Festivals to commemorate Cæsar’s Victories.
IV. It was towards the end of the year 697 that the news of Cæsar’s prodigious successes against the Belgæ reached Rome; they excited there the warmest enthusiasm. As soon as the Senate was informed of them, it voted fifteen days of thanksgiving to celebrate them.[596] This number of days had never before been accorded to anybody. Marius had obtained five, and Pompey, when he had vanquished Mithridates, only ten. The decree of the Senate was expressed in more flattering terms than had ever been used for any general. Cicero himself took part in obtaining this high testimony of public gratitude.[597]
Riots at Rome.
V. In spite of these demonstrations, there continued to exist among a certain class a secret hatred against the conqueror of Gaul: in the month of December, 697, Rutilius Lupus, named tribune for the following year, proposed to revoke Cæsar’s laws, and to suspend the distribution of the lands in Campania;[598] he expatiated in accusations against that general and Pompey. The senators were silent; Cn. Marcellinus, the consul nominate, declared that in the absence of Pompey nothing could be decided. On another hand, Racilius, tribune of the people, rose to renew the old accusations against Clodius.[599] In order to baffle the designs of the latter, who aspired to the office of ædile, and who, once named, would have been inviolable, the consuls nominate proposed that the election of the judges should take place before that of the ædiles. Cato and Cassius opposed this. Cicero eagerly seized the opportunity of fulminating against Clodius; but the latter, who was prepared, defended himself at length, and during this time his adherents excited, by attacking Milo’s men, such an uproar on the steps of the Temple of Castor, where the Senate held its sitting, that the Forum became a new field of battle. The senators fled, and all projects of laws were abandoned.[600]
In the presence of these sanguinary collisions, the elections of ædiles and quæstors could not take place; moreover, Milo and Sextius, from feelings of personal vengeance, prevented the Consul Q. Metellus from convoking the comitia. As soon as the consul named a day of assembly, the two tribunes declared immediately that they were observing the sky; and, for fear that this cause of adjournment might not be sufficient, Milo established himself in the Campus Martius with his followers in arms. Metellus tried to hold the comitia by surprise,[601] and proceeded by night to the Campus Martius through bye streets; but he was well watched. Before he arrived at the place, he was met and recognised by Milo, who signified to him, in virtue of his tribunitial power, the obnunciation, that is, the declaration of a religious obstacle to the holding of the popular assemblies.[602] Thus ended the year 697.
During these inglorious struggles, in which both parties dishonoured themselves by acts of violence, Cæsar had, in two campaigns, saved Italy from the invasion of the barbarians, and vanquished the most warlike peoples of Gaul. Thus, at Rome, venality and anarchy prevailed; with the army, devotedness and glory. Then, as at certain epochs of our own revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under the flag.
CHAPTER III.
EVENTS IN ROME DURING THE YEAR 698.
Presence in Rome of Ptolemy Auletes.
I. THE Consuls of the year preceding had just been succeeded by Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus; the latter allied by family to Cæsar, whose niece, Atia, he had married.[603] It was in vain that the chief magistrates succeeded each other annually, the change of persons led to no change in the state of the Republic.
There happened about this time a circumstance which showed to what a low degree of contempt law and morality had fallen. Ptolemy Auletes, King of Egypt, father of the famous Cleopatra, hated by his subjects, had fled from Alexandria, and arrived in Rome, towards the end of 697, in spite of the advice of M. Cato, whom he had met at Rhodes. He came to solicit the protection of the Republic against the Egyptians, who, in his absence, had given the crown to his daughter Berenice. He had obtained the title, then the object of so much emulation, of friend and ally of the Roman people, by purchasing the suffrages of a great number of considerable personages, which had obliged him to exact heavy taxes from his subjects. He was at first well received, for it was known that he had brought with him his treasure, ready for distribution among his new protectors. Pompey gave him a lodging in his house,[604] and declared publicly in his favour. But the Egyptians, when they were informed of his departure, sent an embassy, composed of more than a hundred persons, to defend their cause; most of them were assassinated on their way by Ptolemy’s agents; and the rest, terrified or corrupted by force of bribery, never carried out their mission.[605] This affair made so much noise, that Favonius, called the ape of Cato, because he imitated his austerity, denounced the conduct of Ptolemy in the Senate, and added that he knew one of the Egyptian deputies, named Dio, who was ready to confirm his assertions. Dio did not dare to appear, and, a short time after, was assassinated. In spite of this crime, Pompey persisted in his friendship for Ptolemy, and no one dared to prosecute the guest of so powerful a man.[606]