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CHAPTER III

(691-695.)

Cicero and Antonius, Consuls (691).

I. IN the year 690, the candidates for the consulship were Cicero, C. Antonius Hybrida, L. Cassius Longinus, Q. Cornificius, C. Lucinius Sacerdos, P. Sulpicius Galba, and Catiline.⁹³³ Informed of the plots so long in progress, the Senate determined to combat the conspiracies of the last by throwing all the votes they could dispose of upon Cicero, who was thus unanimously elected, and took possession of his office at the beginning of 691. This choice made up for the mediocrity of his colleague Antonius.

The illustrious orator, whose eloquence had such authority, was born at Arpinum, of obscure parents; he had served some time in the war of the allies;⁹³⁴ afterwards, his orations acquired for him a great reputation, amongst others the defence of the young Roscius, whom the dictator would have despoiled of his paternal heritage. After the death of Sylla, he was appointed questor and sent to Sicily. In 684, he lashed with his implacable speech the atrocities of Verres; at last, in 688, he obtained the prætorship, and displayed in this capacity those sentiments of high probity and of justice which distinguished him throughout his whole career. But the esteem of his fellow-citizens would not have sufficed, in ordinary times, to have raised him to the first magistracy. “The dread of the conspiracy,” says Sallust, “was the cause of his elevation. Under other circumstances, the pride of the nobility would have revolted against such a choice. The consulship would have been considered profaned, if, even with superior merit, a new man⁹³⁵ had obtained it; but, on the approach of danger, envy and pride became silent.”⁹³⁶ The Roman aristocracy must have greatly lost its influence, when, at a critical moment, it allowed a new man to possess more authority over the people than one from its own ranks.

By birth, as well as by his instincts, Cicero belonged to the popular party; nevertheless, the irresolution of his mind, sensible to flattery, and his fear of innovations, led him to serve by turn the rancours of the great or those of the people.⁹³⁷ Of upright heart, but pusillanimous, he only saw rightly when his self-esteem was not at stake or his interest in danger. Elected consul, he ranged himself on the side of the Senate, and resisted all proposals advantageous to the multitude. Cæsar honoured his talent, but had little confidence in his character; hence he was averse to his candidature, and hostile during the whole of his consulship.

Agrarian Law of Rullus.

II. Scarcely had Cicero entered on his functions, when the tribune P. Servilius Rullus revived one of those projects which, for ages, have had the effect of exciting to the highest degree both the avidity of the proletaries and the anger of the Senate: it was an agrarian law.

It contained the following provisions: To sell, with certain exceptions,⁹³⁸ the territories recently conquered, and some other domains but little productive to the State; devoting the proceeds to the purchase, by private contract, of lands in Italy which were to be divided among the indigent citizens; to cause to be nominated, according to the customary mode for the election of grand pontiff – that is, by seventeen tribes, drawn by lot from the thirty-five – ten commissioners or decemvirs, to whom should be left, for five years, the power, absolute and without control, of distributing or alienating the domains of the Republic and private properties wherever they liked. No one could be appointed who was not present in Rome, which excluded Pompey, and the authority of the decemvirs was to be sanctioned by a curiate law. To them alone was intrusted the right to decide what belonged to the State and what to individuals. The lands of the public domain which should not be alienated were to be charged with a considerable impost.⁹³⁹ The decemvirs had also the power of compelling all the generals, Pompey excepted, to account for the booty and money received during war, but not yet deposited in the treasury, or employed upon some monument. They were allowed to found colonies anywhere they thought proper, particularly in the territory of Stella, and in the ager of Campania, where five thousand Roman citizens were to be established. In a word, the administration of the revenues and the resources of the State came almost wholly into their hands; they had, moreover, their lictors; they could take the omens, and choose amongst the knights two hundred persons to execute their decrees in the provinces, and these were without appeal.

This project offered inconveniences, but also great advantages. Rullus, certainly, was to blame for not designating all the places where he wished to establish colonies; for making two exemptions, one favourable, the other unfavourable to Pompey; for assigning to the decemvirs powers too extensive, tending to arbitrary acts and speculations: nevertheless, his project had an important political aim. The public domain, encroached upon by usurpations or by the colonies of Sylla, had almost disappeared. The law was to re-constitute it by the sale of conquered territories. On the other side, the lands confiscated in great number by Sylla, and given or sold at a paltry price to his partisans, had suffered a general depreciation, for the ownership was liable to be contested, and they no longer found purchasers. The Republic, while desirous of relieving the poorer class, had thus an interest in raising the price of these lands and in securing the holders. The project of Rullus was, in fact, a veritable law of indemnity. There are injustices which, sanctioned by time, ought also to be sanctioned by law, in order to extinguish the causes of dissension, by restoring their security to existing things, and its value to property.

If the great orator had known how to raise himself above the questions of person and of party, he would, like Cæsar, have supported the proposal of the tribune, amending only what was too absolute or too vague in it; but, overreached by the faction of the great, and desiring to please the knights, whose interests the law injured, he attacked it with his usual eloquence, exaggerating its defects. It would only benefit, he said, a small number of persons. Whilst appearing to favour Pompey, it deprived him, on account of his absence, of the chance of being chosen decemvir. It allowed some individuals to dispose of kingdoms like Egypt, and of the immense territories of Asia. Capua would become the capital of Italy, and Rome, surrounded by a girdle of military colonies devoted to ten new tyrants, would lose its independence. To purchase the lands, instead of apportioning the ager publicus, was monstrous, and he could not admit that they would engage the people to abandon the capital to go and languish in the fields. Then, exposing the double personal interest of the author of the law, he reminded them that the father-in-law of Rullus was enriched with the spoils of proscripts, and that Rullus himself had reserved the right of being nominated decemvir.

Cicero, nevertheless, pointed out clearly the political bearing of the project, although censuring it, when he said; “The new law enriches those who occupied the domain lands, and withdraws them from public indignation. How many men are embarrassed by their vast possessions, and cannot support the odium attached to the largesses of Sylla! How many would sell them, and find no buyers! How many seek means, of whatever kind, to dispossess themselves of them!.. And you, Romans, you are going to sell those revenues which your ancestors have acquired at the cost of so much sweat and blood, to augment the fortune and assure the tranquillity of the possessors of the goods confiscated by Sylla!”⁹⁴⁰

We see thus that Cicero seems to deny the necessity of allaying the inquietudes of the new and numerous acquirers of this kind of national property; and yet, when a short time afterwards another tribune proposed to relieve from civic degradation the sons of proscripts, he opposed him, not because this reparation appeared to him unjust, but for fear the rehabilitation in political rights should carry with it the reintegration into the properties, a measure, according to his views, subversive of all interests.⁹⁴¹ Thus, with a strange inconsistency, Cicero combated these two laws of conciliation; the one because it re-assured, the other because it disquieted the holders of the effects of the proscribed. Why must it be that, amongst men of superiority, but without convictions, talent only too often serves to sustain with the like facility the most opposite causes? The opinion of Cicero triumphed, nevertheless, thanks to his eloquence; and the project, despite the lively adhesion of the people, encountered in the Senate such a resistance, that it was abandoned without being referred to the comitia.

Cæsar advocated the agrarian law, because it raised the value of the soil, put an end to the disfavour attached to the national property, augmented the resources of the treasury, prevented the extravagance of the generals, delivered Rome from a turbulent and dangerous populace by wresting it from degradation and misery. He supported the rehabilitation of the children of proscripts, because that measure, profoundly reparative, put an end to one of the great iniquities of the past regime.

There are victories which enfeeble the conquerors more than the vanquished. Such was the success of Cicero. The rejection of the agrarian law, and of the claims of the sons of proscripts, augmented considerably the number of malcontents. A crowd of citizens, driven by privations and the denial of justice, went over to swell the ranks of the conspirators, who, in the shade, were preparing a revolution; and Cæsar, pained at seeing the Senate reject that sage and ancient policy which had saved Rome from so many agitations, resolved to undermine by every means its authority. For this purpose he engaged the tribune, T. Labienus, the same who was afterwards one of his best lieutenants, to get up a criminal accusation which was a direct attack upon the abuse of one of the prerogatives of the government.⁹⁴²

Trial of Rabirius (691).

III. For a long time, when internal or external troubles were apprehended, Rome was put, so to speak, in a state of siege, by the sacramental formula, according to which the consuls were enjoined to see that the Republic received no injury; then the power of the consuls was unlimited;⁹⁴³ and often, in seditions, the Senate had profited by this omnipotence to rid itself of certain factious individuals without observing the forms of justice. The more frequent the agitations had become, the more they had used this extreme remedy. The tribunes always protested ineffectually against a measure which suspended all the established laws, legalised assassination, and made Rome a battle-field. Labienus tried anew to blunt in the hands of the Senate so formidable a weapon.

Thirty-seven years before, as will be remembered, Saturninus, the violent promoter of an agrarian law, had, by the aid of a riot, obtained possession of the Capitol; the country had been declared in danger. The tribune perished in the struggle, and the senator C. Rabirius boasted of having killed him. Despite this long interval of time, Labienus accused Rabirius under an old law of perduellio, which did not leave to the guilty, like the law of treason, the power of voluntary exile, but, by declaring him a public enemy, authorised against him cruel and ignominious punishments.⁹⁴⁴ This procedure provoked considerable agitation; the Senate, which felt the blow struck at its privileges, was unwilling to put any one to trial for the execution of an act authorised by itself. The people and the tribunes, on the contrary, insisted that the accused should be brought before a tribunal. Every passion was at work. Labienus claimed to avenge one of his uncles, massacred with Saturninus; and he had the audacity to expose in the Campus Martius the portrait of the factious tribune, forgetting the case of Sextus Titius, condemned, on a former occasion, for the mere fact of having preserved in his house the likeness of Saturninus.⁹⁴⁵ The affair was brought, according to ancient usage, before the decemvirs. Cæsar, and his cousin Lucius Cæsar, were designated by the prætor to perform the functions of judges. The very violence of the accusation, compared with the eloquence of his defenders, Hortensius and Cicero, overthrew the charge of perduellio. Nevertheless, Rabirius, condemned, appealed to the people; but the animosity against him was so great that the fatal sentence was about to be irrevocably pronounced, when the prætor, Metellus Celer, devised a stratagem to arrest the course of justice; he carried away the standard planted at the Janiculum.⁹⁴⁶ This battered flag formerly announced an invasion of the country round Rome. Immediately all deliberation ceased, and the people rushed to arms. The Romans were great formalists; and, moreover, as this custom left to the magistrates the power of dissolving at their will the comitia, they had the most cogent motives for preserving it; the assembly soon separated, and the affair was not taken up again. Cæsar, nevertheless, had hoped to attain his object. He did not demand the head of Rabirius, whom, when he was subsequently dictator, he treated with favour; he only wished to show to the Senate the strength of the popular party, and to warn it that henceforth it would no more be permitted, as in the time of the Gracchi, to sacrifice its adversaries in the name of the public safety.

If, on the one hand, Cæsar let no opportunity escape of branding the former regime, on the other he was the earnest advocate of the provinces, which vainly looked for justice and protection from Rome. He had, for example, the same year accused of peculation C. Calpurnius Piso, consul in 687, and afterwards governor of Transpadane Gaul, and brought him to trial for having arbitrarily caused an inhabitant of that country to be executed. The accused was acquitted through the influence of Cicero; but Cæsar had shown to the Transpadanes that he was ever the representative of their interests and their vigilant patron.

Cæsar Grand Pontiff (691).

IV. He soon received a brilliant proof of the popularity he enjoyed. The dignity of sovereign pontiff, one of the most important in the Republic, was for life, and gave great influence to the individual clothed with it, for religion mingled itself in all the public and private acts of the Romans.

Metellus Pius, sovereign pontiff, dying in 691, the most illustrious citizens, such as P. Servilius Isauricus, and Q. Lutatius Catulus, prince of the Senate, put themselves at the head of the ranks of candidates to replace him. Cæsar also solicited the office, and, desirous of proving himself worthy of it, he published, at this time doubtless, a very extensive treatise on the augural law, and another on astronomy, designed to make known in Italy the discoveries of the Alexandrian school.⁹⁴⁷

Servilius Isauricus and Catulus, relying on their antecedents, and on the esteem in which they were held, believed themselves the more sure of election, because, since Sylla, the people had not interfered in the nomination of grand pontiff, the college solely making the election. Labienus, to facilitate Cæsar’s access to this high dignity, obtained a plebiscitum restoring the nomination to the suffrages of the people. This manœuvre disconcerted the other competitors without discouraging them, and, as usual, they attempted to seduce the electors with money. All who held with the party of the nobles united against Cæsar, who combated solicitation by solicitation, and sustained the struggle by the aid of considerable loans; he knew how to interest in his success, according to Appian, both the poor that he had paid, and the rich from whom he borrowed.⁹⁴⁸ Catulus, knowing Cæsar to be greatly in debt, and mistaking his character, offered him a large sum to desist. He answered him that he would borrow a much greater sum of him if he would support his candidature.⁹⁴⁹

At length the great day arrived which was to decide the future of Cæsar; when he started to present himself at the comitia, the most gloomy thoughts agitated his ardent mind, and calculating that if he should not succeed, his debts would constrain him perhaps to go into exile, he embraced his mother and said, “To-day thou wilt see me grand pontiff or a fugitive.”⁹⁵⁰ The most brilliant success crowned his efforts, and what added to his joy was his obtaining more votes in the tribes of his adversaries than they had in all the tribes put together.⁹⁵¹

Such a victory made the Senate fear whether Cæsar, strong in his ascendency over the people, might not proceed to the greatest excesses; but his conduct remained the same.

Hitherto he had inhabited a very moderate house, in the quarter called Suburra; nominated sovereign pontiff, he was lodged in a public building in the Via Sacra.⁹⁵² This new position necessarily obliged him, indeed, to a sumptuous life, if we may judge by the luxuriousness displayed at the reception of a simple pontiff, at which he assisted as king of the sacrifices, and of which Macrobius has preserved to us the curious details.⁹⁵³ Moreover, he built himself a superb villa on the Lake of Nemi, near Aricia.

Catiline’s Conspiracy.

V. Catiline, who has already been spoken of, had twice failed in his designs upon the consulship; he solicited it again for the year 692, without abandoning his plans of conspiracy. The moment seemed favourable. Pompey being in Asia, Italy was bared of troops; Antonius, associated in the plot, shared the consulship with Cicero. Calm existed on the surface, whilst passions, half extinguished, and bruised interests, offered to the first man bold enough, numerous means of raising commotions.⁹⁵⁴ The men whom Sylla had despoiled, as well as those he had enriched, but who had dissipated the fruits of their immense plunder, were equally discontented; so that the same idea of subversion formed a bond of union between the victims and the accomplices of the past oppression.

Addicted to excesses of every kind, Catiline dreamed, in the midst of his orgies, of the overthrow of the oligarchy; but we may doubt his desire to put all to fire and sword, as Cicero says, and as most historians have repeated after him. Of illustrious birth, questor in 677, he distinguished himself in Macedonia, in the army of Curio; he had been prætor in 686, and governor of Africa the year following. He was accused of having in his youth imbrued his hands in Sylla’s murders, of having associated with the most infamous men, and of having been guilty of incest and other crimes; there would be no reason for exculpating him if we did not know how prodigal political parties in their triumph are of calumnies against the vanquished. Besides, we must acknowledge that the vices with which he was charged he shared in common with many personages of that epoch, among others with Antonius, the colleague of Cicero, who subsequently undertook his defence. Gifted with a high intelligence and a rare energy, Catiline could not have meditated a thing so insensate as massacre and burning. It would have been to seek to reign over ruins and tombs. The truth will present itself better in the following portrait, traced by Cicero seven years after the death of Catiline, when, returning to a calmer appreciation, the great orator painted in less sombre colours him whom he had so disfigured: – “This Catiline, you cannot have forgotten, I think had, if not the reality, at least the appearance of the greatest virtues. He associated with a crowd of perverse men, but he affected to be devoted to men of greatest estimation. If for him debauchery had powerful attractions, he applied himself with no less ardour to labour and affairs. The fire of passions devoured his heart, but he had also a taste for the labours of war. No, I do not believe there ever existed on this earth a man who offered so monstrous an assemblage of passions and qualities so varied, so contrary, and in continual antagonism with each other.”⁹⁵⁵

The conspiracy, conducted by the adventurous spirit of its chief, had acquired considerable development. Senators, knights, young patricians, a great number of the notable citizens of the allied towns, partook in it. Cicero, informed of these designs, assembles the Senate in the Temple of Concord, and communicates to it the information he had received: he informs it that, on the 5th of the calends of November, a rising was to take place in Etruria; that on the morrow a riot would break out in Rome; that the lives of the consuls were threatened; that, lastly, everywhere stores of warlike arms and attempts to enlist the gladiators indicated the most alarming preparations. Catiline, questioned by the consul, exclaims, that the tyranny of some men, their avarice, their inhumanity, are the true causes of the uneasiness which torments the Republic; then, repelling with scorn the projects of revolt which they imputed to him, he concludes with this threatening figure of speech: “The Roman people is a robust body, but without head: I shall be that head.”⁹⁵⁶ He departed with these words, leaving the Senate undecided and trembling. The assembly, meanwhile, passed the usual decree, enjoining the consuls to watch that the Republic received no injury.

The election of consuls for the following year, till then deferred, took place on the 21st of October, 691, and Silanus having been nominated with Murena, Catiline was a third time rejected. He then dispatched to different parts of Italy his agents, and among others, C. Mallius into Etruria, Septimius to the Picenum, and C. Julius into Apulia, to organise the revolt.⁹⁵⁷ At the mouth of the Tiber, a division of the fleet, previously employed against the pirates, was ready to second his projects.⁹⁵⁸ At Rome even the assassination of Cicero was boldly attempted.

The Senate was convened again on the 8th of November. Catiline dared to attend, and take his seat in the midst of his colleagues. Cicero, in a speech which has become celebrated, apostrophised him in terms of the strongest indignation, and by a crushing denunciation forced him to retire.⁹⁵⁹ Catiline, accompanied by three hundred of his adherents, left the capital next morning to join Mallius.⁹⁶⁰ During the following days, alarming news arriving from all parts threw Rome into the utmost anxiety. Stupor reigned there. To the animation of fêtes and pleasures had, all of a sudden, succeeded a gloomy silence. Troops were raised; armed outposts were placed at various points; Q. Marcius Rex is dispatched to Fæsulæ (Fiesole); Q. Metellus Creticus into Apulia; Pomponius Rufus to Capua; Q. Metellus Celer into the Picenum; and, lastly, the consul, C. Antonius, led an army into Etruria. Cicero had detached the latter from the conspiracy by giving him the lucrative government of Macedonia.⁹⁶¹ He accepted in exchange that of Gaul, which he also subsequently renounced, not wishing, after his consulship, to quit the city and depart as proconsul. The principal conspirators, at the head of whom were the prætor Lentulus and Cethegus, remained at Rome. They continued energetically the preparations for the insurrection, and entered into communication with the envoys of the Allobroges. Cicero, secretly informed by his spies, among others by Curius, watched their doings, and, when he had indisputable proofs, caused them to be arrested, convoked the Senate, and exposed the plan of the conspiracy.

Lentulus was obliged to resign the prætorship. Out of nine conspirators convicted of the attempt against the Republic, five only failed to escape; they were confided to the custody of the magistrates appointed by the consul. Lentulus was delivered to his kinsman Lentulus Spinther; L. Statilius to Cæsar; Gabinius to Crassus; Cethegus to Cornificius; and Cæparius, who was taken in his flight, to the senator Cn. Terentius.⁹⁶² The Senate was on the point of proceeding against them in a manner in which all the forms of justice would have been violated. The criminal judgments were not within its competence, and neither the consul nor the assembly had the right to condemn a Roman citizen without the concurrence of the people. Be that as it may, the senators assembled for a last time on the 5th of December, to deliberate on the punishment of the conspirators; they were less numerous than on the preceding days. Many of them were unwilling to pass sentence of death against citizens belonging to the great patrician families. Some, however, were in favour of capital punishment, in spite of the law Portia. After others had spoken, Cæsar made the following speech, the bearing of which merits particular attention: —

“Conscript fathers, all who deliberate upon doubtful matters ought to be uninfluenced by hatred, affection, anger, or pity. When we are animated by these sentiments, it is hard to unravel the truth; and no one has ever been able to serve at once his passions and his interests. Free your reason of that which beclouds it, and you will be strong; if passion invade your mind and rules it, you will be without strength. It would be here the occasion, conscript fathers, to recall to mind how many kings and peoples, carried away by rage or pity, have taken fatal resolutions; but I prefer reminding you how our ancestors, unswayed by prejudice, performed good and just deeds. In our Macedonian war against King Perseus, the Republic of Rhodes, in its power and pride, although it owed its greatness to the support of the Roman people, proved disloyal and hostile to us; but when, on the termination of this war, the fate of the Rhodians was brought under deliberation, our ancestors left them unpunished in order that no one should ascribe the cause of the war to their riches rather than to their wrongs. So, also, in all the Punic wars, although the Carthaginians had often, both during peace and during the truces, committed perfidious atrocities, our fathers, in spite of the opportunity, never imitated them, because they thought more of their honour than of vengeance, however just.

“And you, conscript fathers, take care that the crime of P. Lentulus and his accomplices overcome not the sentiment of your dignity, and consult not your anger more than your reputation. Indeed, if there be a punishment adequate to their offences, I will approve the new measure; but if, on the contrary, the vastness of the crime exceeds all that can be imagined, we should adhere, I think, to that which has been provided by the laws.

“Most of those who have expressed their opinion before me have deplored in studied and magniloquent terms the misfortune of the Republic; they have recounted the horrors of war and the sufferings of the vanquished, the rapes of young girls and boys, infants torn from the arms of their parents, mothers delivered to the lusts of the vanquisher, the pillage of temples and houses, the carnage and burning everywhere; in short, arms, corpses, blood, and mourning. But, by the immortal gods, to what tend these speeches? To make you detest the conspiracy? What! will he whom a plot so great and so atrocious has not moved, be inflamed by a speech? No, not so; men never consider their personal injuries slight; many men resent them too keenly. But, conscript fathers, that which is permitted to some is not permitted to others. Those who live humbly in obscurity may err by passion, and few people know it; all is equal with them, fame and fortune; but those who, invested with high dignities, pass their life in an exalted sphere, do nothing of which every mortal is not informed. Thus, the higher the fortune the less the liberty; the less we ought to be partial, rancorous, and especially angry. What, in others, is named hastiness, in men of power is called pride and cruelty.

“I think then, conscript fathers, that all the tortures known can never equal the crimes of the conspirators; but, among most mortals, the last impressions are permanent, and the crimes of the greatest culprits are forgotten, to remember only the punishment, if it has been too severe.

“What D. Silanus, a man of constancy and courage, has said, has been inspired in him, I know, by his zeal for the Republic, and in so grave a matter he has been swayed neither by partiality nor hatred. I know too well the wisdom and moderation of that illustrious citizen. Nevertheless, his advice seems to me, I will not say cruel (for can one be cruel towards such men?), but contrary to the spirit of our government. Truly, Silanus, either fear or indignation would have forced you, consul-elect, to adopt a new kind of punishment. As to fear, it is superfluous to speak of it, when, thanks to the active foresight of our illustrious consul, so many guards are under arms. As to the punishment, we may be permitted to say the thing as it is: in affliction and misfortune death is the termination of our sufferings, and not a punishment; it takes away all the ills of humanity; beyond are neither cares nor joy. But, in the name of the immortal gods, why not add to your opinion, Silanus, that they shall be forthwith beaten with rods? Is it because the law Portia forbids it? But other laws also forbid the taking away the lives of condemned citizens, and prescribe exile. Is it because it is more cruel to be beaten with rods than to be put to death? But is there anything too rigorous, too cruel, against men convicted of so black a design? If, then, this penalty is too light, is it fitting to respect the law upon a less essential point, and break it in its most serious part? But, it may be said, who will blame your decree against the parricides of the Republic? Time, circumstances, and fortune, whose caprice governs the world. Whatever happens to them, they will have merited. But you, senators, consider the influence your decision may have upon other offenders. Abuses often grow from precedents good in principle; but when the power falls into the hands of men less enlightened or less honest, a just and reasonable precedent receives an application contrary to justice and reason.