CHAP. XLIII. INTERREGNUM AND INTRIGUES.

335

CHAPTER XLIII.

Interregnum, and intrigues in the city.-Reign of violence.-Clodius slain in a fray with Milo.-The nobles effect the appointment of Pompeius sole consul B. c. 52.-Pompeius detaches himself from Cæsar.-He surrenders Milo to be tried and banished.-Tranquillity is restored.-Cæsar's buildings in Rome. He demands a second consulship as necessary for his personal safety. He is affronted by the Senatorial party.-Indecision of Pompeius.-Cicero proconsul in Cilicia.-l'ompeius falls sick, but recovers. — The sympathy of the Italians raises his confidence in himself.--Cæsar's precarious position at the opening of the year 50.-He is threatened with the loss of his province, while Pompeius refuses to surrender Spain.Curio supports Cæsar as tribune, declares his person endangered, and seeks Cæsar in his camp, while Pompeius arms in defence of the city.

THE slaughter of a proconsul and the rout of several legions, the gravest disaster which had befallen the Roman arms since the first victories of the Cimbri, made but a faint impression upon the citizens, whose whole attention was absorbed by the state of affairs at home. At a later period this famous defeat became the theme of popular and courtly poets, and the emperor was invoked to redress it by a signal effort. But at the time the effect which the death of Crassus might produce upon the coalition of the surviving triumvirs, already shaken by the decease of the daughter of one and the wife of the other, seemed of more vifal interest. During the absence of Crassus from Rome corruption and insolence had advanced to more extravagance than ever, had generated a well-founded despair of the republic, and driven the best men of the state to contemplate more and more the necessity of a dictatorship. The year 701 opened with an interregnum, which lasted for not less than six months. The flagrant bribery of the candidates had induced the Senate and the most honorable of v.0.701. the tribunes to combine in preventing the assembling of 1.0.53. the comitia, and on the 1st of January no consuls had been elected. But as time went on Cato himself became alarmed at the crisis, and prevailed upon Pompeius, as the only remaining power in the state, to require an election to be held. Pompeius, released from his close connection with Cæsar, and informed by this time of the death of Crassus, gladly drew nearer to the party from which he had permitted himself to be estranged. When he interposed to facilitate the election of Calvinus and Messala, the nobles

accepted his gracious advances, and hailed him once more as the champion of their interests.

B.O. 52.

The calm, however, which succeeded was of short duration. Again the election for the ensuing year was thwarted, and this time U.O. 702. Pompeius was suspected of stopping the wheels of government. The year 52 opened, like the preceding, with an interregnum. Milo, Scipio, and Hypsæus demanded the consulship with arms in their hands; every day was marked by some fresh riot, in which blood not unfrequently flowed. But amid the obscure murders which disgraced this era of violence and ferocity there was one which caused a deeper sensation, and demanded stronger measures of repression. It happened that Milo was travelling on the Appian Way, accompanied in his carriage by his wife, and attended by a retinue of servants, and, as was his wont, by a troop of gladiators. Near to Bovillæ, a few miles from the city, he was met by Clodius, who was on horseback, with a small company of armed attendants. It does not appear that the affray which ensued was premeditated. To travel with an armed escort was not unusual even in the vicinity of the city, and men of violence, such as both Milo and Clodius, might be apprehensive of violence themselves. However this might be, a quarrel ensued between their servants, and Clodius, wounded in the struggle, took refuge in a roadside tavern. Milo gave way to his fury, attacked the house, and caused his enemy to be dragged forth and slain. The corpse lay in the road till it was picked up by a passing friend and brought to Rome. Here it was exposed to the gaze of the multitude, who worked themselves into frenzy at the sight. A riot ensued; benches, books, and papers were snatched from the curia in which the Senate was wont to assemble; fire was set to the pile, and the flames which consumed the remains of Clodius spread from house to house over a considerable space bordering upon the Forum. The rioters proceeded to attack the mansions of several nobles, and particularly that of Milo himself. He was prepared, however, for the attempt, and repulsed the assailants with bloodshed. The knights and senators armed themselves to suppress the commotion, and quiet was restored after several days of uproar and violence.

But this personal combat of two distinguished nobles in open day, the fury of the populace, the recourse of the chiefs of the city to arms for their own protection, the impossibility of maintaining the supremacy of the law-for Milo, scared by the clamor, dared not stand a trial, but proposed to fling himself into banishment-all too manifestly threatened the republic with anarchy and dissolution. Men of peace, such as Cicero, held aloof from these sanguinary affrays, and fled from a city where there was no longer

CHAP. XLIII.

POMPEIUS SOLE CONSUL.

337

a People or a Senate, where the laws were silent, and the tribunals timid or corrupt. The great parties which had formerly represented social interests had degenerated into mere personal factions, which sought power for the sake of violence and plunder. Few honest patriots still continued to haunt the Forum or even to obtrude themselves upon the cabals of the Senate-house. Cato him self, as we have seen, though unshaken in courage, despaired of the ancient principles of the commonwealth. Liberty, he saw, was menaced by two dangers-within by anarchy, without by usurpation; and when he looked around for a defender he found, even in those whom Cicero had denominated the party of the "good men," so much cowardice and selfishness that he at last resolved to demand from an individual that protection for the state which the laws could no longer assure to her. "It is better," he said, "to choose a master, than to wait for the tyrant whom anarchy will impose upon us." But there remained, in fact, no choice in the matter. There was as yet only one master at whose feet Rome could throw herself. With bitter reluctance Bibulus proposed the appointment of Pompeius as sole consul, and Cato supported him. They might hope that, content with this title, which sounded a little less harsh than that of dictator, the great man would use his power with moderation, that he would restore order in the city, and find means for compelling the proconsul of Gaul to surrender his province and disband his armies. The repression of scandalous disorders, the overthrow of a licentious ambition, might after all be cheaply purchased by one year of despotism. Such was the fatal reasoning to which the friends of liberty were reduced, and they shut their eyes to the danger of the precedent they were establishing, while Pompeius declared that he would take Cato as his adviser, and rule the state in the interests of freedom.

V.C. 702.

B. C. 52.

The sole consul entered upon his office at the end of February, 702. He now threw off all pretence of an alliance with Cæsar, and devoted himself without reserve to the policy of the Optimates. His natural position he felt to be the head of the oligarchy. Twice already he had achieved this position, and twice he had imprudently relinquished it. The consulship was indeed an empty honor, but the proconsular imperium, which he still firmly grasped, he was determined never to resign, at the same time that he promised to wrest it from the hands of Cæsar. Meanwhile he was content to surrender Milo to the anger of the populace. The culprit, arraigned before a select body of eightyone judges, enlisted Cicero in his defence. The great orator prepared to assert his client's innocence, and to congratulate the people on the issue of an act of self-defence which had struck down the

arch-disturber of all laws, divine and human. But when he rose before the tribunal he was greeted by furious shouts, and was dismayed by the display of armed force which the consul had introduced into the Forum. He stammered through a short and nerveless speech, and sat down leaving his task half finished. Milo, convicted of the murder, was allowed to go into banishment, and chose Massilia for his retreat. On returning home Cicero composed for publication the speech he should have delivered in his defence. His vanity prompted him to send to his client the splendid declamation he had executed. The exile

perused it, and sarcastically replied that he deemed himself fortunate that so convincing a speech had never been actually spoken; "else," he said, "I should not be now enjoying the delicious mullets of this place."

With the death of Clodius, the disappearance of Milo, and the dispersion of the armed bands which had kept the city in an uproar, tranquillity once again returned. The pupil of Sulla, the conqueror of the Marians, was justly feared by the disturbers of the public peace. But Pompeius was unable to conceive any large measures for the public weal. His laws against bribery and other specious measures were mere palliative expedients. Nor did he care to respect them in his own person. He had interdicted the eulogies which the powerful friends of an accused man had been allowed to utter before the judges in his behalf; but when Metellus Scipio, whose daughter he had recently espoused, was cited before a tribunal, he condescended to speak himself in his favor, and thereby extort his acquittal. He had obtained a Zecree that no magistrate should have a province till five years after quitting his office at home; but this excellent enactment he promptly violated in his own case, by causing his proconsulship to be prolonged for a second term, while he was actually consul. Again, he had appointed that no man should sue for a public charge while absent from the city; but when he found it for his interest to facilitate Cesar's election to a second consulship, in der to withdraw from him his Gallic legions, he made an exception to this law also.

The brilliant successes of the conqueror of the Gauls had impressed the minds of the citizens, to whom the name of the Northern barbarians was still fraught with its traditional terrors. Nor were his victories unproductive of substantial effects. The Curia Hostilia was burned in the recent riot, and the site was used for new and more splendid structures. The halls of Julius, and of Emilius, a wealthy magnate, rose together on opposite sides of the Roman Forum, and marked on the north and south the original limits of the enclosure, while another space was

CHAP. XLIII.

CRITICAL POSITION OF CÆSAR.

339

cleared for the construction of a Julian Forum, to give greater room for the circulation of the increasing multitudes of the city. Great had been the mortification of the Senatorial leaders at finding that, even at a distance, Cæsar could control the elections of the city, and few of the chief magistrates had succeeded to office during his absence without the support of his influence. When he now declared through his adherents his desire for a second consulship, he knew that he stood on firmer ground than ever. He could demand that the restrictions of the law should be relaxed for him, as formerly for his rivals. The concession, therefore, which Pompeius now made was doubtless extorted from him by the resolute attitude he assumed, and whatever grace it might have borne was lost by the evident reluctance with which it was accorded.

Neither was the demand itself an act of mere vanity or rudeness. It was a matter of vital importance to him, when his government was about to expire, even if it were not wrested from him by the impatience of his enemies, to light at his return to Rome on a position of security. Unless his personal safety were guaranteed by the dignity of the consular office, it would lie at the mercy of inveterate foes, already prepared to impeach him for pretended misgovernment, if not to rid themselves of his presence by fouler means. Their ravings against him were loud and pertinacious. They watched every turn of his career with ill-dissembled anxiety; and whenever sinister rumors reached the city-when his subjects were reported to have risen against him, when his legions were represented as surrounded, his resources as having failed, his men as having mutinied or murmured-their demeanor plainly showed how much they hoped for the confirmation of the disastrous news, and how gladly they would have heard that the conqueror of Gaul had met the fate of the invader of Parthia. It was impossible for Cæsar to relinquish his government in the ordinary course, and return in a private capacity to Rome. He had attained an eminence from which there was no descent for him. He must step at once from the proconsulship to the consulship, in order to exchange once more from consul to proconsul. He could never lay down the ensigns of military autocracy. Was this necessity of his own making, or was it imposed upon him by his enemies? The question can never be precisely answered, the cause and the effect can never be disentangled. But it is most important to note what the position really was, for this was the critical point on which the impending establishment of the empire turned.

At the end of six months Pompeius divested himself of the invidious distinction of the sole consulship, and caused his father-in