Pompey left Rome in 67. In a marvellously short space of time he freed the Mediterranean from the Cilician pirates and estab lished Roman authority in Cilicia itself. He then crushed Mithri dates (q.v.), added Syria to the list of Roman provinces, and led the Roman legions to the Euphrates and the Caspian, leaving no power capable of disputing with Rome the sovereignty of western Asia. He did not return to Italy till towards the end of 62. The interval was marked in Rome by the rise to political importance of Caesar (q.v.) and Cicero, and by Catiline's attempt at revo lution. As the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna, Caesar possessed a strong hereditary claim to the leadership of the popular and Marian party. He had already taken part in the agitation for the restoration of the tribunate ; he had supported the Manilian law ; and, when Pompey's withdrawal left the field clear for other competitors, he stepped at once into the front rank on the popular side. He took upon himself, as their nearest repre sentative, the task of clearing the memory and avenging the wrongs of the great popular leaders, Marius, Cinna and Saturninus. He publicly reminded the people of Marius's services, and set up again upon the Capitol the trophies of the Cimbric War. He endeavoured to bring to justice, not only the ringleaders in Sulla's bloody work of proscription, but even the murderers of Saturninus, and vehemently pleaded the cause of the children of the pro scribed. While thus carrying on in genuine Roman fashion the feud of his family, he attracted the sympathies of the Italians by his efforts to procure the Roman franchise for the Latin commu nities beyond the Po, and won the affections of the populace in Rome and its immediate neighbourhood by the splendour of the games which he gave as curule aedile (65), and by his lavish ex penditure upon the improvement of the Appian Way. But these measures were with him only means to the further end of creat ing for himself a position such as that which Pompey had already won ; and this ulterior aim he pursued with an audacious indiffer ence to constitutional forms and usages. His coalition with Crassus, soon after Pompey's departure, secured him an ally whose colossal wealth and wide financial connections were of inestimable value, and whose vanity and inferiority of intellect rendered him a willing tool. The story of his attempted coup d'etat in Jan. 65 is probably false, but it is evident that by the beginning of 63 he was bent on reaping the reward of his exer tions by obtaining from the people an extraordinary command abroad, which should secure his position before Pompey's return; and the agrarian law proposed early that year by the tribune P. Servilius Rullus had for its object the creation, in favour of Caesar and Crassus, of a commission with powers so wide as to place its members almost on a level with Pompey himself. It was at this moment when all seemed going well, that Caesar's hopes were dashed to the by Catiline's desperate outbreak, which not only discredited every one connected with the popular party, but directed the suspicions of the well-to-do classes against Caesar himself, as a possible accomplice in Catiline's revolutionary schemes.
The same wave of indignation and suspicion which for the moment checked Caesar's rise carried Marcus Tullius Cicero to the height of his fortunes. Cicero (q.v.), as a politician, has been equally misjudged by friends and foes. That he was deficient in courage, that he was vain, and that he attempted the impossible, may be admitted at once. But he was neither a brilliant and unscrupulous adventurer nor an aimless trimmer, nor yet a devoted champion merely of senatorial ascendancy'. He was a representa tive man, with a numerous following, and a policy which was naturally suggested to him by the circumstances of his birth, connections and profession, and which, impracticable as it proved to be, was yet consistent, intelligible and high-minded. Born at Arpinum, he cherished like all Arpinates the memory of his great fellow-townsman Marius, the friend of the Italians, the saviour of Italy and the irreconcilable foe of Sulla and the nobles. A "mu nicipal" himself, his chosen friends and his warmest supporters were found among the well-to-do classes in the Italian towns. Unpopular with the Roman aristocracy, who despised him as a peregrines, and with the Roman populace, he was the trusted leader of the Italian middle class, "the true Roman people," as he proudly styles them. It was they who carried his election for the consulship (63), who in 58 insisted on his recall from exile, and it was his influence with them which made Caesar so anxious to win him over in 49. He represented their antipathy alike to socialistic
schemes and to aristocratic exclusiveness, and their old-fashioned simplicity of life in contrast with the cosmopolitan luxury of the capital. By birth, too, he belonged to the equestrian order, the foremost representatives of which were indeed still the publicani and negotiatores, but which since the enfranchisement of Italy included also the substantial burgesses of the Italian towns and the smaller "squires" of the country districts. With them, too, Cicero was at one in their dread of democratic excesses and their social and political jealousy of the nobiles. Lastly, as a lawyer and a scholar, he was passionately attached to the ancient constitution. His political ideal was the natural outcome of these circumstances. He advocated the maintenance of the constitution, but not as it was understood by the extreme politicians of the right and left. The senate was to be the supreme directing council, but the senate of Cicero's dreams was not an oligarchic assemblage of nobles, but a body freely open to all citizens, and representing the worth of the community. The magistrates, while deferring to the senate's authority, were to be at once vigorous and public-spirited ; and the assembly itself which elected the magistrates and passed the laws was to consist, not of the "mob of the forum," but of the true Roman people throughout Italy. For the realization of this ideal he looked, above all things, to the establishment of cordial rela tions between the senate and nobles in Rome and the great middle class of Italy represented by the equestrian order, between the capital and the country towns and districts. This was the con cordia ordinum, the consensus Italiae, for which he laboured. Cicero's election to the consulship for 63 over the heads of Caesar's nominees, Antonius and Catiline, was mainly the work of the Italian middle-class, already rendered uneasy both by the rumours which were rife of revolutionary schemes and of Caesar's boundless ambition, and by the numerous disquieting signs of dis turbance noticeable in Italy. The new consul vigorously set him self to discharge the trust placed in him. He defeated the insidious 'Mommsen is throughout unfair to Cicero. The best estimates of Cicero are those given by Strachan-Davidson in his Cicero (1894), by Prof. Tyrrell in his Introductions to his edition of Cicero's Letters, and by Petersson, Cicero, a Biography (1920).
proposals of Rullus for Caesar's aggrandizement and assisted in quashing the prosecution of Gaius Rabirius (q.v.). But with the consular elections in the autumn of 63 a fresh danger arose from a different quarter. The "conspiracy of Catiline" (see CATILINE) was not the work of the popular party, and still less was it an unselfish attempt at reform ; Catiline himself was a patrician, who had held high office, and possessed considerable ability and cour age ; but he was bankrupt in character and in purse, and two suc cessive defeats in the consular elections had rendered him desper ate. To retrieve his broken fortunes by violence was a course which was only too readily suggested by the history of the last 4o years, and materials for a conflagration abounded on all sides. The danger to be feared from his intrigues lay in the state of Italy, which made a revolt against society and the established Govern ment only too likely if once a leader presented himself, and it was such a revolt that Catiline endeavoured to organize. Bankrupt nobles like himself, Sullan veterans and the starving peasants whom they had dispossessed of their holdings, outlaws of every description, the slave population of Rome, and the wilder herds men-slaves of the Apulian pastures, were all enlisted under his banner, and attempts were even made to excite disaffection among the newly conquered people of southern Gaul and the warlike tribes who still cherished the memory of Sertorius in Spain. In Etruria, the seat and centre of agrarian distress and discontent, a rising actually took place headed by a Sullan centurion, but the spread of the revolt was checked by Cicero's vigorous measures. Catiline fled from Rome, and died fighting with desperate courage at the head of his motley force of old soldiers, peasants and slaves. His accomplices in Rome were arrested, and, after an unavailing protest from Caesar, the senate authorized the consuls summarily to put them to death.