Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/787

Rh POMPEY.j ROME 763 of runaway slaves, outlaws, brigands, and impoverished peasants. By the' end of 73 he had 70,000 men under his command, had twice defeated the Roman troops, and was master of southern Italy. In 72 he advanced on Rome, but, though he again routed the legions led against him by the consuls in person, he abandoned his scheme and established himself in the now desolate country near Thurii, already the natural home of brigandage. At length in 71 the praetor Crassus, who had been sent against him with no less than six legions, ended the war. Spartacus was defeated and slain in Apulia. In Rome itself the various classes and parties hostile to the Sullan system had, ever since Sulla's death in 78, been incessantly agitating for the repeal of his most obnoxious laws, and needed only a leader in order successfully to attack a government discredited by failure at home and abroad. With the return of Pompey from Spain their opportunity came. Pompey, who understood politics as little as Marius, was anxious to obtain what the senate was more than likely to refuse to give him, and what he was not legally entitled to a triumph, the consulship for the next year (70), and as the natural consequence of this an important command in the East. The opposition wanted his name and support, and a bargain was soon struck. Pompey and with him Marcus Crassus, the con- queror of Spartacus, were elected consuls, almost in the presence of their troops, which lay encamped outside the gates in readiness to assist at the triumph and ovation granted to their respective leaders. Pompey lost no time in performing his part of the agreement. The tribunes regained their prerogatives. 1 The " perpetual courts" were taken out of the hands of the senatorial judices, who had outdone the equestrian order in scandalous corrup- tion, 2 and finally the censors, the first since 86 B.C., purged the senate of the more worthless and disreputable of Sulla's partisans. 3 The victory was complete ; but for the future its chief significance lay in the clearness with which it showed that the final decision in matters political lay with neither of the two great parties in Rome, but with the holder of the military authority. The recognition of this fact was fatal to the dignity of politics in the city. In proportion as the mass of the Roman community in Italy, and able aspirants to power, like Caesar, became conscious of the unreality of the old constitutional controversies, they became indifferent to the questions which agitated the forum and the curia and contemptuously ready to alter or disregard the constitution itself, when it stood in the way of interests nearer to their hearts. Of this grow- ing indifference to the traditional politics of the republic, against which Cicero struggled in vain, Pompey is an excellent example. He was absolutely without interest in them, except in so far as they led up to important military commands, and, though he was never revolutionary in intention, his own career, in its quiet defiance of all the established rules of the constitution, did almost more than the direct attacks of others to render the republic impos- sible. When his consulship ended, Pompey impatiently awaited at the hands of the politicians he had befriended the further gift of a foreign command. He declined an ordinary 1 The exact provisions of Pompey's law are nowhere given ; Livy, Epit., xcvii., "tribuniciam potestatem restituerunt. " Cf. Velleius, ii. 30. A "lex Aurelia," in 75, had already repealed the law dis- qualifying a tribune for further office ; Cic., Corn., fr. 78. 2 This was the work of L. Aurelins Cotta, praetor in this year. The "judices" were to be taken in equal proportions from senators, equites, and " tribuni aerarii." For the latter and for the law generally, see Madvig, Verf., i. 182, ii. 222; Lange, R. Alt., iii. 193. Com- pare also Cicero's language, In Verr., i. 1, 15. The prosecution of Verres shortly preceded the lex Aurelia. 3 Livy, Epit., xcviii. Sixty-four senators were expelled. Cf, Plut., Pomp., 22 ; Cic. In Verr., i. 1, 15. province, and from the end of 70 to 67 he remained at 684-7. Rome in a somewhat affectedly dignified seclusion. 4 But in 67 and 66 the laws of Gabinius and Manilius gave him 687, 688. all and more than all that he expected. The ravages of the pirates, encouraged in the first instance by the inactivity which had marked Roman policy in the East after 167, and by the absence of any effective Roman navy in the Mediterranean, had now risen to an intolerable height, and the spasmodic efforts made since 81 had done little to check them. The trade of the Mediterranean was para- lysed, and even the coasts of Italy were not safe from their raids. 5 Aulus Gabinius, a tribune, and a follower of Pompey, now proposed to the people to entrust Pompey with the sole command against the pirates. 6 His com- mand was to last for three years. He was to have supreme authority over all Roman magistrates in the provinces throughout the Mediterranean and over the coasts for 50 miles inland. Fifteen legati, all of praetorian rank, were assigned to him, with two hundred ships, and as many troops as he thought desirable. These powers were still further enlarged in the next year by the Manilian law, which transferred from Lucullus and Glabrio to Pompey the conduct of the Mithradatic war in Asia, and with it the entire control of Roman policy and interests in the East. 7 The unrepublican character of the position thus granted to Pompey, and the dangers of the precedent established, were clearly enough pointed out by such moderate men as Q. Lutatius Catulus, the " father of the senate," and by the orator Hortensius but in vain. Both laws were sup- ported, not only by the tribunes and the populace, but by the whole influence of the " publicani " and " nego- tiatores," whose interests in the East were at stake. Pompey left Rome in 67, and did not return to Italy Caesar, till towards the end of 62. The interval was marked in 687, 692. Rome by the rise to political importance of Csesar and Cicero, and by Catiline's attempt at revolution. When in 70 684. the removal of the restrictions placed upon the tribunate restored to the popular party their old weapons of attack, Caesar was already a marked man. In addition to his patrician birth, and his reputation for daring and ability, he possessed, as the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna, a strong hereditary claim to the leadership of the popular and Marian party. He had already taken part in the agitation for the restoration of the tribunate ; he had supported the Manilian law; and, when Pompey's withdrawal left the field clear for other competitors, he stepped at once into the front rank on the popular side. 8 He took upon himself, as their nearest representative, the task of clearing the memory and avenging the wrongs of the great popular leaders, Marius, Cinna, and Saturninus. He publicly reminded the people of Marius's services, and set up again upon the Capitol the trophies of the Cimbric War. He endeavoured to bring to justice, not only the ringleaders in Sulla's bloody work of proscription, but even the murderers of Saturninus, and vehemently pleaded the cause of the children of the proscribed. While thus carrying on in genuine Roman fashion the feud of his family, he attracted -the sympathies of the Italians by his efforts to procure the Roman franchise for the Latin communities beyond the Po, and won the affections of the populace in Rome and its immediate neighbourhood by the splendour of the games which he gave as curule sedile (65), and by his lavish expenditure upon the improve- 689. 4 Velleius, ii. 31 ; Plut., Pomp., 23. 5 See the brilliant sketch by Mommsen, R. G., iii. 39 sq. 6 Plut., Pomp., 25 ; Dio, xxxvi. 6 ; Livy, Epit., c. 7 Cic. Pro Lege Manilla ; Dio, xxxvi. 25.; Plut., Pomp., 30. 8 Prof. Beesly, in his essay on Catiline, has vainly endeavoured to show that Catiline and not Cnesar was the popular leader from 67 to 63. That this is the inference intentionally conveyed by Sallust, in order to screen Csesar, is true, but the inference is a false one.