A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate Part 11

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 att.i.tude 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 hara.s.s, they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain such a success as even the most complacent patriotism could name a victory; while the st.u.r.diness 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 a.s.sume a grovelling att.i.tude, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude 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 emba.s.sy to Rome: he had made a genuine effort to secure her friends.h.i.+p, 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 emba.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sembling 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 emba.s.sy 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumption 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 pet.i.tioner'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 skirmis.h.i.+ng 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 s.h.i.+fted his ground and merely insisted on the utility of a march by night from the dangerous neighbourhood, the quaestor yielded a.s.sent. 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 pa.s.sionate protest on his dubious companion. He called the protecting G.o.d 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 p.a.w.n in the king's game, to be dependent for his safety on the pa.s.sing whim of a man whom he distrusted? Jugurtha might have everything to gain by ma.s.sacring 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured. 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 grat.i.tude. He then pa.s.sed to the question of his own future relations with Rome. He repeated the a.s.sertion, 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 pa.s.s within it. If Sulla had any further request to urge, which could be fairly made by the pet.i.tioner 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 princ.i.p.als 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 n.o.bility, 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 pa.s.sed 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 consuls.h.i.+p 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 repet.i.tion 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 ma.s.sacred 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 cla.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sumed an anti-Roman character, this result had been a.s.sisted, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s of the unpropertied cla.s.ses, 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.signed 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 cla.s.s at Rome. It was this cla.s.s that not only forced the government to war, but insisted on seeing the war through to its bitter end. It was this cla.s.s 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 n.o.bility 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 cla.s.s had the making of the ministers of the State.

But the moneyed cla.s.s 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 ma.s.s of fluctuating opinion and dissipated voting power which was known as "the people." How came the Populus Roma.n.u.s 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 att.i.tude 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 cla.s.s. 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 n.o.bility 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 const.i.tution was an accepted fact, and the senate must at least be tolerated as a necessary element in that const.i.tution; 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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tutionalist 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 cla.s.ses 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 makes.h.i.+ft 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 cla.s.s 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 const.i.tution--of men not subjected to the dividing influences, or swayed by the momentary pa.s.sions, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.bility 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 cla.s.ses, and the consequent weakening of confidence in the one cla.s.s 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 n.o.bility as the triumph of the aristocrat over the parvenu, of the old diplomacy and the old bureaucracy over the coa.r.s.e 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 ma.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sert 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 cla.s.ses 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 Serra.n.u.s and Quintus Servilius Caepio. Of these Serra.n.u.s 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 n.o.bility 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 Serra.n.u.s possessed in the eyes of the voters who elevated him to his high office, was a puzzle to posterity; for such n.o.bility 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 a.s.sociation 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 consuls.h.i.+p; 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 consuls.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.ses and the people, and that the latter, satisfied with their recent political triumph and reconciled by the honest pa.s.sivity of the senate, were content to resume their old allegiance to the governing cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 part.i.tion 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 members.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.ble.

And community of taste is an easy pa.s.sage 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sailants 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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.bles 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 cla.s.s; 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 Cra.s.sus 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 ill.u.s.trated 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, st