CHAP. XXXVII. POMPEIUS AND CRASSUS.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

Consulship of Pompeius and Crassus, B.C. 70.—Their encouragement of the popular party.-Cæsar impeaches certain provincial governors.-Cicero pleads against Verres, who retires into exile.-Censors appointed to purge the Senate.-Vanity of Pompeius.—The Gabinian law appointing him to the command against the Cilician pirates. His success in this enterprise. -Is supported by Cæsar, who studies to detach him from the Senate.Lucullus conducts a war against Mithridates and Tigranes.—His victory at Tigranocerta.-He is recalled to Rome by the intrigues of Pompeius.The Manilian law confers supreme command in the East on Pompeius. -Success of Pompeius.-The Euphrates declared to be the boundary of the empire. Pompeius expels the Seleucidæ from Palestine.-Death of Mithridates.-Settlement of the East. (B.C. 70-63.)

THE few years which had elapsed since the death of Sulla had witnessed a great change in the attitude of parties. Up to that period every statesman's birth and connections afforded, for the most part, a guarantee for his political views. This natural inheritance was represented in the strongest manner by Marius and Sulla; exceptions had occurred to it before, and especially in the case of the Gracchi; but from this time it almost ceased to exist. While a Senatorial and a popular party continued both in name and fact to be arrayed against one another, they were no longer sharply distinguished by the position and origin of their respective members. The interests of party were no longer identified with those of class. The game of politics becomes now a contest of individual leaders, rather than of ranks and orders. Public interests serve only as a cover for personal ambitions. The men who from this time forward sought to raise themselves to supreme power issued one and all from the ranks of the nobility; nevertheless none of them maintained the cause of the Senate except for some momentary advantage. They all professed at least to devote themselves to the interests of the people; while their real object was self-aggrandizement, to which the favor of the great masses of the people and the provincials seemed more and more essential.

Pompeius and Crassus had entered on their consulship in the year B.C. 70. The nobles had yielded without a strug- v.c. 634. gle to the name and influence of the Great Captain; B. 70. but they feared the popular reforms they believed him to medi

tate, and would willingly have refused him a colleague too well disposed to second them. The consuls soon justified these apprehensions. Their first object was to secure a hold of popular favor through the popular magistrates, the tribunes, and the tribunes were to be gained by the recovery of their ancient prerogatives. The measures which Sulla had taken against them had been already shaken. Catulus and Lucullus, the leaders of the Senatorial party, could do little to resist the power of the consuls impelled by the whole weight of the assembly, and supported by the vigorous agitation of the youthful Cæsar. When the people had secured this advantage, the provincials found willing ears to listen to their indignant complaints of the tyranny of their governors. The popular leaders resolved to bring the character of the judges to the test.

This

Cæsar was the first to throw himself forward and impeach the chiefs of the Senate for malversation abroad. He exposed the iniquities of Dolabella in Cilicia, of Antonius in Achaia, but in both cases the culprits were scandalously acquitted. Pompeius himself encouraged the rising orator M. Tullius Cicero to denounce the crimes of Verres, to which we must for a moment return. man was powerfully supported. His defence was undertaken by Hortensius, the ablest advocate of his party, the favorite of the judges, the acknowledged "king of the law courts." But it was further hoped to secure a favorable prætor, who would have to select the judges for the trial, and with this view it was sought to postpone the process till the year following. The prosecutor was young and inexperienced; he was personally little known, being a new man, a municipal of Arpinum, of knightly family, but of no further distinction. He had pleaded, indeed, with marked ability on some former occasions, and had displayed much spirit in resisting the tyrannical application of one of Sulla's laws, even in the dictator's lifetime. As quæstor in Sicily, a few years before the government of Verres, he had gained credit for purity as well as for official activity. The Sicilians themselves had now enlisted his services in their behalf, and he came forward for the first time as an accuser, having hitherto confined himself to the less invidious branch of his profession, the defence of the accused. Cicero was resolute in resisting the call for delay. He demanded time, however, to collect evidence, which the defendant blindly conceded to him; but he produced his proofs in half the time allotted him. When the prosecutor opened his case, he was already sure of the approval of the consuls; Hortensius himself advised submission, and Verres declined to plead and retired into voluntary exile. Cicero had, in fact, no opportunity of delivering the orations he had prepared, but he published them as a standing impeachment of

CHAP. XXXVII.

THE CILICIAN PIRATES.

287

the system against which they were directed, and the effect the publication produced is a guarantee of their substantial truth. The consuls were emboldened to restore to the knights their share in the judicia, and thus broke down the great bulwark of aristocratic privilege. Pompeius proceeded to strike another blow. Sulla had refused to allow the appointment of censors with the func tion of reviewing the list of the Senate. But the consul would not suffer this office to remain longer in abeyance. Sixty-four of the senators were now removed from the order, as inadequate in their fortune or unworthy from their character; and the whole body was made to feel that it was the instrument of the commonwealth, and not its master. All the blood of Sulla's proscriptions had secured for his political work only eight years of existence.

Pompeius, consul though he was, belonged only to the equestrian order, and he professed to be proud of being numbered therein. His biographer describes the famous scene which he enacted when, being called on by the censors to say whether he had performed all the military services required of him by law, he replied with a loud voice, “I have performed all, and all under my own imperium." The people broke out into loud shouts, and the youthful hero felt that he was popularly recognized as their champion. He gave himself up to the full intoxication of vanity. He required his colleague Crassus to treat him with obsequious respect. To the multitude he assumed an air of haughty reserve. He withdrew from the business of an advocate, which the greatest men of the republic had never disdained; he gradually estranged himself from the Forum, and never went into public except with a crowd of courtiers around him. This affectation of royal manners was not assumed without a purpose, but he could not bend to the compliance of a demagogue; and the people, with all their admiration for him, made no further advances. He felt at last, after two years' dallying with their favor, that he risked losing it altogether, unless he could rouse their enthusiasm by newer exploits. An occasion soon offered worthy of his military genius.

The Mediterranean, the great highway of ancient commerce, was infested by swarms of pirates. Sertorius intrigued with them on the coasts of Spain, Spartacus bargained with them at the Strait of Messana. These were not transactions between a hunted fugitive and a crew of buccaneers; they were rather treaties of service and alliance between military and naval powers. The conquest of Greece had driven thousands of expert mariners from the continent to the islands, from the islands to their ships; these adventurers were fearfully multiplied by every Roman victory in Asia. The coast of Cilicia, indeed, placed midway between the emporiums of Greek and Oriental traffic, had long swarmed with preda

tory flotillas. When Sulla required Mithridates to dismantle his armaments, the sailors carried off their vessels to the fortified harbors of these pirates. Thence they made descents upon various coasts, stormed cities, and sold their captured citizens in the slave marts. Their ships were computed at a thousand, the towns they had plundered at four hundred; they rifled the treasuries and temples of the most venerated of the Grecian deities. Their streamers were gilded, their oars inlaid with silver, their sails were dyed with the Tyrian purple. They sat down on the shore to sumptuous banquets; the coast resounded with the melody of their flutes and tabors. Such were the romantic stories current about them in the East and the West. Towards Rome they manifested more especially their pride and petulance, and took a pleasure in insulting the citizens they captured before consigning them to death.

Even on the coast of Italy several cities were attacked by these marauders. Misenum, Caieta, even Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, were all laid under contribution. Two prætors were carried off from the mainland, with their lictors and ensigns; travellers were stopped and plundered even on the Appian Way. But they wanted a common centre and chief; they had no confidence in one another, and they could not act in concert. Still it might have been long before they would have fallen to pieces of themselves; nor could the Romans be easily roused to make an effort against them by the sufferings of their allies, or even by the indignities practiced on themselves. But when at last the pirates began to cut off the foreign supplies of the city, and it became apparent that Rome herself might be starved into ransom, the danger could no longer be overlooked. The proconsul Servilius had been sent in B. c. 78 to root out their strongholds in Asia Minor. After three laborious campaigns among the mountains of Cilicia, he returned with a triumph and the surname Isauricus. He had taken some cities, destroyed many vessels, captured several chiefs, and given to Cilicia itself the name of a province. These specious successes were of no avail. The pirates were as formidable as ever. Metellus drove them again to sea, and reduced their allies, the mountaineers of Crete. He was duly repaid with the title of Creticus. But chased from one point, they quickly reappeared at another, and at sea at least could generally evade the pursuit of the Roman armaments.

U.O. 676.

B.C. 78.

Meanwhile the corn-ships of Sicily and Africa ceased to arrive; the largesses of grain to the people were abruptly stopped. Threatened with the worst of evils, Rome ran blindly upon the most desU.O. 687. perate of remedies. In the year 67 the tribune Gabinius B.C. 67. proposed that some man of consular rank-pointing of course to Pompeius-should be invested for a period of three years

CHAP. XXXVII. SUPPRESSION OF THE PIRATES.

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with absolute authority over ail the waters of the Mediterranean, together with its coasts for fifty miles inland. The whole Roman empire was, in fact, little more than such a fringe of territory, enclosing the great midland ocean. In vain did the affrighted senators resist and instigate a riot in the city, or oppose the veto of one tribune against the measures of another. The motion was carried; Pompeius was named with acclamations, and a force of 120,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 500 galleys placed under his orders.

As the price of provisions fell at once on the passing of the bill, the people exclaimed that the very name of their new champion had put an end to the crisis. The event fell, indeed, little short of this boast. Pompeius chose twenty-four senators for his lieutenants, and divided the Mediterranean into thirteen portions, appointing a squadron and commander for each. With his force thus distributed in every quarter he enclosed the enemy as with a net, and brought them unresisting to land. Such of them as escaped his toils, or broke through the meshes, fled with all speed to their usual rendezvous in Cilicia, as bees, says Plutarch, to their hive. Pompeius chased them with a select squadron, but in the mean time he had completely cleared the Western waters, and that within the space of forty days. The fugitives rallied on their own coasts and encountered him in a naval engagement. Routed at sea, they took refuge within the walls of Coracesium; but the moderation of their conqueror encouraged them to capitulate, and Pompeius was satisfied with dispersing them in small parties among the neighboring cities. To Soli, one of the colonies thus established, he gave the name of Pompeiopolis, another was planted at Dymæ, in Achaia, a third even in Calabria. This policy proved judicious, and for a time at least the plague of piracy was stayed, though we shall find it rife again at a later period. The "piratie laurel" was fairly won, and the victor deserves the credit of one of the most successful operations in Roman warfare.

As the favorite of the people, and claiming to be their patron, Pompeius obtained support from Cæsar, whose services he accepted with dignified condescension. But Cæsar, under the great man's shadow, was advancing his own schemes. He desired to detach Pompeius from the Senate, and frustrate the project which he and Cicero seemed to contemplate of uniting the rival orders under a virtual dictatorship. It might be that such a project was altogether visionary. The chief of the Romans, for many years to come, could only be the champion of one faction for the coercion of the rest, and meanwhile any attempt to fuse irreconcilable interests would be resented as the sacrifice of one to another. On his return from his quæstorship in Spain, Cæsar connected himself more closely with