The Historians' History of the World 05

Nor did the extortions of Verres fall upon the Sicilians alone. He cheated the treasury at Rome of the sums advanced to him in payment of corn for the consumption of the city. He withheld the necessary equipments from the fleet which he was directed to send against the pirates, and applied them to his own use. The fleet was worsted by the enemy, and the proprætor caused its officers to be executed for cowardice. His lictors sold to the victims’ relatives the miserable favour of despatching them at one blow. He crowned his enormities by punishing one of the ruling caste with death. Gavius, a Roman trader, he confined in the quarries of Syracuse; the man escaped, was retaken, and fastened to a cross on the beach within sight of Italy, that he might address to his native shores his plaintive but ineffectual exclamation, “I am a Roman citizen!”

Such is a specimen of the charges which could be plausibly advanced against a Roman officer, and which the criminal, though backed by the united influence of his party, and defended by the most experienced and successful advocate of his times, shrank from rebutting. In most cases however the governor accused of tyranny or malversation could screen himself by bribing his judges, who besides their natural anxiety to absolve one of their own order of crimes which might in turn be imputed to themselves, had been bred in the same school of corruption and venality as himself. The prosecution of these charges became indeed a ready means of acquiring notoriety, and the people, stimulated by their demagogues, encouraged, it was said, the young orators in their attacks, as whelps are trained to hunt down beasts of prey. But the assailants were in almost every case repulsed, and even if successful the provinces themselves reaped no benefit from their efforts. The proconsuls only exerted themselves the more strenuously to grasp the means of securing their acquittal. They could boast that the fruits of three years’ occupation of office would suffice—the first to make their own fortunes, the second to reward their advocates and partisans, the third and most abundant to buy the suffrages of their judges. The provinces, it might be anticipated, would soon come forward of their own accord and pray for the repeal of the laws against malversation, since they only served to redouble the extortions of their oppressors.

[72-69 B.C.]

These frightful iniquities which rendered the dominion of Rome as formidable to the nations in peace as her hostility had been in war, had grown with the progress of luxury and corruption. Her provincial governors had ever wielded their public authority with arrogance and harshness; but in purer and simpler ages they had at least refrained from the sordid exactions and selfish rapacity for which they had now become infamous. The tribunals also had degenerated both in corruption and shamelessness. The knights could venture to assert that during the forty years they had participated in the dispensation of the laws, the justice of Rome had been unstained even by the breath of suspicion. To the notorious venality of the tribunals under the administration of the senate they pointed as a proof of their own superior purity. It was indeed true that the increasing vices of the provincial government were symptomatic of the growing relaxation of morality at home. On the one hand the extension of foreign conquest and the opening in every quarter of new sources of wealth, had inflamed the passions of cupidity and ambition. On the other, half a century of domestic contentions had loosened the bonds of society, overbearing the ancient principles of justice, of respect for law and order, of reverence for things divine. But in fact this greater development of vice was accompanied at the same time by more general publicity, and a more jealous exposure of the faults of political parties. The knights, deterred from the use of force for the recovery of their lost privileges, affected a zeal for justice, to undermine their more fortunate rivals. The constitution of Sulla was assailed and eventually overthrown, not on the field of battle, but on the floor of the law courts.b

FOOTNOTES

[97] [That is, without the consent of the senate.]

[98] [Now that they were dispersed among all the tribes, and thus seemingly deprived of influence in the elections, the Italians could, in reality, if they chose, exercise far greater influence than when confined to a few tribes of their own, which always voted last. In all the assemblies they now stood on an equal footing with the rest of the citizens.]

[99] [Appian,d however, one of our best authorities for Sulla, says that “he was still of virile age and sound constitution.”]

[100] [This achievement of Sulla is perhaps exaggerated. Either Marius or Sertorius would have been able to put down Mithridates, and restore order in the East. Sulla’s chief service was the reform of the courts and the improvement of the administration.]

Death of Sertorius