The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Arthur Gilman (story read aloud .txt) 📕

There was one man among the host of busy figures on the stage at this eventful period who seems to stalk about like a born master, and the lapse of time since his days has not at all dimmed the fame of his deeds, so deep a mark have they left upon the laws and customs of mankind, and so noteworthy are they in the annals of Rome. Caius Julius Cæsar was six years younger than Pompey and Cicero, and was of the popular or Marian party, both by birth and tastes. His aunt Julia was wife of the great Marius himself, and though he had married a young woman of high birth to please his father, he divorced her as soon as his father died, and married Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the devoted opponent of Sulla, to please himself.

When Sulla returned to Rome from the East, he ordered Pompey to put away his wife, and he obeyed. He ordered Cæsar, a boy of seventeen, to give up his Cornelia, and he proudly replied that he would not. Of course he could not remain at Rome after that, and he fled to the land of the Sabines until Sulla was induced to grant him a pardon. Still, he did not feel secure at Rome, and a second time he sought safety in expatriation. Upon the death of the dictator, he returned, having gained experience in war, and having developed his talents as an orator by study in a school at Rhodes. He plunged immediately into public life and won great distinction by his effective speaking.

These are enough characters for us to remember at present. They represent four groups, all striving for supreme power. There are the men of the oligarchy, represented by Pompey and Cicero, actually holding the reins of government; and Crassus, standing for the aristocrats, who resent their claims; Cæsar, foremost among the Marians, the former opponents of Sulla and his schemes; and Catiline, at the head of the faction which included the host of warriors that Sulla had settled in peaceful pursuits throughout Italy,—in peaceful pursuits that did not at all suit their impetuous spirits, ever eager as they were for some revolution that would plunge them again into strife, and perchance win for them some spoil.

[Illustration: CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR.]

The consuls at the time of the death of Sulla were Lepidus and Catulus, who now fell out with one another, Lepidus taking the part of the Marians, and Catulus holding with the aristocrats. This was the same Lepidus who had opposed the burial of the dictator Sulla in the Campus Martius. As soon as the Marians saw that one consul was ready to favor them, there was great excitement among the portion of the community that looked for gain in confusion. Those who had lost their riches and civic rights, hoped to see them restored; young profligates trusted that in some way they might find means to gratify their love of luxury; and the people in general, who had no other reason, thought that after the three years of the calm of despotism, it would be refreshing to see some excitement in the forum. Lepidus was profuse in promises; he told the beggars that he would again distribute free grain; and the families deprived of their estates, that they might soon expect to enjoy them again. Catulus protested in vain, and the civil strife constantly increased, without any apparent probability that the Senate, now weak and inefficient, would or could successfully interfere. Finally it was decreed that Lepidus and Catulus should each be sent to the provinces under oath not to turn their swords against each other.

Lepidus slowly proceeded to carry out his part of this decree, but Catulus remained behind long enough to complete a great temple, which towered above the forum on the Capitoline Hill. The foundations only remain now, but they bear an inscription placed there by order of the senate, testifying that Catulus was the consul under whom the structure was completed. Lepidus did not consider his oath binding long, and the following year (B.C. 77) he marched straight to Rome again, announcing to the senators that he came to re-establish the rights of the people and to assume the dictatorship himself. He was met by an army under Pompey and Catulus, at a spot near the Mulvian bridge and the Campus Martius, almost on the place where the fate of the Roman Empire was to be determined four centuries later by a battle between Maxentius and Constantine (A.D. 312). Lepidus was defeated and forced to flee.

Shortly after, he died on the island of Sardinia, overcome by chagrin and sorrow. One would expect to read of a new proscription, after this success, but the victors did not resort to that terrible vengeance.

Thus Pompey found himself at the head of Roman affairs.

His first duty was to march against the remnant of the party of the Marians. They had joined Sertorius in Spain. It was the year 76 when Pompey arrived on the scene of his new operations. He found his enemy more formidable than he had supposed, and it was not until five years had passed, and Sertorius had been assassinated, that he was able to achieve the victory and scatter the army of the Marians. Meantime the Romans had been fearing that Sertorius would actually prove strong enough to march upon the capital and perhaps overwhelm it. Hardly had their fears in this respect been quieted than they found themselves menaced by a still more frightful catastrophe.

We remember how, in the year 264 B.C., two young Romans honored the memory of their father by causing men to fight each other to the death with swords to celebrate his funeral, and hints from time to time have shown how the Romans had become more and more fond of seeing human beings hack and hew each other in the amphitheatres. The men who were to be “butchered to make a Roman holiday,” as the poet says, were trained for their horrid work with as much system as is now used in our best gymnasiums to fit men to live lives of happy peace, if not with more. They were divided into classes with particular names, according to the arms they wore, the hours at which they fought, and their modes of fighting, and great were the pains that their instructors took to make them perfect in their bloody work. Down at Capua, that celebrated centre of refinement and luxury, there was a school of gladiators, kept by one Lentulus, who hired his fierce pupils out to the nobles to be used at games and festivals.

While Pompey was away engaged with Sertorius, the enemies of Rome everywhere thought it a favorable moment to give her trouble, and these gladiators conspired in the year 73 to escape to freedom, and thus cheat their captors out of their expected pleasures, and give their own wives and children a little more of their lives. So large was the school that two hundred engaged in the plot, though only seventy-eight were successful in escaping. They hurried away to the mountains, armed with knives and spits that they had been able to snatch from the stalls as they fled, and, directed by one Spartacus who had been leader of a band of robbers, found their way to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, not a comfortable resort one would think; but at that time it was quite different in form from what it is now, the volcano being extinct, so that it afforded many of the advantages of a fortified town. From every quarter the hard-worked slaves flocked to the standard of Spartacus, and soon he found himself at the head of a large army. His plan was to cross the Alps, and find a place of refuge in Gaul or in his native Thrace; but his brutalized followers thought only of the present. They were satisfied if they could now and then capture a rich town, and for a while revel in luxuries; if they could wreak their vengeance by forcing the Romans themselves to fight as gladiators; or, if they had the opportunity to kill those to whom they attributed their former distresses. They cared not to follow their leader to the northward, and thus his wiser plans were baffled; but, in spite of all obstacles, he laid the country waste from the foot of the Alps to the most southern extremity of the toe of the Italian boot. For two years he was able to keep up his war against the Roman people, but at last he was driven to the remotest limits of Bruttium, where his only hope was in getting over to Sicily, in the expectation of gaining other followers; but his army was signally defeated by Crassus, a small remnant only escaping to the northward, where they were exterminated by Pompey, then returning from Spain (B.C. 71). From Capua to Rome six thousand crosses, each bearing a captured slave, showed how carefully and ruthlessly the man-hunt had been pursued by the frightened and exasperated Romans. Both Crassus and Pompey claimed the credit of the final victory, Pompey asserting that though Crassus had scotched the serpent, he had himself killed it.

[Illustration: GLADIATORS.]

On the last day of the year 71 Pompey entered Rome with the honor of a triumph, while Crassus received the less important distinction of an ovation, [Footnote: In a triumph in these times, the victorious general, clad in a robe embroidered with gold, and wearing a laurel wreath, solemnly entered the city riding in a chariot drawn by four horses. The captives and spoils went before him, and the army followed.

He passed along the Via Sacra on the Forum Romanum, and went up to the Capitol to sacrifice in the temple of Jupiter. In the ovation the general entered the city on foot, wore a simple toga, and a wreath of myrtle, and was in other respects not so conspicuously honored as in the triumph. The two celebrations differed in other respects also.] as it was called, because his success had been obtained over slaves, less honorable adversaries than those whom Pompey had met. Each desired to be consul, but neither was properly qualified for the office, and therefore they agreed to overawe the senate and win the office for both, each probably thinking that at the first good opportunity he would get the better of the other. In this plan they were successful, and thus two aristocrats came to the head of government, and the oligarchy, to which one of them belonged, went out of power, and soon Pompey, who all the time posed as the friend of the people, proceeded to repeal the most important parts of the legislation of Sulla. The tribunes were restored, and Pompey openly broke with the aristocracy to which by birth he belonged, thus beginning a new era, for the social class of a man’s family was no longer to indicate the political party to which he should give his adherence.

[Illustration: TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION OF A ROMAN GENERAL]

XV.

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT POMPEY.

The master spirits of this remarkable age were now in full action on the stage, and it is difficult to keep the eye fixed upon all of them at once. Now one is prominent and now another; all are pushing their particular interests, while each tries to make it appear that he has nothing but the good of the state at heart. Whenever it is evident that a certain cause is