The Historians' History of the World 05

Among his conspicuous acts of munificence as ædile, Cæsar had adorned the Forum and the Capitol with pictures and statues: he had erected halls and porticoes for the gratification of the people, and these too he had adorned with monuments of taste and luxury. One morning there suddenly appeared among the new ornaments of the Capitol the statue of Marius, surrounded by the trophies of his Cimbrian and Jugurthine victories. The people shouted with delight; the nobles scowled with indignation. The author of the deed did not proclaim himself, but neither friends nor foes could err in ascribing it to the daring ædile. Catulus determined to bring the offender to punishment for this direct breach of law. The remembrance of the murder of his father, the noblest victim of the Marian proscriptions, inflamed the bitterness of his animosity. He accused Cæsar of throwing off the mask from his ulterior designs; of no longer subverting the republic with mines, but of assailing it with the battering-ram. Cæsar defended himself before the senate, and succeeded in foiling his accuser; but he owed his triumph neither to the favour nor the justice of his audience, but to the temper of the people, on which the nobles dared not make an experiment. It would appear from the historians that the trophies of Marius retained possession of their place in front of the Capitol, an indication of the popular strength which must have shaken the nerves even of Cato himself.

The nobles could at least retaliate. On quitting the ædileship, Cæsar demanded a public mission to reduce Egypt to the form of a province, in virtue of the will of the king Ptolemy Alexander. This country, through which all the commerce of the East already passed into Europe, was reputed the wealthiest in the world. Pouring into the royal treasury an annual tribute of 14,800 talents, it offered a magnificent prey to the rapacious republic, and to the fortunate proconsul through whose hands these golden harvests should pass. Crassus and Cæsar disputed this rich booty; but neither the one nor the other succeeded in obtaining it. The senate mustered all its forces to baffle both claimants, and was enabled, perhaps by their division, to succeed. It employed a tribune named Papius to enact that all foreigners, and especially Cæsar’s clients, the Transpadane Gauls, should be removed from the city, and thus boldly cleared the Forum of the tumultuary partisans, by whose hands, if not by whose votes, the reckless demagogue might hope to extort the prize.

Julius Cæsar

(From a statue)

[64 B.C.]

Instead of this brilliant mission Cæsar was invited (64) to preside in the tribunal, to which was committed the inquisition into cases of murder. Hitherto he had done no more than protest against the dictatorship of Sulla; he now determined to brand it with legal stigma. Among the cases which he caused to be cited before him were those of two political offenders, men who had imbrued their hands in the blood of the victims of the proscription. One of these named Bellienus was the centurion who had stabbed Ofella, the other was a more obscure assassin. He condemned these wretched ruffians, only to strike terror into higher quarters. He induced a tribune named Labienus to accuse an aged senator, Rabirius, of the slaughter of the tribune Saturninus; and by making it a criminal, and not a political, charge, he forbade the accused to withdraw himself from the process by voluntary exile. Cicero and Hortensius defended the culprit, but failed to move the judges. Rabirius appealed to the people. Labienus attacked, and Cicero again defended him, while the senators used every effort to excite the compassion of the populace. But the people exulted in the audacious injustice of the whole proceeding: for it was well known, first, that Rabirius had not killed Saturninus; secondly, that the real slayer had been rewarded, and the deed solemnly justified by competent authority; and, thirdly, that the transaction had occurred not less than thirty-six years before, and deserved to be buried in oblivion with the birth of a new generation. The appeal of Rabirius would inevitably have been rejected but for the adroitness of the prætor, Metellus Celer, who suddenly struck the flag which floated from the Janiculum while the tribes were assembled for public business. In ancient times the striking of the flag was the signal that the Etrurians were advancing to attack the city. Immediately all business was suspended, the comitia dissolved, and the citizens rushed to man the walls. The formality still remained in force among a people singularly retentive of traditional usages; and now the multitude which had just shouted clamorously for innocent blood, laughed at the trick by which its fury was baffled, and acquiesced in the suspension of the proceedings. Cæsar had gained his point in alarming and mortifying the senate, and allowed the matter to drop, which he never perhaps seriously intended to push to extremity.

[63 B.C.]