The six consulships of Marius represented not merely a party victory but a protest against the system of divided and rapidly-changing commands, which was no doubt the system favoured by the senate, but was also an integral element of the republican constitution, and in assailing it the populares weakened the republic even more than they irritated the senate. The transference of the political leadership to a consul who was nothing if not a soldier was at once a confession of the insufficiency of the purely civil authority of the tribunate and a dangerous encouragement of military interference in political controversies. The consequences were already foreshadowed by the special provisions made by Saturninus for Marius's veterans, and in the active part taken by them in the passing of his laws. Military Indirectly too Marius, though no politician, played an reforms important part in this new departure. His military reforms1 at once democratized the army and attached it more closely to its leader for the time being. He swept away the last traces of civil distinctions of rank or wealth within the legion, admitted to its ranks all classes, and substituted voluntary enlistment under a popular general for the old-fashioned compulsory levy. The efficiency of the legion was increased at the cost of a complete severance of the ties which bound it to the civil community and to the civil authorities. of Marius. 661. Discontent of the Italian allies. The defeat of Saturninus was followed by several years of quiet; nor was the next important crisis provoked directly by any efforts of the discredited popular party. It was due partly to the rivalry which had been growing more bitter each year since 122 between the senate and the commercial class, and secondly to the long impending question of the enfranchisement of the Italian allies. The publicani, negotiatores, and others, who constituted what was now becoming known as the equestrian order, had made unscrupulous use of their control of the courts and especially of the "quaestio de repetundis" against their natural rivals, the official class in the provinces. The threat of prosecution before a hostile jury was held over the head of every governor, legate, and quæstor who ventured to interfere with their operations in the provinces. The average official preferred to connive at their exactions; the bolder ones paid with fines and even exile for their courage. In 93 the necessity for a reform was proved beyond a doubt by the scandalous condemnation of P. Rutilius Rufus,2 ostensibly on a charge of extortion, in reality as the reward of his efforts to check the extortions of the Roman equites in Asia. The need of reform was clear, but it was not so easy to carry a reform which would certainly be opposed by the whole strength of the equestrian order, and which, as involving the repeal of a Sempronian law, would arouse the resentment of the popular party. The difficulties of the Italian question were more serious. That the Italian allies were discontented was notorious. After nearly two centuries of close alliance, of common dangers and victories, they now eagerly coveted as a boon that complete amalgamation with Rome which they had at first resented as a dishonour. But, unfortunately, Rome had grown more selfishly exclusive in proportion as the value set upon Roman citizenship increased. The politic liberality with which the franchise had once been granted had disappeared. The allies found their burdens increasing and their ancient privileges diminishing, while the resentment with which they viewed their exclusion from the fruits of the conquests they had helped to make was aggravated by 3 the growingly suspicious and domineering attitude of the Roman government. During the last forty years feelings of hope and disappointment had rapidly succeeded each other; Marcus Fulvius, Gaius Gracchus, Saturninus, had all held out promises of relief-and nothing had yet been done. On each occasion they had crowded to Rome, full of eager expectation, only to be harshly ejected from the city by the consul's orders. The justice of their claims could hardly be denied, the danger of continuing to ignore them was obvious-yet the difficulties in the way of granting them were formidable in the extreme. The temper of senate and people alike was still jealously exclusive, and from a higher than a merely selfish point of view there was much to be said against the revolution involved in so sudden and enormous an enlargement of the citizen body. 91 Marcus Livius Drusus, who as tribune gallantly took up Marcus the task of reform, is claimed by Cicero 5 as a member of Livius that party of the centre to which he belonged himself. Drusus, Noble, wealthy, and popular, he seems to have hoped to be 663. able by the weight of his position and character to rescue the burning questions of the day from the grasp of extreme partisans and to settle them peacefully and equitably. But he, like Cicero after him, had to find to his cost that there was no room in the fierce strife of Roman politics for moderate counsels. His proposal to reform the law courts excited the equestrian order and their friends in the senate to fury. The agrarian and corn laws which he coupled with it alienated many more in the senate, and roused the old anti-popular party feeling; finally, his known negotiations with the Italians were eagerly misrepresented to the jealous and excited people as evidence of complicity with a wide-spread conspiracy against Rome. His laws were carried, but the senate pronounced them null and void. Drusus was denounced in the senate house as a traitor, and on his way home was struck down by the hand of an unknown assassin. one man, War, 90-89 The knights retained their monopoly of the courts, but The this and all other domestic controversies were silenced for Social the time by the news which followed hard the upon murder of Drusus that the Italians were in open revolt 664-665. against Rome. His assassination was the signal for an outbreak which had been secretly prepared for some time before. Throughout the highlands of central and southern Italy the flower of the Italian peoples rose as 8 Etruria and Umbria held aloof; the isolated Latin colonies stood firm; but the Sabellian clans, north and south, the Latinized Marsi and Pæligni, as well as the still Oscan-speaking Samnites and Lucanians, rushed to arms. No time was lost in proclaiming their plans for the future. A new Italian state was to be formed. The Palignian town of Corfinium was selected as its capital and re-christened with the proud name of Italica. All Italians were to be citizens of this new metropolis, and here were to be the place of assembly and the senate house. A senate of 500 members and a magistracy resembling that of Rome completed a constitution which adhered closely to the very political traditions which its authors had most reason to abjure. Now, as always in the face of serious danger, the action 3 Mommsen, ii. 218; Ihne, iv. 151, v. 253; Marquardt, Stautsverio., i. 57, 58. Lex Junia,' Cic. De Off., iii. 11; lex Licinia Mucia, Cic. Pro Corn., fr. 10; Ascon., p. 67. Cic. De Orat., i. 25, and De Domo, 50; Appian, B. C., i. 35; Diod. Sic., xxxvii. 10; Ihne, v. 242. For the provisions of the "leges Liviae," see App., B. C., i. 35; Livy, Epit., lxxi. They included, according to Pliny, V. H., xxxiii. 3, a proposal for the debasement of the coinage. 7 Cic. Pro Domo, 16. For the Social War, see, besides Mommsen, Ihne, Lange; also Kiene, D. Römische Bundesgenossenkrieg, Leipsic, 1845. of Rome was prompt and resolute. Both consuls took than 2000 denarii should lose his seat, (5) that those the field;1 with each were five legates, among them the exiled on suspicion of complicity with the Italian revolt veteran Marius and his destined rival L. Cornelius Sulla, should be recalled. Whatever may have been Sulpicius's and even freedmen were pressed into service with the intentions, these proposals inevitably provoked a storm. legions. But the first year's campaign opened disastrously. The old voters bitterly resented the swamping of the In central Italy the northern Sabellians, and in the south existing constituency; the senate rallied its forces to the Samnites, defeated the forces opposed to them. And oppose the alteration in the franchise of the freedmen and though before the end of the year Marius and Sulla in the proposed purging of its own ranks; and, lastly, both the north, and the consul Cæsar himself in Campania, the senate and Sulla himself, now one of the consuls, presucceeded in inflicting severe blows on the enemy, and on pared to resist the transference of the Asiatic command to the Marsi especially, it is not surprising that, with an Marius. Both sides were ominously ready for violent empty treasury, with the insurgents' strength still un- measures. The consuls, in order to prevent legislation, broken, and with rumours of disaffection in the loyal proclaimed a public holiday." Sulpicius replied by armdistricts, opinion in Rome should have turned in the direc-ing his followers and driving the consuls from the forum. tion of the more liberal policy which had been so often scornfully rejected and in favour of some compromise which should check the spread of the revolt, and possibly sow discord among their enemies. Towards the close of the year 90 the consul Cæsar carried the "lex Julia," by which the Roman franchise was offered to all communities which had not as yet revolted; early in the next year (89) the Julian law was supplemented by the "lex Plautia Papiria. Papiria," introduced by two of the tribunes, which enacted that any citizen of an allied community then domiciled in Italy might obtain the franchise by giving in his name to a prætor in Rome within sixty days. A third law (lex Calpurnia) apparently passed at the same time empowered Romau magistrates in the field to bestow the franchise there and then upon all who were willing to receive it. This sudden opening of the closed gates of Roman citizenship was completely successful, and its effects were at once visible in the diminished vigour of the insurgents. By the end of 89 the Samnites and Lucanians were left alone in their obstinate hostility to Rome, and neither, thanks to Sulla's brilliant campaign in Samnium, had for the moment any strength left for active aggression. 664. Lex Julia and lex Plautia 665. 665. P. Sulpicius Rufus, 88= 666. The termination of the Social War brought with it no peace in Rome. The old quarrels were renewed with increased bitterness, and the newly enfranchised Italians themselves complained as bitterly of the restriction3 which robbed them of their due share of political influence by allowing them to vote only in a specified number of tribes. The senate itself was distracted by violent personal rivalries -and all these feuds, animosities, and grievances were aggravated by the widespread economic distress and ruin which affected all classes. Lastly, war with Mithradates had been declared; it was notorious that the privilege of commanding the force to be sent against him would be keenly contested, and that the contest would lie between the veteran Marius and L. Cornelius Sulla.5 It was in an atmosphere thus charged with the elements of disturbance that P. Sulpicius Rufus as tribune brought forward his laws. He proposed (1) that the command of the Mithradatic war should be given to Marius, (2) that the new citizens should be distributed through all the tribes, (3) that the freedmen should no longer be confined to the four city tribes, (4) that any senator owing more 1 App., B. C., i. 39-49; Livy, Epit., lxxii.-lxxvi. 2 For the lex Julia, see Cicero Pro Balbo, 8; Gell., iv. 4; App., B. C., i. 49. For lex Plautia Papiria, see Cic. Pro Archia, 4, and Schol. Bob., p. 353. 3 Vell. Pat., ii. 20; App., B. C., i. 49, 53. Madvig (R. Verf., i. 27) follows Appian in holding that the tribes to which the new voters were confined were newly created tribes. Cf. Momsen, Röm. Tribus, ii. 4 App., B. C., i. 54, and Mithr. 22; Oros., v. 18; Livy, Epit., 5 It had been already declared a consular province for 87, and early 9 Cinna, The proclamation was withdrawn and the laws carried, 7 App., loc. cit., μepŵv åpylas worλŵv—a favourite stroke of policy. 8 Marius finally escaped to Africa (see MARIUS); Sulpicius was * App., Β. C., i. 59, μηδὲν ἐτί ἀπροβούλευτον ἐς τὸν δῆμον and 668. 669. The 672. murdered like Flaccus by his mutinous soldiers; his most of the 669, 670. ally suspended. For 85 and 84 Cinna nominated himself and to fortify it against the dangers which visibly and a trusted colleague as consuls.1 The state was, as threatened it in the future. The real charge against Cicero2 says, without lawful authority.3 One important Sulla10 is not that he failed to accomplish all this, for to do matter was carried through-the registration in all the so was beyond the powers even of a man so able, resolute, tribes of the newly enfranchised Italians, but beyond this and self-confident as Sulla, armed though he was with little was done. The attention of Cinna and his friends absolute authority and backed by overwhelming military was in truth engrossed by the ever-present dread of Sulla's strength and the prestige of unbroken success. He stands return from Asia. The consul of 86, Valerius Flaccus, convicted rather of deliberately aggravating some and sent out to supersede him, was murdered by his own culpably ignoring others of the evils he should have tried soldiers at Nicomedia.5 In 85 Sulla, though disowned by to cure, and of contenting himself with a party triumph his government, concluded a peace with Mithradates. In when he should have aimed at the regeneration and con84, after settling affairs in Asia and crushing Flaccus's suc- firmation of the whole state. His victory was instantly cessor Fimbria, he crossed into Greece, and in the spring followed, not by any measures of conciliation, but by a series return of of 83 landed at Brundusium with 40,000 soldiers and a of massacres, proscriptions, and confiscations, of which Sulla, 83-671, large following of emigré nobles. Cinna was dead, almost the least serious consequence was the immediate loss of life which they entailed.11 From this time forward Effects the fear of proscription and confiscation recurred as a Sullan possible consequence of every political crisis, and it was proscripwith difficulty that Cæsar himself dissipated the belief tions. that his victory would be followed by a Sullan reign of terror. The legacy of hatred and discontent which Sulla left behind him was a constant source of disquiet and danger. In the children of the proscribed, whom he excluded from holding office, and the dispossessed owners of the confiscated lands, every agitator found ready and willing allies.12 The moneyed men of the equestrian order were more than ever hostile to the senatorial government, which they now identified with the man who cherished towards them a peculiar hatred,13 and whose creatures had hunted them down like dogs. The attachment which the new Italian citizens might in time have learnt to feel for the old republican constitution was nipped in the bud by the massacres at Præneste and Norba, by the harsh treatment of the ancient towns of Etruria, and by the ruthless desolation of Samnium and Lucania.14 Quite as fatal were the results to the economic prosperity of the peninsula. Sulla's confiscations, following on the civil and social wars, opened the doors wide for a long train of evils. The veterans whom he planted on the lands he had seized 15 did nothing for agriculture, and swelled the growing numbers of the turbulent and discontented.16 The "Sullan men "" became as great an object of fear and dislike as the "Sullan reign."17 The "latifundia" increased with startling rapidity-whole territories passing into the hands of greedy partisans. 18 Wide tracts of land, confiscated but never allotted, ran to waste.19 In all but a few districts of Italy the free population finally and completely disappeared from the open country; and life and property were rendered insecure by the brigandage which now developed unchecked, and in which the herdsmen slaves played a prominent part. The outbreaks of Spartacus in 73, and of Catiline ten years later, were significant com- 681. mentaries on this part of Sulla's work. 20 His constitutional Constilegislation, while it included many useful administrative tutional reforms, is marked by as violent a spirit of partisanship, legislaand as apparently wilful a blindness to the future. Sulla's For a period of nearly ten years Rome and Italy had dictator been distracted by civil war. Constitutional government, ship, 81 whether by senate or assembly, had been in abeyance, -673. while the opposing parties fought out their quarrels with the sword, under the leadership of generals at the head of legions ready and willing to follow them against their fellow citizens and against the established authorities of the state. The strife had spread from the Roman forum to Italy, and from Italy to the provinces; and for the first time the integrity of the empire was threatened by the conflicts of rival governors. The tottering fabric of Italian prosperity had been rudely shaken by the ravages of war. Class hatreds and personal feuds distracted the community, while the enfranchisement of the Italians was in itself a revolution which affected the very foundations of the republic. Such was the situation with which Sulla was now called upon to deal. It was for him to heal the divisions which rent the state asunder, to set in working again the machinery of civil government, and above all so to modify it as to meet the altered conditions, The consuls of 86, 85, 84 were all nominated without election. Livy, Epit., lxxx., lxxxiii.; App., i. 75. 2 Brut., 227. The nobles had fled to Sulla in large numbers; Velleius, ii. 23. 7 In 84; App., B. C., i. 78; Livy, Epit., lxxxiii. 8 66 9 In Asia between Sulla and Fimbria. In 82 Pompey crushed the tion of The Sulla. 10 Compare especially Mommsen's brilliant chapter, which is, however, too favourable (ii. 335–377), and also Lange (iii. 144 sq.), where most of the special literature on the Sullan legislation is given. The 11 App., i. 95 sq.; Dio Cassius, fr. 109; Plut., Sulla, 31. number of the proscribed is given as 4700 (Valer. Max.), including, according to Appian, 2600 members of the equestrian order. 12 E.g., Catiline, in 63. Sall., Cat., 21, 37. For the "liberi proscriptorum," see Velleius, ii. 28. 13 Cic. Pro Cluent., 151. 14 Cic., Phil., v. 43, tot municipiorum maximae calamitates." Cic. Pro Domo, 30; Cic. Ad Att., i. 19; Florus, iii. 21; Strabo, p. 223, 254. 15 Livy, Epit., lxxxix.; App., B. C., i. 100; Cicero, Catil., ii. 20. 18 Cic., Lex Agr., ii. 26, 28, iii. 2, -the territories of Præneste and 20 See especially Cicero's of Apulia, Sall., Cat., 28. 7 8 re-establishment on a legal basis of the ascendency which custom had so long accorded to the senate was his main object. With this purpose he had already, when consul in 88, made the "senatus auctoritas" legally necessary for proposals to the assembly. He now as dictator1 followed this up by crippling the power of the magistracy, which had been the most effective weapon in the hands of the senate's opponents. The legislative freedom of the tribunes was already hampered by the necessity of obtain ing the senate's sanction; in addition, Sulla restricted their wide powers of interference (intercessio) to their original purpose of protecting individual plebeians,2 and discredited the office by prohibiting a tribune from holding any subsequent office in the state. The control of the courts (quaestiones perpetuae) was taken from the equestrian order and restored to the senate. To prevent the people from suddenly installing and keeping in high office a second Marius, he re-enacted the old law against re-election,5 and made legally binding the custom which required a man to mount up gradually to the consulship through the lower offices. His increase of the number of prætors from six to eight, and of quæstors to twenty, though required by administrative necessities, tended, by enlarging the numbers and further dividing the authority of the magistrates, to render them still more dependent upon the central direction of the senate. Lastly, he replaced the pontifical and augural colleges in the hands of the senatorial nobles, by enacting that vacancies in them should, as before the lex Domitia (104), be filled up by co-optation.9 This policy of deliberately altering the constitution, so as to make it pronounce in favour of his own party, was open to two grave objections. It was not to be expected that the new legal safeguards would protect the senate any more efficiently than the established custom and tradition which the Gracchi had broken down; and, secondly, it was inevitable that the popular party would on the first opportunity follow Sulla's example, and alter the constitution to suit themselves. Still less was Sulla successful in fortifying the republican system against the dangers which menaced it from without. He accepted as an accomplished fact the enfranchisement of the Italians, 10 but he made no provision to guard against the consequent reduction of the comitia to an absurdity, and with them of the civic government which rested upon them, or to organize an effective administrative system for the Italian communities.11 Of all men, too, Sulla had the best reason 1 For Sulla's dictatorship as in itself a novelty, see App., i. 98 ; Plut., Sulla, 33; Cic. Ad Att., 9, 15; Cic. De Legg., i. 15. 2 Cic. De Legg., iii. 22, “injuriae faciendae potestatem ademit, auxilii ferendi reliquit.' Cf. Cic., Verr., i. 60; Livy, Epit., lxxxix. 3 Cic. Pro Cornel., fr. 78; Ascon. In Corn., 78; Appian, i. 100. 4 Velleius, ii. 32; Tac., Ann., xi. 22; Cic., Verr., i. 13. 5 App., B. C., i. 100; cf. Livy, vii. 42 (342 B.C.), ne quis eundem magistratum intra decem annos caperet.' 6 The custom had gradually established itself. Cf. Livy, xxxii. 7. The "certus ordo magistratuum" legalized by Sulla was-quæstorship, prætorship, consulate; App., i. 100. 7 Pompon., De Orig. Juris (Dig., i. 2, 2); Velleius, ii. 89. Compare also Cicero In Pison., 15, with Id. Pro Milone, 15. The increase was connected with his extension of the system of quaestiones perpetuae," which threw more work on the prætors as the magistrates in charge of the courts. 8 Tac., Ann., xi. 22. The quæstorship henceforward carried with it the right to be called up to the senate. By increasing the number of quæstors, Sulla provided for the supply of ordinary vacancies in the senate and restricted the censors' freedom of choice in filling them up. Fragments of the "lex Cornelia de XX quaestoribus" survive. See C. I. L., 108. "Dio Cass., xxxvii. 37; Ps. Ascon., 102 (Orelli). He also increased their numbers; Livy, Epit., lxxxix. 10 He did propose to deprive several communities which had joined Cinna of the franchise, but the deprivation was not carried into effect; Cic. Pro Domo, 30, and Pro Cacing, 33, 35. 11 There is no evidence to show that Sulla's legislation touched at all upon municipal government in Italy; cf. Mommsen, ii. 361 sq. to appreciate the dangers to be feared from the growing independence of governors and generals in the provinces, and from the transformation of the old civic militia into a group of professional armies, devoted only to a successful leader, and with the weakest possible sense of allegiance to the state. He had himself, as proconsul of Asia, contemptuously and successfully defied the home government, and he, more than any other Roman general, had taught his soldiers to look only to their leader, and to think only of booty.12 Yet, beyond a few inadequate regulations, there is no evidence that Sulla dealt with these burning questions, the settlement of which was among the greatest of the achievements of Augustus.13 One administrative reform of real importance must, lastly, be set down to his credit. The judicial procedure first established in 149 605-673 for the trial of cases of magisterial extortion in the provinces, and applied between 149 and 81 to cases of treason and bribery, Sulla extended so as to bring under it the chief criminal offences, and thus laid the foundations of the Roman criminal law.14 of the The Sullan system stood for nine years, and was then Overoverthrown—as it had been established-by a successful throw soldier. It was the fortune of Cn. Pompeius, a favourite gallan officer of Sulla, first of all to violate in his own person the constitu fundamental principles of the constitution re-established tion, 70 by his old chief, and then to overturn it. In Spain the =684. Marian governor Q. Sertorius (see SERTORIUS) had defeated one after another of the proconsuls sent out by the senate, and was already in 77 master of all Hither Spain.15 To 677. meet the crisis, the senate itself took a step which was in fact the plainest possible confession that the system sanctioned afresh by Sulla was inadequate to the needs of the state. Pompey, who was not yet thirty, and had never held even the quæstorship, was sent out to Spain with proconsular authority.16 Still Sertorius held out, until in 73 he was foully murdered by his own officers. 681. The native tribes who had loyally stood by him submitted, and Pompey early in 71 returned with his troops to Italy, 683. where, during his absence in Spain, an event had occurred which had shown Roman society with startling plainness how near it stood to revolution. In 73 Spartacus,17 a 681 Thracian slave, escaped with seventy others from a gladiators' training school at Capua. In an incredibly short time he found himself at the head of a numerous force 12 Sall., Cat., ii., "L. Sulla exercitum, quo sibi fidum faceret, contra morem majorum luxuriose nimisque liberaliter habuerat." 13 There was a lex Cornelia de provinciis ordinandis," but only two of its provisions are known :-(1) that a magistrate sent out with the imperium should retain it till he re-entered the city (Cic. Ad Fam., i. 9, 25), a provision which increased rather than diminished his freedom of action; (2) that an outgoing governor should leave his province within thirty days after his successor's arrival (Cic. Ad Fam., iii. 6, 4). A "lex Cornelia de majestate" contained, it is true, a definition of treason evidently framed in the light of recent experience. The magistrate was forbidden "exire de provincia, educere exercitum, bellum sua sponte gerere, in regnum injussu populi ac senatus accedere," Cic. In Pis., 21. Sulla also added one to the long list of laws dealing with extortion in the provinces. But the danger lay, not in the want of laws, but in the want of security for their observance by an absolutely autocratic proconsul. The present writer cannot agree with those who would include among Sulla's laws one retaining consuls and prætors in Rome for their year of office and then sending them out to a province. This was becoming the common practice before 81. After 81 it is invariable for prætors, as needed for the judicial work, and invariable but for two exceptions in the case of consuls; but nowhere is there a hint that there had been any legislation on the subject, and there are indications that it was convenience and not law which maintained the arrangement. Mommsen, ii. 355; Marquardt, Staatsverw., i. 378. 14 For this, the most lasting of Sulla's reforms, see Mommsen, ii 359; Rein, Criminal-Recht; Zumpt, Criminal-Prozess d. Römer. 16 For the Sertorian War, see Plutarch, Sertorius. 16 Plut., Pomp., 17; Livy, Epit., xci. For Pompey's earlier life, see POMPEY. 682. 5676. 684. of runaway slaves, outlaws, brigands, and impoverished | peasants. By the end of 73 he had 70,000 men under his command, had twice defeated the Roman troops, and was master of southern Italy. In 72 he advanced on Rome, but, though he again routed the legions led against him by the consuls in person, he abandoned his scheme and established himself in the now desolate country near Thurii, already the natural home of brigandage. At 683. length in 71 the prætor Crassus, who had been sent against him with no less than six legions, ended the war. Spartacus was defeated and slain in Apulia. In Rome itself the various classes and parties hostile to the Sullan system had, ever since Sulla's death in 78, been incessantly agitating for the repeal of his most obnoxious laws, and needed only a leader in order successfully to attack a government discredited by failure at home and abroad. With the return of Pompey from Spain their Pompey opportunity came. Pompey, who understood politics as as consul. little as Marius, was anxious to obtain-what the senate was more than likely to refuse to give him, and what he was not legally entitled to a triumph, the consulship for the next year (70), and as the natural consequence of this an important command in the East. The opposition wanted his name and support, and a bargain was soon struck. Pompey and with him Marcus Crassus, the conqueror of Spartacus, were elected consuls, almost in the presence of their troops, which lay encamped outside the gates in readiness to assist at the triumph and ovation granted to their respective leaders. Pompey lost no time in performing his part of the agreement. The tribunes regained their prerogatives.1 The " perpetual courts" were taken out of the hands of the senatorial judices, who had outdone the equestrian order in scandalous corruption, and finally the censors, the first since 86 B.C., purged the senate of the more worthless and disreputable of Sulla's partisans. The victory was complete; but for the future its chief significance lay in the clearness with which it showed that the final decision in matters political lay with neither of the two great parties in Rome, but with the holder of the military authority. The recognition of this fact was fatal to the dignity of politics in the city. In proportion as the mass of the Roman community in Italy, and able aspirants to power, like Caesar, became conscious of the unreality of the old constitutional controversies, they became indifferent to the questions which agitated the forum and the curia and contemptuously ready to alter or disregard the constitution itself, when it stood in the way of interests nearer to their hearts. Of this growing indifference to the traditional politics of the republic, against which Cicero struggled in vain, Pompey is an excellent example. He was absolutely without interest in them, except in so far as they led up to important military commands, and, though he was never revolutionary in intention, his own career, in its quiet defiance of all the established rules of the constitution, did almost more than the direct attacks of others to render the republic impossible. province, and from the end of 70 to 67 he remained at 684-7. Pompey left Rome in 67, and did not return to Italy Cæsar. Velleius, ii. 31; Plut., Pomp., 23. 5 See the brilliant sketch by Mommsen, R. G., iii. 39 sq. 6 Plut., Pomp., 25; Dio, xxxvi. 6; Livy, Epit., c. 7 Cic. Pro Lege Manilia; Dio, xxxvi. 25; Plut., Pomp., 30. 8 Prof. Beesly, in his essay on Catiline, has vainly endeavoured to show that Catiline and not Cæsar was the popular leader from 67 to 63. That this is the inference intentionally conveyed by Sallust, in order to screen Cæsar, is true, but the inference is a false one. |