The History of Rome, Book V

-Rupture between

Goes t

im, and his chagrin at occupying a position so near to power and yet so powerless, amidst his always accumulating piles of gold. But the conference at Luca changed the state of matters also for him; with the view of still retaining the preponderance as compared with Pompeius after concessions so extensive, Caesar gave to his old confederate Crassus an opportunity of attaining in Syria through the Parthian war the same position to which Caesar had attained by the Celtic war in Gaul. It was difficult to say whether these new prospects proved more attractive to the ardent thirst for gold which had now become at the age of six

gainst Parth

in the Parthian empire; the grandees of the kingdom, with the young, bold, and talented grand vizier at their head, had overthrown king Mithradates and placed his brother Orodes on the throne. Mithradates therefore made common cause with the Romans and resorted to the camp of Gabinius. Everything promised the best results to the enterprise of the Roman governor, when he unexpectedly received orders to conduct the king of Egypt back by force of arms to Alexandria.(3) He was obliged to obey; but, in the expectation of soon coming back, he induced the dethroned Parthian prince who solicited aid from him to commence the war in the meanwhile at his own hand. Mithradates did so; and Seleucia and Babylon declared for him; but the vizier captured Seleucia by assault, having been in person the first to mount the battlements, and

f the

s, including the considerable one of Nicephorium (Rakkah), were occupied, after which the Romans having left garrisons behind in them returned to Syria. They had hitherto been in doubt whether it was more advisable to march to Parthia by the circuitous route of Armenia or by the direct route through the Mesopotamian desert. The first route, leading through mountainous regions under the control of trustworthy allies, commended itself by its greater safety; king Artavasdes came in person to the Roman headquarters to advocate this plan of the campaign. But that reconnaissance decided in favour of the march through Mesopotamia. The numerous and flourishing Greek and half-

hrates

weighty voices were raised in favour of this route in the Roman council of war; in particular the quaestor Gaius Cassius pointed to the difficulties of the march in the desert, and to the suspicious reports arriving from the Roman garrisons on the left bank of the Euphrates as to the Parthian warlike preparations. But in opposition to this the Arab prince Abgarus announced that the Parthians were employed in evacuating their western provinces. They had already packed up their treasures and put themselves in motion to flee to the Hyrcanians and

ch in t

garus and his followers. With impatience the Romans waited for his return and for more exact information. The general hoped here at length to come upon the constantly retreating foe; his young and brave son Publius, who had fought with the greatest distinction in Gaul under Caesar,(5) and had been sent by the latter at the head of a Celtic squadron of horse to take part in the Parthian war, was inflamed with a vehement desire for the fight. When no tidings came, they reso

rthian Syste

hand-to-hand combat with the sword, could not compel an army consisting merely of cavalry to come to an engagement with them; and they found, even when they did come to a hand-to-hand conflict, an equal if not superior adversary in the iron-clad hosts of lancers. As compared with an army like this Parthian one, the Roman army was at a disadvantage strategically, because the cavalry commanded the communications; and at a disadvantage tactically, because every weapon of close combat must succumb to that which is wielded from a distance, unless the struggle becomes an individual one, man against man. The concentrated position, on which the whole Roman method of war was based, increased the danger in presence of such an attack; the closer the ranks of the Roman column, the more irresistible certainly was its onset, but the less also could the missiles fail to hit their mark. Under ordinary circumstances, where towns have to be defended and difficulties of the ground have to be considered, such tactics operating merely with cavalry against infantry could never be completely carried out; but in the Mesopotamian desert, where the army, almost like a ship on the high seas, neither encountered an obstacle nor met

of Crassus, on the other hand, the cavalry for the first time came forward independently, and this arm obtained quite a new application and quite a different value. The irresistible superiority of the Roman infantry in close combat seems to have led the adversaries of Rome in very different parts of the world independently of each other-at the same time and with similar success-to meet it with cavalry and distant weapons. What as completely successful with Cassivellaunus in Britain(6) and partially successful with Vercingetorix in Gaul(7)- what was to a certain degree attempted even by Mithradates Eupator(8)- the vizier of Orodes carried out only on a larger scale

near

ose the circle, and retreated, hotly pursued by the impetuous leader of the Romans. But, when the corps of Publius had totally lost sight of the main army, the heavy cavalry made a stand against it, and the Parthian host hastening up from all sides closed in like a net round it. Publius, who saw his troops falling thickly and vainly around him under the arrows of the mounted archers, threw himself in desperation with his Celtic cavalry unprotected by any coats of mail on the iron-clad lancers of the enemy; but the death-despising valour of his Celts, who seized the lances with their hands or sprang from their horses to stab the enemy, performed its marvels in vain. The remains of the corps, including their leader wounded in the sword-arm, were driven to a slight eminence, where they only served for an easier mark to the enemy's archers. Mesopotamian Greeks, who were accurately acquainted with the country, adjured Crassus to ride off with them and make an attempt to escape; but he refused to separate his fate from that of the brave men whom his too-daring courage had led to death, and he caused himself to be stabbed by the hand of his shield-bearer. Following his example,

t to C

d to amount to 4000-of the wounded and stragglers were left), with the view of seeking protection within the walls of Carrhae. The fact that the Parthians, when they returned on the following day, applied themselves first of all to seek out and massacre the sc

re from

se at

esent from the king to the Roman commander-in-chief; the servants of the vizier crowded round Crassus, zealous to mount him on the steed. It seemed to the Roman officers as if there was a design to seize the person of the commander-in-chief; Octavius, unarmed as he was, pulled the sword of one of the Parthians from its sheath and stabbed the groom. In the tumult which thereupon arose, the Roman officers were all put to death; the gray-haired commander- in-chief also, like his grand-uncle,(10) was unwilling to serve as a living trophy to the enemy, and sought and found death. The multitude left behind in the camp without a leader were partly taken prisoners, partly dispersed. What the day of Carrhae had begun, the day of Sinnaca completed (June 9, 701); the two took their place side by side with the days of the Allia, of Cannae, and of Arausio. The army of the Euphrates was no more. Only the squadron of Gaius Cassius, which had been broken off from the main army on the retreat from Carrhae, and some other scattered bands and isolated fugitives succeeded in escaping from the Parthians and Bedouins and separately finding their way back to Syria. Of above 40,000 Roman legionaries, who had crossed the Euphrates, not a fourth part returned; the half had perished; nearly 10,000 Roman prisoners were settled by the victors in the extreme east of thei

ika neotomon epi mela

he fact that, by way of celebrating this victory, the fairest product of the western world- Greek tragedy-parodied itself through its degenerate representat

nces of

ns, one of the treacherous guides of the Romans, named Andromachus. The Parthians now prepared in all earnest to cross the Euphrates in their turn, and, in union with the Armenians and Arabs, to dislodge the Romans from Syria. The Jews and various other Occidentals awaited emancipation from the Roman rule there, no less impatiently than the Hellenes beyond the Euphrates awaited relief from the Parthian; in Rome civil war was at the door; an attack at this particular place and time was a grave peril. But fortunately for Rome the leaders on each side had changed

of the P

t the two weak legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus. Of course with these he could neither prevent the crossing nor defend the province. Syria was overrun by the Parthians, and all Western Asia trembled. But the Parthians did not understand the besieging of towns. They not only retreated from Antioch, into which Cassius had thrown himself with his troops, without having accomplished their object, but they were on their retreat along the Orontes allured into an ambush by Cassius' cavalry and there severely handled by the Roman infantry; prince Osaces was himself among the slain. Friend and foe thus perceived that the Parthian army under an ordinary general and on ordinary ground was not capable of much more than any other Oriental army. However, the attack

ed in Rome by the

ss to think and speak of than that wretched tumult on the Appian road, in which, a couple of months after Crassus, Clodius the partisan-leader perished; but it is easily conceivable and almost excusable. The breach between the two regents, long felt as inevitable and often announced as near, was now assuming such a shape that it could not be arrested. Like the boat of the ancient Greek mariners' tale,

anding between t

of retaliating on Caesar for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar's indulgence. But while it is probable that Pompeius in accordance with his dull and sluggish nature never properly consented to let Caesar hold a position of equality by his side, yet the design of breaking up the alliance doubtless came only by degrees to be distinctly entertained by him. At any rate the public, which usually saw better through the views and intentions of Pompeius than he did himself, could not be mistaken in thinking that at least with the death of the beautiful Julia- who died in the bloom of womanhood in the autumn of 700 and was soon followed by her only child to the tomb-the personal relation between her father and her husband was broken up. Caesar attempted to re-establish the ties of affinity which fate had severed; he asked for himself the hand of the only daughter of Pompeius, and offered Octavia, his sister's grand-daughter, who was now his nearest relative, in marriage to his fellow-regent; but Pompeius left his daughter to her existing husband Faustus Sulla th

ship of

ks by Pompei

, but associated with himself a puppet wholly dependent on him in his new father-in-law Scipio;(14) and still less, when Pompeius at the same time got the governorship of the two Spains continued to him for five years more, that is to 709, and a considerable fixed sum appropriated from the state-chest for the payment of his troops, not only without stipulating for a like prolongation of command and a like grant of money to Caesar, but even while labouring ulteriorly to effect the recall of Caesar before the term formerly agreed on through the new regulations which were issued at the same time regarding the holding of the governorships. These encroachments were unmistakeably calculated to undermine Caesar's position and eventually to overthrow him. The moment could not be more favourable. Caesar had conceded so much to Pompeius at Luca, only because Crassus and his Syrian army would necessarily, in the event of any rupture with Pompeius, be thrown into Caesar's scale; for upon Crassus-who since the times of Sulla had been at the deepest enmity with Pompeius and almost as long politically and personally allied with Caesar, and who from his peculiar character at all events, if he could not hi

y Names and

he crisis was incessantly urged on

respectable portion of the burgesses, which desired the continuance of the republic and believed in its possibility, directly into the camp of his opponent. The old battle-cries raised by Gracchus and Drusus, Cinna and Sulla, used up and meaningless as they were, remained still good enough for watchwords in the struggle of the

cracy an

n. The immediate advantage no doubt, which this battle-cry brought to him, was trifling; it was confined mainly to the circumstance that he was thereby relieved from the inconvenience of directly naming the kingly office, and so alarming the mass of the lukewarm and his own adherents by that detested word. The democratic

ocracy an

t, if it proceeded from the right man. Perhaps the majority, at any rate the flower of the burgesses, belonged to the constitutional party; and as respected its numerical and moral strength might well be called to interfere powerfully, perhaps decisively, in the impending struggle of the pretenders. It wanted nothing but a leader. Marcus Cato, its present head, did the duty, as he understood it, of its leader amidst daily peril to his life and perhaps without hope of success; his fidelity to duty deserves respect, but to be the last at a forlorn post is commendable in the soldier, not in the general. He had not the skill either to organize or to bring i

now made preparations as though he would set out to take over the command on the Euphrates, the legitimate governing board, namely the senate, were to break with Caesar, to declare war against him, and to entrust the conduct of it to Pompeius, who then, yielding to the general desire, was to come forward as the protector of the constitution against demagogico- monarchical plots, as an upright man and champion of the existing order of things against the profligates and anarchists, as the duly-installed general of the senate against the Imperator of the street, and so once more to save his country. Thus P

epubl

he majority would still only restore the oligarchic government if it might be restored without danger-in which case, doubtless, it had a good while to wait. In presence of the regents on the one hand, and on the other hand of this indolent majority, which desired peace above all things and at any price, and was averse to any decided action and most of all to a decided rupture with one or other of the regents, the only possible course for the Catonian party to obtain a restoration of the old rule lay in a coalition with the less dangerous of the rulers. If Pompeius acknowledged the oligarchic constitution and offered to fight for it against Caesar, the republican opposition might and must recognize him as its general, and in alliance with him compel the timid majority

ague wit

gain the men of order as they were offensive to the democrat Caesar. On the other hand Cato and his followers, instead of combating with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship on Pompeius, had made it with immaterial alterations of form their own; Pompeius had received the undivided consulship primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato. While the Catonian party and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as formally concluded, when at the consular elections for 703 there was elected not Cato himself indeed, but-along with an insignificant man

esistance

e dominant in Italy. Accordingly he sought to preserve the relation with Pompeius and thereby the peace unbroken, and to attain, if at all possible, by peaceful means to the consulship for 706 already assured to him at Luca. If he should then after a conclusive settlement of Celtic affairs be placed in a regular manner at the head of the state, he, who was still more decidedly superior to Pompeius as a statesman than as a general, might well reckon on outmanoeuvring the latter in the senate-house and in the Forum without special difficulty. Perhaps it was possible to find out for his awkward, vacillating, and arrogant rival some sort of honourable and influential position, in which the latter might be content to sink into a nullity; the repeated attempts of Caesar to keep himself related by marriage to Pompeius, may have been designed to pave the way for such a solution and to bring about a final settlement of the old quarrel through the succession of offspring inheriting the blood of both competitors. The republican opposition would then remain without a leader and therefore probably quiet, and peace would be preserved. If this should

nd the restoration of order in the capital which he had effected, rejected the warnings of officious friends as calumnies, reckoned every day by which he succeeded in postponing the catastrophe a gain, overlooked whatever could be overlooked and bore whatever could be borne-

for Attack

racy in the capital beyond the 1st January 706, so that he should remain for a time between the governorship and the consulate without office, and consequently liable to criminal impeachment-which according to Roman law was o

p Caesar Out o

had not yet been issued, and, as Pompeius was now in possession of the decretive machinery, Caesar depended in this respect on the good will of his rival. Pompeius incomprehensibly abandoned of his own accord this completely secure position; with his consen and during his dictatorship (702) the personal appearance of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law. When however soon afterwards the new election-ordinance(16) was issued, the obligation of candidates personally to enrol themselves was repeated in general terms, and no sort of exception was added in favour of those release

orten Caesar'

6. So far Caesar had still during the last ten months of the year 705 a right to the command, not on the ground of the Pompeio-Licinian law, but on the ground of the old rule that a command with a set term still continued after the expiry of the term up to the arrival of the successor. But now, since the new regulation of 702 called to the governorships not the consuls and praetors going out, but those who had gone out five years ago or more, and thus prescribed an interval between the civil magistracy and the command instead of the previous immediate sequence, there was no longer any difficulty in straightway filling up from another quarter every legally vacant governorship, and so, in the case in question, bringing about for the Gallic provinces the change of command on the 1st Mar

s to Caes

provinces hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided with governorships for that year. The long-repressed indignation burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened; everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar was brought forward in these discussions. For them it was a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law to the proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people, and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid. T

Gaul and equity demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled before the time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command along with the consulship; and they pointed beyond doubt to the facts, that a few years previously Pompeius had just in the same way combined the Spanish governorships with

he demand of the Caesarians that their master should be allowed to conjoin the consulship and the proconsulship; this demand, he added with blunt coarseness, seemed to him no better than if a son should offer to flog his father. He approved in principle the proposal of Marcellus, in so far as he too declared that he would not allow Caesar directly to attach the consulship to the pro-consulship. He hinted, however, although without making any binding declaration on the point, that they would perhaps grant to Caesar admission to

nstitutionally could, the cancelling of these decrees by their tribunician veto; but Pompeius very distinctly declared that the magistrates were bound unconditionally to obey the senate, and that intercessions and similar antiquated formalities would produce no change. The oligarchical party, whose organ Pompeius now made himself, betrayed not obscurely the design, in the event of a victory, of revising the constitution in their sense and removing

rangements

ed Gaul, he sought even yet to procrastinate, and, well acquainted with the extreme love of peace in the majority of the senate, did not abandon the hope of still restraining them from the declaration of war in spite of the pressure exercised over them by Pompeius. He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might avoid for the present open variance with the supreme governing board. When the senate (in the spring of 704) at the suggestion of Pompeius requested both him and Caesar to furnish each a legion for the impending Parthian war(20) and when agreeably to this resolution Pompeius demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him some years before, so as to s

u

ent and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but also unsurpassed in his dissolute life, in his talent for borrowing- his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces (600

he Recall of Ca

less than Caesar refuse obedience to it, that the one-sided removal of one of the two generals would only increase the danger to the constitution- carried complete conviction to superficial politicians and to the public at large; and the declaration of Curio, that he intended to prevent any onesided proceedings against Caesar by the veto constitutionally belonging to him, met with much approval in and out of the senate. Caesar declared his consent at once to Curio's proposal and offered to resign his governorship and command at any moment on the summons of the senate, provided Pompeius would do the same; he might safely do so, for Pompeius without his Italo-Spanish command was no longer formidable. Pompeius again for that very re

Pompeius Bo

nt of Curio. Pompeius was thus recalled by the senate no less than Caesar, and while Caesar was ready to comply with the command, Pompeius positively refused obedience. The presiding consul Gaius Marcellus, cousin of Marcus Marcellus and like the latter belonging to the Catonian party, addressed a severe lecture to the servile majority; and it was, no doubt, vexatious to be thus beaten

ation

apid action, his allies knew very well that they could never expect this from him, and that it was for them, as they had promised, to bring matters to a crisis. After the champions of the constitution and of senatorial government had already declared the constitutional rights of the burgesses and of the tribunes of the people to be meaningless formalities,(22) they now found themselves driven by necessity to treat the constitutional decision; of the senate itself in a similar manner and, as the legitimate government wou

arcellus to give Pompeius on the strength of it orders to march against Caesar. Yet the said consul, in concert with the two consuls elected for 705 who likewise belonged to the Catonian party, proceeded to Pompeius, and these three men by virtue of their own plenitude of power requested the general to put himself at the head of the two legions stationed at Capua

imatum

04) had immediately gone to Caesar at Ravenna, vividly represented the state of things to his master; and it hardly needed such a representation to convince Caesar that longer delay now could only be injurious. But, as he with the view of not giving his antagonists occasion to complain had hitherto brought no troops to Ravenna itself, he could for the present do nothing but despatch orders to his whole force to set out with all haste; and he had to wait till at least the one legion stationed in Upper Italy reached Ravenna. Meanwhile he sent an ultimatum to Rome, which, if useful for nothing else, by its extreme submissiveness still farther compromised his opponents in public opinion, and perhaps even, as he seemed himself to hesitate, induced them to prosecute more remissly their preparations against him. In this ultimatum Caesar dropped all the counter-demands which he formerly made on Pompeius, and offered on his own part both to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, and to dismiss eight of the ten legions belonging to him, at the term fixed by the senate; he declared himself content, if the senate would leave him either the governorship of Cisalpine Gau

ate in t

made the deepest impression. In spite of the dread inspired by the numerous soldiers of Pompeius who flocked into the capital, the sentiment of the majority was not doubtful; the consuls could not venture to let it find expression. Respecting the proposal renewed by Caesar that both generals might be enjoined to resign their commands simultaneously, respecting all the projects of accommodation suggested by his letter, and respecting the proposal made by Marcus Coelius Rufus and Marcus Calidius that Pompeius should be urged immediately to depart for Spain, the consuls refused- as they in the capacity of presiding officers were entitled to do- to let a vote take place. Even the proposal of one of their most decided partisans who was simply not so blind to the military position of affairs as his party, Marcus Marcellus-to defer the determination till the Italian levy en masse could be under arms and could protect the senate-was not allowed to be brought to a vote. Pompeius caused it to be declared through his usual organ, Quintus Scipio, that he was resolved to take up the cause of the senate now or never, and that he would let it drop if they longer delay

arches i

had torn to pieces the Sullan constitution, had overthrown the rule of the senate, and had furnished the defenceless and unarmed democracy with protection and with arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke, not to the Clodian public whose republican enthusiasm had been long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns and villages of Northern Italy, who still felt freshly and purely the mighty influence of the thought of civic freedom; who were still capable of fighting and of dying for ideals; who had themselves received for their country in a revolutionary way from Caesar the burgess-rights which the government refused to them; whom Caesar's fall would leave once more at the mercy of the -fasces-, and who already possessed practical proofs(26) of the inexorable use which the oligarchy proposed to make of these against the Transpadanes. Such were the listeners before whom such an orator set forth the facts- the thanks for the conquest of Gaul which the nobility were preparing for the general and his army; the contemptuous setting aside of the comitia; the overawing of the sena