Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

WAR WITH MITHRIDATES.—Mithridates, king of Pontus, in the north-east of Asia Minor, was as ardent an enemy of the Romans as Hannibal had been. With the help of his son-in-law Tigranes, king of Armenia, he had subdued the neighboring kings in alliance with Rome. The Asiatic states, who were ruled by the Romans, were impatient of the oppression under which they groaned. When checked by the Romans, Mithridates had paused for a while, and then had resumed again his enterprise of conquest. In 88 the Grecian cities of Asia joined him; and, in obedience to his brutal order, all the Italians within their walls, not lelss than eighty thousand in number, but possibly almost double that number, were put to death in one day. The whole dominion of the Romans in the East was in jeopardy.

MARIUS AND SULLA.—Sulla was elected consul in 88, and was on the point of departing for Asia. He was a soldier of marked talents, a representative of the aristocratic party, and was more cool and consistent in his public conduct than Marius. Marius desired the command against Mithridates for himself. P. Sulpicius, one of his adherents, brought forward a revolutionary law for incorporating the Italians and freedmen among the thirty-five tribes. The populace, under the guidance of the leaders of the Marian faction, voted to take away the command from Sulla, and to give it to Marius. Sulla refused to submit, and marched his army to Rome. It was impossible to resist him. Sulpicius was killed in his flight. Marius escaped from Italy, and, intending to go to Africa, was landed at Minturnae. To escape pursuit, he had to stand up to the chin in a marsh. He was put in prison, and a Gaulish slave was sent to kill him. But when he saw the flashing eyes of the old general, and heard him cry, "Fellow, darest thou kill Caius Marius?" he dropped his sword, and ran. Marius crossed to Africa. Messengers who were sent to warn him to go away, found him sitting among the ruins of Carthage.

THE MARIANS IN ROME.—Sulla restored the authority of the Senate. During Sulla's absence, Cinna, the consul of the popular party, sought to revive the laws of Sulpicius by violent means (87). Driven out of the city, he came back with an army which he had gathered in Campania, and with old Marius, who had returned from Africa. He now took vengeance on the leaders of the Optimates. For five days the gates were closed, and every noble who was specially obnoxious, and had not escaped, was killed by Marius, who marched through the streets at the head of a body of soldiers. In 86 Marius and Cinna were made consuls. Sulla was declared to be deposed. Marius, who was now more than seventy years old, died (86). The fever of revenge, and the apprehension of what might follow on Sulla's return, drove sleep from his eyelids. A brave soldier, he was incompetent to play the part of a statesman. He went to his grave with the curse of all parties resting upon him.

RETURN OF SULLA.—Sulla refused to do any thing against his adversaries at home, or for the help of the fugitive nobles who appealed to him, until the cause of the country was secure abroad. He captured Athens in 86, defeated Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, in a great battle at Chaeronea; and, by this and subsequent victories, he forced Mithridates to conclude peace, who agreed to evacuate the Roman province of Asia, to restore all his conquests, surrender eighty ships of war, and pay three thousand talents (84). Sulla's hands were now free. In 83 he landed at Brundisium. He was joined by Cneius Pompeius, then twenty-three years old, with a troop of volunteers. Sulla did not wish to fight the Italians. He issued a proclamation, therefore, giving them the assurance that their rights would not be impaired. This pledge had the desired effect. The army of the Consuls largely outnumbered his own. Sulla lingered in South Italy to make good his position there. The Samnites joined the Marians, and moved upon Rome with the intent to destroy it. They were defeated before they could enter the city. The Marians in Spain were defeated afterwards, as were the same party in Sicily and Africa by Pompeius.

CRUELTY OF SULLA.—The cruelty of Sulla, after his victory, was more direful than Rome had ever witnessed. It appeared to spring from no heat of passion, but was cold and shameless. After a few days, there was a massacre of four thousand prisoners in the Circus. Their shrieks and groans were heard in the neighboring Temple of Bellona, where Sulla was in consultation with the Senate. Many thousands—not far from three thousand in Rome alone—were proscribed and murdered, and the property of all on these lists of the condemned was confiscated.

THE LAWS OF SULLA.—In his character as Dictator, Sulla remade the constitution, striking out the popular elements to a great extent, and concentrating authority in the Senate. The Tribunes were stripped of most of their power. The Senate alone could propose laws. In the Senate, the places in the juries were given back (p. 154). Besides these and other like changes, the right of suffrage was bestowed on ten thousand emancipated slaves; while Italians and others, who had been on the Marian side, were deprived of it. In the year 80 B.C., Sulla caused himself to be elected Consul. The next year he retired from office to his country estate, and gave himself up to amusements and sensual pleasure. A part of his time—for he was not without a taste for literature—he devoted to the writing of his memoirs, which, however, have not come down to us. He died in 78.

CHAPTER II. POMPEIUS AND THE EAST: TO THE DEATH OF CRASSUS (78-53 B.C.).

WAR WITH SERTORIUS.—Not many years after _Sulla's _death, his reforms were annulled. This was largely through the agency of Cneius Pompeius, who had supported Sulla, but was not a uniform or consistent adherent of the aristocratic party. He did not belong to an old family, but had so distinguished himself that Sulla gave him a triumph. Later he rose to still higher distinction by his conduct of the war against Sertorius in Spain, a brave and able man of the Marian party, who was supported there for a long time by a union of Spaniards and Romans. Not until jealousy arose among his officers, and Sertorius was assassinated, was the formidable rebellion put down (72).

THE GLADIATORIAL WAR.—Pompeius had the opportunity still further to distinguish himself on his way back from Spain. A gladiator, Spartacus, started a revolt among his companions. He called about him slaves and outlaws until with an army of one hundred thousand men he defeated the Roman generals, and threatened Rome itself. For two years they ravaged Italy at their will. They were vanquished by Marcus Crassus in 71, in two battles, in the last of which Spartacus fell. The remnant of them, a body of five thousand men, who had nearly reached the Alps, were annihilated by Pompeius.

POMPEIUS: CRASSUS: CICERO.—Crassus was a man of great wealth and of much shrewdness. Pompeius was bland and dignified in his ways, a valiant, though sometimes over-cautious, general. These two men, in 70 B.C., became consuls. They had resolved to throw themselves for support on the middle class at Rome. Pompeius, sustained by his colleague, secured the abrogation of some of the essential changes made by Sulla. The Tribunes received back their powers, and the independence of the Assembly of the Tribes was restored. The absolute power of the Senate over the law-courts was taken away. These measures were carried in spite of the resistance of that body. Pompeius was aided by the great advocate, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born at Arpinum in 106 B.C., of an equestrian family. He had been a diligent student of law and politics, and also of the Greek philosophy, and aspired to distinction in civil life. He studied rhetoric under Molo, first at Rome and then at Rhodes, during a period of absence from Italy, which continued about two years. On his return (in 77 B.C.), he resumed legal practice. Cicero was a man of extraordinary and various talents, and a patriot, sincerely attached to the republican constitution. He was humane and sensitive, and much more a man of peace than his eminent contemporaries. His foibles, the chief of which was the love of praise, were on the surface; and, if he lacked some of the robust qualities of the great Roman leaders of that day, he was likewise free from some of their sins. The captivating oratory of Cicero found a field for its exercise in the impeachment of Verres, whose rapacity, as Roman governor of Sicily, had fairly desolated that wealthy province. Cicero showed such vigor in the prosecution that Verres was driven into exile. This event weakened the senatorial oligarchy, and helped Pompeius in his contest with it.