History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers, Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and, moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise the rebels that they should not quit Italy.

Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen hundred vessels.712 He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium.713 He brought the gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle. Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla his sword, already redoubtable.

It was the beginning of the year 672 when Sylla entered Latium; he completely defeated, near Signia, the legions of the younger Marius, whose name had raised him to the consulship. This battle rendered Sylla master of Rome; but to the north, in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, Carbo, in spite of frequent defeats, disputed the ground with obstinacy against Pompey and Sylla’s other lieutenants. In the south, the Samnites had raised all their forces, and were preparing to succour Præneste, besieged by Sylla in person, and defended by young Marius. Pontius Telesinus, the general of the Samnites, finding it out of his power to raise the siege, conceived then the audacious and almost desperate idea of carrying his whole army to Rome, taking it by surprise, and sacking it. “Let us burn the wolves’ den,”714 he said to his soldiers: “so long as it exists, there will be no liberty in Italy.”

By a rapid night-march, Telesinus deceived the vigilance of his adversary; but, exhausted with fatigue, on arriving at the foot of the ramparts of Rome, the Samnites were unable to give the assault, and Sylla had time to arrive with the choicest of his legions.

A sanguinary battle took place at the very gates of the town, on the day of the calends of November, 672, and it continued far into the night. The left wing of the Romans was beaten and took to flight, in spite of the efforts of Sylla to rally it; Telesinus perished in the fight, and Crassus, who commanded the right wing, gained a complete victory. At daylight, the Samnites who had escaped the slaughter laid down their arms and demanded quarter.715

More than a year still passed away before the complete pacification of Italy, and it was only obtained by employing the most violent and sanguinary measures. Sylla made this terrible declaration, that he would not pardon one of his enemies. At Præneste, all the senators who were the partisans of Marius had their throats cut, and the inhabitants were put to the sword. Those of Norba, surprised through treason, rather than surrender, buried themselves under the ruins of their city.

Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the armies,716 the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites who had surrendered prisoners.717 A considerable number of the inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been granted them after the war of the allies;718 he invented a new punishment, that of proscription,719 and, in Rome alone, he banished four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators, fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights.720 His fury fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared, and he almost entirely annihilated that nation.721 Although his triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the same lot.722 Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or cry on looking at these was a crime.723 M. Pletorius was slaughtered for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the prætor, M. Marius;724 to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts, or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about 11,640 francs [£460]) a head;725 to assist them, to have had friendly or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other, all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus, were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being candidates for public offices.726 All these acts of pitiless vengeance had been authorised by a law called Valeria, promulgated in 672, and which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently followed by the emperors.

Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest the course of ideas.

The legislation of the Gracchi was abolished. The senators, by the law judiciaria, acquired again the exclusive privilege of the judicatory functions. The colony of Capua, a popular creation, was destroyed and restored to the domain. Sylla assumed to himself one of the first privileges of the censorship, which he had suppressed – the nomination of the members of the Senate. He introduced into that assembly, decimated during the civil wars, three hundred knights. By the law on the priesthood, he removed from the votes of the people and restored to the college the choice of the pontiffs and of the sovereign pontiff. He limited the power of the tribunes, leaving them only the right of protection (auxilium),727 and forbidding their access to the superior magistracies.728 He flattered himself that he had thus removed the ambitious from a career henceforward profitless.

He admitted into Rome ten thousand new citizens (called Cornelians),729 taken from among the slaves whose masters had been proscribed. Similar enfranchisements took place in the rest of Italy. He had almost exterminated two nations, the Etruscans and the Samnites; he re-peopled their deserted countries by distributing the estates of his adversaries among a considerable number of his soldiers, whom some authors raise to the prodigious number of forty-seven legions,730 and created for his veterans twenty-three military colonies on the territory taken from the rebel towns.731

All these arbitrary measures were dictated by the spirit of reaction; but those which follow were inspired by the desire to re-establish order and the hierarchy.

The rules formerly adopted for the succession of the magistracies were restored.732 No person could offer himself for the consulship without having previously held the office of prætor; or for the prætorship before he had held that of questor. Thirty years were fixed as the age necessary for the questorship, forty for the prætorship, and forty-three for the consulship. The law required an interval of two years between the exercise of two different magistracies, and often between the same magistracy, a rule so severely maintained, that, for having braved it in merely soliciting for the consulship,733 Lucretius Ofella, one of Sylla’s most devoted partisans, was put to death. The dictator withdrew from the freedmen the right of voting, from the knights the places of honour in the spectacles; he put a stop to the adjudications entrusted to the farmers-general and the distributions of wheat, and suppressed the corporations, which threatened a real danger to public tranquillity. Lastly, to put limits to extravagance, the sumptuary laws were promulgated.734

By the law de provinciis ordinandis, he sought to regulate the provinces and ameliorate their administration. The two consuls and the eight prætors were retained at Rome during their year of office by the administration of civil affairs. They took afterwards, in quality of proconsuls or proprætors, the command of one of the ten provinces, which they exercised during a year; after which a new curiate law became necessary to renew the imperium; they preserved it until their return to Rome. Thirty days were allowed to them for quitting the province after the arrival of their successors.735 The number of prætors, questors, pontiffs, and augurs was augmented.736 Every year twenty questors were to be named, which would ensure the recruitment of the Senate, since this office gave entrance to it. Sylla multiplied the commissions of justice. He took measures for putting a stop to the murders which desolated Italy (lex de sicariis), and to protect the citizens against outrages (lex de injuriis). The lex magistratis completed, so to say, the preceding.737 In the number of crimes of high treason, punished capitally, are the excesses of magistrates charged with the administration of the provinces; quitting their government without leave of the Senate; conducting an army beyond the limits of his province; undertaking a war unauthorised; treating with foreign chiefs: such were the principal acts denounced as crimes against the Republic. There was not one of them of which Sylla himself had not been guilty.

Sylla abdicated in 675, the only extraordinary act which remained for him to accomplish. He who had carried mourning into so many families returned into his own house alone, through a respectful and submissive crowd. Such was the ascendency of his old power, supported, moreover, by the ten thousand Cornelians present in Rome and devoted to his person,738 that, though he had resumed his position of simple citizen, he was still allowed to act as absolute master, and even on the eve of his death, which occurred in 676, he made himself the executioner of pitiless justice, in daring to cause to be slaughtered before his eyes the prætor Granius, guilty of exaction.739

Unexampled magnificence was displayed at his funeral; his body was carried to the Campus Martius, where previously none but the kings had been inhumed.740 He left Italy tamed, but not subdued; the great nobles in power, but without moral authority; his partisans enriched, but trembling for their riches; the numerous victims of tyranny held down, but growling under the oppression; lastly, Rome taught that henceforth she is without protection against the boldness of any fortunate soldier.741

Effects of Sylla’s Dictatorship.

VII. The history of the last fifty years, and especially the dictatorship of Sylla, show beyond doubt that Italy demanded a master. Everywhere institutions gave way before the power of an individual, sustained not only by his own partisans, but also by the irresolute multitude, which, fatigued by the action and reaction of so many opposite parties, aspired to order and repose. If the conduct of Sylla had been moderated, what is called the Empire would probably have commenced with him; but his power was so cruel and so partial, that after his death, the abuses of liberty were forgotten in the memory of abuses of tyranny. The more the democratic spirit had expanded, the more the ancient institutions lost their prestige. In fact, as democracy, trusting and passionate, believes always that its interests are better represented by an individual than by a political body, it was incessantly disposed to deliver its future to the man who raised himself above others by his own merit. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla, had in turn disposed at will of the destinies of the Republic, and trampled under foot with impunity ancient institutions and ancient customs; but their reign was ephemeral,742 for they only represented factions. Instead of embracing collectively the hopes and interests of all the peninsula of Italy, they favoured exclusively particular classes of society. Some sought before all to secure the prosperity of the proletaries of Rome, or the emancipation of the Italiotes, or the preponderance of the knights; others, the privileges of the aristocracy. They failed.

To establish a durable order of things there wanted a man who, raising himself above vulgar passions, should unite in himself the essential qualities and just ideas of each of his predecessors, avoiding their faults as well as their errors. To the greatness of soul and love of the people of certain tribunes, it was needful to join the military genius of great generals and the strong sentiments of the Dictator in favour of order and the hierarchy.

The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That man was Cæsar.

BOOK II.

HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR

CHAPTER I

(654-684.)

First Years of Cæsar.

I. ABOUT the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.

Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis (July 12), 654,743 and the month Quintilis, called Julius [July] in honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He was the son of C. Julius Cæsar,744 prætor, who died suddenly at Pisa about 670,745 and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian family.

By ancestry and alliances, Cæsar inherited that double prestige which is derived from ancient origin and recent renown.

On one side, he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus;746 on the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius who had married his aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died in 686, Cæsar pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own genealogy: – “My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of kings; on the paternal side, she descends from the immortal gods: for her mother was a Marcia,747 and the family Marcius Rex are the descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong, descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their subjection.”748

This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Cæsar, sprung from that aristocracy which had produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges, instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that nobility dispenses.

Aurelia, a woman of lofty character and severe morals,749 helped above all in the development of his great abilities, by a wise and enlightened education, and prepared him to make himself worthy of the part which destiny had reserved for him.750 This first education, given by a tender and virtuous mother, has ever as much influence over our future as the most precious natural qualities. Cæsar reaped the fruits of it. He also received lessons from M. Antonius Gnipho, the Gaul, a philosopher and master of eloquence, of a rare mind, of vast learning, and well versed in Greek and Latin letters, which he had cultivated at Alexandria.751

Greece was always the country of the arts and sciences, and the language of Demosthenes was familiar to every lettered Roman.752 Thus Greek and Latin might be called the two languages of Italy, as they were, at a later period, by the Emperor Claudius.753 Cæsar spoke both with the same facility; and, when falling beneath the dagger of Brutus, he pronounced in Greek the last words that issued from his lips.754

Though eager for pleasure, he neglected nothing, says Suetonius, by which to acquire those talents which lead to the highest honours. Now, according to Roman habits, the first offices were attainable only by the union of the most diverse merits. The patrician youth, still worthy of their ancestors, were not idle: they sought religious appointments, to give them power over consciences; administrative employments, to influence material interests; discussions and public discourses, to captivate minds by their eloquence; finally, military labours, to strike imaginations by the brilliancy of their glory. Emulous of distinction in all, Cæsar did not confine himself to the study of letters; he early composed works, among which are cited “The Praises of Hercules,” a tragedy of “Œdipus,” “A Collection of Choice Phrases,”755 a book on “Divination.”756 It seems that these works were written in a style so pure and correct, that they gained for him the reputation of an eminent writer, gravis auctor linguæ Latinæ.757 He was less happy in the art of poetry, if we may believe Tacitus.758 However, there remain to us some verses addressed to the memory of Terence, which are not wanting in elegance.759

Education, then, had made Cæsar a distinguished man before he was a great man. He united to goodness of heart a high intelligence, to an invincible courage,760 an enthralling eloquence,761 a wonderful memory,762 an unbounded generosity; finally, he possessed one very rare quality – calmness under anger.763 “His affability,” says Plutarch, “his politeness, his gracious address – qualities which he had to a degree beyond his age – gained him the affection of the people.”764

Two anecdotes of later date must come in here. Plutarch relates that Cæsar, during his campaigns, one day, surprised by a violent storm, took shelter in a hut where was only one room, too small to contain many people. He hastened to offer it to Oppius, one of his officers, who was sick; and himself passed the night in the open air, saying to those who accompanied him, “We must leave to the great the places of honour, but yield to the sick those that are necessary to them.” Another time, Valerius Leo, with whom he was dining at Milan, having set before him an ill-seasoned dish, the companions of Cæsar remonstrated, but he reproached them sharply for their want of consideration for his host, saying “that they were free not to eat of a dish they did not like, but that to complain of it aloud was a want of good breeding.”765

These facts, of small importance in themselves, yet testify to Cæsar’s goodness of heart, and to the delicacy of the well-bred man who is always observant of propriety.

To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned limbs, stamped his person with a grace that distinguished him from all others.766 He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face, whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual faculties. His face was full, at least, in his youth; for in his busts, doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner, and bear traces of fatigue.767 He had a sonorous and penetrating voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his person.768 His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of the weather.769 Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he was a bold horseman,770 and bore privations and fatigues without difficulty.771 Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither by excess of labour nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two occasions – the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus – he was seized with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy.772

He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead. He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair.773 His toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle carelessly tied about his loins; a costume which distinguished the elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care of this young man with the loose girdle.774 He had a taste for pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always wore on his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed Venus.775

In fine, we discover in Cæsar, both physically and morally, two natures rarely united in the same person. He joined an aristocratic delicacy of body to the muscular constitution of the warrior; the love of luxury and the arts to a passion for military life, in all its simplicity and rudeness: in a word, he allied the elegance of manner which seduces with the energy of character which commands.

Cæsar persecuted by Sylla (672).

II. Such was Cæsar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the dictatorship.776 Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name, his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps, women still more.

The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of Jupiter (flamen dialis) at the age of fourteen.777 At sixteen, betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a rich knight, he broke his engagement,778 after the death of his father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.779

Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When every one yielded to his will; when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of Cinna,780 and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of Antistius, who died for his cause,781 to marry Emilia, the daughter-in-law of the dictator, Cæsar maintained his independence at the price of his personal safety.

Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood,782 and of his wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family. Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome to escape persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla, he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about 12,000 francs),783 and his life was preserved. Let us note here that, arrived at sovereign power, Cæsar met this same Phagita, and treated him with indulgence, without reminding him of the past.784 Meanwhile, he still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy, his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family, interceded in his favour.785 The vestals also, whose sole intervention put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers.786 Vanquished by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for, trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man.”787