The Historians' History of the World 05

The days of triumph which succeeded passed over with uninterrupted good fortune. The populace were gratified with the sight of the Egyptian princess Arsinoe led as a captive at the conqueror’s wheels; but she was spared the fate of the Gallic chieftain out of favour to her sister, or perhaps out of pity to her sex. The son of the king of Numidia who followed the triumphal car was also spared, and lived to receive back his father’s crown from Augustus. Though Cæsar abstained from claiming the title of a triumph over his countrymen, he did not scruple to parade their effigies among the shows of the procession. The figures or pictures of the vanquished chiefs were carried on litters, and represented the manner of their deaths. Scipio was seen leaping desperately into the sea; Cato plunging the sword into his own bowels; Juba and Petreius engaged in mortal duel; Lentulus stabbed by the Egyptian assassin; Domitius pierced perhaps in the back, in token of his flight. The figure of Pompey alone was withheld for fear of the commiseration it might excite among the people whose favourite he had so lately been. Nor, as it was, were the spectators unmoved. Upon the unfeeling display of Roman defeat and disaster they reflected with becoming sensibility. But the pictures of Achillas and Pothinus were received with unmingled acclamations, and loud was the cry of scorn at the exhibition of Pharnaces flying in confusion from the field. After all, the most impressive part of the ceremony must have been the appearance of the rude veterans whose long files closed the procession. With what ignorant wonder must the children of Gaul and Iberia, of Epirus and Africa, have gazed at the splendour of the city, of which the fame resounded in their native cabins! What contempt must they have felt for the unarmed multitudes grinning around them! How reckless must they have been of the dignity of the consuls and senators, they who claimed the license of shouting derisive songs in the ears of their own commander! Little did they think that grave historians would sum up their coarse camp jokes in evidence against the fame of their illustrious leader; still less did they dream of the new power which the military class was thenceforth to constitute in the state. Rome in fact was their own; but it was a secret they were not yet to discover.

The satisfaction of his armed supporters, however, was the first condition on which the supreme power of the dictator must henceforth be maintained in the city. It was a matter, indeed, of hardly less importance to secure the good humour of the urban population. While the soldiers receive each a donative of twenty thousand sesterces, the claims of the much larger multitude of the free citizens were not undervalued severally at four hundred; especially as they received the additional gratification of one year’s remission of house rent. It does not appear how this indulgence differed from that for which Cælius and Dolabella had raised their commotions; but the dictator had so strenuously resisted every attempt to set aside the just claims of creditors on all previous occasions, that it can hardly be doubted that in this case he gave the landlords compensation from the public treasury. The mass of the citizens was feasted at a magnificent banquet, at which the Chian and Falernian wines, the choicest produce of Greece and Italy, flowed freely from the hogshead, and towards which six thousand lampreys, the most exquisite delicacy of the Roman epicure, were furnished by a single breeder. The mighty multitude reclined before twenty-two thousand tables; each table having its three couches, and each couch, we may suppose, its three guests; so that the whole number feasted may have amounted to nearly two hundred thousand. When Cæsar undertook the functions of his censorship, the number of recipients of the public distributions of corn was estimated at 320,000. Upon a scrutiny into their claims as genuine and resident citizens, he was enabled to strike off as many as 150,000 from this list. Adding to the remainder the senators and knights, and the few wealthy individuals who might have scorned to partake of a state provision, the sum will correspond pretty accurately with the number of the imperial guests as above computed.