brief experience was sufficient to convert the general's prejudice into
the heartiest approval of his new officer. Any spirit of emulation which
Sulla possessed was but shown in action and counsel; none could outstrip
him in prowess and forethought, yet all that he did seemed to be the
easy outcome either of opportunity or of a ready wit which charmed
without startling: and he was never heard to breathe a word which
reflected on the conduct of the pro-consul or his staff. Over the petty
officers and the soldiers he attained the immediate triumph which
attends supreme capacity combined with a facile temper and a sense of
humour. His old companions of the stage had been perhaps his best
instructors in the art of moulding the will of the common man. He had
the right address for every one; a grumble was met by a few kind words;
a roar of laughter was awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was
the happier for the day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed
boundless; yet he never gave as though he expected a return, and the
idea of obligation was dismissed with a shrug and a smile.[1148] Sulla
was not one of the clumsy intriguers who laboriously lay up a store of
favour and are easily detected in the attempt. He was a terrible man
because his insight and his charm were a part of his very nature, as
were also the dark current of ambition, scarcely acknowledged even by
its possessor, and the surging tides of passion, carefully dammed by an
exquisitely balanced intellect into a level stream, on which crowds
might float and believe themselves to be victims or agents of an
overmastering principle, not of a single man's caprice.

The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be put to an
effective test; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, which the
campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out to be its
immediate result. The Moor was still hesitating between peace and
war--looking still, it may be, for another bid from the representative
of Rome, and waiting for the moment when he might compel the attention
of Metellus's rude successor, who preferred the precautions of war to
those of diplomacy--when the Numidian king, in despair at this ruinous
passivity and at the loss of the magnificent strategic chance that was
being offered by the enemy, approached his father-in-law with the
proposal that the cession of one-third of Numidia should be the price of
his assistance. The cession was to take effect, either if the Romans
were driven out of Africa, or if a settlement was reached with Rome
which left the boundaries of Numidia intact.[1149] Bocchus may not have
credited the likelihood of the realisation of the first alternative; but
combined action might render the second possible, and even if that
failed, his chances of a bargain with Rome were not decreased by
entering on a policy of hostility which might be closed at the opportune
moment. For the time, however, he played vigorously for Jugurtha's
success. His troops of horsemen poured over the border to join the
Numidian force, and the combined armies moved rapidly to the east to
encompass the columns of Marius, that had just begun their long march to
the site which had been chosen for winter quarters.

The object of the Roman general was to keep in touch with the sea for
the purpose of facilitating the supply of his army. But we cannot say
whether his original choice was a station so distant as the
neighbourhood of Cirta,[1150] or whether his movement in this direction,
which severed him by some hundreds of miles from the region which he had
lately commanded, was a measure forced on him by the danger to which his
army was exposed in the distant west from the overwhelming forces of the
enemy. He had at any rate covered a great stretch of territory before he
actually came into touch with the combined forces of Bocchus and
Jugurtha; for the almost continuous fighting that ensued, when once the
armies had come into contact, seems all to have been confined to the
last few days before Cirta was reached and to a period of time which
could have formed but a small fraction of the whole duration of the
march. The first attack was planned for the closing hours of the
day.[1151] The advent of night would be of advantage to the native force
whether they were victorious or defeated. In the first case their
knowledge of the ground would enable them to follow up their success, in
the second their retreat would be secured. Under all circumstances a
struggle in the darkness must increase the difficulties of the Romans. A
complete surprise was impossible, for Marius's scouting was good, and
from all directions horsemen dashed up to tell him the enemy was at
hand. But the quarter from which such an attack would be aimed could not
be determined, and so incredibly rapid were the movements of the Moorish
and Gaetulian horse that scarcely had the last messenger ridden up when
the Roman column was assailed on every side. The Roman army had no time
to form in line, and anything approaching battle array was scorned by
the enemy. They charged in separate squadrons, the formation of which
seemed to be due to chance as much as to design; this desultory mode of
attack enabled them to assail the Roman forces at every point and to
prevent any portion of the men from acquiring the stability that might
save the helplessness of the others; they harried the legionaries as
they shifted their heavy baggage, drew their swords and hurried into
line, and the cavalry soldiers as they strove to mount their frightened
horses. Horse and foot were inextricably mixed, and no one could tell
which was the van and which the rear of the surrounded army. The general
fought like a common soldier, but he did not forget the duties of a
commander. With his chosen troop of horse he rode up and down the field,
detecting the weak points of his own men, the strong points of the
enemy, lending a timely succour to the first and throwing his weight
against the second.[1152] But it was the experience of the well-trained
legionaries that saved the day. Schooled in such surprises, they began
to form small solid squares, and against these barriers the impact of
the light horsemen beat in vain.[1153] But night was drawing on--the
hour which the allied kings had chosen as the crowning moment of their
attack--and Marius was as fully conscious as his enemies how helpless
the Roman force would be if such a struggle were protracted into the
darkness. Fortunately the place of the attack had been badly chosen; the
neighbouring ground did not present a wholly level expanse on which
cavalry could operate at will. But a short distance from the scene of
the fight two neighbouring hills could be seen to rise above the plain;
the smaller possessed an abundant spring of water, the larger by its
rugged aspect seemed to promise an admirable rampart for defence.[1154]
It was impossible to withdraw the whole army to the elevation which
contained the welcome stream, for its space did not permit of an
encampment; but Marius instructed Sulla to seize it with the cavalry. He
then began to draw his scattered infantry together, taking advantage of
the disorder in the enemy which the last sturdy stand of the veterans
had produced, and when the divisions were at last in touch with one
another, he led the whole force at a quick march to the place which he
had chosen for its retreat. The kings soon recognised that this retreat
was unassailable; their plan of a night attack had failed; but they did
not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their mercy. The fight
had become a blockade; they would coop the Romans within their narrow
limits, or force them to straggle on their way under a renewal of the
same merciless assault. To have withstood the legions and occupied their
ground, was itself a triumph for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their
long lines round either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires; but
their minds were set on passing the night in a manner conducive neither
to sleep nor vigilance. They threw away their victory in a manner common
to barbarism, which often lacks neither courage nor skill, but finds its
nemesis in an utter lack of self-restraint. From the silent darkness of
the ridge above the Romans could see, in the circles of red light thrown
by the blazing watch-fires, the forms of their enemies in every attitude
of careless and reckless joy; while the delirious howls of triumph which
reached their ears, were a source, not of terror, but of hope. In the
Roman camp no sound was heard; even the call of the patrol was hushed by
the general's command.[1155] As the night wore on, the silence spread to
the Plain below, but here it was the silence of the deep and profound
sleep that comes on men wearied by the excesses of the night. Suddenly
there was a terrific uproar. Every horn and trumpet in the Roman lines
seemed to be alive, every throat to be swelling the clamour with
ear-piercing yells. The Moors and Gaetulians, springing from the ground,
found the enemy in their very midst. Where the slaughter ended, the
pursuit began. No battle in the war had shown a larger amount of slain;
for flight, which was the Numidian's salvation and the mockery of his
foe, had been less possible in this conflict than in any which had
gone before.

Marius continued his march, but with precautions even greater than those
which he had previously observed. He formed his whole army into a
"hollow square" [1156]--in fact, a great oblong, arranged equally for
defence on front, flanks, and rear, while the baggage occupied the
centre. Sulla with the cavalry rode on the extreme right; on the left
was Aulus Manlius with the slingers and archers and some cohorts of
Ligurians; the front and rear were covered by light infantry selected
from the legions under the command of military tribunes. Numidian
refugees scoured the country around, their knowledge of the land giving
them a peculiar value as a scouting force. The camp was formed with the
same scrupulous care; whole cohorts formed from legionaries kept watch
against the gates, fortified posts were manned at short distances along
the enclosing mound, and squadrons of auxiliary cavalry moved all night
before the ramparts. Marius was to be seen at all points and at all
hours, a living example of vigilance not of distrust, a master in the
art of controlling men, not by terror but by sharing in their toils.
Four days had the march progressed and Cirta was reported to be not far
distant, when suddenly an ominous but now familiar sight was seen.
Scouts were riding in on every hand; all reported an enemy, but none
could say with certainty the quarter from which he might appear.[1157]
The present disposition of the Roman troops had made the direction of
the attack a matter of comparatively little moment, and Marius called a
halt without making any change in the order of his march. Soon the enemy
came down, and Jugurtha, when he saw the hollow square, knew that his
plan had been partly foiled. He had divided his own forces into four
divisions; some of these were to engage the Roman van; but some at least
might be able to throw themselves at the critical moment on the
undefended rear of the Roman column, when its attention was fully
engaged by a frontal attack.[1158]

As things were, the Roman army presented no one point that seemed more
assailable than another, and Jugurtha determined to engage with the
Roman cavalry on the right, probably with the idea that by diverting
that portion of the Roman force which was under the circumstances its
strongest protecting arm, he might give an opportunity to his ally to
lead that attack upon the rear which was to be the crowning movement of
the day. His assault, which was directed near to the angle which the
right flank made with the van, was anticipated rather than received by
Sulla, who rapidly formed his force into two divisions, one for attack,
the other for defence. The first he massed in dense squadrons, and at
the head of these he charged the Moorish horse; the second stood their
ground, covering themselves as best they could from the clouds of
missiles that rose from the enemy's ranks, and slaughtering the daring
horsemen that rode too near their lines. For a time it seemed as if the
right flank and the van were to bear the brunt of the battle; the king
was known to be there in person: and Marius, knowing what Jugurtha's
presence meant, himself hastened to the front.

But suddenly the chief point of the attack was changed. Bocchus had been
joined by a force of native infantry, which his son Volux had just
brought upon the field. It was a force that had not yet known defeat,
for some delay upon the route had prevented it from taking part in the
former battle. With this infantry, and probably with a considerable body
of Moorish horse,[1159] Bocchus threw himself upon the Roman rear.
Neither the general nor his chief officers were present with the
division that was thus attacked; Marius and Sulla were both engrossed
with the struggle at the other end of the right wing, and Manlius seems
still to have kept his position on the left flank; the absence of an
inspiring mind amongst the troops assailed, their ignorance of the fate
of their distant comrades, moved Jugurtha to lend the weight of his
presence and his words to the efforts of his fellow king. With a handful
of horsemen he quitted the main force under his command and galloped
down the whole length of the right wing, until he wheeled his horse
amidst the front ranks of the struggling infantry. He raised a sword
streaming with blood and shouted in the Latin tongue that Marius had
already fallen by his hand, that the Romans might now give up the
struggle. The suggestion conveyed by his words shook the nerves even of
those who did not credit the horrifying news,[1160] while the presence
of the king, here as everywhere, stirred the Africans to their highest
pitch of daring. They pressed the wavering Romans harder than before,
the battle at this point had almost become a rout, when suddenly a large
body of Roman horse was seen to be bearing down on the right flank of
the Moorish infantry. They were led by Sulla, whose vigorous attacks had
scattered the enemy on the right wing; he could now employ his cavalry
for other purposes, and the Moorish infantry shook beneath the flank
attack, Jugurtha refused to see that the tide of victory had turned;
with a reckless courage he still strove to weld together the shattered
forces of the Moors and to urge them against the Roman lines; his own
escape was a miracle; men fell to left and right of him, he was pressed
on both sides by the Roman horse; at times he seemed almost alone amidst
his foes; yet at the last moment he vanished, and the capture which
would have ended the war was still beyond the reach of Roman skill and
prowess.[1161] Sulla had saved the day, the advent of Marius was but
needed to put the final touches to the victory. He had seen the cavalry
on the right scatter beneath the charges of the Roman horse, and almost
at the same moment news was brought him that his men were being driven
back upon the rear. His succour was scarcely needed, but his presence
gave an impulse to pursuit. The sight of the field when that pursuit was
at its height, lived ever in the minds of those who shared in its glory
and its horror. The sickening spectacle which a hard fought battle
yields, was protracted in this instance by the vast vista of the plains.
Wherever the eye could reach there were prostrate bodies of men and
horses, whose only claim to life was the writhing agony of their wounds;
on a stage dyed red with blood and strewn with the furniture of
shattered weapons little moving groups could be seen. The figures of
these puppets showed all the phases of helpless flight, violent pursuit,
and pitiless slaughter.

In spite of the carnage of this battlefield, victory here, as elsewhere
throughout the war, meant little more than driving off the foe. We
possess but a fragmentary record of this terrible retreat to Cirta, but
it is certain that its dangers and losses were by no means exhausted in
two pitched battles. A chance notice torn from its context[1162] tells
of a third great contest which closed a long period of harassing
attacks. Close to the walls of Cirta the Roman army was met by the two
kings at the head of sixty thousand horse. The combatants were swathed
in a cloud raised by the dust of battle, the Roman soldiers massed in a
narrow space were such helpless victims of the missiles of the enemy
that the Numidian and Moorish horsemen ceased to single out their
targets, and threw their javelins at random into the crowded ranks with
the certainty that each would find its mark. For three days was the
running fight continued. A charge was impossible against the volleys of
the foe, and retreat was cut off by the multitude of light horsemen that
hemmed the army in on every side. In the last desperate effort which
Marius made to free himself from the meshes of the kings, even the
centre of his column shook under the hail of missiles that assailed it,
and to the weapons of the enemy were soon added the terrors of blinding
heat and intolerable thirst. Suddenly a storm broke over the warring
hosts. It cooled the throats of the Romans and refreshed their limbs,
while it lessened the power of their foes. The strapless javelins[1163]
of the Numidians could not be hurled when wet, for they slipped from the
hands of the thrower; their shields of elephants' hide absorbed water
like a sponge and weighed down the arms on which they hung. The Moors
and Numidians, seeing that even their means of defence had failed them,
took to flight: but only to appear on another day with their army raised
to ninety thousand and to repeat the attempt to surround the Roman host.
This last effort ended in a signal victory for Marius. The forces of the
two kings were not only defeated but almost destroyed.

The events thus recorded can scarcely be regarded as mere variants of
the two battles which we have previously described. Vague and rhetorical
as is the account which sets them forth, it shows that there were
traditions of suffering and loss endured by the army of Marius such as
found no parallel in the campaign of his predecessor. Marius had
attempted what Metellus had never dared--a campaign in the far west of
Numidia. Its results were fruitless successes of the paladin type
followed by a burdensome and disastrous retreat. The west was lost, the
east was threatened, yet the lesson was not without its fruit. The
general when he reached the walls of Cirta had lost something of his
hardy faith in the use of blood and iron; he was more ready to appeal to
the motives which make for peace, to pretend a trust he did not feel, to
make promises which might induce the fluid treachery of Bocchus to
harden into a definite act of treason to his brother king, above all, to
lean on some other man who could play the delicate game of diplomatic
fence with a cunning which his own straightforward methods could not
attain. Everything depended on the attitude of the King of Mauretania;
and here again the campaign had not been without some healthful
consequences. If the Romans had gained no material advantage, Bocchus
had suffered some very material losses. His forces had been cut up, the
stigma of failure attached (perhaps for the first time) to their leader,
the first contact with the Romans had not been encouraging to his
subjects. And the campaign may also have revealed the difficulty, if not
the hopelessness, of Jugurtha's cause. The plan of driving the Romans
from Africa could not be perfected even with the combined forces of the
two kingdoms at their fullest strength; however much they might harass,
they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain such a success as
even the most complacent patriotism could name a victory; while the
sturdiness of the resistance of Rome seemed to banish the hypothesis
that Jugurtha would be included in any terms that might be made. Yet the
campaign had left Bocchus in an excellent position for negotiation. He
had shown that Mauretania was a great make-weight in the scale against
Rome; he had advertised his power as an enemy, his value as an ally; now
was the time to see whether the power and the value, so long ignored,
would be appreciated by Rome.

But five days are said to have elapsed since the last great conflict
with the Moors when envoys from Bocchus waited on Marius in his winter
quarters at Cirta.[1164] The request which they brought was that "two of
the Roman general's most trusty friends should wait on the king, who
desired to speak with them on a matter of interest to himself and the
Roman people".[1165] Marius forthwith singled out Sulla and Manlius, who
followed the envoys to the place of meeting that had been arranged. On
the way it was agreed by the representatives of Rome that they should
not wait for the king to open the discussion. Hitherto every proposal
had come from Bocchus; he had been played with, but never given a
straightforward answer, still less a sign of real encouragement. Yet no
good could be gained by expecting the king to assume a grovelling
attitude, by forcing him to begin proposals for peace with a confession
of his own humiliation. It would be far wiser if the commissioners
opened with a few spontaneous remarks which might restore rest and
dignity to the royal mind. Manlius the elder readily yielded the place
of first speaker to the more facile Sulla. If the words which history
has attributed to the quaestor[1166] were really used by him, they are a
record of one of those rare instances in which a diplomatist is able to
tell the naked truth. Sulla began by dwelling on the joy which he and
his friends derived from the change in Bocchus's mind--from the
heaven-sent inspiration which had taught the king that peace was
preferable to war. He then dwelt on the fact, which he might have
adduced the whole of his country's history to prove, that Rome had been
ever keener in the search for friends than subjects, that the Republic
had ever deemed voluntary allegiance safer than that compelled by force.
He showed that Roman friendship might be a boon, not a burden, to
Bocchus; the distance of his kingdom from the capital would obviate a
conflict of interests, but no distance was too great to be traversed by
the gratitude of Rome. Bocchus had already seen what Rome could do in
war; all that he needed to learn was the still greater lesson that her
generosity was as unconquerable as her arms. Sulla's words were a
genuine statement of the whole theory of the Protectorate, as it was
held and even acted on at this period of history. As a proof of the
ruinous lengths to which Roman generosity might proceed, he could have
pointed to the Numidian war now in the sixth year of its disastrous
course. The darker side of the Protectorate--the rapacity of the
individual adventurer--was no creation of the government, and needed not
to be reproduced on the canvas of the bright picture which he drew. The
hopes held out to Bocchus were genuine enough; the burden of his
alliance was but slight, its security immense.

The king seemed impressed by the gracious overtures of the
commissioners. His answer was not only friendly, but apologetic.[1167]
He urged that he had not taken up arms in any spirit of hostility to
Rome, but simply for the purpose of defending his own frontiers. He
claimed that the territory near the Muluccha, which had been harried by
Marius, did not belong to Jugurtha at all. He had expelled the Numidian
king from this region and it was his by the right of war. He appealed
finally to the fact of his own former embassy to Rome: he had made a
genuine effort to secure her friendship, but this had been
repulsed.[1168] He was, however, willing to forget the past; and, if
Marius permitted, he would like to send a fresh embassy to the senate.
This last request was provisionally granted by the commissioners;
Bocchus, in making it, showed a wise and, in consideration of some of
the events of this very war, a natural sense of the insecurity of the
promises made by Roman commanders, at the same time as he exhibited a
justifiable faith in a word once given by the great organ of the
Republic. Yet, when the commissioners had taken their departure, his old
hesitancy seemed to revive. He consented at least to listen to those of
his advisers who still urged the claims of Jugurtha.[1169] They had
raised their voices again, either at the time when the Roman
commissioners were waiting on Bocchus, or immediately after their
departure; for Jugurtha had no sooner learnt of his father-in-law's
renewed negotiations with Rome than he had used every means (amongst
others, we are told, that of costly gifts) to induce his Mauretanian
supporters to advocate his cause.

A further stage in the negotiations was reached before the winter season
was over, although it is probable that, at the time when this next step
was taken by the Mauretanian king, the new year had been passed and the
advent of spring was not far off. Marius, who was not fettered in his
operations by respect for the traditional seasons which were deemed
suitable to a campaign, had started with some flying columns of infantry
and a portion of the cavalry to some desert spot, with a view to besiege
a fortress still held by Jugurtha, and garrisoned by all the deserters
from the Roman army who were now in the king's service. Sulla had been
left with the usual title of pro-praetor to represent his absent
commander. To the headquarters of the winter camp[1170] Bocchus now sent
five of his closest friends, men chosen for their approved loyalty and
ability.[1171] His last access of hesitancy, if it were more than a
semblance, had certainly been shortlived, and the envoys were given full
powers to arrange the terms of peace. They had set out with all speed to
reach the Roman winter camp, but their journey had been long and
painful. They had been seized and plundered on the route by Gaetulian
brigands, and now appeared panic-stricken and in miserable plight before
the representative of Rome. Stripped of their credentials and the
symbols of their high office, they expected to be treated as vagrant
impostors from a hostile state; Sulla received them with the lavish
dignity that might be the due of princes. The simple nomads felt the
charm and the surprise of this first glimpse of the public manners of
Rome. Was it possible that these kindly and courteous men were the
spoilers of the world? The rumour must be the false invention of the
enemies of the bounteous Republic. The untrained mind rapidly argues
from the part to the whole, and Sulla's tact had done a great service to
his country. He had also established a claim on the Mauretanian
king,[1172] and this personal tie was not to be without its
consequences.

The envoys revealed to the quaestor the instructions of their master,
and asked his help and advice in the mission that lay before them. They
dwelt with pardonable pride on the wealth, the magnificence, and the
honour of their king, and dilated on every point in which the alliance
with such a potentate was likely to serve the cause of Rome.[1173] Sulla
promised them the plenitude of his help; he instructed them in the mode
in which they should address Marius, in which they should approach the
senate, and continued to be their host for forty days, until his
commander was ready to listen to their proposals and forward them on
their way. When Marius returned to Cirta after the successful completion
of his brief campaign, and heard of the arrival of the envoys, he asked
Sulla to bring them[1174] to his quarters, and made preparations for
assembling as formal a council as the resources of the province
permitted. A praetor happened to be within its limits and several men of
senatorial rank. All these sat to listen to the proposals made by
Bocchus. The verdict of the council was in favour of the genuineness of
the king's appeal, and the proconsul granted the envoys permission to
make their way to Rome. They asked an armistice for their king[1175]
until the mission should be completed. Loud and angry voices were heard
in protest--the voices of the narrow and suspicious men who are haunted
by the fixed conviction that a request for a cessation of hostilities is
always a treacherous attempt at renewed preparations for war. But Sulla
and the majority of the board supported the request of the envoys, and
the wiser counsel at length prevailed. The embassy now divided; two of
its members returned to their king, while three were escorted to Rome by
Cnaeus Octavius Ruso, a quaestor who had brought the last instalment of
pay for the army and was ready for his return homewards. The language of
the envoys before the Roman senate assumed the apologetic tone which had
been suggested by Sulla. Their king, they said, had erred; Jugurtha had
been the cause of this error. Their master asked that Rome should admit
him to treaty relations with herself, that she should call him her
friend. It is not impossible that these negotiations had a secret
history; that Bocchus was told of some very material reward that he
might expect, if Jugurtha were surrendered. But the assumption is not
necessary. The magic of the name of Rome had fired the imagination of
the African king at the commencement of the struggle; now that his fears
were quieted, the end, in whatever form it was attained, may have seemed
supremely desirable in itself. His envoys had been schooled by Sulla to
expect much more than was promised and to read the senate's words
aright. Certainly, if a prize had been offered for Bocchus's fidelity,
the offer was carefully concealed. The official form in which the
government accepted the petitioner's request, granted a free pardon and
expressed a cold probation. "The senate and Roman people (so ran the
resolution) are used to be mindful of good service and of wrongs. Since
Bocchus is penitent for the past, they excuse his fault. He will be
granted a treaty and the name of friend, when he has proved that he
deserves the grant." [1176]

When Bocchus received this answer, he despatched a letter to Marius
asking that Sulla should be sent to advise with him on the matters that
touched the common interests of himself and Rome.[1177] It was tolerably
clear what the subject of interest was. If it could be made "common,"
the end of the war had been reached. Sulla was despatched, and the final
triumph, if attained, would be that of the diplomatist, not of the
soldier. The quaestor was accompanied by an escort of cavalry, slingers,
and archers, and a cohort of Italians bearing the weapons of a
skirmishing force; for the adventures of Bocchus's envoys had shown the
insecurity of the route. On the fifth day of the march, a large body of
horse was seen approaching from a distance--a force that looked larger
and more threatening than it afterwards proved to be; for it rode in
open order, and the wild evolutions of the horsemen seemed to be the
preliminary to an attack. Sulla's escort sprang to their arms; but the
returning scouts soon removed all sense of fear. The approaching band of
cavalry proved to be but a thousand strong and their leader to be Volux
the son of Bocchus. The prince saluted Sulla and told him that he had
been sent to meet and escort him to the presence of the king. For two
days the combined forces advanced together, and there were no adventures
by the road; but on the evening of the second day, when their resting
place had been already chosen, the Moorish prince came hastily to Sulla
with a look of perplexity on his face. He said that his scouts had just
informed him that Jugurtha was close at hand, he entreated Sulla to join
him in flight from the camp while it was yet night.[1178] The request
was met by an indignant refusal; Sulla pointed to his men, whose lives
might be sacrificed by the disgraceful disappearance of their leader.
But, when Volux shifted his ground and merely insisted on the utility of
a march by night from the dangerous neighbourhood, the quaestor yielded
assent. He ordered that the soldiers should take their evening meal, and
that a large number of fires should be lit which were to be left burning
in the deserted camp. At the first watch the Moors and Romans stole
silently from the lines. The dawn found them jaded, heavy with sleep,
and longing for rest. Sulla was supervising the measurement of a camp,
when some Moorish horsemen galloped up with the news that Jugurtha was
but two miles in advance of their position. It was clear that the
anxious Numidian was watching their every movement; the question to be
answered was "Was Prince Volux in the plot?" The facts seemed dark
enough to justify any suspicion. The nerves of the Romans had been
shaken by the unknown danger which had forced them to leave their camp,
by the night of sleepless watchfulness which had followed its
abandonment. A panic was the inevitable result, and panic leads to fury.
Voices were raised that the Moorish traitor should be slain, and that,
if the fruit of his treason was reaped, he at least should not be
allowed to see it. Sulla himself was weighed down with the same
suspicion that animated his men, but he would not allow them to lay
violent hands on the Moor.[1179] He encouraged them as best he might,
then he turned with a passionate protest on his dubious companion. He
called the protecting god of his own race, the guardian of its
international honour, Jupiter Maximus, to witness the crime and perfidy
of Bocchus, and he ordered Volux to leave his camp. The unhappy prince
was probably in a state of genuine terror of Jugurtha, of complete
uncertainty as to the intentions of that jealous kinsman and ally. Even
had Volux known that his father Bocchus wished to play a double game, to
balance the helplessness of Sulla against that of Jugurtha, to hold two
valuable hostages in his hands at once, how could he be certain that
Jugurtha would be content to play the part of a mere pawn in the king's
game, to be dependent for his safety on the passing whim of a man whom
he distrusted? Jugurtha might have everything to gain by massacring the
Romans and seizing Sulla. The act would compromise Bocchus hopelessly in
the eyes of the Roman government. There was hardly a man that would not
believe in his treason, and from that time forth Bocchus would have no
choice but to be the firm ally of Numidia against the vengeance of Rome.
Yet, if Volux acted or spoke as though he believed in the possibility of
this issue, he might seem to be incriminating his father and himself, he
might seem to deserve the stern rebuke of Sulla and the order of
expulsion from the Roman camp. His fears must therefore be concealed and
he must profess a confidence which he did not feel. With tears which may
have expressed a genuine emotion, he entreated Sulla not to harbour the
unworthy suspicion. There had been no preconcerted treachery; the danger
was at the most the product of the cunning of Jugurtha, who had
discovered their route. Volux implied that the object of the Numidian's
movement was to compromise the Moorish government in the eyes of Sulla;
but he stated his emphatic belief that Jugurtha would, or could, do no
positive hurt to the Roman envoy or his retinue. He pointed out that the
king had no great force at his command, and (what was more important
still) that he was now wholly dependent on the favour of his
father-in-law. It was incredible, he maintained, that Jugurtha would
attempt any overt act of hostility, when the son of Bocchus was present
to be a witness to the crime. Their best plan would be to show their
indifference to his schemes, to ride in broad daylight through the
middle of his camp. If Sulla wished, he would send on the Moorish
escort, or leave it where it was and ride with him alone.

It was one of those situations which are the supreme tests of the
qualities of a man. Sulla knew that his life depended on the caprice, or
the momentary sense of self-interest, of a barbarian who was believed to
have shrunk from no crime and on whose head Rome had put a price. Yet he
did not hesitate. He passed with Volux through the lines of Jugurtha's
camp, and the desperate Numidian never stirred. What motive held his
hand was never known; it may have been that Jugurtha never intended
violence; yet the failure of his plan of compromising Bocchus might well
have stirred such a ready man to action; it may have been that he still
relied on his influence with the Mauretanian king, which was perpetuated
by his agents at the court. But some believed that his inaction was due
to surprise, and that the transit of Sulla through the hostile camp was
one of those actions which are rendered safe by their very
boldness.[1180]

In a few days the travellers had reached the spot where Bocchus held his
court. The secret advocates of Numidia and Rome were already in
possession of the king.[1181] Jugurtha's representative was Aspar, a
Numidian subject who had been sent by his master as soon as the news had
been brought of Bocchus's demand for the presence of Sulla. He had been
sent to watch the negotiations and, if possible, to plead his monarch's
cause. The advocate of Rome was Dabar, also a Numidian but of the royal
line and therefore hostile to Jugurtha. He was a grandson of Masinissa,
but not by legitimate descent, for his father had been born of a
concubine of the king.[1182] His great parts had long recommended him to
Bocchus, and his known loyalty to Rome made him a useful intermediary
with the representative of that power. He was now sent to Sulla with the
intimation that Bocchus was ready to meet the wishes of the Roman
people; that he asked Sulla himself to choose a day, an hour and a place
for a conference; that the understanding, which already existed between
them, remained wholly unimpaired. The presence of a representative of
Jugurtha at the court should cause no uneasiness. This representative
was only tolerated because there was no other means of lulling the
suspicion of the Numidian king. We do not know what Sulla made of this
presentment of the case; but somewhere in the annals of the time there
was to be found an emphatic conviction that Bocchus was still playing a
double game, that he was still revolving in his mind the respective
merits of a surrender of Jugurtha to the Romans and of Sulla to
Jugurtha;[1183] that his fears prompted the first step, his inclinations
the second, and that this internal struggle was waged throughout the
whole of the tortuous negotiations which ensued.

Sulla, in accepting the promised interview, replied that he did not
object to the presence of Jugurtha's legate at the preliminaries; but
that most of what he wished to say was for the king's ear alone, or at
least for those of a very few of his most trusted counsellors. He
suggested the reply that he expected from the king, and after a short
interval was led into Bocchus's presence. At this meeting he gave the
barest intimation of his mission; he had been sent, he said, by the
proconsul[1184] to ask the king whether he intended peace or war. It had
been arranged that Bocchus should make no immediate answer to this
question, but should reserve his reply for another date. The king now
adjourned the audience to the tenth day, intimating that on that day his
intention would be decided and his reply prepared. Sulla and Bocchus
both retired to their respective camps; but the king was restless, and
at a late hour of that very night a message reached Sulla entreating an
immediate and secret interview. No one was present but Dabar, the trusty
go-between, and interpreters whose secrecy was assured. The narrative of
this momentous meeting[1185] is therefore due to Sulla, whose fortunate
possession of literary tastes has revealed a bit of secret history to
the world. The king began with some complimentary references to his
visitor, an acknowledgment of the great debt that he owed him, a hope
that his benefactor would never be weary of attempting to exhaust his
boundless gratitude. He then passed to the question of his own future
relations with Rome. He repeated the assertion, which he had made on the
occasion of Sulla's earlier visit, that he had never made, or even
wished for, war with the people of Rome, that he had merely protected
his frontiers against armed aggression. But he was willing to waive the
point. He would impose no hindrance to the Romans waging war with
Jugurtha in any way they pleased. He would not press his claim to the
disputed territory east of the Muluccha. He would be content to regard
that river, which had been the boundary between his own kingdom and that
of Micipsa, as his future frontier. He would not cross it himself nor
permit Jugurtha to pass within it. If Sulla had any further request to
urge, which could be fairly made by the petitioner and honourably
granted by himself, he would not refuse it.

A strict and safe neutrality was the tentacle put out by Bocchus. The
only shadow of a positive service by which he proposed to deserve the
alliance of Rome, was the abandonment of a highly disputable claim to a
part of Jugurtha's possessions. It was certainly time to bring the
monarch to the real point at issue, and Sulla pressed it home. He began
by a brief acknowledgment of the complimentary references which the king
had made to himself, and then indulged in some plain speaking as to the
expectations which the Roman government had formed of their would-be
ally.[1186] He pointed out that the offers made by Bocchus were scarcely
needed by Rome. A power that possessed her military strength would not
be likely to regard them in the light of favours. Something was expected
which could be seen to subserve the interests of Rome far more than
those of the king himself. The service was patent. He had Jugurtha in
his power; if he handed him over to Rome, her debt would certainly be
great, and it would be paid. The recognition of friendship, the treaty
which he sought, and the portion of Numidia which he claimed--all these
would be his for the asking. The king drew back; he urged the sacred
bonds of relationship, the scarce less sacred tie of the treaty which
bound him to his son-in-law; he emphasised the danger to himself of such
a flagrant breach of faith. It might alienate the hearts of his
subjects, who loved Jugurtha and hated the name of Rome.[1187] But Sulla
continued to press the point; the king's resistance seemed to give way,
and at last he promised to do everything that his persistent visitor
demanded. It was agreed, however, between the two conspirators that it
was necessary to preserve a semblance of peaceful relations with
Jugurtha. A pretence must be made of admitting him to the terms of the
convention; this would be a ready bait, for he was thoroughly tired of
the war. Sulla agreed to this arrangement as the only means of
entrapping his victim; to Bocchus it may have had another significance
as well; it still left his hands free.

The next day witnessed the beginning of the machinations that were to
end in the sacrifice of a Numidian king or a Roman magistrate. Bocchus
summoned Aspar, the agent of Jugurtha, and told him that a communication
had been received from Sulla to the effect that terms might be
considered for bringing the war to a close; he therefore asked the
legate to ascertain the views of his sovereign.[1188] Aspar departed
joyfully to the headquarters of Jugurtha, who was now at a considerable
distance from the scene of the negotiations. Eight days later he
returned with all speed, bearing a message for the ear of Bocchus.
Jugurtha, it appeared, was willing to submit to any conditions. But he
had little confidence in Marius. It had often happened that terms of
peace sanctioned by Roman generals had been declared invalid. But there
was a way of obtaining a guarantee. If Bocchus wished to secure their
common interests and to enjoy an undisputed peace, he should arrange a
meeting of all the principals to the agreement, on the pretext of
discussing its terms. At that meeting Sulla should be handed over to
Jugurtha. There could be no doubt that the possession of such a hostage
would wring the consent of the senate and people to the terms of the
treaty; for it was incredible that the Roman government would leave a
member of the nobility, who had been captured while performing a public
duty, in the power of his foes.

Bocchus after some reflection consented to this course. Then, as later,
it was a disputed question whether the king had even at this stage made
up his mind as to his final course of action.[1189] When the time and
place for the meeting had been arranged, the nature of the treachery was
still uncertain. At one moment the king was holding smiling converse
with Sulla, at another with the envoy of Jugurtha. Precisely the same
promises were made to both; both were satisfied and eager for the
appointed day. On the evening before the meeting Bocchus summoned a
council of his friends; then the whim took him that they should be
dismissed, and he passed some time in silent thought. Before the night
was out he had sent for Sulla, and it was the cunning of the Roman that
set the final toils for the Numidian. At break of day the news was
brought that Jugurtha was at hand. Bocchus, attended by a few friends
and the Roman quaestor, advanced as though to do him honour, and halted
on some rising ground which put the chief actors in the drama in full
view of the men who lay in ambush. Jugurtha proceeded to the same spot
amidst a large retinue of his friends; it had been agreed that all the
partners to the conference should come unarmed.[1190] A sign was given,
and the men of the ambuscade had sprung from every side upon the mound.
Jugurtha's retinue was cut down to a man; the king himself was seized,
bound and handed over to Sulla. In a short while he was the prisoner
of Marius.

Every one had long known that the war would be closed with the capture
of the king. Marius could leave for other fields and dream other dreams
of glory. But even the utter collapse of resistance in Numidia did not
obviate the necessity for a considerable amount of detailed labour,
which absorbed the energy of the commander during the closing months of
the year. Even when news had been brought from Rome that a grateful
people had raised him to the consulship for the second time, and that a
task greater than that of the Numidian war had been entrusted to his
hand,[1191] he did not immediately quit the African province, and it is
probable that at least the initial steps of the new settlement of
Numidia determined by the senate, were taken by him. The settlement was
characteristic of the imperialism of the time. The government declined
to extend the evils of empire westward and southward, to make of
Mauretania another Numidia, and to enter on a course of border warfare
with the tribes that fringed the desert. It therefore refused to
recognise Numidia as a province. In default of an abler ruler, Gauda was
set upon the throne of his ancestors;[1192] he had long had the support
of Marius, and seems indeed to have been the only legitimate claimant.
But he was not given the whole of the realm which had been swayed by
Masinissa and Micipsa. The aspirations of Bocchus for an extension of
the limits of Mauretania had to be satisfied, partly because it would
have been ungenerous and impolitic to deprive of a reward that had been
more than hinted at, a man who had violated his own personal
inclinations and the national traditions of the subjects over whom he
ruled, for the purpose of performing a signal service to Rome; partly
because it would have been dangerous to the future peace of Numidia, and
therefore of Rome, to leave the question of Bocchus's claims to
territory east of the Muluccha unsettled, especially with such a ruler
as Gauda on the throne. The western part of Numidia was therefore
attached to the kingdom of Mauretania; nearly five hundred miles of
coast line may have been transferred, and the future boundary between
the two dominions may have been the port of Saldae on the west of the
Numidian gulf.[1193] The wisdom of this settlement is proved by its
success. Until Rome herself becomes a victim to civil strife, and her
exiles or conquerors play for the help of her own subjects, Numidia
ceases to be a factor in Roman politics. The mischief of interfering in
dynastic questions had been made too patent to permit of the rash
repetition of the dangerous experiment.

In comparison with the settlement of Numidia, the ultimate fate of its
late king was a matter of little concern. But Jugurtha had played too
large a part in history to permit either the historian, or the lounger
of the streets who jostled his neighbour for the privilege of gazing
with hungry eyes at the visage and bearing of the terrible warrior, to
be wholly indifferent to his end. The prisoner was foredoomed. Had he
not for years been treated as an escaped criminal, not as a hostile
king? If one ignored his outrages on his own race, had he not massacred
Roman merchants, prompted the treacherous slaughter of a Roman garrison,
and devised the murder of a client of the Roman people in the very
streets of Rome? In truth, a formidable indictment might be brought
against Jugurtha, nor was it the care of any one to discriminate which
of the counts referred to acts of war, and which must be classed in the
category of merely private crimes. It was sufficient that he was an
enemy (which to the Roman mind meant traitor) who had brought death to
citizens and humiliation to the State, and it is probable that, had the
Numidian been the purest knight whose chivalrous warfare had shaken the
power of Rome, he would have taken that last journey to the Capitol. It
was the custom of Rome, and any derogation of the iron rule was an act
of singular grace. The stupidity of the mob, which is closely akin to
its brutality, was utterly unable to distinguish between the differences
in conduct which are the result of the varying ethical standards of the
races of the world, or even to balance the enormities committed by their
own commanders against those which could be fastened on the enemy whom
they had seized. And this lack of imagination was reflected in a
cultured government, partly because their culture was superficial and
they were still the products of the grim old school which had produced
their ferocious ancestors, partly for reasons that were purely politic.
The light hold which Rome held over her dependants, could only be
rendered light by acts of occasional severity; the world must be made to
see the consequences of rebellion against a sovereign. But the true
justification for Roman rigour was not dependent on such considerations,
which are often of a highly disputable kind, nearly so much as on the
normal attitude of the Roman mind itself. Cruelty was but an expression
of Roman patriotism; with characteristic consistency they applied much
the same views to their citizens and their subjects, and their treatment
of captured enemies was but one expression of the spirit which found
utterance in their own terrible law of treason.

When Marius celebrated his triumph on the 1st of January in the year
which followed the close of the Numidian war,[1194] Jugurtha and his two
sons walked before his chariot. While the pageant lasted, the king still
wore his royal robes in mockery of his former state; when it had reached
its bourne on the Capitol, the degradation and the punishment were
begun. But it was believed by some that neither could now be felt, and
that it was a madman that was pushed down the narrow stair which leads
to the rock-hewn dungeon below the hill.[1195] His tunic was stripped
from him, the golden rings wrested from his ears, and, as the son of the
south[1196] stepped shivering into the well-like cavern, the cry "Oh!
what a cold bath!" burst from his lips. Of the stories as to how the end
was reached, the more detailed speaks of a protracted agony of six days
until the prisoner had starved to death, his weakened mind clinging ever
to the hope that his life might yet be spared.[1197]

The minor prize of the Numidian war was a quantity of treasure including
more than three thousand pounds' weight of gold and over five thousand
of silver[1198]--which was shown in the triumph of Marius before it was
deposited in the treasury. It was indeed the only permanent prize of the
war which could be exhibited to the people; if one excepted two triumphs
and the recognition of the merit of three officials, there was nothing
else to show. It was difficult to justify the war even on defensive
grounds, for it would have required a courageous advocate to maintain
that the mere recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia would have
imperilled the Roman possessions in Africa; and, if the struggle had
assumed an anti-Roman character, this result had been assisted, if not
secured, by the tactics of the opposition which had systematically
foiled every attempt at compromise. But a war, which it is difficult to
justify and still more difficult to remember with satisfaction, may be
the necessary result of a radically unsound system of administration:
and the disasters which it entails may be equally the consequence of a
military system, excellent in itself but ill-adapted to the
circumstances of the country in which the struggle is waged. These are
the only two points of view from which the Numidian war is remarkable on
strategic or administrative grounds. The strategic difficulties of the
task do nothing more than exhibit the wisdom of the majority of the
senate, and of the earlier generals engaged in the campaign, in seeking
to avoid a struggle at almost any cost. A military system is conditioned
by the necessities of its growth; even that of an empire is seldom
sufficiently elastic to be equally adapted to every country and equally
capable of beating down every form of armed resistance. The Roman system
had been evolved for the type of warfare which was common to the
civilised nations around the Mediterranean basin--nations which employed
heavily armed and fully equipped soldiers as the main source of their
fighting strength, and which were forced to operate within a narrow
area, on account of the possession of great centres of civilisation
which it was imperative to defend. Its mobility was simply the mobility
of a heavy force of infantry with a circumscribed range of action; in
the days of its highest development it was still strikingly weak in
cavalry. It had already shown itself an imperfect instrument for putting
down the guerilla warfare of Spain; it had never been intended for the
purposes of desert warfare, or to effect the pacification of nomad
tribes extending over a vast and desolate territory. Even as the
Parthian war of Trajan required the formation of what was practically a
new army developed on unfamiliar lines, so the complete reorganisation
of the Republican system would have been essential to the effective
conquest of Numidia. The slight successes of this war, such as the
taking of Thala and of Capsa and the victories near Cirta, were attained
by judicious adaptations to the new conditions, by the employment of
light infantry and the increased use of cavalry; but even these
improvements were of little avail, for effective pursuit was still
impossible, and without pursuit the conflict could not be brought to a
close. The unkindness of the conditions almost exonerates the generals
who blundered during the struggle, and to an unprejudiced observer the
record of incompetence is slight. The fact that the inconclusive
proceedings of Metellus and Marius were deemed successes, almost
justifies the exploits of a Bestia, and even the crowning disaster of
the war--the surprise of the army of Aulus Albinus--might have been the
lot of a better commander opposed to an enemy so far superior in
mobility and knowledge of the land. Most wars of this type are
destructive of military reputations; the general is fortunate who can
emerge as the least incapable of the host of blunderers. If we adopt
this relative standard, one fortunate issue of the campaign may be held
to be the discovery that Marius was not unworthy of his military
reputation. The verdict, it is true, was not justified by positive
results; but it was the verdict of the army that he led and as incapable
of being ignored as all such judgments are. His leadership had been
characterised at least by efficiency in detail, and this efficiency had
been secured by gentle measures, by unceasing vigilance, by the
cultivation of a true soldierly spirit, and by the untiring example of
the commander. The courage of the innovator--a courage at once political
and military--had also given Rome, in the mass of the unpropertied
classes, a fathomless source from which she could draw an army of
professional soldiers, if she possessed the capacity to use her
opportunities.

The political issues of the war were bound up with those which were
strategic, both in so far as the hesitancy of the senate to enter on
hostilities was based on a just estimate of the difficulties of the
campaign, and in so far as the policy of smoothing over difficulties in
a client state by diplomatic means, in preference to stirring up a
hornet's nest by the thrust of the sword, was one of the traditional
maxims of the Roman protectorate. But this second issue raised the whole
of the great administrative question of the limits of the duties which
Rome owed to her client kings. Such a question not infrequently suggests
a conflict of duty with interest. The claims of Adherbal for protection
against his aggressive cousin might be just, but even to many moderate
men, not wholly vitiated by the maxims of a Machiavellian policy, they
may have appeared intolerable. Was Rome to waste her own strength and
stake the peace of the empire on a mere question of dynastic succession?
Might it not be better to allow the rivals to fight out the question
amongst themselves, and then to see whether the man who emerged
victorious from the contest was likely to prove a client acceptable and
obedient to Rome? There was danger in the course, no doubt: the danger
inherent in a vicious example which might spread to other protected
states; but might it not be a slighter peril than that involved in
dethroning a ruler, who had proved his energy and ability, his
familiarity with Roman ways, and his knowledge of Roman methods, above
all, his possession of the confidence of the great mass of the Numidian
people? Nay, it might be argued that Adherbal had by his weakness proved
his unfitness to be an efficient agent of Rome. It might be asked
whether such a man was likely to be an adequate representative of Roman
interests in Africa, an adequate protector of the frontiers of the
province. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the advocates of
interference had something more than the claim of justice and the claim
of prestige on their side. It was an undisputed fact that the division
of power in Numidia, at the time when the question was presented to
Rome, showed that Adherbal stood for civilisation and Jugurtha for
barbarism. This was an issue that might not have been manifest at first,
although any one who knew Numidia must have been aware that the military
spirit of the country which was embodied in Jugurtha, was not
represented in the coast cities with their trading populations drawn
from many towns, but in the remote agricultural districts and the
deserts of the west and south; but it was an issue recognised by the
commissioners when they assigned the more civilised portion of the
kingdom to Adherbal, and the territories, whose strength was the natural
wealth and the manhood which they yielded, to his energetic rival; and
it was one that became painfully apparent when Jugurtha led his
barbarous hordes against Cirta, and when these hordes in the hour of
victory slew every merchant and money-lender whom they could find in the
town. It was this aspect of the question that ultimately proved the
decisive factor in bringing on the war; for the claims of justice could
now be reinforced by those of interest, and the interest which was at
stake was that of the powerful moneyed class at Rome. It was this class
that not only forced the government to war, but insisted on seeing the
war through to its bitter end. It was this class that systematically
hindered all attempts at compromise, that brandished its control of the
courts in the face of every one who strove to temper war with hopes of
peace, that tolerated Metellus until he proved too dilatory, and sent
out Marius in the vain hope that he might show greater expedition. The
close of the war was a singular satire on their policy, a remarkable
proof of the justice of the official view. The end came through
diplomacy, not through battle, through an unknown quaestor who belonged
to the old nobility and possessed its best gifts of facile speech and
suppleness in intrigue, not through the great "new man" who was to be a
living example of what might be done, if the middle class had the making
of the ministers of the State.

But the moneyed class could hardly have developed the power to force the
hand of the council of state, had it not been in union with the third
great factor in the commonwealth, that disorganised mass of fluctuating
opinion and dissipated voting power which was known as "the people." How
came the Populus Romanus to be stirred to action in this cause, with the
result that the balance of power projected by Caius Gracchus was again
restored? Much of their excitement may have been the result of
misrepresentation, of the persistent efforts made by the opposition to
prove that all parleying with the enemy was tantamount to treason; more
must have been due to the dishonouring news of positive disaster which
marked a later stage of the war; but the mingled attitude of resentment
and suspicion with which the people was taught to regard its council and
its ministers, seems to have been due to the genuine belief that many of
the former and nearly all of the latter were hopelessly corrupt. This
darkest aspect of the Numidian war is none the less a reality if we
believe that the individual charges of corruption were not well founded,
and that they were mere party devices meant to mask a policy which would
have been impossible without them. The proceedings of the Mamilian
commission certainly commanded little respect even from the democrat of
a later day; but it is with the suspicion of corruption, rather than
with the justice of that suspicion in individual cases, that we are most
intimately concerned. A political society must be tainted to the core,
if bribery can be given and accepted as a serious and adequate
explanation of the proceedings of its leading members. The suspicion was
a condemnation of the State rather than of a class. It might be tempting
to suppose that the disease was confined to a narrow circle (by a
curious accident to the circle actually in power); but of what proof did
such a supposition admit? The leaders of the people were themselves
members of the senatorial order and scions of the nobility of office.
Marius the "new man" might thunder his appeal for a purer atmosphere and
a wider field; but it would be long, if ever, before the councils of the
State would be administered by men who might be deemed virtuous because
their ancestors were unknown.

But for a time the view prevailed that the interests of the State could
best be served by a combination of powerful directors of financial
corporations with patriotic reformers, invested with the tribunate,
struggling for higher office, and expressing their views of statecraft
chiefly in the form of denunciations of the government. Such a coalition
might form a powerful and healthy organ of criticism; but it could only
become more by serving as a mere basis for a new executive power. As
regards the nature of this power and even the necessity for its
existence, the views of the discontented elements of the time were
probably as indefinite as those of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. The
Republican constitution was an accepted fact, and the senate must at
least be tolerated as a necessary element in that constitution; for no
one could dream of finding a coherent administration either in the
Comitia or in the aggregate of the magistrates of the people. Now, as at
all times since the Roman constitution had attained its full
development, the only mode of breaking with tradition in order to secure
a given end which the senate was supposed to have neglected, was to
employ the services of an individual. There was no danger in this
employment if the individual could be overthrown when his work had been
completed, or when the senate had regained its old prestige. The leader
elevated to a purely civil magistracy by the suffrages of the people was
ever subject to this risk; if his personal influence outgrew the
necessities of his task, if he ceased to be an agent and threatened to
be a master, the mere suspicion of an aspiration after monarchy would
send a shudder of reaction through the mass of men which had given him
his greatness. As long as the cry for reform was based on the existence
of purely internal evils, which the temporary power of a domestic
magistracy such as the tribunate might heal, the breast even of the most
timid constitutionalist did not deserve to be agitated by alarm for the
security of the Republican government. But what if external dangers
called for settlement, if the eyes of the mercantile classes and the
proletariate were turned on the spectacle of a foreign commerce in decay
and an empire in disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's
authority--its government of the foreign dependencies of Rome--were
first questioned, then tossed aside? Would not the Individual makeshift
have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority?
Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon mightier
than the voting tablet? Might not his supporters be a class of men, to
whom the charms of civil life are few, whose habits have trained them to
look for inspiration to an individual, not to a corporation, still less
to that abstraction called a constitution--of men not subjected to the
dividing influences, or swayed by the momentary passions, of their
fellows of the streets? In such a case might not the power of the
individual be made secure, and what was this but monarchy?

Such were the reflections suggested to posterity by the power which
popularly-elected generals began to hold from the time of the Numidian
war. But such were not the reflections of Marius and his contemporaries.
There was no precedent and no contemporary circumstance which could
suggest a belief in any danger arising from the military power. The
experiment of bearding the senate by entrusting the conduct of a
campaign to a popular favourite had been tried before, and, whether its
immediate results were beneficial or the reverse, it had produced no
ulterior effects. Whether the people had pinned its faith on men of the
nobility such as the two Scipios, or on a man of the people like Varro,
such agents had either retired from public life, confessed their
incapacity, or returned to serve the State. The armies which such
generals had led were composed of well-to-do men who, apart from the
annoyance of the levy, had no ground of complaint against the
commonwealth: and the change in the recruiting system which had been
introduced by Marius, was much too novel and too partial for its
consequences to be forecast. Nor could any one be expected to see the
fundamental difference between the Rome of but two generations past and
the Rome of the day--the difference which sprang from the increasing
divergence of the interests of classes, and the consequent weakening of
confidence in the one class which had "weathered the storm and been
wrecked in a calm". Aristocracy is the true leveller of merit, but, if
it lose that magic power by ceasing to be an aristocracy, then the turn
of the individual has come.

The fact that it was already coming may justify us in descending from
the general to the particular and remarking that the question "Who
deserved the credit of bringing the war with Jugurtha to an end?" soon
excited an interest which appealed equally to the two parties in the
State and the two personalities whom the close of the episode had
revealed. It was natural that the success of Sulla should be exploited
by resentful members of the nobility as the triumph of the aristocrat
over the parvenu, of the old diplomacy and the old bureaucracy over the
coarse and childish methods of the opposition; it was tempting to
circulate the view that the humiliation of Metellus had been avenged,
that the man who had slandered and superseded him had found an immediate
nemesis in a youthful member of the aristocracy.[1199] Such a version,
if it ever reached the ears of the masses, was heard only to be
rejected; the man who had brought Jugurtha in chains to Rome must be his
conqueror, and, even had this evidence been lacking, they did not intend
to surrender the glory which was reflected from the champion whom they
had created. Nor even in the circles of the governing class could this
controversy be for the moment more than a matter for idle or malicious
speculation. Hard fighting had to be done against the barbarians of the
north, a reorganisation of the army was essential, and for both these
purposes even they admitted that Marius was the necessary man. Even the
two men who were most interested in the verdict were content to stifle
for the time, the one the ambitious claim which was strengthened by a
belief in its justice, the other the resentful repudiation, which would
have been rendered all the more emphatic from the galling sense that it
could not be absolute. In the coming campaigns against the Germans Sulla
served first as legate and afterwards as military tribune in the army of
his old commander.[1200] But his own conviction of the part which he had
played in the Numidian war was expressed in a manner not the less
irritating because it gave no reasonable ground for offence. He began
wearing a signet ring, the seal of which showed Bocchus delivering
Jugurtha into his hand.[1201] This emblem was destined to grate on the
nerves of Marius in a still more offensive form, for thirteen years
later, when his work had been done and his glory had begun to wane, Rome
was given an unexpected confirmation of the truthfulness of the scene
which it depicted. The King of Mauretania, eager to conciliate the
people of Rome while he showed his gratitude to Sulla, sent as a
dedicatory offering to the Capitol a group of trophy-bearing Victories
who guarded a device wrought in gold, which showed Bocchus surrendering
to Sulla the person of the Numidian king. Marius would have had it
removed, but Sulla's supporters could now loudly assert the claim, which
had been only whispered when the dark cloud of barbaric invasion hung
over the State and the loyal belief of the people in Marius was
quickened by their fears.[1202]

Yet, although at the close of the Numidian war an appalling danger to
the empire tended to perpetuate the coalition that had been formed
between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, and to wring from
the senate an acceptance of the new military genius with his plans for
reform, there are clear indications which prove that an ebb of political
feeling had been witnessed, even during the last three years--a turn of
the tide which shows how utterly unstable the coalition against the
senate would have been, had it not been reinforced by the continuance of
disasters abroad. The first sign of the reaction was the flattering
reception and the triumph of Metellus; and it may have been this current
of feeling which decided the consular elections for the following year.
The successful candidates were Caius Atilius Serranus and Quintus
Servilius Caepio. Of these Serranus could trace his name back to the
great Reguli of Carthaginian fame;[1203] the family to which he
belonged, although plebeian, had figured amongst the ranks of the
official nobility since the close of the fourth century, although it is
known to have furnished the State with but five consuls since the time
of Caius Regulus. The merit which Serranus possessed in the eyes of the
voters who elevated him to his high office, was a puzzle to posterity;
for such nobility as he could boast seemed the only compensation for the
lack of intelligence which was supposed to characterise his utterances
and his conduct.[1204] But, if we may judge from the resolution which he
subsequently displayed in combating revolution at Rome,[1205] he was
known to be a supporter of the authority of the senate, and his
aristocratic proclivities may have led to his association with his more
distinguished colleague Caepio. The latter belonged to a patrician clan,
and to a branch of that clan which had lately clung to the highest
political prizes with a tenacity second only to that of the Metelli.
Caepio's great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father and his two
uncles had all filled the consulship; and his own hereditary claim to
that office had been rendered more secure by some good service in
Lusitania, which had secured him a military reputation and the triumph
which he enjoyed in the very year that preceded his candidature.[1206]
His political sentiments may have been known before his election; but
the very fact of his elevation to the consulship, and his appreciation
of the direction in which the tide of public feeling seemed to be
running, gave a definiteness to his views and a courage to his reforming
conservatism, which must have surprised his supporters as well as his
opponents, and may not have been altogether pleasing to the extreme
members of the former party. It must have been believed that a rift was
opening between the moneyed classes and the people, and that the latter,
satisfied with their recent political triumph and reconciled by the
honest passivity of the senate, were content to resume their old
allegiance to the governing class. It must even have been held that a
spirit of repentance and indignation could be awakened at the reckless
and selfish use which the knights had made of the judicial power
entrusted to their keeping, that the Mamilian commission could be
represented as an outrage on the public conscience, and the ordinary
cognisance of public crimes as a reign of terror intended merely to
ensure the security of investments.[1207] The knights were to be
attacked in their stronghold, and Caepio came forward with a new
judiciary law. Two accounts of the scope of this measure have come down
to us. According to the one, the bill proposed that jurisdiction in the
standing criminal courts should be shared between the senators and the
equites;[1208] according to the other, this jurisdiction was to be given
to the senate.[1209] That the latter result was meant to be attained in
some way by the law, is perhaps shown by the intense dislike which the
equestrian order entertained in later times to any laudatory reference
to the hated Servilian proposal:[1210] and, although a class which has
possessed and perhaps abused a monopoly of jurisdiction, may object to
seeing even a share of it given to their enemies and their victims, yet
this resentment would be still more natural if the threatened
transference of jurisdiction from their order was to be complete. But,
in any case, we cannot afford to neglect the express testimony to the
fact that the senate was to have possession of the courts; and the only
method of reconciling this view with the other tradition of a partition
of jurisdiction between the orders, is to suppose that Caepio attempted
the effort suggested by Tiberius Gracchus, once advocated by his brother
Caius,[1211] and subsequently taken up by the younger Livius Drusus, of
increasing the senate by admitting a certain number of knights into that
body, and giving the control of the courts to the members of this
enlarged council. It may seem a strange and revolutionary step to
attempt such a reform of the governing body of the State, whose
membership and whose privileges were so jealously guarded, for the
purpose of securing a single political end; it may seem at first sight
as though the admission of a considerable number of the upper middle
class to the power and prizes possessed by the privileged few, would be
a shock even to a mildly conservative mind that had fed upon the
traditions of the past. Yet a closer examination will reveal the truth
that such a change would have meant a very slight modification in the
temper and tendencies of the senate, and would have insured a very great
increase in its security, whether it meant to govern well or ill, to
secure its own advantages or those of its suffering subjects. In reality
a very thin line parted the interests of the senators from those of the
more distinguished members of the equestrian order. It was only when
official probity or official selfishness came into conflict with
capitalistic greed, that recrimination was aroused between the two heads
of the body politic. But what if official power, under either of its
aspects, could make a compromise with greed? The rough features of both
might be softened; but, at the worst, a stronger, more permanent and, in
the long run, more profitable monopoly of the good things of the empire
would be the result of the union. The admission of wealthy capitalists
could not be considered a very marked social detraction to the dignity
of the order. The question of pedigree might be sunk in an amiable
community of taste. In point of lavish expenditure and exotic
refinement, in the taste that displayed itself in the patronage of
literature, the collection of objects of art, the adornment of country
villas, there was little to choose between the capitalist and the noble.
And community of taste is an easy passage to community of political
sentiment. Any one acquainted with the history of the past must have
known that all efforts to temper the exclusiveness of the senatorial
order had but resulted in an increase of the spirit of exclusiveness.
The patrician council had in old days been stormed by a horde of
plebeian chiefs; but these chiefs, when they had once stepped within the
magic circle, had shown not the least inclination to permit their poorer
followers to do the same. The successful Roman, practical, grasping,
commercial and magnificently beneficent, ranking the glory of patronage
as second only in point of worth to the possession and selfish use of
power, scarcely attached a value even to the highest birth when deprived
of its brilliant accessories, and had always found his bond of
fellowship in a close community of interest with others, who helped him
to hold a position which he might keep against the world. How much more
secure would this position be, if the front rank of the assailants were
enticed within the fortress and given strong positions upon the walls!
They would soon drink into their lungs the strong air of possession,
they would soon be stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a
man when he becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little
probability that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be
in any real sense members of the equestrian order.

But even to a senator who reckoned the increase of profit-sharers,
whatever their present or future sentiments might be, as a loss to
himself, the sacrifice involved in the proposed increase of the members
of his order may have seemed well worthy of the cost. For how could
power be exercised or enjoyed in the face of a hostile judicature? The
knights had recently made foreign administration on the accepted lines
not only impossible in itself, but positively dangerous to the
administrator, and in all the details of provincial policy they could,
if they chose, enforce their views by means of the terrible instrument
which Caius Gracchus had committed to their hands. Even if the business
men, shorn of their most distinguished members, might still have the
power to offer transitory opposition to the senate by coalition with the
mob, the more dangerous, because more permanent, possibilities of harm
which the control of the courts afforded them, would be wholly
swept away.

The attraction of Caepio's proposal to the senatorial mind is,
therefore, perfectly intelligible; but it is very probable that there
were many members of the nobility who were wholly insensible to this
attraction. The men who would descend a few steps in order to secure a
profitable concord between the orders, may have been in the majority;
but there must have been a considerable number of stiff-backed nobles
who, even if they believed that concord could be secured by a measure
which gave away privileges and did not conciliate hostility, were
exceedingly unwilling to descend at all. Caepio is the first exponent of
a fresh phase of the new conservatism which had animated the elder
Drusus. That statesman had sought to win the people over to the side of
the senate by a series of beneficent laws, which should be as attractive
as those of the demagogue and perhaps of more permanent utility than the
blessings showered on them by the irresponsible favourite of the moment;
but he had done nothing for the mercantile class; and his greater son
was left to combine the scheme of conciliation transmitted to him by his
father with that enunciated by Caepio.

The moderation and the tactical utility of the new proposal fired the
imagination of a man, whose support was of the utmost importance for the
success of a measure which was to be submitted to a popular body that
was divided in its allegiance, uncertain in its views, and therefore
open to conviction by rhetoric if not by argument. It was characteristic
of the past career of the young orator Lucius Crassus that he should now
have thrown himself wholly on the side of Caepio and the progressive
members of the senate.[1212] His past career had committed him to no
extremes. He had impeached Carbo, known to have been a radical and
believed to be a renegade, and he had championed the policy of
provincial colonisation as illustrated by the settlement of Narbo
Martius. His action in the former case might have been equally pleasing
to either side; his action in the latter might have been construed as
the work, less of an advanced liberal, than of an imperialist more
enlightened than his peers. He had evidently not compromised his chances
of political success; he was still but thirty-four and had just
concluded his tenure of the tribunate. In the opposite camp stood
Memmius, striving with all his might to keep alive the coalition, which
he had done so much to form, between the popular party and the merchant
class. The knights mustered readily under his banner, for they had no
illusions as to the meaning of the bill; it was impossible to conciliate
an order by the bribery of a few hundreds of its members, whose very
names were as yet unknown. To keep the people faithful to the coalition
was a much more difficult task. It was soon patent to all that the
agitators had not been wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had
opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which the
Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match for his
opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but humorous invective
with which he held Memmius up to the ridicule of his former
followers,[1213] was balanced by the grand periods in which he
formulated his detailed indictment of the methods pursued by the
existing courts of justice, and of the terrible dangers to the public
security produced by their methods of administration. He did not merely
impugn the verdicts which were the issue of a jury system so degraded as
to have become the sport of a political "faction," but he dwelt on the
public danger which sprang from the parasites of the courts, the gloomy
brood of public accusers which is hatched by a rotten system, feeds on
the impurities of a diseased judicature, and terrifies the commonwealth
by the peril that lurks in its poisonous sting. This speech was to be
studied by eager students for years to come as a master work in the art
of declamatory argument.[1214] But its momentary efficacy seems to have
been as great as its permanent value. Caepio's bill was acclaimed and
carried.[1215] Then began the turn of the tide. It is practically
certain that the authors of the measure never had the courage, or
perhaps the time, to carry a single one of its proposals Into effect.
The senate was not enlarged, nor was the right of judicature wrested
from the hands of its existing holders.[1216] The bill may have been
repealed within a few months of its acceptance by the people. Caepio
went to Gaul to stake his military reputation on a conflict with the
German hordes; he was to return as the best hated man in Rome, to
receive no mercy from an indignant people. There was probably more than
one cause for this sudden change in political sentiment. The knights may
have been thrown off their guard by the suddenness of Caepio's attack
upon their privileges, and a few months of organisation and canvassing
may have been all that they needed to restore the majority required for
effacing the blot upon their name. But the chief reason is doubtless to
be sought in the external circumstances of the moment, and can only be
fully illustrated by the description which we shall soon be giving of
the great events that were taking place on the northern frontiers of the
empire. It is sufficient for the present to remember that, in the very
year in which Caepio's measure had received the ratification of the
people, Caius Popillius Laenas, a legate of one of the consuls of the
previous year, had been put on his trial before that very people for
making a treaty which was considered still more disgraceful than the
defeat which had preceded it.[1217] The Comitia now heard the whole
story of the conduct of the Roman arms against the barbarians of the
North. The story immediately revived the coalition of the early days of
the Numidian war, and there was no longer any hope for the success of
even moderate counsels proceeding from the senate. Popillius was a
second Aulus Albinus, and a new Marius was required to restore the
fortunes of the day. It was, however, certain that the only Marius could
not be withdrawn from Africa, and men looked eagerly to see what the
consular elections for the next year would produce. We hear of no
candidate belonging to the highest ranks of the nobility who was deemed
to have been defrauded of his birthright on this occasion; but the
disappointment of Quintus Lutatius Catulus was deemed wholly legitimate,
when Cnaeus Mallius Maximus defeated him at the poll. Catulus belonged
to a plebeian family that had been ennobled by the possession of the
consulship at least as early as the First Punic War; but the distinction
had not been perpetuated in the later annals of the house, and if
Catulus received the support of the official nobility, it was because
his tastes and temperament harmonised with theirs, and because it may
have seemed impolitic to advance a man of better birth and more
pronounced opinions in view of the prevailing temper of the people.
Catulus was a man of elegant taste and polished learning, one of the
most perfect Hellenists of the day, and distinguished for the grace and
purity of the Latin style that was exhibited in his writings and
orations.[1218] He was one day to write the history of his own momentous
consulship and of the final struggle with the Cimbri, in which he played
a not ignoble part. Much of our knowledge of those days is due to his
pen, and the modern historian is perhaps likely to congratulate himself
on the blindness of the people, which thrice refused Catulus the
consulship and reserved him to be an actor and a witness in the crowning
victory of the great year of deliverance. He had already been defeated
by Serranus; he was now subordinated to the claims of Maximus. But what
were those claims? Posterity found it difficult to give an answer,[1219]
and the reason for that difficulty was that this second experiment in
the virtues of a "new man" was anything but successful. The family to
which Maximus belonged seems to have been wholly undistinguished, and he
himself is the only member of his clan who is known to have attained the
consulship. An explanation of his present prominence could only be
gathered from a knowledge of his past career, and of this knowledge we
are wholly deprived; but it is manifest that he must have done much,
either in the way of positive service to the State in subordinate
capacities, or in the way of invective against its late administrators,
which caused him to be regarded as a discovery by the leaders of the
multitude. The colleague given to Maximus was a man such as the people
in the present emergency could not well refuse. Publius Rutilius Rufus
was a kind of Cato with a deeper philosophy, a higher culture, and a far
less bewildering activity. As a soldier he had been trained by Scipio in
Spain, and he possessed a theoretical interest in military matters which
issued in practical results of the most important kind.[1220] His tenure
of the urban praetorship seems to have been marked by reforms which
materially improved the condition of the freedmen in matters of private
law, and limited the right of patrons to impose burdensome conditions of
personal service as the price of manumission.[1221] It was he too who
may have introduced the humane system of granting the possession of a
debtor's goods to a creditor, if that creditor was willing to waive his
claim to the debtor's person.[1222] Rutilius, therefore, may have had
strong claims on the gratitude of the lower orders; and his personality
was one that could more readily command a grateful respect than a warm
affection. He was a learned adherent of the Stoic system, the cold and
stern philosophy of which imbued his speeches, already rendered somewhat
unattractive by their author's devotion to the forms of the civil
law.[1223] He was much in request as an advocate, his learning commanded
deep respect, but he lacked or would not condescend to the charm which
would have made him a great personal force with the people at a time
when there was a sore need of men who were at the same time great
and honest.

By a singular irony of fortune it chanced that the province of Gaul fell
to Maximus and not to Rutilius. The strong-headed soldier was left at
home to indulge his schemes of army reform while the new man went to his
post in the north, to quarrel with the aristocratic Caepio, who was now
serving as proconsul in those regions, and to share in the crushing
disaster which this dissension drew upon their heads. The search for
genius had to be renewed at the close of this melancholy year.[1224]
Another "new man" was found in Caius Flavius Fimbria, a product of the
forensic activity of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement
speaker, but with a power that secured his efforts a transitory
circulation as types of literary oratory.[1225] He is not known to have
shown any previous ability as a soldier, and his election, so far as it
was not due to his own unquestioned merit, may have been but a symbol of
the continued prevalence of the distrust of the people in aristocratic
influence and qualifications. His competitor was Catulus who was for the
third time defeated. For the other place in the consulship there could
be no competition. The close of the Numidian war had freed the hands of
the man who was still believed to be the greatest soldier of the day.
There was, it is true, a legal difficulty in the way of the appointment
of Marius to the command in the north. Such a command should belong to a
consul, but nearly fifty years before this date a law had been passed
absolutely prohibiting re-election to the consulship.[1226] Yet the
dispensation granted to the younger Africanus could be quoted as a
precedent, and indeed the danger that now threatened the very frontiers
of Italy was an infinitely better argument for the suspension of the law
than the reverses of the Numantine war.[1227] The people were in no mood
to listen to legal quibbles. They drove the protestant minority from the
assembly, and raised Marius to the position which they deemed necessary
for the salvation of the State.[1228] The formal act of dispensation may
have been passed by the Comitia either before or after the election, but
the senate must have been easily coerced into giving its assent, if its
adherence were thought requisite to the validity of the act. The
province of Gaul was assigned him as a matter of course,[1229] whether
by the senate or the people is a matter of indifference. For the Roman
constitution was again throwing off the mask of custom and uncovering
the bold lineaments which spoke of the undisputed sovereignty of the
people. Certainly, if a sovereign has a right to assert himself, it is
one who is _in extremis_, who stands between death and revolution.
Personality had again triumphed in spite of the meshes of Roman law and
custom. It remained to be seen whether the net could be woven again with
as much cunning as before, or whether the rent made by Marius was
greater than that which had been torn by the Gracchi.

TITLES OF MODERN WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES

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BEESLY, A.H.--_The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_. 3rd ed. London, 1882.

BELOCH, J.--_Der Italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie; staatsrechtliche
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BERGMANN, R.--_De Asiae Romanorum provinciae praesidibus_ (Philologus,
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BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, M.A. VON.--_Der römische Civilprozess_ (Der
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BIEREYE, J.--_Res Numidarum et Maurorum annis inde ab a. DCXLVIII.
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BOISSIER, GASTON.--_L'Afrique Romaine; promenades archéologiques en
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BOOR, C. DE.--_Fasti censorii, quos composuit et commentariis instruxit
    C. de Boor_. Berolini, 1873.

BRUNS, C.G.--_Fontes juris Romani antiqui_. Ed. 6ta. Friburgi, 1893.

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CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM GRAECARUM. Ed. A. Böckh. Vol. ii. Berlin, 1843.

CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM. Berolini. Vol. i. (ed. Th. Mommsen,
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    1893). Vol. ii. (ed. A. Hübner, 1869). Vol. viii. (coll. G.
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CUNNINGHAM, W.--_An Essay on Western Civilisation in its _Economic
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DELOUME, A.--_Les manieurs d'argent à Rome jusqu'à l'Empire_. Paris,
    1892.

DREYFUS, R.--_Essai sur les lois agraires sous la République Romaine_.
    Paris, 1898.

DRUMANN, W.--_Geschichte Roms in seinem Uebergange von der
    republikanischen zur monarchisen Verfassung_. 2te Aufl., herausg.
    von P. Groebe. Berlin. Bd. i., 1899. Bd. ii., 1902.

DUREAU DE LA MALLE, A.--_Économie politique des Romains_. Paris, 1840.

FORBIGER, A.--_Handbuch der alten Geographie_. Leipzig, 1842-8.

FOWLER, W. WARDE.--_The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_.
    London and New York, 1899.

FRAENKEL, M.--_Die Inschriften von Pergamon_ (Altertümer von Pergamon.
    Berlin, 1890. Bd. viii.).

GOEBEL, E.--_Die Westküste Afrikas im Altertum und die Geschichte
    Mauretaniens_. Leipzig, 1887.

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    Grecques et Romaines).

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    bearbeitet_. Leipzig, 1845.

KLEES, E.--_Atilius Saranus oder Serranus_ (Pauly-Wissowa,
    Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2094).

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The average, or at least the most powerful, type of a race is
stamped on its history. It is perhaps needless to say that no
generalisations on character apply to all its individual members.

[2] Even the Hellenes of the West are only a partial exception. It is
true that their cities clung to the coast; but the vast inland
possessions of states like Sybaris are scarcely paralleled elsewhere in
the history of Greek colonisation.

[3] The Latin colony of Aquileia was settled in the former year (Liv.
xl. 34 Vellei. 1. 15), the Roman colony of Auximum in the latter
(Vellei. l.c.).

[4] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 27. 73 Est operae pretium diligentiam
majorum recordari, qui colonias sic idoneis in locis contra suspicionem
periculi collocarunt, ut esse non oppida Italiae, sed propugnacula
imperii viderentur.

[5] Liv. xxvii. 38; xxxvi. 3; cf. Marquardt _Staatsverwaltung_ 1. p. 51.

[6] The Roman citizen, who entered his name for a Latin colony, suffered
the derogation of _caput_ which was known to the later jurists as
_capitis deminutio minor_ and expressed the loss of _civitas_ (Gaius i.
161; iii. 56). That a fine was the alternative of enrolment, hence
conceived as voluntary, we are told by Cicero (_pro Caec_. 33. 98 Aut
sua voluntate aut legis multa profecti sunt: quam multam si sufferre
voluissent, manere in civitate potuissent. Cf. _pro Domo_ 30. 78 Qui
cives Romani in colonias Latinas proficiscebantur, fieri non poterant
Latini, nisi erant auctores acti nomenque dederant).

[7] Liv. xxxix. 23.

[8] Liv. xxxvii. 4.

[9] Liv. xlii. 32 Multi voluntate nomina dabant, quia locupletes
videbant, qui priore Macedonico bello, aut adversus Antiochum in Asia,
stipendia fecerant.

[10] For the assignations _viritim_ in the times of the Kings see Varro
_R.R_. i. 10 (Romulus); Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 14. 26 (Numa); Liv. 1. 46
(Servius Tullius). That the Cassian distribution was to be [Greek: _kat
andra_] is stated by Dionysius (viii. 72, 73). On the whole subject see
Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 75. He has made out a good case for the land
thus assigned being known by the technical name of _viritanus ager_. See
Festus p. 373; Siculus Flaccus p. 154 Lachm. We shall find that this was
the form of distribution effected by the Gracchi.

[11] For the settlement in the land of the Volsci see Liv. v. 24; for
that made by M. Curius in the Sabine territory, Colum. i. praef. 14;
[Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 33.

[12] Cato ap. Varr. _R.R_. i. 2. 7 Ager Gallicus Romanus vocatur, qui
viritim cis Ariminum datus est ultra agrum Picentium; cf. Cic. _Brut_.
14. 57; _de Senect_. 4. 11; Val. Max. v. 4. 5.

[13] Liv. xlii. 4 (173 B.C.); cf. xli. 16.

[14] The other sources were the _portoria_ and the _vicesima libertatis_.
Even at a period when the revenues from the provinces were infinitely
larger than they were at the present time Cicero could write, with
reference to Caesar's proposal for distributing the Campanian land,
Portoriis Italiae sublatis, agro Campano divisor, quid vectigal superest
domesticum praeter vicensimam? (Cic. _ad Att_. ii. 16. i).

[15] See the map attempted by Beloch in his work _Der Italische Bund
unter Roms Hegemonie_.

[16] Vellei. ii. 7. See ch. iv., where the attitude of the senate
towards the proposals for transmarine settlement made by Caius Gracchus
is described.

[17] Polyb. xxxii. 11.

[18] Besides the continued war in Spain from 145 to 133 there were
troubles in Macedonia (in 142) and in Sicily during this period of
comparative peace. _Circa_ 140-135 commences the great slave rising in
that island, and in the latter year the long series of campaigns against
the free Illyrian and Thracian peoples begins.

[19] The _officia_ of the _villicus_ have become very extensive even in
Cato's time (Cato _R.R_. 5). Their extent implies the assumption of
very prolonged absences on the part of the master.

[20] Lucullus paid 500,200 drachmae for the house at Misenum which had
once belonged to Cornelia. She had purchased it for 75,000 (Plut. _Mar_.
34). Marius had been its intermediate owner. Even during his occupancy
it is described as [Greek: _polytelaes oikia tryphas echousa kai diaitas
thaelyteras hae kat andra polemon tosouton kai strateion autourgon_.]

[21] Diod. xxxvii. 3.

[22] Sulla rented one of the lower floors for 3000 sesterces (Plut.
_Sulla_ 1).

[23] The _coenaculum_ is mentioned by Livy (xxxix. 14) in connection
with the year 186 B.C. It is known both to Ennius (ap. Tertull. _adv_.
Valent. 7) and to Plautus (_Amph_. iii. 1. 3).

[24] Festus p. 171. The _insula_ resembled a large hotel, with one or
more courts, and bounded on all sides by streets. See Smith _Dict. of
Antiq_. (3rd ed.) i. p. 665.

[25] Val. Max. viii. 1. damn. 7 Admodum severae notae et illud populi
judicium, cum M. Aemilium Porcinam (consul 137 B.C.) a L. Cassio (censor
125 B.C.) accusatum crimine nimis sublime extructae villae in Alsiensi
agro gravi multa affecit. The author does not sufficiently distinguish
between the censorian initiative and the operation of the law. The
passage is important as showing the existence of an enactment on the
height of buildings. See Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2, p.
394, and cf. Vellei. ii. 10. Augustus limited the height of houses to
70 feet (Strabo v. p. 235).

[26] Diodor. v. 40 (The Etruscans) [Greek: _en ... tais oikiais ta
peristoa pros tas ton therapeuonton ochlon tarachas exeuron
euchraestian_.] See Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 528.

[27] In spite of the plural form _fauces_ (Vitruv. vi. 3. 6) may denote
only a single passage. See Marquardt _Privatl_. p. 240; Smith and
Middleton in Smith _Dict. of Antiq_. i. p. 671.

[28] For this _atriensis_, the English butler, the continental porter,
see the frequent references in Plautus (e.g., _Asin_. ii. 2. 80 and 101;
_Pseud_. ii. 2. 15), Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 534 and Marquardt
_Privatl_. p. 140.

[29] Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 6 Stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines
pictas. It is not known at what period the _imagines_ were transferred
from the Atrium to the Alae.

[30] Overbeck _Pompeii_ p. 192; Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 539.

[31] For the practice started, or developed, by Caius Gracchus of
receiving visitors, some singly, others in smaller or larger groups, see
Seneca _de Ben_. vi. 34. 2 and the description of Gracchus' tribunate in
chapter iv.

[32] Festus p. 357 (according to Mommsen, Abh. der Berl. Akad.
Phil.-hist. Classe, 1864 p. 68). Tablinum proxime atrium locus dicitur,
quod antiqui magistratus in suo imperio tabulis rationum ibi habebant
publicarum rationum causa factum locum; Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 7 Tabulina
codicibus implebantur et monimentis rerum in magistratu gestarum.
Marquardt, however (_Privatl_. p. 215) thinks that the name _tablinum_
is derived from the fact that this chamber was originally made of planks
(_tablinum_ from _tabula_, as _figlinum_ from _figulus_).

[33] The earliest instances of extreme extravagance in the use of
building material--of the use, for instance, of Hymettian and Numidian
marble--are furnished by the houses of the orator Lucius Licinius
Crassus (built about 92 B.C.) and of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in
78 B.C. This growth of luxury will be treated when we come to deal with
the civilisation of the Ciceronian period.

[34] As Krause expresses it (_Deinokrates_ p. 542), at the final stage
we find a Greek "Hinterhaus" standing behind an old Italian
"Vorderhaus".

[35] The case mentioned by Juvenal (xi. 151)

    Pastoris duri hic est filius, ille bubulci.
    Suspirat longo non visam tempore matrem,
    Et casulam, et notos tristis desiderat haedos,

must have been of frequent occurrence as soon as the urban and rustic
_familiae_ had been kept distinct.

[36] Suetonius says (_de Rhet_. 3) of L. Voltacilius Pilutus, one of the
teachers of Pompeius, Servisse dicitur atque etiam ostiarius vetere more
in catena fuisse.

[37] For these _atrienses, atriarii, admissionales, velarii_ see Wallon
_Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 108.

[38] Diod. xxxvii. 3; Sallust (_Jug_. 85) makes Marius say (107 B.C.)
Neque pluris pretii coquum quam villicum habeo. Livy (xxxix. 6) remarks
with reference to the consequences of the return of Manlius' army from
Asia in 187 B.C. Tum coquus, vilissimum antiquis mancipium et
aestimatione et usu, in pretio esse; et, quod ministerium fuerat, ars
haberi coepta.

[39] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 108 Nec coquos vero habebant in servitiis
eosque ex macello conducebant. The practice is mentioned by Plautus
(_Aul_. ii. 4. 1; iii. 2. 15).

[40] _Condus promus_ (Plaut. _Pseud_. ii. 2. 14).

[41] Wallon op. cit. ii. p. 111.

[42] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. x. 3. 5.

[43] Polyb. xxxii. 11; Diodor. xxxvii. 3.

[44] Diod. l.c.

[45] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 143 Invenimus legatos Carthaginiensium
dixisse nullos hominum inter se benignius vivere quam Romanos. Eodem
enim argento apud omnes cenitavisse ipsos.

[46] Val. Max. ii. 9, 3.

[47] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 141.

[48] Vellei. i. 13.

[49] Polyb. xl. 7.

[50] Liv. xxxix. 6 Lectos aeratos ... plagulas ... monopodia et abacos
Romam advexerunt. Tunc psaltriae sambucistriaeque et convivalia ludionum
oblectamenta addita epulis. Cf. Plin, _H.N_. xxxiv. 14.

[51] Polyb. ix. 10 [Greek: _Rhomaioi de metakomisantes ta proeiraemena
tais men idiotikais kataskenais tous auton ekosmaesan bious, tais de
daemosiais ta koina taes poleos_.] Another great raid was that made by
Fulvius Nobilior in 189 B.C. on the art treasures of the Ambraciots
(Signa aenea marmoreaque et tabulae pictae, Liv. xxxviii. 9).

[52] Plin. _H.N_. xv. 19 Graeci vitiorum omnium genitores.

[53] Cic. _pro Arch_. 3. 5 Erat Italia tum plena Graecarum artium ac
disciplinarum ... Itaque hunc (Archiam) et Tarentini et Regini et
Neapolitani civitate ceterisque praemiis donarunt: et omnes, qui aliquid
de ingeniis poterant judicare, cognitione atque hospitio dignum
existimarunt.

[54] Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 19. 34 Videtur insitiva quadam disciplina
doctior facta esse civitas. Influxit enim non tenuis quidam e Graecia
rivulus in hanc urbem, sed abundantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum
et artium. Cicero is speaking of the very earliest Hellenic influences
on Rome, but his description is just as appropriate to the period which
we are considering.

[55] Plut. _Paul_. 28.

[56] Sulla brought back the library of Apellicon of Teos, Lucullus the
very large one of the kings of Pontus (Plut. _Sulla_ 26; _Luc_. 42;
Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5). Lucullus allowed free access to his books. Here we
get the germ of the public library. The first that was genuinely public
belongs to the close of the Republican era. It was founded by Asinius
Pollio in the Atrium Libertatis on the Aventine (Plin. _H.N_. vii. 45;
Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5).

[57] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 14. 7.

[58] Dionys. vii. 71.

[59] They had made contributions in 186 B.C. towards the games of Scipio
Asiaticus (Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 138).

[60] Livy (xl. 44) after describing the _senatus consultum_, in which
occur the words Neve quid ad eos ludos arcesseret, cogeret, acciperet,
faceret adversus id senatus consultum, quod L. Aemilio Cn. Baebio
consulibus de ludis factum esset, adds Decreverat id senatus propter
effusos sumptus, factos in ludos Ti. Sempronii aedilis, qui graves non
modo Italiae ac sociis Latini nominis sed etiam provinciis
externis fuerant.

[61] The effect was still worse when a rich man avoided it. Cic. _de
Off_. ii. 17. 58. Vitanda tamen suspicio est avaritiae. Mamerco, homini
divitissimo, praetermissio aedilitatis consulatus repulsam attulit.
Sulla said that the people would not give him the praetorship because
they wished him to be aedile first. They knew that he could obtain
African animals for exhibition (Plut. _Sulla_ 5).

[62] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 14. 36.

[63] Liv. x. 47; xxvii. 6.

[64] Liv. xxiii. 30.

[65] Liv. xxx. 39.

[66] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 286.

[67] Mommsen _Röm. Münzw_. p. 645.

[68] Liv. xxxvi. 36. On these festivals see Warde Fowler _The Roman
Festivals_ pp. 72. 91. 70. The _Megalesia_ seem to have fallen to the
lot of the curule aediles (Dio. Cass. xliii. 48), the others to have
been given indifferently by either pair.

[69] Val. Max. ii. 4-7; Liv. _Ep_. xvi. It was exhibited in the Forum
Boarium by Marcus and Decimus Brutus at the funeral of their father.

[70] Compare Livy's description (xli. 20) of the adoption of Roman
gladiatorial shows by Antiochus Epiphanes--Armorum studium plerisque
juvenum accendit.

[71] Polyb. xxx. 13.

[72] Liv. xxxix. 22.

[73] Liv. xliv. 18.

[74] Dig. 21. 1. 40-42 (from the edict of the curule aediles) Ne quis
canem, verrem vel minorem aprum, lupum, ursum, pantheram, leonem ... qua
vulgo iter fiet, ita habuisse velit, ut cuiquam nocere damnumve
dare possit.

[75] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 17. 60 Tota igitur ratio talium largitionum
genere vitiosa est, temporibus necessaria. He adds the pious but
unattainable wish Tamen ipsa et ad facultates accomodanda et
mediocritate moderanda est. Compare the remarks of Pöhlmann on the
subject in his _Geschichte des antiken Communismus und Sozialismus_ ii.
2. p. 471.

[76] Mommsen _Staatsr_. ii., p. 382.

[77] Plut, _Ti. Gracch_. 14.

[78] Liv. xxxix. 44; Plut, _Cat. Maj_. 18.

[79] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_, p. 128.

[80] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae
invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A
deterrent to luxury could still have been created by imposing heavy
harbour-dues on articles of value; but this would have required
legislation. Nothing is known about the Republican tariff at Italian
ports. The percentage may have been uniform for all articles.

[81] Liv. xxxiv. cc. 1-8; Val. Max. ix. 1. 3; Tac. _Ann_. iii. 33.

[82] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Festus pp. 201, 242; Schol. Bob. p. 310;
Meyer _Orat. Rom. Fragm_. p. 91.

[83] This date (161) is given by Pliny (_H.N_. x. 139); Macrobius
(_Sat_. iii. 17. 3) places the law in 159.

[84] Gell. ii. 24; Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Plin. _H.N_. x. 139;
Tertull. _Apol_. vi. The ten asses of this law are the Fanni centussis
misellus of Lucilius.

[85] It seems that we must assume formal acceptance on the part of the
allies in accordance with the principle that Rome could not legislate
for her confederacy, a principle analogous to that which forbade her to
force her franchise on its members (Cic. _pro Balbo_ 8, 20 and 21).

[86] We may compare the enactment of 193 B.C., which was produced by the
discovery that Roman creditors escaped the usury laws by using Italians
as their agents (Liv. xxxv. 7 M. Sempronius tribunus plebis ... plebem
rogavit plebesque scivit ut cum sociis ac nomine Latino creditae
pecuniae jus idem quod cum civibus Romanis esset).

[87] The _Lex Licinia_, which is attributed by Macrobius (l.c.) to P.
Licinius Crassus Dives, perhaps belongs either to his praetorship (104
B.C.) or to his consulship (97 B.C.).

[88] Gellius (ii. 24), in speaking of Sulla's experiments, says of the
older laws Legibus istis situ atque senio obliteratis.

[89] _Exaequatio_ (Liv. xxxiv. 4).

[90] Cic. _de Rep_. iii. g. 16; see p. 80.

[91] Compare Tac. _Ann_. iii. 53. The Emperor Tiberius here speaks of
Illa feminarum propria, quis lapidum causa pecuniae nostrae ad externas
aut hostilis gentes transferuntur.

[92] The prohibition belongs to the year 229 B.C. (Zonar. viii. 19). For
other prohibitions of the same kind dating from, a period later than
that which we are considering see Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv.
2, p. 376 n. 95.

[93] Earlier enactments had been directed against canvassing, but not
against bribery. The simplicity of the fifth century B.C. was
illustrated by the law that a candidate should not whiten his toga with
chalk (Liv. iv. 25; 433 B.C.). The _Lex Poetelia_ of 358 B.C. (Liv. vii.
16) was directed against personal solicitation by _novi homines_. Some
law of _ambitus_ is known to Plautus (_Amph. prol. 73; cf. Trinumm_. iv.
3. 26), See Rein _Criminalrecht_ p. 706

[94] Liv. xl. 19 Leges de ambitu consules ex auctoritate senatus ad
populum tulerunt. This was the _lex Cornelia Baebia_ and that it
referred to pecuniary corruption is known from a fragment of Cato (ap.
_Non_. vii. 19, s.v. largi, Cato lege Baebia: pecuniam inlargibo tibi).

[95] Obsequens lxxi.

[96] Liv. _Ep_. xlvii.

[97] Polyb. vi. 56 [Greek: _para men Karchaedoniois dora phaneros
didontes lambanousi tas archas, para de Rhomaiois thanatos esti peri
touto prostimon_.]

[98] The position of the ruined patrician will be fully illustrated in
the following pages when we deal with the careers of Scaurus and
of Sulla.

[99] Liv. xxxiv. 52.

[100] Liv. xxxix. 7.

[101] Liv. xxxviii. 9.

[102] For the later history of the _aurum coronarium_ see Marquardt
_Staatsverw_. ii. p. 295. It was developed from the _triumphales
coronae_ (Festus p. 367) and is described as gold Quod triumphantibus
... a victis gentibus datur and as imposed by commanders Propter
concessam vitam (_al_. immunitatem) (Serv. _Ad. Aen_. viii. 721).

[103] Liv. xxi. 63 (218 B.C.) Id satis habitum ad fructus ex agris
vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus.

[104] It was antiqua et mortua (Cic. _in Verr_. v. 18. 45).

[105] Cicero (_Parad_. 6. 46) speaks of those Qui honeste rem quaerunt
mercaturis faciendis, operis dandis, publicis sumendis. Compare the
category of banausic trades in _de Off_, 1. 42. 150, although in the
_Paradoxa_ the contrast is rather that between honest and vicious
methods of money-making. Deloume (_Les manieurs d'argent à Rome_
pp. 58 ff.) believes that the fortune of Cicero swelled through
participation in _publica_.

[106] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21.

[107] Plut. _Crass_. 2.

[108] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21. Cato employed this method of training as a
means of increasing the _peculium_ of his own slaves. But even the
_peculium_ technically belonged to the master, and it is obvious that
the slave-trainer might have been used by others as a mere instrument
for the master's gain.

[109] Plat. l.c. [Greek: _haptomenos de syntonoteron porismou taen men
georgian mallon haegeito diagogaen hae prosodon_.]

[110] Plaut. _Trinumm. Prol_. 8:

    Primum mihi Plautus nomen Luxuriae indidit:
    Tum hanc mihi gnatam esse voluit Inopiam.

[111] Liv. xxxiv. 4 (Cato's speech in defence of the Oppian law) Saepe
me querentem de feminarum, saepe de virorum, nec de privatorum modo, sed
etiam magistratuum sumptibus audistis; diversisque duobus vitiis,
avaritia et luxuria, civitatem laborare. Compare Sallust's impressions
of a later age (_Cat_. 3) Pro pudore, pro abstinentia, pro virtute,
audacia, largitio, avaritia vigebant.

[112] Polyb. vi. 56.

[113] Polyb. xxiv. 9.

[114] Cato ap. Gell. xi. 18. 18. The speech was one De praeda
militibus dividenda.

[115] We first hear of a standing court for _peculatus_ in 66 B.C. (Cic.
_pro Cluent_. 53. 147). It was probably established by Sulla.

[116] Rein _Criminalr_. pp. 680 ff.; Mommsen _Röm. Forsch_. ii.
pp. 437 ff.

[117] Liv. xxxvii. 57 and 58 (190 B.C.).

[118] See especially the case of Pleminius, Scipio's lieutenant at Locri
(204 B.C.), who, after a committee had reported on the charge, was
conveyed to Rome but died in bonds before the popular court had
pronounced judgment (Liv. xxix. 16-22).

[119] Liv. xlii. 1 (173 B.C.) Silentium, nimis aut modestum aut timidum
Praenestinorum, jus, velut probato exemplo, magistratibus fecit
graviorum in dies talis generis imperiorum.

[120] For such requisitions see Plut. _Cato Maj_ 6 (of Cato's government
of Sardinia) [Greek: _ton pro autou strataegon eiothoton chraesthai kai
skaenomasi daemosiois kai klinais kai himatiois, pollae de therapeia kai
philon plaethei kai peri deipna dapanais kai paraskeuais barhynonton_.]

[121] Liv. xxxii. 27 Sumptus, quos in cultum praetorum socii facere
soliti erant, circumcisi aut sublati (198 B.C.).

[122] The _Lex de Termessibus_ (a charter of freedom given to Termessus
in Pisidia in 71 B.C.) enjoins (ii. l. 15) Nei ... quis magistratus ...
inperato, quo quid magis iei dent praebeant ab ieisve auferatur nisei
quod eos ex lege Porcia dare praebere oportet oportebit. This Porcian
law was probably the work of Cato (Rein _Criminalr_. p. 607).

[123] Liv. xxxviii. 43; xxxix. 3; Rein, l.c.

[124] Liv. xliii. 2.

[125] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 106; _de Off_. ii. 21. 75; cf. _in Verr_.
iii. 84. 195; iv. 25. 56.

[126] Liv. xli. 15. (176 B.C.) Duo (praetores) deprecati sunt ne in
provincias irent, M. Popillius in Sardiniam: Gracchum eam provinciam
pacare &c.... Probata Popillii excusatio est. P. Licinius Crassus
sacrificiis se impediri sollemnibus excusabat, ne in provinciam iret.
Citerior Hispania obvenerat. Ceterum aut ire jussus aut jurare pro
contione sollemni sacrificio se prohiberi.... Praetores ambo in eadem
verba jurarunt. I have seen the passage cited as a proof that governors
would not go to unproductive provinces; but Sardinia was a fruitful
sphere for plunder, and the excuses may have been genuine. That of
Popillius seems to have been positively patriotic.

[127] Liv. xlii. 45 Decimius unus sine ullo effectu, captarum etiam
pecuniarum ab regibus Illyriorum suspicione infamis, Romam rediit.

[128] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 48. 126 (70 B.C.) Patimur ... multos jam annos
et silemus cum videamus ad paucos homines omnes omnium nationum pecunias
pervenisse.

[129] For the principle see Gaius iii. 151-153.

[130] Polybius (vi. 17), after speaking of various kinds of property
belonging to the state, adds [Greek: _panta cheirizesthai symbainei ta
proeiraemena dia tou plaethous, kai schedon hos epos eipein pantas
endedesthai tais onais kai tais ergasiais tais ek touton_].

[131] Polyb. vi. 17. The senate can [Greek: _symptomatos genomenou
kouphisai kai to parapan adynatou tinos symbantos apolysai taes
ergonias_]. Thus the senate invalidated the _locationes_ of the censors
of 184 B.C. (Liv. xxxix. 44 Locationes cum senatus precibus et lacrimis
publicanorum victus induci et de integro locari jussisset.)

[132] In 169 B.C. it was the people that released from an oppressive
regulation (Liv. xliii. 16). In this case a tribune answered the
censor's intimation, that none of the former state-contractors should
appear at the auction, by promulgating the resolution Quae publica
vectigalia, ultro tributa C. Claudius et Ti. Sempronius locassent, ea
rata locatio ne esset. Ab integro locarentur, et ut omnibus redimendi et
conducendi promiscue jus esset.

[133] Deloume op. cit. pp. 119 ff. Polybius (vi. 17) has been quoted
as an authority for the distinction between these two classes. He says
[Greek: _oi men gar agorazousi para ton timaeton autoi tas ekdoseis, oi
de koinonousi toutois, oi d' enguontai tous aegorakotas, oi de tas
ousias didoasi peri touton eis to daemosion_.] The first three classes
are the _mancipes, socii and praedes_. In the fourth the shareholders
(_participes_ or perhaps _adfines_, cf. Liv. xliii. 16) are found by
Deloume (p. 120); but the identification is very uncertain. The words
may denote either real as opposed to formal security or the final
payment of the _vectigal_ into the treasury. A better evidence for the
distinction between _socii_ and shareholders is found in the
Pseudo-Asconius (in Cic. _in Verr_. p. 197 Or.) Aliud enim socius, Aliud
particeps qui certam habet partem et non _in_divise agit ut socius. The
_magnas partes_ (Cic. _pro Rab_. Post. 2. 4) and the _particulam_ (Val.
Max. vi. 9. 7) of a _publicum_, need only denote large or small shares
held by the _socii_. _Dare partes_ (Cic. l.c.) is to "allot shares," but
not necessarily to outside members. Apart from the testimony of the
Pseudo-Asconius and the mention of _adfines_ in Livy the evidence for
the ordinary shareholder is slight but by no means fatal to his
existence.

[134] E.g. by loan to a _socius_ at a rate of interest dependent on his
returns, perhaps with a _pactum de non petendo_ in certain
contingencies.

[135] These are, in strict legal language, the true _publicani_; the
lessees of state property are _publicanorum loco_ (Dig. 39. 4, 12
and 13).

[136] Later legal theory assimilated the third with the first class.
Gaius says (ii. 7) In eo (provinciali) solo dominium populi Romani est
vel Caesaris, nos autem possessionem tantum vel usumfructum habere
videmur. But the theory is not ancient-perhaps not older than the
Gracchan period. See Greenidge _Roman Public Life_ p. 320. From a broad
standpoint the first and second classes may be assimilated, since the
payment of harbour dues (_portoria_) is based on the idea of the use of
public ground by a private occupant.

[137] _Cic. de Leg. Agr_. ii. 31. 84.

[138] Thédenat in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict. des Antiq. s.v_. Ergastulum.

[139] Compare Cunningham _Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects_
vol. i. p. 162.

[140] Cic. _in Verr_. ii. 55. 137; iii. 33. 77; ii. 13. 32; 26. 63.

[141] Ibid. ii. 13. 32.