ROME 



791 



reverse, to put himself on even terms with Pompey 

 before that magnate's return. Crassus, the 

 millionaire, he found a tractable auxiliary, in 

 concert with whom he was rapidly gaining powers 

 hardly inferior to Pompey's, when the Catilinarian 

 conspiracy (63), exposed and defeated by Cicero 

 as consul, involved Caesar in the ill-will in which 

 the middle classes held popular adventurers. 

 Pompey had now returned to importune the senate 

 for trie ratification of his measures in Asia cind the 

 bestowal of land on his legionaries. His demands 

 met with determined opposition, till Caesar, posing 

 as his friend, formed with him and Crassus the 

 coalition the first, if irregular, triumvirate of 

 which Pompey was the head, Caesar engaging to 

 see Pompey satisfied, and Pompey in return pro- 

 moting Caesar's candidature for the consulship. 

 Cicero strove to undo a coalition he knew to be 

 fatal to his ideal of a conservative republic, but in 

 vain ; he saw the senate weakened by a quarrel 

 with the equestrians and its authority impugned 

 by the friends of Catiline, who arraigned him for 

 having, with the senate's approval, violated the 

 law in putting to death the conspirator's lieu- 

 tenants. The triumvirate in 59 fulfilled its com- 

 pact. Caesar obtained the consulship and the 

 satisfaction of Pompey's demands, conciliated the 

 equestrians at the expense of the senate, and 

 carried an agrarian law enabling him one day to 

 reward his faithful troops. But his crowning 

 success was his obtaining for five years the military 

 command of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum, and later of 

 Transalpine Gaul, from which he could scan every 

 political move in Italy. Next year (58) Clodius, 

 the tribune, proceeded against Cicero, who, thrown 

 over by Pompey and with Caesar out of reach, fled 

 from Rome and was outlawed to l>e recalled (57), 

 and his outlawry annulled by senate and people, 

 in the reaction induced by Clodius's misdeeds. 

 Cicero, to fortify the constitution, renewed his 

 efforts, only to fail and retire from public life. 

 The triumvirs tightened their alliance. Caesar 

 secured his command for five years more ; Pompey 

 and Crassus were elected consuls, and Pompey 

 received as province the two Spains, with Africa, 

 nd Crassus, Syria the Roman empire being 

 at the mercy of all three, not, however, for long. 

 Crassus was defeated and killed by the Parthians 

 <53), and Pompey was slowly but surely drawn 

 into antagonism with Caesar. Rome, in the 

 absence of efficient government, was in ceaseless 

 turmoil, till the senate in despair induced Pompey 

 to remain in Italy, electing him sole consul 

 <52), giving him, with fresh legions, five 

 years' more command, and, in fact, pitting 

 him as its champion against Caesar. It tried to 

 reduce Caesar to impotence, either by keeping him 

 at his post, and so baulking his candidature for the 

 consulship, which required his presence in the 

 capital, or, by terminating his command at its 

 legal expiry, to detach him from his troops and 

 make him pursue his candidature in Rome as a 

 private individual. Negotiations between him and 

 the senate only left the latter more uncompromis- 

 ing ; and with well-inspired audacity he crossed the 

 Rubicon (49) and advanced on the city. Unprepared 

 for such a move, Pompey and most of the senatorial 

 party, including the consuls and many nobles, 

 withdrew to Greece, leaving Caesar to enter Rome 

 in triumph. The mighty duel between the two 

 chiefs had begun. After a brief pause Caesar 

 hurried to Spain, and, victorious over the powerful 

 armies of Pompey's legates, returned to Rome, 

 where, appointed dictator in his absence, he almost 

 immediately renounced the post, and as consul for 

 48 crossed over into Greece and dealt Pompey a 

 crushing blow at Phai-salia. The Pompeian cause 

 struggled on till 45, when it collapsed at Munda, 



and Caesar was made by the senate dictator for 

 life. Unlike Sulla, he used his power with a 

 clemency, a statesman-like wisdom, and a patriot- 

 ism that made men almost forgive, if not forget, 

 how he came by it. The roll of his salutary- reforms 

 and innovations is indicated elsewhere ( see CAESAR ) ; 

 but here our interest centres in the significance of 

 the empire he initiated. That meant the merely 

 nominal retention of the old constitution with its 

 senate, its comitia, its consuls, and its tribunes, 

 under the fiction that the supreme power was held 

 at the people's will. Really it meant an autocracy 

 reaching to the remotest province, resting in the 

 last resort on the military arm an autocracy whose 

 founder took the title 'imperator,' as expressing his 

 arbitrary and uncontrolled impcrium, in token of 

 which he appeared with the laurel wreath and the 

 triumphal garb and sceptre. From the senate 

 which he summoned and presided at to the assembly 

 where he carried laws, and the court where he dis- 

 pensed justice, he was everywhere the chief magis- 

 trate. The empire he designed to bequeath was to 

 be bounded by the ocean on the west, by the 

 Rhine and Danube on the north, by the Caucasus 

 and the Euphrates on the east, and by the African 

 desert on the south, and within these limits he 

 wanted to extend the Roman citizenship, and admit 

 their communities to share the government. This 

 scheme of consolidation he did not live to cany 

 out ; but he reduced fiscal burdens in the provinces 

 and curbed the authority of their governors. 



His assassination, March 15, 44, was followed by 

 an attempt, powerfully aided by Cicero, to win 

 back the old republican constitution ; but Ca>sar's 

 representative, Antony, at the head of seventeen 

 legions, combined with Lepidus and Octavian, just 

 made consul, in spite of his youth, to form the 

 second triumvirate, which began operations by 

 proscribing and assassinating its opponents Cicero 

 among the number. A stand made at Philippi by 

 Brutus and Cassius was crushed by Octavian and 

 Antony, after which the triumvirs divided the 

 empire l>etween them Octavian taking Italy and 

 the west, Antony the east, and Lepidus Africa. 

 Antony contemplated with Cleopatra an eastern 

 empire, while Lepidus, having lost Africa, was 

 exiled, and the death of Sextus Pompeius, after the 

 destruction of his fleet in the Mediterranean, left 

 Octavian, who had been sagaciously strengthening 

 his position in the west, with only Antony for 

 rival. The inevitable collision took place off 

 Actium (31), and the victorious Octavian, after 

 the suicide of Cleopatra and her paramour, remained 

 master of the east (29). Two years more saw him 

 in Rome, the grand-nephew and heir of Caesar, 

 armed with authority to mould a government out 

 of republican and imperial institutions. For this 

 he had every qualification. 



The Empire. Augustus began (28-27 B.C.) by a 

 restoration of the republic, with himself as prtn- 

 ceps, the republican constitution being retained, 

 while the princeps held the real power. By, 

 decrees of the senate he assumed, in token of 

 supreme dignity, the cognomen 'Augustus,' and 

 also the proconsulare imperium, which far exceeded 

 the old proconsular command in width of area and 

 length of tenure, the provinces being governed by 

 legates appointed and controlled by him alone. Of 

 army and navy he was commander-in-cbief, raising 

 or dissolving both, and declaring or concluding 

 war at pleasure. His imperium, contrary to pre- 

 cedent, he was allowed to retain within the 

 ppmcerium, the city's consecrated boundary, giving 

 him there the power wielded by a proconsul in his 

 province. Augustus refrained from exercising this 

 in Rome, but as tribune of the people he con- 

 trolled the entire administrative machine, so that, 

 what with proconsular command and the tribunicia 



