History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

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.

“The Lacedæmonians imposed upon Athens vanquished a government of thirty rulers. These began by putting to death without judgment all those whose crimes marked them out to public hatred; the people rejoiced, and said it was well done. Afterwards, when the abuses of this power multiplied, good and bad alike were sacrificed at the instigation of caprice; the rest were in terror. Thus Athens, crushed under servitude, expiated cruelly her insensate joy. In our days, when Sylla, conqueror, caused to be butchered Damasippus and other men of that description, who had attained to dignities to the curse of the Republic, who did not praise such a deed? Those villains, those factious men, whose seditions had harassed the Republic, had, it was said, merited their death. But this was the signal for a great carnage. For if any one coveted the house or land of another, or only a vase or vestment, it was somehow contrived that he should be put in the number of the proscribed. Thus, those to whom the death of Damasippus had been a subject for joy, were soon themselves dragged to execution, and the massacres ceased not until Sylla had gorged all his followers with riches.

“It is true, I dread nothing of the sort, either from M. Tullius or from present circumstances; but, in a great state, there are so many different natures! Who knows if at another epoch, under another consul, master of an army, some imaginary plot may not be believed real? And if a consul, armed with this example and with a decree of the Senate, once draw the sword, who will stay his hand or limit vengeance?

“Our ancestors, conscript fathers, were never wanting in prudence or decision, and pride did not hinder them from adopting foreign customs provided they appeared good. From the Samnites they borrowed their arms, offensive and defensive; from the Etruscans, the greater part of the insignia of our magistrates; in short, all that, amongst their allies or their enemies, appeared useful to themselves, they appropriated with the utmost eagerness, preferring to imitate good examples than to be envious of them. At the same epoch, adopting a Grecian custom, they inflicted rods upon the citizens, and death upon criminals. Afterwards the Republic increased; and with the increase of citizens factions prevailed more, and the innocent were oppressed; they committed many excesses of this kind. Then the law Portia and many others were promulgated, which only sanctioned the punishment of exile against the condemned. This consideration, conscript fathers, is, in my opinion, the strongest for rejecting the proposed innovation. Certainly those men were superior to us in virtue and wisdom, who, with such feeble means, have raised so great an empire, whilst we preserve with difficulty an inheritance so gloriously acquired. Are we then to set free the guilty, and increase with them the army of Catiline? In no wise; but I vote that their goods be confiscated, themselves imprisoned in the municipia best furnished with armed force, to the end that no one may hereafter propose their restoration to the Senate or even to the people; that whoever shall act contrary to this measure be declared by the Senate an enemy of the State and of the public tranquillity.”963