The Historians' History of the World 05

The first attempt which the dexterous advocate of Verres made to elude Cicero’s attack was to put forward Q. Cæcilius Niger, who had been quæstor under Verres, to contend that to him belonged the task of accusation. But Cicero exposed the intended fraud so unanswerably that even the senatorial jurymen named Cicero as prosecutor. He demanded ninety days for the purpose of collecting evidence in Sicily. But he only used fifty of them, and on the fifth of August he opened this famous impeachment. He had in the meantime been elected ædile. But Hortensius had also become consul-elect; and one of the Metelli, a warm friend of the accused, was designated to succeed Glabrio, who now presided in the court as prætor peregrinus. It was therefore a great object for Verres to get the trial postponed to the next year, when his great senatorial friends would fill the most important offices in the state. To baffle this design, Cicero contented himself with a brief statement of his case, and at once proceeded to call witnesses. So overpowering was the evidence that Hortensius threw up his brief, and Verres sought impunity in a voluntary exile. To show what he could have done, Cicero published the five great pleadings in which he intended to have set forth the crimes of Verres; and they remain to us as a notable picture of the misery which it was in the power of a Roman proconsul to inflict.

Roman General

(From Trajan’s Column)

Soon after the trial came to this abrupt issue, the law was passed, seemingly with little opposition; and thus a second great breach was made in the Sullan constitution.

The corrupt state of the senate itself was made manifest by a step now taken by Catulus and his friends. They restored the censorial office, which had been suspended for sixteen years. The censors of the year 70 B.C. discharged their duties with severe integrity, and sixty-four senators were degraded. For Catulus they revived the high rank of princeps, and he was the last independent senator who held that rank. When it was next called into existence, it served to give a title to the despotic authority of Augustus. The review of the knights was made remarkable by the fact that the consul Pompey appeared in the procession, leading his horse through the Forum, and submitting himself to the censorial scrutiny.

The jealousy of Crassus increased with Pompey’s popularity. Both the consuls continued to maintain an armed force near the city; and, though the liberal measures of Pompey had won the Forum, yet the gold of Crassus commanded many followers. The senate dreaded that the days of Marius or Cinna might return. But Crassus calculated the risks of a conflict, and prudently resolved to give a pledge of peace. At the close of the year he publicly offered his hand to Pompey, which the latter deigned to accept after the manner of a prince. It did not suit Crassus to disturb credit and imperil his vast fortune by a civil war; Pompey was satisfied so long as no other disputed his claim to be the first citizen of the republic.

Thus ended by far the most remarkable year that had passed since the time of Sulla. Two generals, backed by an armed force, had trampled on the great dictator’s laws; and one of them had rudely shaken the political edifice reared in so much blood. Behind them appeared the form of one who sought to gain by eloquence and civil arts what had lately been arrogated by the sword. But it was some years yet before Cæsar descended into the political arena.b

POMPEY SUBDUES THE CILICIAN PIRATES

[84-67 B.C.]

During the party struggles in Italy, Sicily, Africa, and Spain, during the dictatorship of Sulla and its sanguinary effects, felt long afterwards in the Sertorian and Slave wars, the sufferings of Rome and her provinces were increased by a scourge of a peculiar character which had gradually attained alarming proportions.

The coasts of the western part of that district of Asia Minor known as Cilicia, where the wild mountains of the Taurus, which intersect the country, afford a safe refuge to the robber and his prey, had been from ancient times the home of piracy. The hopeless confusion of the Syrian kingdom, of which Cilicia formed a part, set order at defiance and for a long time allowed full play to the lucrative trade which flourished under the protection of the states of Rhodes, Cyprus, and Egypt, all of them at enmity with the Syrian monarchy.