Pompey had, nevertheless, rendered great services by putting down the riots and protecting the exercise of justice. He had delivered Rome from the bands of Clodius and Milo, had given a more regular organisation to the tribunals,[759] and caused their judgments to be respected by armed force. Still, if we except these acts, commanded by circumstances, he had used his power with hesitation, as a man who is struggling between his conscience and his interests. Having become, perhaps unknowingly, the instrument of the aristocratic party, the ties which had attached him to Cæsar had often checked him in the way in which they sought to push him. As the defender of order, he had promulgated laws to restore it; but, as the man of a party, he had been incessantly led to violate them, to satisfy the urgencies of his faction. He caused a senatus-consultus to be adopted, authorising prosecutions against those who had exercised public employments since his first consulship. The retrospective effect of this law, which embraced a period of twenty years; and consequently the consulship of Cæsar, excited the indignation of the partisans of the latter; they exclaimed that Pompey would do much better to occupy himself with the present than to call the hateful investigation of the factions to the past conduct of the first magistrates of the Republic; but Pompey replied that, since the law permitted the control of his own acts, he saw no reason why those of Cæsar should be freed from it; and that, moreover, the relaxation of morals during so many years rendered the measure necessary.[760]
Complaint was made of the power left to orators of pronouncing the eulogy of the accused, whose defence they offered, because the prestige attached to the word of men of consideration procured too easily the acquittal of the guilty. A senatus-consultus prohibited the custom. Yet in contempt of these orders, which he had brought forward, Pompey was not ashamed to pronounce the eulogy of T. Munatius Plancus, accused, with Q. Pompeius Rufus, of the fire which burnt the Curia Hostilia.[761] Cato, who was one of the members of the tribunal, exclaimed, stopping his ears: “I do not believe this eulogiser, who speaks against his own laws.” The accused were condemned nevertheless.
With the aim of repressing electoral corruption and bringing to justice those guilty of it, it was enacted that every one condemned for bribery who should succeed in convicting another of the same crime should obtain thereby the remission of his punishment. Memmius, condemned for an act of this description, wishing to take advantage of the benefit of the legal impunity, denounced Scipio. Then Pompey appeared clothed in mourning before the tribunal, at the side of his father-in-law. At the view of this image of sorrow and of the moral pressure which resulted from it, Memmius desisted, deploring the misfortune of the Republic. As to the judges, they pushed flattery to the point of conducting Scipio back to his dwelling.[762]
To put a stop in the elections to the intrigues arising from the shameless covetousness of the candidates, it was decreed that the consuls and prætors should not be allowed to take the government of a province until five years after their consulship or prætorship.[763] This discouraged the ambitious, who threw themselves into extravagant expenses in order to arrive through one of these magistracies at the government of the provinces. And nevertheless Pompey, although consul, not only preserved the proconsulship of Spain, but he caused his government to be prolonged for five years, kept a part of his army in Italy, and received a thousand talents for the maintenance of his troops. In the interest of his partisans, he did not hesitate to violate his own laws, which has made Tacitus say of him, Suarum legum auctor idem ac subversor.[764]
The preceding law did not deprive Cæsar of the possibility of arriving at the consulship, but the Senate put in force again the law which prohibited any one who was absent from offering himself as a candidate, forgetting that it had just elected Pompey sole consul, although absent from the town of Rome. The friends of the proconsul of Gaul protested with energy. “Cæsar,” they said, “had merited well of his country; a second consulship would only be the just recompense of his immense labours; or, at all events, if they felt reluctance in conferring this great dignity upon him, they ought at least not to give him a successor, or deprive him of the benefit he had acquired.” Pompey, who had no desire of breaking with Cæsar, had recourse to Cicero[765] to add to the law already engraved on a tablet of brass, which was then the form of promulgation, that the prohibition did not apply to those who had obtained the authorisation to offer themselves as candidates in spite of their absence. All the tribunes, who had at first protested, accepted this qualification, at the motion of Cœlius.[766]
Nevertheless, Cæsar’s friends went to him in great numbers to demonstrate that Pompey’s laws had been all brought forward against his interest, and that it was essential that he should be on his guard against him. Cæsar, proud in the justice of his claims, and strong in the services he had rendered, distrusted neither his son-in-law nor destiny, encouraged them, and praised greatly the conduct of Pompey.[767]
Pompey takes as his Associate Cæcillus Metellus Pius Scipio.
V. About the first of August, Pompey chose his father-in-law Scipio as his associate in the consulship, for the last five months. This partition of power, purely nominal, and which was subsequently imitated by the emperors, appeared to satisfy men who thought only of forms. The senators boasted of having restored order without injuring the institutions of the Republic.[768]
Scipio sought to signalise his short administration by abolishing the law of Clodius, which permitted the censors to expel from the Senate only men who had already undergone a condemnation. He restored things to the old footing, by rendering the power of the censors almost unlimited. This change was not received with favour, as Scipio had expected. The old consulars, among whom the censors were usually chosen, found the responsibility of such functions dangerous in a time of trouble and anarchy. Instead of being sought as an honour, the censorship was avoided as a perilous post.[769]
It was every day more evident, in the eyes of all men of judgment, that the institutions of the Republic were becoming more and more powerless to guarantee order within, and perhaps even peace without. The Senate could no longer meet, the comitia be held, or the judges render judgment, without the protection of a military force; it was necessary, therefore, to place themselves at the discretion of a general, and to abdicate all authority into his hands. Thus, while the popular instinct, which is rarely deceived, saw the safety of the Republic in the power of a single individual, the aristocratic party, on the contrary, saw danger only in this general tendency towards one man. For this reason Cato inscribed himself among the candidates for the consulship for the year 703, denouncing Pompey and Cæsar as equally dangerous, and declaring that he only aspired to the first magistracy to counteract their ambitious designs. This competition, opposed to the spirit of the time and to the powerful instincts which were in play, had no chance of success: the candidature of Cato was defeated without difficulty.