirates, virtually set aside the government of the Senate. The ordinary supreme magistrates chosen by the citizens were the proper generals of the commonwealth, and, strictly speaking, the extraordinary magistrates needed confirmation by the citizens to act as generals. But the community had no constitutional power to appoint to particular commands: and it was only on the motion of the Senate, or of a magistrate entitled to hold office as general, that the voters had now and then interfered and conferred such special functions. Ever since there had been a free Roman state the Senate had held the decisive voice, and its prerogative had been fully recognized. Demagogic politicians had no doubt previously assailed this power. But even in the most important of the past cases—the transference of the African command to Gaius Marius in 107 B.C.—a magistrate constitutionally entitled to hold the office of general had been entrusted by a resolution of the citizens with a definite expedition.
Now, however, the voters were investing a private citizen not only with the extraordinary authority of the supreme magistracy, but also with a definite sphere of office. That the Senate might choose this man from the ranks of the consulars was a mitigation in form only; the choice left to it was really no choice, since in the presence of the excited populace the Senate could entrust the chief command of the seas and coasts to no one save Pompey.
But more dangerous still was the practical abolition of senatorial control by the creation of an office with almost unlimited military and financial powers. While the office of general was formerly restricted to a term of one year, to a definite province, and to military and financial resources strictly measured out, the new extraordinary office had from the outset a duration of three years, which of course did not exclude a further prolongation. It held sway over the greater portion of all the provinces and even Italy, which formerly was free from military control. The soldiers, ships, and treasures of the state were placed almost without restriction at its disposal. Even the fundamental principle of the constitutional law of the Roman republic—that the highest military and civil authority could not be conferred without the consent of the electorate—was infringed in favor of the new commander-in-chief. Since the law conferred in advance praetorian rank and praetorian prerogatives on the twenty-five adjutants whom the extraordinary general was to appoint, the highest office of republican Rome became subordinate to a newly created office which the future might name, but which even now was in effect a monarchy. Such a law laid the train for a total revolution in the existing order of things.2
The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret, could not very well come forward publicly against the projected law. They could not in any case have hindered its passage; and opposition would have produced an open break with Pompey, thereby compelling him either to make approaches to the oligarchy or pursue his personal policy in the face of both parties. The democrats had to accept their alliance, hollow as it was, and to take the opportunity of at least overthrowing the Senate and passing from opposition to government, while leaving the ultimate issue to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompey’s character. Accordingly their leaders—the praetor Lucius Quinctius, who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration of the tribunician power, and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar—supported the proposed law, known as the Gabinian law from the tribune who brought it forward.
The privileged classes were furious—including the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive position endangered by so far-reaching a revolution, and which once more recognized its true patron in the Senate. When the tribune Gabinius appeared in the senate house after introducing his proposals, the senators were almost on the point of strangling him with their own hands, disregarding how ruinous for them this method of argument must in the end have proved. The tribune escaped to the Forum and summoned the multitude to storm the senate house, but the sitting was terminated before the ultimate violence occurred. The consul Piso, champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally fell into the hands of the multitude, would certainly have become a victim of the popular rage had not Gabinius come up and, in order that his sure triumph might not be endangered by unseasonable acts of outrage, liberated the consul.
Meanwhile the exasperation of the people remained undiminished, and constantly found fresh nourishment from the high price of grain and from numerous more or less absurd rumors. It was said, for example, that Lucius Lucullus had invested in Rome the money entrusted to him for carrying on the Asiatic war, and had attempted with its aid to bribe the praetor Quinctius into withdrawing from the cause of the people. It was whispered that the Senate intended the “second Romulus,” as they called Pompey, to meet the fate of the first, who according to legend had been torn to pieces by the senators.
When the day of voting arrived, the multitude stood densely packed in the Forum, and all the buildings from whence the rostra could be seen were covered to the roofs with spectators. All Gabinius’ colleagues had promised their veto to the Senate, but in the presence of the surging masses all were silent save Lucius Trebellius, who had sworn to himself and to the Senate to die rather than yield. When he exercised his veto, Gabinius interrupted the voting on his law and proposed that Trebellius be dealt with as Octavius had formerly been by Tiberius Gracchus, that is, immediately removed from office. The vote was taken and the reading of the tablets began. When the first seventeen tribes had declared for the proposal and the next affirmative vote would give it the majority, Trebellius, forgetting his oath, pusillanimously withdrew his veto. In vain did the tribune Otho then endeavor to preserve legal precedent by urging that two generals be elected instead of one. In vain the aged Quintus Catulus, the most respected man in the Senate, exerted his last energies for the amendment that the lieutenant-generals be chosen by the people rather than appointed by the commander-in-chief. Otho could not even secure a hearing amid the noise of the multitude; and while the well-calculated forbearance of Gabinius procured a respectful hearing for Catulus, his plea was nonetheless disregarded. Gabinius’ proposals were not only passed unaltered, but supplementary requests made by Pompey were instantly and completely agreed to in detail.
With great expectations men saw Pompey and Glabrio depart for their respective destinations. The price of grain had fallen to normal immediately after the passage of the Gabinian proposals—an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand expedition and its glorious leader. As we shall see, these hopes were not merely fulfilled but surpassed. In three months the clearing of the seas was completed. Since the Hannibalic war the Roman government had displayed no such energy. Compared to the lax and incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic-military opposition had most brilliantly earned its title to the reins of the state. The unpatriotic and clumsy attempts of the consul Piso to put paltry obstacles in the way of Pompey’s arrangements for suppressing piracy in Narbonese Gaul only increased the exasperation of the citizens against the oligarchy and their enthusiasm for Pompey. In fact, it was only the personal intervention of the latter that prevented the assembly of the people from summarily removing the consul from office.
Meanwhile the confusion on the Asiatic continent had become still worse. Glabrio, who was to take up Lucullus’ command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had not proceeded much beyond the coast of Asia Minor; and while he had aroused the soldiers against Lucullus by various proclamations, he had forced Lucullus to retain the supreme command by refusing himself to take it over. Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done, and the Pontic cavalry ravaged Bithynia and Cappadocia with impunity. Pompey had been led by the war against the pirates to transport his own army to Asia Minor, and nothing seemed more natural than to give him the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war which he himself had long desired. But the democratic faction did not, as may readily be conceived, share the wishes of its general, and carefully avoided taking any initiative in the matter. Quite probably its leaders had induced Gabinius not to give the command of both the Mithradatic and pirate wars to Pompey, but to entrust the former to Glabrio. On no account could they wish to increase and perpetuate the position of the already too-powerful general. Pompey himself exhibited his customary passive attitude. Perhaps he would have returned home after fulfilling his mission against the pirates, but for an incident unexpected by all parties.
One Gaius Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignificant man, had as tribune lost favor both with the oligarchy and with the popular party by his legislative in-epitude. In the hope of sheltering himself under the wing of the powerful general, by procuring for him what everyone knew he eagerly desired but had not the boldness to demand, Manilius proposed (1) that the citizens recall Glabrio from Bithynia and Pontus, and Marcus Rex from Cilicia, and (2) that their offices, as well as the conduct of the war in the East, also be entrusted to Pompey, apparently without any time limit and with the fullest authority to negotiate alliances and treaties of peace.
The serious proposal of so important a measure by such a man clearly showed the disorganization of the Roman governmental machinery; the initiative of any demagogue, however insignificant, combined with the prejudices of the incapable multitude, was to decide the most difficult questions of government policy. The Manilian proposal was acceptable to none of the political groups, yet it encountered little serious resistance. The democratic leaders did not dare oppose it for the same reasons which had forced them to acquiesce to the Gabinian law. They kept their displeasure and their fears to themselves and spoke publicly in favor of Pompey. The moderate aristocrats declared themselves for the Manilian proposal because after the Gabinian law resistance seemed vain; and far-seeing men already perceived that the Senate’s true interest was to draw Pompey over to their side in anticipation of the break which might be expected between him and the democrats. Lastly, the trimmers blessed the day when they too seemed to have an opinion and could come forward decidedly without losing favor in any quarter. (It is significant that Marcus Cicero first appeared on the political platform in support of the Manilian proposal.) Only the strict Optimates, with Quintus Catulus at their head, showed their colors and spoke against the proposition, which, of course, was converted into law by a majority bordering on unanimity.
Pompey thus added to his earlier extensive powers the administration of the most important provinces of Asia Minor, so that there scarcely remained a spot within the Roman world that was not under his control, and the conduct of a war which (like the expedition of Alexander) had a definite beginning but no foreseeable end. Never since Rome stood had such power been united in the hands of a single man.
The Gabinio-Manilian proposals ended the struggle between the Senate and the popular leaders which the Sempronian laws had begun sixty-seven years before. As the Sempronian laws first transformed the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-Manilian laws first converted it from an opposition into a government. As it had been a great moment when the first breach of the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto of Octavius, so it was a moment no less significant when the last bulwark of senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal of the veto of Trebellius. This was so generally felt that even the indolent souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-struggle. But the war over the constitution terminated in a far different and more pitiful fashion than it had begun. A truly noble youth had begun the revolution; it was concluded by intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type. The Optimates had begun the struggle with a tenacious defense of even forlorn positions; they ended by resort to violence, grandiloquent weakness, and pitiful perjury.
What had once been a daring dream was now attained: the Senate had ceased to govern. But when the few old men who had seen the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi compared that time with the present, they found that everything had changed—countrymen and citizens, life and manners, the law of the state and the discipline of the camp. Well might those painfully smile who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period with their realization.
But such reflections belonged to the past. For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact. The oligarchs resembled a broken army whose scattered bands might serve to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer stay in the field or risk a combat on their own account. But as the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously beginning—the struggle between the two forces hitherto leagued for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the popular opposition and the growing military power.
The exceptional position of Pompey under the Gabinian law, and still more under the Manilian, was incompatible with a republican organization. As even then his opponents urged with good reason, he had been appointed not general but regent of the empire; not unjustly was he designated “king of kings” by a Greek familiar with eastern affairs. If he should return from the East victorious and with increased glory, with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted to his cause, who could call a halt were he to stretch forth his hand to seize the crown? Would the aged consular Quintus Catulus summon forth the senators against the first general of his time and his veteran legions? Could the aedile-elect Gaius Caesar call forth the multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silvered equipage?
Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol in order to save liberty. It was not the prophet’s fault that the storm came not from the East, as he expected, but that fate fulfilled his words more literally than he had himself anticipated by sending the destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.
How strong was Mommsen’s prejudice against Pompey is vividly illustrated by the history of the next few years, which saw a rapid series of spectacular achievements by that general. By careful military preparations, plus a judicious policy of moderation toward his piratical opponents once armed resistance was broken, he completely cleared the western Mediterranean in forty days. Then, transferring his forces to eastern waters, he finished the cleanup in forty-nine days more. In these two short campaigns he substantially freed the Roman world of an incubus that had oppressed it for generations.
In the following spring (66 B.C.), Pompey led his army of some 50,000 regulars in the Third Mithradatic War. After lengthy tactical maneuvering he managed to lead the king’s army into a night ambush where it was almost totally destroyed. Mithradates again sought help from his son-in-law, King Tigranes of Armenia, and again in vain; with a price on his head he was forced to flee to the hinterland of his Pontic kingdom stretching around the eastern rim of the Black Sea. Pompey pursued, accepting on the way the voluntary submission of Tigranes and the ancient Armenian capital of Artaxata.
“At the beginning of 66,” Mommsen summarizes, “there was not a Roman soldier beyond the bounds of the old Roman possessions; at its close King Mithradates was an exile wandering in the ravines of the Caucasus, and King Tigranes sat upon his throne not as King of Kings, but as a Roman vassal.” Achievements like these are hardly consistent with Mommsen’s general picture of Pompey as a sluggish, incompetent “sergeant-nature.”
Pompey pursued the fleeing Mithradates as far as present-day Tiflis, then turned toward the Black Sea and bent his efforts toward subduing a long list of barbarian and semicivilized peoples. Mithradates himself sought once more to organize an army and mount a campaign against the Romans from a base on the northern side of the Black Sea; but at last his officers, his troops, and his subjects deserted him. He died in 63 B.C., in his 68th year, a suicide to avoid falling into the hands of his mutinous son, Pharnaces. So great a victory was his death regarded by the Romans that the messengers who brought the news to Pompey wore crowns of laurel.
Well before Mithradates’ death, however, Pompey had turned southward to regulate the confused affairs of Syria. After its incapable king had been deposed, it too, like Pontus and Bithynia, became an outright Roman province. Around the edge of the new provinces the Romans forged a ring of dependencies; and everywhere they sought to strengthen Graeco-Roman civilization against the Oriental feudalism of the countryside. This general settlement of affairs in the East was Pompey’s creative work. But it was yet to be ratified and made permanent by the government in Rome. It is today impossible to settle the precise limits of Pompey’s legal authority to act for the government, but it is certain that he expected his acts to be approved without argument. His failure on his return to Rome to secure this blanket approval was an important factor in driving him into the arms of Caesar, with fateful consequences for the history of the next fifteen years.
Pompey’s triumphal march through the streets of Rome on September 28-29, 61 B.C., may perhaps have been, as Mommsen uncharitably dubs it, an “insipid extravagance.” But for all that, Pompey in five years of invariably successful marches, battles, punitive expeditions, and reorganizations had achieved no less than the establishment of the Roman imperial system in the East.
1. The original enumerates several examples.
2. In the original, Mommsen seeks to explain Pompey’s apparent decisiveness in this question by noting that the measure had a certain sort of legality; that Pompey could not prudently risk the dilatory support of the Senate; and that the proponents of the new law “probably took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands of their shortsighted and resource-less patron.”