A History of Rome, Vol 1 by A H.J. Greenidge

A >> A H.J. Greenidge >> A History of Rome, Vol 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

When the measure had been passed, it still remained to appoint the
commissioners. This also was to be effected by the people's vote, and
never perhaps was the effect of habit on the popular mind more
strikingly exhibited than when Scaurus, who was thought to be trembling
as a criminal, was chosen as a judge.[989] The large personal following,
which he doubtless possessed amongst the people, must have remained
unshaken by the scandals against his name; but the reflection amongst
all classes that any business would be incomplete which did not secure
the co-operation of the head of the State, was perhaps a still more
potent factor in his election. Never was a more splendid testimonial
given to a public man, and it accompanied, or prepared the way for, the
greatest of all honours that it was in the power of the Comitia to
bestow--the control of morals which Scaurus was in that very year to
exercise as censor.[990] The presence of the venerable statesman amongst
the three commissioners created under the Mamilian law, could not,
however, exercise a controlling influence on the judgments of the
special tribunal. Such an influence was provided against by the very
structure of the new courts. The three commissioners were not to judge
but merely to preside; for in the constitution of this commission the
new departure was taken of modelling it on the pattern of the newly
established standing courts, and the judges who gave an uncontrolled and
final verdict were men selected on the same qualifications as those
which produced the Gracchan jurors, and were perhaps taken from the list
already in existence for the trial of cases of extortion. The knights
were, therefore, chosen as the vehicle for the popular indignation, and
the result justified the choice. The impatience of a hampered commerce,
and perhaps of an outraged feeling of respectability, spent itself
without mercy on the devoted heads of some of the proudest leaders of
the faction that had so long controlled the destinies of the State.
Expedition in judgment was probably secured by dividing the
commissioners into three courts, each with his panel of _judices_ and
all acting concurrently. It was still more effectually secured by the
mode in which evidence was heard, tested and accepted, and by the
scandalous rapidity with which judgment was pronounced. The courts were
influenced by every chance rumour and swayed by the wild caprices of
public opinion. No sane democrat could in the future pretend to regard
the Mamilian commission as other than an outrage on the name of justice;
to the philosophic mind it seemed that a sudden turn in fortune's wheel
had brought to the masses the same intoxication in the sense of
unbridled power that had but a moment before been the disgrace of the
nobility.[991] An old score was wiped off when Lucius Opimius, the
author of the downfall of Caius Gracchus, was condemned. Three other
names completed the tale of victims who had been rendered illustrious by
the possession of the consular _fasces_. Lucius Bestia was convicted for
the conclusion of that dark treaty with Jugurtha, although his
counsellor Scaurus had been elevated to the Bench. Spurius Albinus fell
a victim to his own caution and the blunder of his too-enterprising
brother; the caution was supposed to have been purchased by Jugurtha's
gold, and the absent pro-consul was perhaps held responsible for the
rashness or cupidity of his incompetent legate, who does not seem to
have been himself assailed. Caius Porcius Cato was emerging from the
cloud of a recent conviction for extortion only to feel the weight of a
more crushing judgment which drove him to seek a refuge on Spanish soil.
Caius Sulpicius Galba, although he had held no dominant position in the
secular life of the State, was a distinguished member of the religious
hierarchy; but even the memorable speech which he made in his defence
did not save him from being the first occupant of a priestly office to
be condemned in a criminal court at Rome.[992]

We do not know the number of criminals discovered by the Mamilian
courts, and perhaps only the names of their more prominent victims have
been preserved. The worldly position of these victims may, however, have
saved others of lesser note, and the dignity of the sacrifice may have
been regarded in the fortunate light of a compensation for its limited
extent. The object of the people and of their present agents, the
knights, so far as a rational object can be discerned in such a carnival
of rage and vengeance, was to teach a severe lesson to the governing
class. Their full purpose had been attained when the lesson had been
taught. It was not their intention, any more than it had been that of
Caius Gracchus, to usurp the administrative functions of government or
to attempt to wrest the direction of foreign administration out of the
senate's hands. The time for that further step might not be long in
coming; but for the present both the lower and middle classes halted
just at the point where destructive might have given place to
constructive energy. The leaders of the people may have felt the entire
lack of the organisation requisite for detailed administration, and the
right man who might replace the machine had not yet been found; while
the knights may, in addition to these convictions, have been influenced
by their characteristic dislike of pushing a popular movement to an
extreme which would remove it from the guidance of the middle class.

The senate had indeed learnt a lesson, and from this time onward the
history of the Numidian war is simplified by the fact that its progress
was determined by strategic, not by political, considerations. There is
no thought of temporising with the enemy; the one idea is to reduce him
to a condition of absolute submission--a submission which it was known
could be secured only by the possession of his person. It is true that
the conduct of the campaign became more than ever a party question; but
the party struggle turned almost wholly on the military merit of the
commander sent to the scene of action, and although there was a
suspicion that the war was being needlessly prolonged for the purpose of
gratifying personal ambition, there was no hint of the secret operation
of influences that were wholly corrupt. Such a suspicion was rendered
impossible by the personality of the man who now took over the conduct
of the campaign. The tardily elected consuls for the year were Quintus
Caecilius Metellus and Marcus Junius Silanus. Of these Metellus was to
hold Numidia and Silanus Gaul.[993] It is possible that, in the counsels
of the previous year, considerations of the Numidian campaign may to
some extent have determined the election of Metellus; the senate may
have welcomed the candidature of a man of approved probity, although not
of approved military skill, for the purpose of obviating the chance of
another scandal; and the people may in the same spirit have now ratified
his election. But, when we remember the almost mechanical system of
advancement to the higher offices which prevailed at this time, it is
equally possible that Metellus's day had come, that the senate was
fortunate rather than prescient in its choice of a servant, and that,
although the people in their present temper would probably have rejected
a suspicious character, they accepted rather than chose Metellus. The
existing system did not even make it possible to elect a man who would
certainly have the conduct of the African war; and if we suppose that in
this particular case the division of the consular provinces did not
depend on the unadulterated use of the lot, but was settled by agreement
or by a mock sortition,[994] the probity rather than the genius of
Metellus must have determined the choice, for Silanus was assigned a
task of far more vital importance to the welfare of Rome and Italy.

The repute of Metellus was based on the fact that, although an
aristocrat and a staunch upholder of the privileges of his order, he was
honest in his motives and, so far at least as civic politics were
concerned, straightforward in his methods. Rome was reaching a stage at
which the dramatic probity of Hellenic annals, as exemplified by the
names of an Aristeides or a Xenocrates, could be employed as a measure
to exalt one member of a government among his fellows; the
incorruptibility which had so lately been the common property of
all,[995] had become the monopoly of a few, and Metellus was a witness
to the folly of a caste which had not recognised the policy of honesty.
The completeness with which the prize for character might be won, was
shown by the attitude of a jury before which he had been impeached on a
charge of extortion. Even the jealous _Equites_ did not deign to glance
at the account-books which were handed in, but pronounced an immediate
verdict of acquittal.[996] But the merely negative virtue of
unassailability by grossly corrupting influences could not have been the
only source of the equable repute which Metellus enjoyed amongst the
masses. It was but one of the signs of the self-sufficient directness,
repose and courtesy, which marked the better type of the new nobility,
of a life that held so much that it needed not to grasp at more, of the
protecting impulse and the generosity which, in the purer type of minds
constricted by conservative prejudices, is an outcome of the conviction
of the unbridgeable gulf that separates the classes. The nobility of
Metellus was wholly in his favour; it justified the senate while it
hypnotised the people. The man who was now consul and would probably
within a short space of time attach the name of a conquered nationality
to his own, was but fulfilling the accepted destiny of his family.
Metellus could show a father, a brother, an uncle and four cousins, all
of whom had held the consulship. Since the middle of the second century
titles drawn from three conquered peoples had become appellatives of
branches of his race. His uncle had derived a name from Macedon, a
cousin from the Baliares, his own elder brother from the Dalmatians. It
remained to see whether the best-loved member of this favoured race
would be in a position to add to the family names the imposing
designation of Numidicus.

Metellus was a man of intellect and energy as well as of character,[997]
and he showed himself sufficiently exempt from the prejudices of his
caste, and sufficiently conscious of the seriousness of the work in
hand, to choose real soldiers, not diplomatists or ornamental warriors,
as his lieutenants. If the restiveness of Marius had left a disturbing
memory behind, it was judiciously forgotten by the consul, who drew the
_protege_ of his family from the uncongenial atmosphere of the city to
render services in the field, and to teach an ambitious and somewhat
embittered man that each act of skill and gallantry was performed for
the glory of his superior. Another of his legates was Publius Rutilius
Rufus, who like Marius had held the praetorship, and was not only a man
of known probity and firmness of character, but a scientific student of
tactics with original ideas which were soon to be put to the test in the
reorganisation of the army which followed the Numidian war. For the
present it was necessary to create rather than reorganise an army, and
Metellus in his haste had no time for the indulgence of original views.
The reports of the forces at present quartered in the African province
were not encouraging; and every means had to be taken to find new
soldiers and fresh supplies. A vigorous levy was cheerfully tolerated by
the enthusiasm of the community; the senate showed its earnestness by
voting ample sums for the purchase of arms, horses, siege implements and
stores. Renewed assistance was sought from, and voluntarily rendered by,
the Latins and Italian allies, while subject kings proved their loyalty
by sending auxiliary forces of their own free will.[998] When Metellus
deemed his preparations complete, he sailed for his province amidst the
highest hopes. They were hopes based on the probity of a single man; for
the impression still prevailed that Roman arms were invincible and had
been vanquished only by the new vices of the Roman character. Such hopes
are not always the best omen for a commander to take with him; a joy in
the present, they are likely to prove an embarrassment in the
immediate future.

CHAPTER VII

The delay in his own appointment to the consulship, and the length of
time required for collecting his supplementary forces and their
supplies, had robbed Metellus of some of the best months of the year
when he set foot on African soil; but his patience was to be put to a
further test, for the most casual survey of what had been the army of
the proconsul Albinus showed the impossibility of taking the field for
some considerable time.[999] What he had heard was nothing to what he
saw. The military spirit had vanished with discipline, and its sole
survivals were a tendency to plunder the peaceful subjects of the
province and a habit of bandying words with superior officers. The camp
established by Aulus for his beaten army had hardly ever been moved,
except when sanitary reasons or a lack of forage rendered a short
migration unavoidable. It had developed the character of a highly
disorderly town, the citizens of which had nothing to do except to
traffic for the small luxuries of life, to enjoy them when they were
secured, and, in times when money and good things were scarce, to spread
in bands over the surrounding country, make predatory raids on the
fields and villas of the neighbourhood, and return with the spoils of
war, whether beasts or slaves, driven in flocks before them. The trader
who haunts the footsteps of the bandit was a familiar figure in the
camp; he could be found everywhere exchanging his foreign wine and the
other amenities in which he dealt for the booty wrung from the
provincials. Since discipline was dead and there was no enemy to fear,
even the most ordinary military precautions had ceased to be observed.
The ramparts were falling to pieces, the regular appointment and relief
of sentries had been abandoned, and the common soldier absented himself
from his company as often and for as long a period as he pleased.

Metellus had to face the task which had confronted Scipio at Numantia.
He performed it as effectually and perhaps with greater gentleness; for
the most singular feature in the methods by which he restored discipline
was his avoidance of all attempts at terrorism.[1000] The moderation and
restraint, which had won the hearts of the citizens, worked their magic
even in the disorganised rabble which he was remodelling into an army.
The habits of obedience were readily resumed when the tones of a true
commander were heard, and the way for their resumption was prepared by
the regulations which abolished all the incentives to the luxurious
indolence which he had found prevalent in the camp. The sale of cooked
food was forbidden, the camp followers were swept away, and no private
soldier was allowed the use of a slave or beast of burden, whether in
quarters or on the march. Other edicts of the same kind followed, and
then the work of active training began. Every day the camp was broken up
and pitched again after a cross-country march; rampart and ditch were
formed and pickets set as though the enemy was hovering near, and the
general and staff went their rounds to see that every precaution of real
warfare was observed. On the line of march Metellus was everywhere, now
in the van, now with The rearguard, now with the central column. His eye
criticised every disposition and detected every departure from the
rules; he saw that each soldier kept his line, that he filled his due
place in the serried ranks that gathered round a standard, that he bore
the appropriate burden of his food and weapons. Metellus preferred the
removal of the opportunities for vice to the vindictive chastisement of
the vicious; his wise and temperate measures produced a healthy state of
mind and body with no loss of self-respect, and in a short time he
possessed an army, strong in physique as in morale, which he might now
venture to move against the foe.

Jugurtha had shown no inclination to follow up his success by active
measures against the defeated Roman army, even after he had learnt the
repudiation of his treaty with Aulus and knew that the state of war had
been resumed. The miserable condition of the forces in the African
province, of which he must have been fully aware, must have offered an
inviting object of attack, and a sudden raid across the borders might
have enabled him to dissipate the last relics of Roman military power in
Africa. But he was now, as ever, averse to pushing matters to extremes,
he declined to figure as an aggressive enemy of the Roman power; and to
give a pretext for a war which could have no issue but his own
extinction, would be to surrender the chances of compromise which his
own position as a client king and the possibilities, however lessened,
of working on the fears or cupidity of members of the Roman
administration still afforded him. His strength lay in defensive
operations of an elusive kind, not in attack; the less cultivated and
accessible portions of his own country furnished the best field for a
desultory and protracted war, and he seems still to have looked forward
to a compromise to which weariness of the wasteful struggle might in the
course of time invite his enemies. He may even have had some knowledge
of the embarrassments of the Republic in other quarters of the world,
and believed that both the unwillingness of Rome to enter into the
struggle, and her eagerness, when she had entered, to see it brought to
a rapid close, were to some extent due to a feeling that an African war
would divert resources that were sorely needed for the defence of her
European possessions.

The king's confidence in the weakness and half-heartedness of the Roman
administration is said to have been considerably shaken by the news that
Metellus was in command.[1001] During his own residence in Rome he may
have heard of him as the prospective consul; he had at any rate learnt
the very unusual foundations on which Metellus's influence with his
peers and with the people was based, and knew to his chagrin that these
were unshakable. The later news from the province was equally
depressing. The new commander was not only honest but efficient, and the
shattered forces of Rome were regaining the stability that had so often
replaced or worn out the efforts of genius. Delicate measures were
necessary to resist this combination of innocence and strength, and
Jugurtha began to throw out the tentacles of diplomacy. The impression
which he meant to produce, and actually did produce on the mind of the
historian who has left us the fullest record of the war, was that of a
genuine desire to effect a surrender of himself which should no longer
be fictitious, and to throw himself almost unreservedly on the mercy of
the Roman people.[1002] But Jugurtha was in the habit of exhibiting the
most expansive trust, based on a feeling of his own utter helplessness,
at the beginning of his negotiations, and of then seeming to permit his
fears to get the better of his confidence. He was an experimental
psychologist who held out vivid hopes in the belief that the craving
once excited would be ultimately satisfied with less than the original
offer, while the physical and mental retreat would meanwhile divert his
victim from military preparations or lead him to incautious advances. It
must have been in some such spirit that he assailed Metellus with offers
so extreme in their humility that their good faith must have aroused
suspicion in any mind where innocence did not imply simplicity of
character, as Jugurtha perhaps hoped that it did in the case of this
novel type of Roman official. The Numidian envoys promised absolute
submission; even the crown was to be surrendered, and they stipulated
only for the bare life of the king and his children.[1003] Metellus,
convinced of the unreality of the promise, matched his own treachery
against that of the king. He had not the least scruple in following the
lead which the senate had given, and regarding Jugurtha as unworthy of
the most rudimentary rights of a belligerent. Believing that he had seen
enough of the Numidian type to be sure that its conduct was guided by no
principles of honour or constancy, and that its shifty imagination could
be influenced by the newest project that held out a hope of excitement
or of gain,[1004] he began in secret interviews with each individual
envoy, to tamper with his fidelity to the king. The subjects of his
interviews did not repudiate the suggestion, and adopted an attitude of
ready attention which invited further confidences. It might have been an
attitude which in these subtle minds denoted unswerving loyalty to their
master; but Metellus interpreted it in the light of his own desires, and
proceeded to hold out hopes of great reward to each of the envoys if
Jugurtha was handed over into his power; he would prefer to have the
king alive; but, if that was impossible, the surrender of his dead body
would be rewarded. He then gave in public a message which he thought
might be acceptable to their master. It is sufficiently probable that
the private dialogues no less than the public message were imparted to
Jugurtha's ear by messengers who now had unexampled means of proving
their fidelity and each of whom may have attempted to show that his
loyalty was superior to that of his fellows; incentives to frankness had
certainly been supplied by Metellus; but this frankness may have been
itself of value to the Roman commander. It would prove to Jugurtha the
presence of a resolute and unscrupulous man who aimed at nothing less
than his capture and with whom further parleyings would be waste
of time.

A few days later Metellus entered Numidia with an army marching with all
the vigilance which a hostile territory demands, and prepared in the
perfected carefulness of its organisation to meet the surprises which
the enemy had in store. The surprise that did await it was of a novel
character.[1005] The grimly arrayed column found itself forging through
a land which presented the undisturbed appearance of peace, security and
comfort. The confident peasant was found in his homestead or tilling his
lands, the cattle grazed on the meadows; when an open village or a
fortified town was reached, the army was met by the headman or governor
representing the king. This obliging official was wholly at the disposal
of the Roman general; he was ready to supply corn to the army or to
accumulate supplies at any base that might be chosen by the commander;
any order that he gave would be faithfully carried out. But Metellus's
vigilance was not for a moment shaken by this bloodless triumph. He
interpreted the ostentatious submission as the first stage of an
intended ambush, and he continued his cautious progress as though the
enemy were hovering on his flank. His line of march was as jealously
guarded as before, his scouts still rode abroad to examine and report on
the safety of the route. The general himself led the van, which was
formed of cohorts in light marching order and a select force of slingers
and archers; Marius with the main body of cavalry brought up the rear,
and either flank was protected by squadrons of auxiliary horse that had
been placed at the disposal of the tribunes in charge of the legions and
the prefects who commanded the divisions of the contingents from the
allies. With these squadrons were mingled light-armed troops, their
joint function being to repel any sudden assault from the mobile
Numidian cavalry. Every forward step inspired new fears of Jugurtha's
strategic craft and knowledge of the ground; wherever the king might be,
his subtle influence oppressed the trespasser on any part of his
domains, and the most peaceful scene appeared to the anxious eyes of the
Roman commander to be fraught with the most terrible perils of war.

The route taken by Metellus may have been the familiar line of advance
from the Roman province, down the valley of the Bagradas. But before
following the upper course of that river into the heart of Numidia, he
deemed it necessary to make a deflection to the north, and secure his
communications by seizing and garrisoning the town of Vaga, the most
important of the Eastern cities of Jugurtha. Its position near the
borders of the Roman province had made it the greatest of Numidian
market towns, and it had once been the home, and the seat of the
industry, of a great number of Italian traders.[1006] We may suppose
that by this time the merchants had fled from the insecure locality and
that the foreign trade of the town had passed away; but both the site of
the city and the character of its inhabitants attracted the attention of
Metellus. The latter, like the Eastern Numidians generally, were a
receptive and industrious folk, who knew the benefits that peace and
contact with Rome conferred on commerce, and might therefore be induced
to throw off their allegiance to Jugurtha. The site suggested a suitable
basis for supplies and, if adequately protected, might again invite the
merchant. Metellus, therefore, placed a garrison in the town, ordered
corn and other necessaries to be stored within its walls, and saw in the
concourse of the merchant class a promise of constant supplies for his
forces and a tower of strength for the maintenance of Roman influence in
Numidia when the work of pacification had been done. The slight delay
was utilised by Jugurtha in his characteristic manner. The seizure of
one of his most important cities offered an occasion or pretext for
fresh terrors. Metellus was beset by grovelling envoys with renewed
entreaties; peace was sought at any price short of the life of the king
and his children; all else was to be surrendered. The consul still
pursued his cherished plan of tampering with the fidelity of the
messengers and sending them home with vague promises. He would not cut
off Jugurtha from all hope of a compromise. He may have believed that he
was paralysing the king's efforts while he continued his steady advance,
and turning his enemy's favourite weapon against that enemy himself.
Perhaps he even let his thoughts dally with the hope that the envoys who
had proved such facile traitors might find some means of redeeming their
promises.[1007] But, unless he committed the cardinal mistake of
misreading or undervaluing his opponent, these could have been but
secondary hopes. He must have known that to penetrate into Western
Numidia without a serious battle, or at least without an effort of
Jugurtha to harass his march or to cut his communications, was an event
beyond the reach of purely human aspiration.