and recognized balance of powers, or rather anarchy, which enabled parties, even when acting within the limits of the constitution, to bring the government to a dead lock; he restored to the senate all, and more than all its old powers; curtailed the prerogatives of all magistrates, especially of the tribunes of the plebs; improved the administration of justice so far as was consistent with his political objects; and by his military colonies in various parts of Italy, placed a standing army of veterans at the disposal of the senate for the defence of the newly-established order of things. Great, though not the greatest, results followed. Unity was restored to the government at home, and it was at first successful abroad. But for a picture of the state of Rome on Sulla's death, we must quote more at length from our author. 'When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had restored ruled the Roman state without control; only as it had been founded by force, it still required force to maintain it against its numerous secret and open enemies. What stood opposed to it was, not a simple party with clearly expressed ends and under definitely recognized leaders, but a mass of the most various elements, which were united, to be sure, in general, under the name of the popular party, but in reality opposed Sulla's settlement of the commonwealth on very different grounds. . . There were the men of positive law who neither took part in politics, nor understood them, but who regarded with horror Sulla's arbitrary dealing with the lives and properties of the citizens. . . . There were, moreover, the remnants of the old liberal minority in the senate, which had always laboured for a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and now was inclined to mitigate the rigorously oligarchical constitution of Sulla by concessions to the popular party. There was, further, the popular party proper, the honourable and credulous radicals of limited views, who staked life and property for the watchwords of their party, to recognize with astonishment after victory that they had fought for a phrase and not for a fact... There were, above all, the numerous and important classes whom the revolution of Sulla had left discontented, or directly injured in their political or private interests. Such causes added to the opposition the dense and prosperous population of the district between the Po and the Alps, as it naturally considered the concession of Latin rights in the year 665 as only an instalment of full Roman citizenship, and thus offered a favourable soil to agitation.' After pointing out how the capitalists, the freedmen, the pauper population of the metropolis, the families of the victims of proscription, and the actual victims of confiscation, supplied an additional mass of dangerous materials, and promised support to the ambitious aspirants who were denied all hopes of distinction by the oligarchical exclusiveness of the government, Dr. Mommsen concludes 'Such was the opposition with which the oligarchical government introduced by Sulla had to struggle, when, sooner than its founder might have expected, his death threw it on its own resources. The task was not light in itself, and was made heavier by the peculiar and political evils of the time, above all, by the uncommon difficulty of maintaining the authority of the supreme civic government over the military chiefs in the provinces, and of keeping in order, without troops at command, the Italian and foreign rabble dwelling in the capital, and the slaves who at Rome generally enjoyed practical freedom. The senate stood as in a fortress exposed and threatened on every side, and serious struggles were inevitable. But the resources which Sulla had set in order for resistance were also considerable and sufficient; and although the mass of the nation was disaffected and even hostile to the government as Sulla had constituted it, yet against the confused and perplexed masses of an opposition which agreed neither as to the end nor as to the means, and which separated into a hundred fractions without a recognized head, the government might for a long while maintain itself. Of course it must have the will to maintain itself, and must bring to the defence of its fortress a spark at least of the energy which had built it: for a garrison that will not defend itself the ablest engineer throws up his mounds and digs his trenches in vain.' In his judgment on the following scenes in which Cæsar, Pompeius, Cato, and Cicero play the most prominent parts, Dr. Mommsen agrees generally with Mr. Merivale. It is, perhaps, a novelty that he places the date of the fall of the oligarchy, not at the battle of Pharsalia, but at the passing of the Manilian law; but this is hardly a point of much importance. In his estimate of persons, however, he is original, and in some cases almost paradoxical. Cicero in his hands becomes a selfish and time-serving legal adventurer; Cato a quixotic blockhead. We should have thought that the pure and amiable character of Cicero in private life; his spotless administration of his province when rapacity was so general; his patriotism, not indeed always enlightened, but sincere, even in the judgment of men so different from himself and from each other as Cato and Octavianus, might have pleaded for a more favourable sentence. It must be allowed that he condescended to unseemly flattery of Cæsar when living, and to unseemly exultation over his death. But in the last crisis of his country's liberties he displayed a courage and energy which soldiers might have envied; and the last moments of his life were marked by consideration for others' safety, and by a true fortitude equally removed from ostentation and timidity. In the case of Cato our complaint is somewhat different. We think Dr. Mommsen's estimate is distorted and exaggerated rather than altogether false, and some of his remarks on the death of the republican hero are generous and forcible. 'For many years he had been the leader in the struggle of the legitimate republic against its oppressors; he had continued it long after every hope of victory had departed; but now the struggle itself had become im possible; the republic which L. Brutus had founded was dead and never to revive; what had republicans yet to do on the earth? The treasure was stolen and its sentinel thereby discharged; who could blame him if he went home? There was more nobleness, and, above all, more intelligence in Cato's death than there had been in his life. Cato was anything rather than a great man; yet with all his shortsightedness and perversity, his dry tediousness and his false phrases--which made him for his own and for all other times the idol of unthinking republicanism and of individuals who play with it-he was still the only man in whom the great decaying system found an honourable and spirited defender in its agony. Therefore, as before the simple truth the most cunning lie inwardly feels itself destroyed, and the elevation and glory of human nature depend finally not on prudence but on honour, Cato has played a greater part in history than many men far superior to him in intellect. The greatest homage paid him was that involuntarily rendered by Cæsar in making Cato an exception from the contemptuous leniency with which he usually treated his antagonists whether Pompeian or republican, and in persecuting him even beyond the grave with that energetic hostility which practical statesmen usually feel against the antagonists who oppose them in the domain of the ideal-antagonists as formidable as they are hard to reach.' The efforts of the democrats at Rome before the time of Cæsar had been baffled by the definiteness of object, and the personal interest in politics, which had given unity and tenacity to even a corrupt aristocracy. The successes of a popular party under an oligarchical government are of necessity transient and insecure as its efforts are violent and spasmodic. A wise aristocracy will accept the results of such efforts and trust to the steady and permanent working of its social influence to maintain its political supremacy uninjured in essentials, while it will refrain from exciting needless animosity by sanguinary persecutions in its hour of triumph. The Roman nobles were not by any means without a perception of the wisdom of this policy as to measures; but they could not forego the luxury of persecuting individuals, and hence their enemies started up anew after every defeat, and seemed inspired with fresh energy and bitterness. On the other hand, the leaders of the democracy saw the necessity of forming a permanent basis for their party. Tiberius Gracchus, as before mentioned, only aimed at the correction of social abuses, and failed owing to the jealousy of a class interested in maintaining them. Taught by his brother's example, Caius Gracchus sought to bind the capitalists, the populace, and the Italians to his cause; but was supplanted by a rival put forward by the senate. The unpardonable shortsightedness and hesitation of the senate enabled Marius and Cinna to win the Italians definitely to the popular cause, and the democracy seemed thenceforth inspired with new life until a real genius appeared in the opposite ranks in the person of Sulla. Cæsar, on his entrance into public life, found the urban populace thoroughly debauched and demoralized, yet not kept down by the iron yoke of Sulla's constitution. He found the system of that statesman crippled by severe blows. Its formal harmony had been destroyed by the altered constitution of the law courts and the restored privileges of the tribunate: its spirit was outraged by the necessity for employing officers on foreign service for long periods with almost unlimited powers. When Cæsar presented himself as the successor of Marius and the Gracchi he was welcomed with enthusiasm by the populace. But previous history taught him that enthusiasm is of little avail against an organized government and disciplined armies: and he had to look for some permanent and reliable force which he might oppose to the senate and its legions. South of the Po the materials for such a force hardly existed. It is probable, indeed, that sympathy for the party of Marius still existed in large districts of Italy: the ease of Cæsar's march from the Rubicon may be considered evidence enough for this. But the peninsula had been horribly ravaged by civil war : Samnium was a desert: Etruria parcelled out amongst Sulla's veterans : the interest of Pompeius was predominant in Picenum: and the governments of cities in other parts of Italy were connected by many ties with the Roman nobility. In the district north of the Po, however, now flourishing and prosperous, the case was different. As has been mentioned already, Latin rights had been granted to its inhabitants about the year 665; and they were ready to follow any leader who would promise to convert this imperfect franchise into full Roman citizenship. It was a happy conception of Cæsar's, therefore, when in the year 696 he assumed the proconsular government of Gaul, to arm this population and train it to war beyond the Alps for the cause of revolution at home. He might hope to succeed in a task in which Sertorius had failed; but failed after the most brilliant successes, and mainly owing to the treason of his friends. The populace of Rome, the Italians, Spain, had successively failed the popular party. It remained to be seen whether Gaul would give a more effective support to the new leader in his task of destroying the Roman aristocracy and fusing into an organized whole the disjointed members of the Roman empire. The mission of Roman conquest was twofold. It had partly to give order and union to Greece and the East, which in literary, scientific, and artistic culture were equal or superior to their conqueror, partly to impart to the West that civilization which Rome had inherited or acquired. But before this peaceful process could begin a material consolidation of the scattered provinces was necessary. For the East this work had been accomplished by Pompeius, who had secured the frontier of the Euphrates, while allowing all the districts beyond it to relapse into the purely Asiatic system of the Parthian monarchy. But in the West the road from Italy to Spain was insecure; and the unconquered tribes of Gaul might at any time cut off the land communications of Rome with her Iberian subjects, or, worse still, afford a passage to any fresh swarm of German invaders who should seek to follow in the steps of the Cimbri and Teutones. Hence the personal aims of Caesar coincided, as is the privilege of genius, with those of Rome and of civilization itself. He had to form an army for his own enterprises; but he had also to free Italy from the danger of future barbarian inroads, to find an outlet for its superfluous energies like that which three centuries earlier the senate had found for those of Rome in Italian conquest, and to establish a natural and defensible frontier for the Roman empire. The work of conquest occupied eight years. Cæsar found Gaul in a declining state: several of its eastern districts had already been occupied by German invaders or settlers: personal and party selfishness, and incapacity for combined national efforts, thwarted all the exertions of the patriot leaders: the most obstinate resistance offered to the invaders came from the half German populations of the north-east. Yet a last gleam of glory was shed over the downfall of Keltic independence by the courage and devotion of the Arvernian Vercingetorix. 'As after a gloomy day the sun shines forth at its setting, destiny grants to perishing peoples a last noble man. Thus, at the close of Phoenician history stands Hannibal, of Keltic, Vercingetorix. Neither of the two could save his nation from foreign dominion, but both averted the last disgrace that yet remained-a dishonourable fall. Vercingétorix too, like the Carthaginian, had to struggle not only against the national enemy, but even more against the anti-national opposition of aggrieved egotists and alarmed cowards which regularly accompanies a degenerate civilization; and, like Hannibal, he has his place in history secured him, not by his battles and sieges, but by having been able to make his person a point of union and resistance to a nation dissolving into individualism. And yet there can hardly be a sharper contrast than between the steady citizen of the Phoenician commercial city, directing his plans towards a great object with unchanging energy for fifty years, and the bold prince of the Keltic land, whose mighty deeds and magnanimous self-sacrifice are included in one short summer. The whole of antiquity knows no more chivalrous man than Vercingetorix in his inmost nature as well as in his outward manifestation. But human life, and the life of a statesman especially, requires other qualities than those of chivalry. It was the knight, and not the hero, who was ashamed to escape from Alesia, when more depended on his life than on those of one hundred thousand ordinary |