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

city through imprudence of the conspirators and the skill of Cicero, and he himself fled, hoping to reach Gaul. He was, however, hemmed in by the Roman army and killed in a battle. Catiline’s head was sent to Rome to assure the government that he was no more. Cicero, who had caused nine of the conspirators to be put to death, [Footnote: Under Roman law no citizen could legally be put to death except by the sanction of the Comitia Curiata, the sovereign assembly of the people, though it often happened that the regulation was ignored. If nobody dared or cared to object, no notice was taken of the irregularity, but we shall see that Cicero paid dearly for his action at this time.] now laid down his consular authority amid the plaudits of the people, who, under the lead of Cato and Catulus, hailed him as the Father of his Country.

 

Cicero was apparently spoiled by his success. Carried away by his own oratorical ability, he too often reminded the people in his long and eloquent speeches of the great deeds that he had done for the country.

They cheered him as he spoke, but after this they never raised him to power again.

 

Just about this time a noble named Publius Clodius Pulcher, who was a demagogue of the worst moral character, in the pursuance of his base intrigues, committed an act of sacrilege by entering the house of Cæsar, disguised as a woman, during the celebration of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which men were never admitted. He was tried for the impiety, and, through the efforts of Cicero, was almost convicted, though he managed to escape by bribery. He was ever afterward a determined enemy of the great orator, and, by the aid of Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus, finally succeeded in having him condemned for putting to death the Catilinian conspirators without due process of law. Cicero does not appear manly in the story of this affair. He left Rome, fearing to face the result; and after he had gone Clodius caused a bill to be passed by which he was declared a public enemy, and every citizen was forbidden to give him fire or water within four hundred miles of Rome (spring of 58). He found his way to Brundusium and thence to Greece, where he passed his time in the most unmanly wailings and gloomy forebodings. His property was confiscated, his rich house on the Palatine Hill and his villas being given over to plunder and destruction. Strange as it appears, Cicero was recalled the next year, and entered the city amid the hearty plaudits of the changeful people, though his self-respect was gone and his spirit broken.

 

Meantime, Cæsar had been quietly pushing himself to the front. He had returned from Spain, where he had been governor, at about the time that Pompey had returned from the East. He reconciled that great warrior to Crassus (called from his immense wealth Dives, the rich), and with the two made a secret arrangement to control the government. This was known as the First Triumvirate [Footnote: Each of the three pledged himself not to speak nor to act except to subverse the common interest of all, though of course they were not sincere in their promises of mutual support.] or government of three men, though it was only a coalition, and did not strictly deserve the name given it (B.C. 60).

Cæsar reaped the first-fruits of the league, as he intended, by securing the office of consul, through the assistance of his colleagues, whose influence proved irresistible.

 

[Illustration: THE FORUM ROMANUM IN MODERN TIMES.]

 

Entering upon his office in the year 59, Cæsar very soon obtained the good-will of all,—first winning the people by proposing an agrarian law dividing the public lands among them. This was the last law of this sort, as that of Cassius (B.C. 486) had been the first. [Footnote: See page 83.] He rewarded Crassus by means of a law remitting one third of the sum that the publicans who had agreed to farm the revenues in Asia Minor had contracted to pay to the state; and satisfied Pompey by a ratification of all his acts in the East. The distribution of the lands among the people was placed in the hands of Pompey and Crassus.

 

At the end of his term of office Cæsar was made governor of Gaul, an office which he sought no more for the opportunity it afforded of gaining renown by conquering those ancient enemies who had formerly visited Rome with such dire devastation, than because he hoped to win for himself an army and partisans who would be useful in carrying out further ambitious ends.

 

Cæsar now entered upon a wonderful career of conquest, which lasted nine years. The story of what he accomplished during the first seven is given in his “Commentaries,” as they are called, which are still read in schools, on account of the incomparable simplicity, naturalness, and purity of the style in which they are written, as well as because they seem to give truthful accounts of the events they describe. Sixty years before this time the Romans had possessed themselves of a little strip of Gaul south of the Alps, which was known as the Province, [Footnote: See pages 166 and 182.] and though they had ever since thought that there was a very important region to the north and west that might be conquered, they made no great effort to gain it. Cæsar was now to win imperishable laurels by effecting what had been before only vaguely dreamed of. He first made himself master of the country of the Helvetii (modern Switzerland), defeated the Germans under their famous general Ariovistus, and subjected the Belgian confederacy. The frightful carnage involved in these campaigns cannot be described, and the thousands upon thousands of brave barbarians who were sacrificed to the extension of Roman civilization are enough to make one shudder. When the despatches of Cæsar announcing his successes reached Rome, the senate, on motion of Cicero, though against the protestations of Cato, ordained that a grand public thanksgiving, lasting fifteen days, should be celebrated (B.C. 57). This was an unheard-of honor, the most ostentatious thanksgiving of the kind before—that given to Pompey, after the close of the war against Mithridates—having lasted but ten days.

 

Pompey and Crassus had fallen out during the absence of Cæsar, and he now invited them to meet and consult at Lucca, at the foot of the Apennines, just north of Pisa, where (April, 56) he held a sort of court, hundreds of Roman senators waiting upon him to receive the bribes with which he ensured the success of his measures during his absences in the field. [Footnote: Pompey had left Rome ostensibly for the purpose of arranging for supplies of grain from Africa and Sardinia. He was followed by many of his most noted adherents, the conference counting more than two hundred senators and sixscore lictors. Cæsar, like a mighty magician, caused the discordant spirits to act in concert. The power of the triumvirs is shown by the change that came over public opinion, and the calmness with which their acts were submitted to, though it was evident that the historic form of government was to be overturned, and a monarchy established. ] Here the three agreed that Pompey should rule Spain, Crassus Syria, and Cæsar Gaul, which he had made his own. Cæsar still kept on with his conquests, meeting desperate resistance, however, from the hordes of barbarians, who would not remain conquered, but engaged in revolts that caused him vast trouble and the loss of large numbers of soldiers.

Incidentally to his other wars, he made two incursions into Britain, the home of our forefathers (B.C. 55 and 54), and nominally conquered the people, but it was not a real subjugation. Shakespeare did not make a mistake when he put into the mouth of the queen-wife of Cymbeline the words:

 

* “A kind of conquest

Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag Of ‘came’ and ‘saw’ and ‘overcame,’”

 

and certainly the brave Britons did not continue to obey their self-styled Roman “rulers.”

 

In the sixth year of Cæsar’s campaigns in Gaul, it seemed as if all was to be lost to the Romans. There arose a young general named Vercingetorix, who was much abler than any leader the Gauls had ever opposed to their enemies, and he united them as they had never been united before. This man persuaded his countrymen to lay their own country waste, in order that it might not afford any abiding place for the Romans, but contrary to his intentions one town that was strongly fortified was left, and to that Cæsar laid siege, finally taking it and butchering all the men, women, and children that it contained.

Vercingetorix then fortified himself at Alesia (southeast of Paris), where he was, of course, besieged by the Romans, but soon Cæsar found his own forces attacked in the rear, and surrounded by a vast army of Gauls, who had come to the relief of their leader. In the face of such odds, he succeeded in vanquishing the enemy, and took the place, achieving the most wonderful act of his genius. The conquered chief was reserved to grace a Roman triumph, and to die by the hand of a Roman executioner. [Footnote: The historian Mommsen says of this unfortunate “barbarian”: “As after a day of gloom the sun breaks through the clouds at its setting, so destiny bestows on nations in their decline a last great man. Thus Hannibal stands at the close of the Phoenician history and Vercingetorix at the close of the Celtic. They were not all to save the nations to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them the last remaining disgrace—an ignominious fall…. The whole ancient world presents no more genuine knight [than Vercingetorix], whether as regards his essential character or his outward appearance.”]

The fate of Gaul was now certain, and Cæsar found comparatively little difficulty in subduing the remaining states, the last of which was Aquitania, the flat and uninteresting region in the southwest of modern France, watered by the Garonne and washed by the Atlantic. The conqueror treated the Gauls with mildness, and endeavored in every way to make them adopt Roman habits and customs. As they had lost all hope of resisting him, they calmly accepted the situation, and the foundation of the subsequent Romanizing of the west of Europe was laid.

Three million Gauls had been conquered, a million had been butchered, and another million taken captive, while eight hundred cities, centres of active life and places of the enjoyment of those social virtues for which the rough inhabitants of the region were noted, had been destroyed. Legions of Roman soldiers had been cut to pieces in accomplishing this result, the influence of which upon the history of Europe can hardly be over-estimated Cæsar had completely eclipsed the military prestige of his rival, Pompey the Great.

 

XVI.

 

HOW THE TRIUMVIRS CAME TO UNTIMELY ENDS.

 

It was agreed at the conference of Lucca that Pompey should rule Spain, but it did not suit his plans to go to that distant country. He preferred to remain at Rome, where he thought that he might do something that would establish his influence with the people, and give him the advantage over his colleagues that they were each seeking to get over him. In order to court popularity, he built the first stone theatre that Rome had ever seen, capable of accommodating the enormous number of forty thousand spectators, and opened it with a splendid exhibition (B.C. 55). [Footnote: This theatre was built after the model of one that Pompey had seen at Mitylene, and stood between the Campus Martius and