ripe for it. It would have been abhorrent from the ideas of Plato or Aristotle; and the broader teaching of the Stoics was theoretical rather than practical, and such as it was had the slightest possible acceptance even among the public men of Rome at this period. Such an attempt had no foundation in current argument, nor in any sense of right as right was then understood. With many of his ablest contemporaries, no doubt, Sulla mistook for the laws of nature the institutions of an obsolete expediency. But nature was carrying on a great work, and proved too strong for art. Ten years sufficed to overthrow the whole structure of this reactionary legislation. The champions of a more liberal policy sprang up in constant succession, and contributed unconsciously to the great work of union and comprehension which was everywhere in rapid progress. The spirit of isolation which had split Greece and Italy into a hundred separate communities, and fostered every casual discrepancy of character by reserved and jealous institutions, was about to yield to a general yearning for social and moral unity. Providence was preparing mankind for the reception of one law and one religion; and for this consummation the nations were to be trained by the steady progress the Roman empire.

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But though Sulla's main policy was to be thus speedily overthrown, he had not lived in vain. As dictator he wasted his strength in attempting what, if successful, would have destroyed his country; but as proconsul he had saved her. The tyranny of the Roman domination had set the provinces in a blaze. Mithridates had fanned the flame. Greece and Asia had revolted. The genius of the king of Pontus might have consolidated an empire such as Xerxes might have envied on both shores of the Egean Sea. But at this crisis of her fate, hardly less imminent than when Hannibal was reviving the hostility of the Gauls and Samnites, Rome had confided her fortunes to the prowess of Sulla. The victory of Charonea checked the dissolution of the empire. The invader was hurled back across the Egean; the cities of Greece returned reluctantly to their obedience, never more to be seduced from it. Sulla followed Mithridates into Asia; one by one he recovered the Eastern provinces of the republic. He bound his foe by treaties to meddle no more with their discontents. He left his officers to enforce his decrees, and quartered the armies of Rome upon the miserable populations. The crisis was averted, though it took twenty years more to subdue the power of Mithridates and reduce Asia to passive submission. Rome was relieved from the last of her foreign invaders, and this was the great work of Sulla which deserved to immortalize him in her annals.

CHAP. XXXV. RENEWAL OF CIVIL WARS.

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CHAPTER XXXV.

Renewal of Civil Wars.-Revolt of the Iberians under Sertorius, and maritime confederacy of the pirates.-The government of the provinces by the proconsuls.-General system of extortion and plunder.─Impoverishment of the provincials by usury.-Political impeachments.-History of C. Verres as an example of provincial misgovernment.-General relaxation of morality.

THE spoil of the provinces had been the bait with which the popular leaders had lured the Italians to their standards. All the legal rights of citizenship had been conceded, but the old oligarchic families, dignified by historic associations and enriched by centuries of conquest, still hoped to maintain their grasp of the honors and emoluments which they made accessible only to the wealthiest. They still looked with scorn themselves, and infused the same sentiment into their inferiors, on the new men-the men of talents and education, but of moderate origin and fortunewho were striving on all sides to thrust themselves into public notice. The judicia were the great instruments by which they protected their monopoly; for by keeping these in their own hands they could quash every attempt to reveal by legal process the enormities of their provincial administration. But as far as each party succeeded in retaining or extorting a share in the plunder, the same system was carried on by both. We cannot point to either the Optimates or the Commons as exceeding the other in rapacity and injustice. The distress and alienation of the provinces became the pressing evil of the times. For the most part the Italians were now satisfied, but in more than one quarter beyond the peninsula the old struggle of the Social Wars was about to be renewed. The second period of the Civil Wars of Rome opens with the revolt of the Spaniards in the West and the maritime confederacy of the pirates in the East. Ambitious or turbulent citizens found a mass of discontent around them from which they could always derive direct assistance, or meet at least with sullen approbation.

The original vice of the provincial administration consisted in the avowed principle that the native races were to be regarded as conquered subjects. The government, civil and military, was quartered upon the inhabitants. Houses and establishments were pro

vided for it at the cost of the provincials. The proconsul's outfit or vasarium was perhaps generally defrayed by a grant from the public treasury; but the charge required for his maintenance, and that of his retinue, entitled salarium, was laid upon the local revenues. The proconsul himself, indeed, was supposed, in strictness, to serve the state gratuitously as a public duty, but practically he was left to remunerate himself by any indirect means of extortion he chose to adopt. As the supreme judicial as well as military authority, there was no appeal against either the edicts he issued or the interpretation he put upon them. The legions in occupation of the province were maintained at free quarters, and their daily pay supplied by the contributions of the inhabitants. The landowners were burdened with a tithe or other rate upon their produce as a tribute to the conquering city. This payment was made generally by a composition, in which the proconsul was instructed to drive the hardest bargain he could for his employers. The local revenues were raised for the most part by direct taxes and customs' dues; and these were usually farmed by Roman contractors, who made large fortunes from the transaction. Public opinion at home was such as rather to stimulate than to check their extortions; for it was a settled maxim of Roman policy that every talent extracted from the provincial for the enrichment of his rulers was a transfer of so much of the sinews of war to the state from its enemies. But the rulers of the world were not content with the extortion of money from their subjects. An era of taste in art had dawned upon the rude conquerors, and every proconsul, quæstor, and tribune was smitten with the desire to bring home trophies of Greek and Asiatic culture. Those among them who cared to ingratiate themselves with their fellow-citizens sought out the choicest statues and pictures, and even the marble columns of edifices, for the decoration of public places in the city. They did not scruple to violate the temples, and ransomed rebellious cities for the plunder of their favorite divinities. The thirst for these spoils led to acts of hateful cruelty; where persuasion failed, punishments and tortures were used. The proconsul and his officers were all bound together in a common cause, and the impunity of the subordinates was repaid by zeal for the interests of their chiefs. Of those who could refrain from open violence, and withhold their hands from the plunder of temples and palaces, few could deny themselves the sordid gains of usury. The demands of the government were enforced without compunction, and communities were repeatedly driven to pledge their revenues to Roman money-lenders. The law permitted the usurer to recover his dues by the severest process. In a celebrated instance the agent of one of the most honorable men at Rome could shut up the senators of a provincial town in their curia, till

CHAP. XXXV.

CAIUS VERRES.

273

five of them actually died of starvation, to recover the debts due to his principal.

When, indeed, their tyranny reached its height the province might sometimes enjoy the sweets of revenge, though with little prospect of redress or of security for the future. In a government by parties the misdeeds of one set of men will often rouse the indignation of their rivals; and while the factions of Rome contended for prerogatives of conquest, they tried to brand each other with the guilt of abusing them. The domination of the senators, as established by Sulla, soon provoked the jealous animadversion of their excluded opponents. Their administration of the provinces, protected as it was by the tribunals in which they reigned supreme, presented a memorable point of attack, and against the crimes of the senatorial proconsuls the deadliest shafts of the popular orators were directed. The remains of Roman eloquence have preserved for us more than one full-length portrait of a provincial tyrant. We cannot, indeed, rely upon the fidelity of the coloring, or even the correctness of the lines; nevertheless their general effect is amply supported by many independent testimonies.

About the period of Sulla's abdication a young noble, named Caius Verres, accompanied the prætor Dolabella to his government of Cilicia. At Sicyon, in Achaia, as he passed along, he thought fit to demand a sum of money of the chief magistrate of the city, and, being refused, shut him up in a close chamber, with a fire of green wood, to extort the gratuity he required. From the same place he carried off several of the finest sculptures and paintings. At Athens he shared with his chief the plunder of the temple of Minerva; at Delos, that of Apollo; at Chios, Erythræa, Halicarnassus, and elsewhere on his route, he perpetrated similar acts of rapine. Samos possessed a temple celebrated throughout Asia; Verres rifled both the temple and the city itself. The Samians complained to the governor of Asia; they were recommended to carry their complaints to Rome. Perga boasted a statue of Diana coated with gold; Verres scraped off the gilding. Miletus offered him the escort of one of her finest vessels; he detained it for his own use and sold it. At Lampsacus he sought to dishonor the daughter of the first citizen of the place; her father and brother ventured to defend her, and slew one of his attendants. Verres seized the pretext to accuse them both of an attempt on his life, and the governor of the province obliged him by cutting off both their heads. Such were the atrocities of the young ruffian, while yet a mere dependent of the proconsul, with no charge or office of his own. Being appointed quæstor, he extended his exactions over every district of the provinces, and speedily amassed, by the avowal of his own

principal, from two to three millions of sesterces beyond the requi sitions of the public service.

Verres could now pay for his clection to the prætorship in the city. For one year he dispensed his favorable judgments to wealthy suitors at home, and on its termination sailed for the province of Sicily. Here his conduct on the tribunal was marked by the most glaring venality. He sold everything, both his patronage and his decisions, making sport of the laws of the country and of his own edicts; of the religion, the fortunes, and the lives of the provincials. During the three years of his government not a single senator of the sixty-five cities of the island was elected without a gratuity to the proprætor. He imposed arbitrary requisitions of many hundred thousand bushels of grain upon the communities already overburdened with their authorized tithes. He distributed cities among his creatures with the air of a Persian despot: Lipara he gave to a boon-companion, Segesta to an actress, Herbita to a courtesan. These exactions threatened to depopulate the country. At the period of his arrival the territory of Leontium possessed eighty-three farms; in the third year of the Verrine administration only thirty-two remained in occupation. At Motya the number of tenanted estates had fallen from a hundred and eighty-eight to a hundred and one; at Herbita, from two hundred and fifty-seven to a hundred and twenty; at Argyrona, from two hundred and fifty to eighty. Throughout the province more than one half of the cultivated lands were abandoned, as if the scourge of war or pestilence had passed over the island.

But Verres was an amateur and an antiquary, and had a taste for art as well as a thirst for lucre. At every city where he stopped on his progresses he extorted gems, vases, and trinkets from his hosts, or from any inhabitant whom he understood to possess them. No one ventured to complain. There was no redress even for a potentate in alliance with the republic, such as Antiochus, king of Syria, who was thus robbed of a splendid candelabrum enriched with jewels, which he was about to dedicate in the Capitol at Rome. All these objects of art were sent off to Italy to decorate the villa of the proprætor. Nor were the antiques and curiosities he thus amassed less valuable than the ornaments of gold and silver. Finally, Verres laid his hands on certain statues of Ceres and Diana, the special objects of worship among the natives, who were only allowed the consolation of coming to offer them their sacrifices in his garden. Nor did the extortion of Verres fall upon the Sicilians only. He cheated the treasury at Rome of the sums advanced to him in payment of corn for the consumption of the city. He withheld the necessary equipments from the fleet which he was directed to send against the pirates, and applied them to