36 over the whole sea and all its coasts for fifty miles inland, with officers, soldiers, seamen, and supplies according to his own demands, and a fleet of two hundred ships besides.35 Against this extraordinary commission, which Cæsar and probably Cicero both approved, the Senate, -applying the name to the majority of that body, with some of the magistrates in office, alone appeared in opposition. The countries adjoining the coasts and the islands of the Mediterranean, held by the Senators or their fellowmembers, were too precious in spoils and in services to themselves to be surrendered even to the control of Pompey; but though their resistance provoked the old tumults of the Forum, the bill was passed, and the only man, as Gabinius said,38 to be found for the command, received it, with large additions to the supplies previously voted. Twenty-four Senators were taken as his lieutenants, besides two Quæstors; five thousand horse, one hundred and twenty thousand heavy-armed, and many thousand light-armed, troops were raised; and five hundred vessels in all were manned. The price of provisions instantly fell, on the appointment of Pompey; and he, after sweeping the seas, routed the pirates on shore within three short months from the time of his departure from 35 A. C. 67. Vell. Pat., II. 31. Plut., Pomp., 25. 36 Plutarch (loc. cit.) speaks of Cæsar. Cicero, in his oration for the Manilian law, speaks for himself in relation to the Gabinian. 37 See the reported harangue of Catulus in Dion Cass., XXXVI. 14 et seq., especially 16. 38 Ibid., XXXVI. 10. Compare the anecdote concerning Catulus in Vell. Pat., II. 32. Rome.39 On the other hand, the interference, feared by the Senate, soon came to pass in Crete, where Metellus, afterwards surnamed Creticus, was superseded by Pompey in the command of a war against the islanders; his triumph likewise being subsequently prevented by the partisans of his superior at home.40 But there were no circumstances so untoward as to hinder the acknowledgment that the great commission against the pirates had been splendidly executed.41 42 Pompey's eyes were already fixed upon a new command, to which the overthrow of the pirates had been, perhaps, from the first, intended as an easy stepping-stone. A second war with Mithridates, beginning eight years previously, had been prosecuted against the untiring monarch by Licinius Lucullus, whose skill and activity were so entirely neutralized by his inability to attach or to control his soldiers, that at the end of long and repeated campaigns it seemed as if the work of the day had been undone in the night-time. It was for Pompey, as he and most of his countrymen believed, to conclude the contest. Another Tribune, Caius Manilius, was found by the partisans of the absent hero to propose a bill transferring the military forces and operations in the East to the direction of Pompey, without his being de 43 prived of the nearly unlimited authority he actually possessed. The opposition on the part of the Senate was renewed; but Cicero, then in the prætorship, supported the bill with all the eloquence that submission to the great citizen or gratitude for his achievements could inspire; 45 and the person of Pompey, as the historian remarks, was formally made the pivot of the Roman world.46 We may leave him for the present in pursuit of victories. And we no sooner turn from him to the condition of the Commonwealth he has left behind and beneath him, than we see, as plainly as though we were living there ourselves, that the great problem of establishing public order in the midst of decaying liberties has not yet been solved. One Tribune is engaged in passing a law, which is instantly repealed, to admit the freedmen promiscuously amongst the Tribes.47 Another retorts with a statute to remove all aliens from the city, and to punish such as have unwarrantably assumed the rights of citizenship. Then appear two Consuls elect, charged with bribery so offensive that they are not only condemn 44 Liv., Epit. C. laws. Gesch. Roms, Vol. VI. pp. 45 See the glowing eulogy in Cic., 401 et seq. Pro Leg. Man., 14. 46 "Converterat Cn. Pompeii persona totum in se terrarum orbem." Vell. Pat., II. 31. Cf. Plut., Pomp., 30. All the old writers (not contemporaries) remark upon the supremacy which Pompey now held. See Drumann's detailed account of the Gabinian and Manilian 47 A. C. 67; repealed 66. The same Tribune, Manilius, mentioned above. Ascon., in Cic., Pro Mil., 8. Dion Cass., XXXVI. 25. 48 A. C. 65. The Papian law, as it was called from its author. Cic., De Off., III. 11. Dion Cass., XXXVII. 9. ed, but displaced in office by their previously unsuccessful competitors. Yet deeper grows the gloom. The two culprits, joined by Lucius Sergius Catiline, a man whose name is like a household word for dissolute habits and ferocious passions, determine to murder the citizens elected in their stead; and some higher personages, like Crassus and Cæsar, are suspected of having a part in the conspiracy.49 When this has failed, without its investigation or its suppression having been proposed, the indignation of men like Porcius Cato returns against the assassins and the villains who have survived the days of Sulla in enjoyment of their sanguinary gains.50 It is an ominous contradiction that we witness between the anxiety concerning evils of an older date and the apparent indifference towards those with which the present and the future are alike infested and endangered. 49 End of A. C. 66 and beginning of 65. The condemned were Autronius Pætus and P. Corn. Sulla, the Dictator's nephew. They were accused by L. Manlius Torquatus, and displaced by his father and L. Aurel. Cotta, the same whose prætorship and law have been mentioned. Cic., Pro Sull., 2, 3, 17, 18; De Fin. Bon. et Mal., II. 19. 9; 50 Cato was then (A. C. 65) Quæstor. Plut., Cat. Min., 17. Dion Cass., XXXVII. 10. CHAPTER VI. CICERO: RESORT TO UNION. "There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable."- BACON, Essays, X. "Obsecro, abjiciamus ista, et semiliberi saltem simus."-CICERO, Epist. ad Atticum, XIII. 31. WHILE Cicero was in Greece, pursuing the studies in which he delighted far more than in the wars or the factions of Rome, he went, without much faith, to ask the oracle at Delphi how he might win the highest fame. The answer was returned, that he must follow his own nature rather than the opinions of the multitude.' It was at once the advantage and the disadvantage of Cicero, that the injunction of the oracle, whether it were really given, or merely imag ined as a tradition of after years, was necessarily his only inspiration. He lived in an age when human virtues were no longer generally trusted, and when human laws were no longer generally reverenced. The result of errors and crimes innumerable had been to leave men with 1 Plut., Cic., 5. Middleton discredits the story. Life of Cicero, Sect. I. p. 15. |