But at the same time infusions of foreign blood came into the city. The rapid rise in wealth and power had poured into Rome a constant stream of the commonest of wares, viz. human chattels. These slaves, Greek, Thracian, but above all Syrian, were directly consequent upon the imperative demand for skilled labor, which they alone could satisfy. But the very number of these slaves, and the changes in personal fortunes, which were then even more frequent than now, made them often a liability rather than an asset to their master.
Enfranchisement was encouraged by another consideration. The Roman law, determined by a very ancient patriarchal system, was apparently very rigid as to the extent of the master’s dominium. The slave was, in law and logic, a sentient chattel indistinguishable from ox and ass. But in other respects the Roman law was extraordinarily liberal. For practical purposes the slave could and did acquire property, the so-called peculium, and could and did use it to purchase his freedom.
Further, the newly-made freeman became a full citizen, a civis Romanus. His name was enrolled in the census books; he possessed full suffrage, and lacked only the ius honorum, the right of holding office. Even this, however, his children acquired. Sons of slaves who held magistracies are frequent enough to furnish some notable examples; e.g. Cn. Flavius, the secretary to Appius Claudius; P. Gabinius, the proposer of the Lex Tabellaria of 139 B.C.E.[[234]] It is for this reason that indications of servile origin have been found in names nothing less than illustrious in Roman history.[[235]]
With this steady influx of dispossessed peasants and enfranchised Greek and Asiatic slaves, the urban population was a sufficiently unaccountable quantity; and in this motley horde, constantly stirred to riot by the political upheavals, which quickly followed each other from the Gracchan period onward, all manner of strange and picturesque foreigners lived and worked. To the Roman of cultivation they were sometimes interesting, more often repellent, especially if he found himself compelled to reckon with them seriously on the basis of a common citizenship. Even for foreigners Roman citizenship was not very difficult to acquire, and was, as we have seen, obtained with especial facility through slavery. The emancipated slave was as such a civis Romanus. His son had even the ius honorum; he might be a candidate for the magistracy. This process had been accelerated after the Social War, which admitted an enormous and quite unmanageable number into citizenship. The popular leaders were especially lavish, and no doubt many ward politicians took it upon themselves to dispense with the formalities when a few votes were needed.
We are very fortunate in possessing for this period records of quite unusual fulness and variety. The last century of the Roman republic was rich in notable men, with some of whom we are especially familiar. In literary importance and in permanent charm of personality, no one of them can compare with the country squire’s son, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who achieved the impossible in his lifetime, and attained posthumous fame far beyond his wildest dreams. He was consul of Rome in the very year in which Jerusalem was captured, and was in the throes of the same political uncertainty that marked his whole later career. The most brilliant pleader in the city or the world, he was feared, loved, and hated for his mordant wit, his torrential fluency of speech, and his remarkable power and skill in invective. Although his personal instincts had always inclined him to the gentlemanly aristocracy that made up the majority of the senate, he had won his first successes in politics on the other side, and reached the summit of his ambition, the consulship, as a popular candidate, receiving the support of the senate only because he was deemed the least dangerous of three.
In the year 59 B.C.E. Cicero, concededly the leader of the Roman bar and still more concededly the social lion of the day, undertook the defense of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, former governor of Asia, who was charged with maladministration and oppression. The counts in the indictment were numerous. Among them was the following allegation: That Flaccus as praetor had seized certain sacred funds; to wit, the moneys which Asiatic provincials, Jews in origin, had, in accordance with ancient custom, collected and were about to transfer to the temple at Jerusalem. By so doing Flaccus had doubled embezzlement upon sacrilege, for the sanctity of the temple was established by its antiquity, and confirmed by the conduct of Pompey, who had ostentatiously spared it and its appurtenances.
It will be necessary to examine in some detail the circumstances of the entire case. Flaccus was a member of the reactionary wing of the senatorial party, which until recently had held Cicero aloof as an upstart provincial. His birth and training were those of an aristocrat. A certain portion of Cicero’s defense is occupied in descanting on the glories of the Valerian house, to which Flaccus belonged. The prosecution of Flaccus, again, was a political move of the popular opposition, now at last, after the futile essays of Lepidus and Catiline, finding voice and hand in the consummate skill of Gaius Julius Caesar.
Shortly before this date a powerful combination had been made, which enlisted in the same scheme the glamour of unprecedented military success in the person of Gnaeus Pompey, the unlimited resources of the tax-farmers and land-capitalists represented by Marcus Crassus, and the personal popularity of the demagogue Caesar. Each no doubt had his own axe to grind in this coalition, and the bond that held them was of an uncertain nature, opposition to the senatorial oligarchy. Further, only in the case of Caesar was the opposition a matter of policy. In the case of the other two, it was the outcome of nothing loftier than pique. None the less, when the strings were pulled by Caesar, this variously assembled machine moved readily enough.
In 59 B.C.E. this cabal had been successful in winning one place in the consulship, that of Caesar himself. Lucius Flaccus had earned Caesar’s enmity by his vigorous action against the Catilinarians in 63 B.C.E. E., so that when an influential financier, C. Appuleius Decianus, complained of Flaccus’ treatment of him, the democratic leader found an opportunity of gratifying his allies, of posing as the protector of oppressed provincials, and wreaking political spite at the same time. A certain Decimus Laelius appeared to prosecute the ex-governor of Asia.
Of Flaccus’ guilt there seems to be no reasonable question. He was plainly one of the customary type of avaricious nobles to whom a provincial governorship was purely a business proposition. No doubt he was no worse than his neighbors. His guilt seems to have been especially patent. “Cicero,” says Macrobius, “secured the acquittal of Flaccus by an apposite jest, although the defendant’s guilt of the charges made was perfectly apparent.”[[236]] And indeed on the principal counts Cicero has no evidence except exaltation of Flaccus’ personal character, and abuse of the witnesses against him, whom he characterizes as lying and irresponsible Greeks. His peroration is a flaming denunciation of the prosecution and an appeal to the jury not to permit the supporters of the dead traitor Catiline to win a signal triumph.