Rome

by Faulkner, Neil

  It threatened, moreover, to spread further and fuse with the struggle elsewhere. Marching south again in 72 BC, his followers having abandoned the idea of crossing the Alpine passes and dispersing to their respective homelands, Spartacus made contact with the pirates, planning to use their ships to transport his army to Sicily and reignite the slave revolution that had burned there a generation before. Links were being forged that might have united Sertorius in Spain, the slaves of Italy and Sicily, the pirates of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Greeks of Asia Minor in a common anti-Roman front. The years 74–71 BC were among the most dangerous in the history of the empire. Certainly the crisis proved fatal for the senatorial government restored by Sulla ten years before.

  It was the failure of Sulla’s colleague, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, to crush Sertorius that allowed Pompey to press for and secure a special command in Spain in 77 BC. Metellus and his army remained in the field, however, and the rivalry between the two commanders contributed to further defeats. Even after reinforcement, the war ground on for years, as Metellus and Pompey attempted to reduce one hilltop fortress after another. It was ended not by strategic brilliance but by treachery. The coherence of Sertorius’s high command was weakened when the Senate passed a law pardoning most of the rebels. One of them then murdered Sertorius, usurped his position, and was then promptly defeated by Pompey. Quite suddenly, all resistance collapsed and the long war was brought to an end in 72 BC. On the other side of the empire also, the Roman counter-offensive was successful. Though the Romans were defeated in a sea battle with the pirates off Crete, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, appointed to a special command against Mithridates, destroyed the main Pontic army and fleet, recovered the territory that had been lost, and then invaded Pontus itself. At the Battle of Cabira he won another decisive victory, and Mithridates fled his kingdom to take refuge with the King of Armenia, his kinsman and ally, whose mountain territory seemed at the time beyond the reach of Roman power. By the end of 73 BC the threat from Mithridates had been greatly diminished, and Lucullus spent the following year settling the affairs of Asia Minor.

  That same year, 72 BC, traumatized by the slave revolution at home, the Romans appointed Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the richest men in the empire, to a special command against Spartacus. Conscription, hard drilling and brutal discipline – including the decimation of units routed in battle against the slaves (by which each tenth man was executed) – created a new army of ten legions (50,000 men). For six months the war continued in the South, where an embryonic slave state had emerged, in control of several towns and having official storehouses, arms factories, and tight collective discipline. But Spartacus found himself unable to supply his vast host once Crassus had closed off the toe of Italy with a huge entrenchment running from sea to sea. Breaking out northwards and resuming a war of movement in 71 BC, he was eventually boxed in and fell back into the mountains of Petelia in Apulia, threatened now by three converging Roman armies – that of Crassus, that of Pompey returning from Spain, and that of Lucullus recalled from the East: the whole military might of the Roman Empire deployed to crush the slave revolution in Italy.

  Spartacus tried to break out again by seeking battle with Crassus before other Roman armies could join him. The historians record that the rebels fought with great determination, and that Spartacus, having killed his horse beforehand as a symbolic rejection of flight, died trying to hack his way through the mêlée to reach Crassus himself. His body was never found. The remnants of his army were pursued back into the mountains, Pompey’s men now joining the manhunt. Some 6,000 captives were later crucified along the Appian Way, the road from Rome to Capua, where the revolt had begun three years before.

  Pompey immediately sought further advancement for himself. This was far from guaranteed: his supremacy in the state was not yet firmly established. Spain had afforded him little glory: he had suffered several defeats, the war had been long and costly, much of the credit for such success as there was belonged to his colleague Metellus, and it was treachery that had finally brought Sertorius down. Lucullus, victor over Mithridates, and Crassus, conqueror of Spartacus, seemed at least equally meritorious. But Pompey had created a powerful base of support in Spain, where a network of client chiefs now worked in his favour, and he stood at the head of a veteran army that looked to him for pay, a share of plunder, and land for retirement. This army Pompey now led to within striking distance of Rome, at which point he issued a demand that he be allowed to stand for the consulship. Under Sulla’s constitution this was illegal on two counts: Pompey was too young, and he had not yet qualified by holding more junior magistracies. More importantly, the Senate feared a new Marius, a general who championed the People, an advocate of reform who threatened property and privilege, a would-be popular dictator hostile to the power of conservative oligarchs.

  The Senate, however, lacked an army. Lucullus had one, but most of it had been left back in the East. There was only Crassus, whose ten highly trained and battle-hardened legions might be a match for the Spanish veterans. Only Crassus might checkmate Pompey. But would he be willing?

  That it should come to this was itself evidence that the Sullan constitution was all but dead. The oligarchy’s powerlessness was apparent in its dependence on one warlord to defeat another. Now and henceforward it was reduced to little more than this: wooing, cajoling and bribing one senior general after another, each a prospective military dictator, the highest point of senatorial politics being to divine which of them was the lesser evil. At present it was Crassus in preference to Pompey. Later it would be Pompey over Caesar. Then Octavian over Antony. Sometimes the cynical opportunist whose favour was sought would judge it expedient to stamp his drive for power with the imprimatur of the Senate. And sometimes not, as now, when Crassus chose an alliance with Pompey instead of the Senate.

  Crassus is a more shadowy figure than Pompey, his motives often difficult to fathom, but it seems likely that his natural caution inclined him to baulk at the risks of civil war – especially against Pompey and his veterans – and to prefer the safe option of a share in power. After all, both men were feared by their colleagues; not only was there the risk of defeat, but risk too in a victory which restored the power of the Senate and allowed it the chance one day to strike down Crassus in his turn. Whereas Pompey, also in fear of war, was willing to cut a deal: he and Crassus would stand for the consulship together, guaranteeing a combination of political power – of clients, of wealth, of votes – that would be unbeatable. And though the tension between the two rivals remained acute, their armies still in being during and after the election, the consuls did finally agree to demobilize, to reform the state, and to parcel out future high offices and honours between themselves and their respective retinues. Many features of the Sullan constitution were overturned. Senators lost their exclusive control of the jury-courts. The Senate was purged of many of Sulla’s appointees. And the powers of the tribunes of plebs were restored. The events of the winter of 71–70 BC amounted in fact to an anti-oligarchic coup. Its principal agents may have been two rival politician-generals – suspicious and squabbling, each out for himself – but to secure their power they were compelled to weaken the Senate and strengthen the People.

  Pompey aspired to a command in the East, and he remained in Rome until 67 BC, apparently awaiting the right opportunity. This came when the pirates attacked the ships that carried grain to the city. A bill was passed granting Pompey imperium infinitum – authority without boundaries – over the whole Mediterranean and all the coastal districts. With the right to levy on both the treasury and the tax-farmers, he raised a force of 500 ships and 120,000 men. Dividing the Mediterranean into 13 zones and organizing his forces into separate flotillas under 24 commanders, Pompey commenced a series of marine counter-insurgency sweeps that cleared the sea of pirates and shut down their coastal bases within three months.

  A second bill in 66 BC then granted Pompey the command against Mithridates and his Armenian ally
King Tigranes. Lucullus had returned to the East after the defeat of Spartacus, but his campaign in the Armenian mountains had badly misfired. The prize was Mithridates himself, an exotic eastern potentate who had become Rome’s most intractable enemy. Lucullus craved the glory of his capture. Invading Armenia in 69 BC with a small army, he won a brilliant victory at Tigranocerta over vastly superior eastern forces. But tactical success does not always translate into strategic dominance. The following year, in pursuit of Mithridates, Tigranes and the remnants of their forces, he pushed deeper into the mountain wilderness of Armenia. His wily enemies lured him on, refusing battle, letting time, terrain and climate eat away at the morale of his legionaries. Finally, as the first autumn blizzards struck, they mutinied and demanded a retreat. Lucullus was forced to pull back, harassed as he did so by Pontic and Armenian guerrillas. His discomfiture was complete when Rome denied his small force reinforcement. Lucullus had become the target of a hostile political coalition at home – the loan-sharks resented his rescheduling of the debts of the Greek cities of Asia, and Pompey had designs on his eastern command. Lucullus, who had crushed Mithridates and conquered Pontus, was recalled to Rome so that Pompey’s sun might rise higher.

  Pompey resumed the war with a much bigger army – perhaps three times the size of Lucullus’s. With it, between 66 and 63 BC, he won a stunning series of military and diplomatic victories. Mithridates was again defeated and the last Pontic army destroyed. (The king escaped again, this time to the Crimea, but his attempts to renew the war from this base were frustrated by a revolt against conscription and taxation led by his own son; and Mithridates, blockaded inside a fortress by his own people, committed suicide in 63 BC, successfully evading his Roman enemies even at the end.) Pompey turned aside from the pursuit of Mithridates and quickly reduced Tigranes to submission. He then launched murderous attacks on the Albanians and Iberians of the Caucasus (66–65 BC), before being forced to pull back by an increasingly restive army. Other rich prizes soon beckoned. In 64 BC he intervened to restore order in Seleucid Syria, which feuding in the royal family had reduced to political chaos. Then, in 63 BC, he pushed on southwards down the Levantine coast towards Palestine and Arabia. Succession to the throne of the Jews was contested by two brothers, and both claimants submitted their suits to Pompey’s arbitration. Naturally, the Roman war-lord decided in favour of the weaker, provoking the stronger to revolt, whereupon Pompey unleashed his army on Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jews. After a lengthy siege, the legionaries stormed into the Temple, the world centre of Judaism, cutting down soldiers, civilians and priests indiscriminately, and their leader then violated religious taboo by entering the Holy of Holies and profaning it with his unclean presence. Roman civilization had reached the Holy Land.

  Sulla, Lucullus and Pompey had destroyed the Hellenistic system of states and created a power vacuum in the East. A new Roman supremacy was needed to keep the Parthian Empire at bay, to defend property and order, and to permit efficient exploitation of conquests. Pompey’s ‘eastern settlement’ of 63 BC centred on the rich and heavily garrisoned Province of Syria, which was annexed at the outset and thereafter remained under direct Roman rule. Ranged around it was a penumbra of smaller provinces and client states, the latter retaining nominal independence but ruled by pro-Roman puppets. But the new East was not simply Roman-dominated; it was also a personal fiefdom of Pompey himself. The region would remain his principal power-base in the years to come – controlled by his appointed vassals, milked of revenue to support his political campaigns at home, and a source of military manpower, matériel and supplies to sustain the Pompeian cause in civil war. Pompey by 63 BC had become probably the richest and most powerful Roman in history. His return to Rome was anticipated with a mixture of fascination and fear.

  Pompey’s special commands had been proposed by the tribunes and granted by the popular assemblies. His alliance with Crassus had delivered winning majorities. The Senate had been eclipsed in the years 71–67 BC. Afterwards, however, with Pompey himself in the East, the Senate had attempted to reassert itself. Ironically, the reaction had been led not by one of the traditional aristocracy, but by a ‘new man’ who was the first of his family to enter the Senate: Marcus Tullius Cicero. We know him mainly from the large corpus of his own writings that has survived – collections of letters and speeches, and treatises on philosophy, politics, oratory and religion. As well as being the greatest man of letters of his age, he was also a highly successful lawyer and a leading conservative politician from 67 BC until his death in 43 BC. From the outset a defender of the Senate, Cicero developed the concept of the Concordia Ordinum – the Union of the Orders – an attempt to unite senators and equestrians in a political bloc that would stand against what Cicero saw as the forces of disorder and breakdown: the warlords, the tribunes, the popular assemblies, and all those who supported reform. More clearly than any other Late Republican politician, Cicero theorized and articulated an ideology of senatorial reaction, that is, of the optimates (best men) who stood opposed to the populares (populists). In practice, however, the Concordia Ordinum quickly degenerated into political hysteria and a right-wing pogrom.

  Cicero was elected consul in 64 BC in opposition to the popular candidate Lucius Sergius Catilina, against whose policy of cancelling debts (novae tabulae) the victor had run a veritable ‘red scare’ campaign. Afterwards, we are told, Catiline decided to organize a coup to overthrow the government, but his plans were betrayed, he fled the capital with some of his supporters, and he was then defeated and killed trying to raise an insurrection in the Etruscan countryside. Cicero, in this account, was the man of the hour. Acting promptly on intelligence received from informers, he arrested many of the leading conspirators, made the capital secure with improvised patrols and checkpoints, and dispatched the forces necessary to disperse Catiline’s rebel army. This is the version of events presented by the historian Sallust in The Conspiracy of Catiline; and his version is essentially that of Cicero himself. Catiline, according to Sallust, had ‘a vicious and depraved nature’, delighted in ‘civil war, bloodshed, robbery and political strife’, and was possessed by ‘an over-mastering desire for despotic power to gratify which he was prepared to use by any and every means.’(16)

  Most classical scholars admire Cicero and assume the essential veracity of his account. In fact, he was a snob, a hypocrite, a liar and, as Michael Parenti has recently put it, ‘a self-enriching slaveholder, slumlord and senator [who] deplored even the palest moves towards democracy’.(17) By dissecting the traditional account of the Catiline Conspiracy and exposing its numerous oddities and inconsistencies, Parenti brilliantly exposes it as a fabrication in which a hapless populist politician was hounded to death in a ‘war on terror’ directed at opponents of the Senate. In the fevered atmosphere engendered, senators ran for cover, supporting whatever repressive measures were demanded lest apparent weakness betray them as ‘conspirators’ in league with Catiline. First a state of emergency was declared; then the men arrested were summarily executed in the state prison; and finally the fugitives from Cicero’s death-squads in Rome were hunted down by government forces in the countryside. Cui bono? Who benefits? This bon mot we owe to Cicero, who, though he did not invent it, made it famous by using it in his first big court case. The answer in this case is clear: the consul, the Senate, and the supporters of the Concordia Ordinum, now once again firmly in control of Rome.

  Late the following year, 62 BC, Pompey returned from the East. Cicero hoped to enlist him as the figurehead leader of the Concordia Ordinum. The signs were good: in contrast to his behaviour in 71 BC, Pompey demobilized his soldiers, came immediately in person to Rome, and there respectfully addressed the Senate.

  The honeymoon was brief. Pompey came to Rome seeking ratification of his eastern settlement and land allotments for his veterans. But the first would underwrite his power-base in the East, the second create a new one in Italy itself, and the Senate, encouraged by Crassus and Lucullus, jealous of Pom
pey’s pre-eminence, and by Cato, fearful of the over-mighty citizen, put off decisions from session to session. Pompey let matters drift. Not so, however, one of the few powerful men to support his demands, a man whose career had also been stalled by the hostility of enemies in the Senate. An intelligent, dignified and steely presence in the swirling politics of the 60s BC, it may partly have been fear of him that had caused Cicero to hope that Pompey would lead the Concordia. If so, Cicero was right in judging Pompey the lesser evil. For the man in question was destined to become the greatest popularis of them all: Gaius Julius Caesar.

  Crossing the Rubicon: the First Triumvirate, the Civil War, and the dictatorship of Caesar, 59–44 BC

  Until 59 BC, when he was 41, Caesar’s career had been unspectacular. A nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, he was closely associated with the populist faction in Roman politics, and, to escape the chill wind of Sullan reaction at home, he had spent much time in the East in early adulthood. After returning to Rome, he supported Pompey’s coup of 71–70 BC, a political alliance further consolidated when in 67 BC he married into Pompey’s family after the death of his first wife. He also became closely associated with another political giant of the 60s BC, borrowing heavily from Crassus to fund campaigns for election to a succession of offices – quaestor, aedile, pontifex maximus (high priest), praetor – culminating in his appointment as Governor of Further Spain in 61 BC. This posting involved both opportunities for enrichment, such that Caesar was able to pay off his debts, and a field command, which revealed hitherto hidden talent for generalship. But the higher he rose, the more suspicious and obstructive his senatorial colleagues became. For Caesar was no ordinary politician.