In the meantime another rebellion broke out in Spain, where Sertorius had assumed the government. Neither Metellus nor Pompey was able to reduce him to submission, and the rebellion was put to an end only by the murder of Sertorius in 72 B.C.
The epoch of civil wars had now fully begun for Rome, and the same year which witnessed the murder of Sertorius saw also the breaking out of the rebellion of the gladiators under Spartacus. This rebellion, starting in the mere uprising of a handful of gladiators, reached very large proportions and occasioned the greatest fear at Rome before it was put down by Crassus in the south of Italy and Pompey in the north. The credit for putting down this insurrection clearly belonged to Crassus rather than to Pompey, whose share in the work had been merely the destruction of a band of fugitives who had fled to the north of Italy. Nevertheless, the Senate gave the highest honors to Pompey, who was voted a triumph, while only an ovation was granted to Crassus.
Pompey and Crassus both sought election to the consulship, although both were ineligible, since Crassus was still a prætor and under the laws should have waited two years before being a candidate for consul, and Pompey was only thirty-five years old and had not even been quæstor. Each of the candidates, however, had an army under his control at the very gates of Rome, and the two illegal elections were secured from the people by fear. Pompey and Crassus, the two most powerful men in Rome at this time, were thus consuls together in the year 70 B.C.
Pompey, although he had been an ardent supporter of Sulla and a great favorite of this leader, nevertheless, upon his election as consul, began to depart from Sulla's policies. The proposals made by Pompey were the removal of the restrictions placed upon the tribunes by Sulla and a reform of the judicial system. The first proposal was consented to by the Senate after some slight protest, but the second met with bitter opposition. The complete control possessed by the Senate over the law courts was of such great value to them that they were determined to retain it, although the administration of the courts while under their control had been one long-continued scandal. The administration of justice under the knights, however, had been almost as corrupt as that of the Senate, and to avoid giving the complete control of the trials to either of these orders, the new law prepared by Pompey and proposed by the prætor urbanus Aurelius Cotta provided that one third of the jurymen should be furnished by the Senate, one third by the knights, and one third by the tribunes of the treasury. It was evident that the law was popular and would be adopted if it came to a vote. To prevent this, the senatorial party again prepared to engage in civil war. On this occasion, however, the resistance of the Senate was broken by the result of the still famous Verres trial.
In connection with this trial it is necessary to go back and speak of the work of another of the great men in the new generation of Roman politicians. As early as the year 79 B.C. Cicero had won considerable reputation by his defense of Sextius Roscius. From 77 B.C. down to the period of which we are now writing Cicero had been actively engaged in the work of an advocate at Rome, except during the single year 75 B.C., when he served as a quæstor in Sicily, and during this period had risen in his profession until his reputation in the courts was second only to that of the greatest lawyer of the age, Hortensius.
Cicero was now a candidate for ædile and tried to aid his candidacy by some signal achievements. Just at this time a number of the Sicilians, to whom Cicero had endeared himself by the honesty and ability with which he had exercised his duty as quæstor in their island, besought Cicero to undertake the prosecution of C. Cornelius Verres, who had just returned from three years' service as prætor in Sicily, in which province he had been guilty of the most extreme extortions, dishonesty, and cruelty. The evidence Cicero was able to produce against Verres, and the impassioned eloquence of the orations against him which he prepared (for the evidence against Verres was so unanswerable that his counsel, the great Hortensius, threw up the case, and Verres fled into exile, thus depriving Cicero of an opportunity of delivering all the carefully prepared speeches orally in court) so demoralized the senatorial party that opposition to Cotta's bill now ceased, and the law was passed without further difficulty.
In the same year, 70 B.C., censors were again appointed, after the office had been suspended for sixteen years, and the corruption of the times, and particularly of the Senate, was shown by the fact that by the action of the censors sixty-four members of the Senate were degraded from their office.
The greatest military triumphs in the life of Pompey were in the years following his consulship. In 67 B.C. he was sent to subdue the Sicilian pirates, armed with more complete powers than had ever before been voluntarily given by Roman citizens to any Roman general.
"The terms of the proposal are extraordinary, and require close attention. First, a generalissimo was to be appointed by the senate from the consulars, to hold supreme command over the whole Mediterranean and over all the coast for fifty miles inland, concurrently with the ordinary governors, for three years. Second, he might select from the men of senatorial rank twenty-five lieutenants with prætorian powers, and two treasurers with questorian power. Third, he might raise an army of 120,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry, and a fleet of 500 ships, and for this purpose might dispose absolutely of all the resources of the provinces. Besides this, a large sum of money and a considerable force of men and ships were at once handed over to him.
"By the introduction of this law the government was practically taken out of the hands of the senate; it was the final collapse of the oligarchic rule. But it was more than this—it was practically the institution of an unlimited dictatorship.
"Like all extraordinary commands, this new office no doubt required the confirmation of the people; but it was an undoubted prerogative of the senate to define the sphere of every command, and, in fact, to control and limit it in all ways. The people had hitherto interfered only on the proposition of the senate, or at any rate of a magistrate himself qualified for the office of general. Even during the Jugurthine War, when the command was transferred to Marius by popular vote, it was only to Marius as consul for the year. But now a private man was to be invested by the tribes with extraordinary authority, and the sphere of his office was defined by themselves. The new commander was empowered to confer prætorian powers—that is, the highest military and civil authority—upon adjutants chosen by himself, though hitherto such authority could only be conferred with the coöperation of the burgesses; while the office of general, which was usually conferred for one year only, with strict limitations as to forces and supplies, was now committed almost without reserve to one man, who could draw upon the whole resources of the state.
"Thus at one stroke the government was taken out of the hands of the senate, and the fortunes of the empire committed for the next three years to a dictator."
The passage of this measure was one of the greatest triumphs in the life of Pompey. The success of Pompey against the pirates was complete and immediate, and appeared in striking contrast with the ill-success which had attended the Roman armies in Asia during the previous few years.