by military force is the simplest and most vulgar of political expedients. The pettiest Greek despot who held an acropolis with a gang of armed mercenaries was master of the state-secret which, we are asked to believe, was hidden from the eyes of the pupil of Sulla and the conqueror of Mithridates. It is unjust to set down Pompey as a 'rival runner' for the prize which Casar won.* He was striving for a nobler crown. What he desired was not absolute power purchased by armed rebellion: this he deliberately rejected. Soldier though he was, he seems to have appreciated the fatal weakness of a military despotism. He saw that 'you may do anything with bayonets except sit on them.' He desired power indeed, but power derived from its legitimate source the will of his fellow-countrymen; this will he scorned to coerce. Pompey wants many of the qualities which make a great man. We shall find in him more to pardon than to admire. Let it at least be put to his credit that he dared to break with the bad traditions of Marius and Sulla, that he did not despair of the Republic,' and that his faith gave her one chance more. Unhappily the Roman constitution was not sound enough to admit of a leader on these terms. Pompey believed that the highest place would be freely granted to him, as soon as he had proved his loyalty by refusing to seize on it. He appealed to the honour of his countrymen not at least to refuse that which a few weeks before he could have commanded, the confirmation namely of his arrangements respecting his Asiatic conquests, and the redemption of his promise of grants of land to his victorious soldiers. With a short-sighted perversity of ingratitude the Senate refused both these requests. Pompey's disappointment was bitter; he was called to act in a situation where right and wrong were no longer so clear, and in which his want of political capacity and political training led him into fatal errors. A year and a half elapsed from Pompey's landing in Italy, and still the confusions of the situation showed no signs of clearing. The union of Senate and Equites under the leadership of Pompey, the ideal combination of which Cicero dreamed,† failed to realize itself, owing to the selfishness and impracticability of the * It might have been thought that this distinction between the minister of a free state (however great the authority entrusted to him) and the despot who governs by compulsion was sufficiently obvious. Nevertheless the failure to apprehend it seems to vitiate all the political philosophy of Mommsen. See below, p. 477. In this union of the Constitutional party Cicero himself aspired to play the part of Lælius to Pompey's Scipio (cf. ad Fam. V. vii. 3). Some such combination was undoubtedly necessary if the Constitution were to be preserved at all. parties. parties. At length about the middle of the year (B.C. 60), Cæsar, who had been absent for some months as pro-prætor in Spain, returned to Rome, and a very different solution presented itself in the famous coalition of Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar. Cæsar promised, if he were made consul and were duly backed up by his confederates, that he would obtain for them, legally or illegally, the measures which each desired. The Equites, with whom Crassus was leagued, were anxious for a remission of their contracts for the collection of the taxes; and this claim was now to be satisfied. Pompey's acts in Asia were to be confirmed, and his soldiers were to have their lands. Cæsar in return bargained for a province and an army. The bribe was too tempting to be resisted. The patience of Pompey was worn out. He had not the magnanimity to submit to vexation and discomfiture rather than swerve from the straight path. He had virtue enough not to break the law himself, when he might have reaped all the advantages of the crime; he had not firmness enough to refuse to take advantage of the breach of the law by another, who professed himself willing to act in his behalf. In his short-sightedness he probably hardly recognized that his compact with Cæsar was treasonable. This compact is the turning-point of Pompey's life. Henceforth he is no longer master of his own course; he is driven to a succession of forced moves. He, who would fain be the champion of legality, is obliged to defend the illegal acts of Cæsar. He, who refused to bear arms against the State, provides with an army a rival who has no such scruple. In the interest of the coalition to which he has bound himself, he is obliged to undertake the task for which he is least fitted, that of guiding the turbulent politics of the city. His warlike achievements grow pale beside the fresh glories of Cæsar. His efforts to obtain a compensating power elsewhere fail. In spite of misgivings he is forced to renew the triumvirate at the conference of Luca. He is doomed to work at building up, stone by stone, the edifice of his rival's greatness, only to find out too late that he has created a power which aims at the destruction of the Republic, and to perish at last in a desperate effort to undo the work of his own hands. Pompey's great fault is, that he aspired to a political career without any political creed or political principle. He belongs to no party; he represents no consistent idea. He never seems to have come to any conclusion on the main question of the day, the alternative of an aristocratical or a despotic government. In his youth his sword had helped Sulla to set up the authority of the Senate, and he drew the sword again in his old age in vain defence of that authority; yet, by his restoration of the tribu nician power in his first consulship, he struck a deadly blow at the polity which Sulla had established, and in his extraordinary commands and offices he traversed every rule of the aristocratic régime, and gave precedents for almost all the arrangements of the imperial system.* Dean Merivale has some justification for beginning his History of the Romans under the Empire' with the return of Pompey from the conquest of Mithridates. Throughout a long political life Pompey hardly ever ventured to initiate a policy or to originate a reform. He wished to be the leader of Roman politics, but had not the wit to see that a leader must needs accept responsibility. Because he is virtuous, Rome is to tolerate a physician who has no idea what is the disease of which the State is sickening, or what the remedy which he will prescribe. Pompey seems conscious of his inability to originate, and fears above everything to commit himself. A striking instance of this unpardonable fear of responsibility is to be found in his attitude during the first consulship of Cæsar, an epoch to which we must give a fuller discussion. Cæsar's actions as consul were wholly illegal and unconstitutional. It must never be forgotten that the veto and the auspices which Cæsar set aside were the ultimate safeguards of the constitution, answering in that respect to the power of our House of Commons to refuse supplies. In formal law the Roman people was sovereign, and the affirmative answer of the people to the proposition of a magistrate constituted an Act of Parliament, unlimited in its powers. This theory was a dangerous survival from days when it had represented a fact. The real Roman people was now scattered in country towns over Italy; the citizens could not give regular personal attendance at the assemblies; at most they could only be brought up once or twice a year to vote for an influential neighbour at the consular or prætorian elections. Where would popular government be in England, if the crowd which could be collected in Trafalgar Square had the right to constitute itself a sovereign assembly? And even this example does not represent the full absurdity of the situation. The population of a great English town is in the Like the emperors, he governed a province by his legates, whilst he remained at the capital; like them, he cumulated the consulship and the pro-consulship; he invested his personal subordinates with pro-prætorian rank; as general of the seas, and again, as curator of the corn-supply of Rome, he enjoyed an imperium infinitum 'one that was not limited to the bounds of a single province-lastly, the whole population of Italy pronounced the sacramentum in verba Pompeii;' the precedent was revived in favour of Octavian before the battle of Actium, and became the established custom for later emperors. See Tac. Ann. i. 7, for the ceremony on the accession of Tiberius. main an industrial population. In Rome free industry was killed by slave-labour, and the populace consisted of idle paupers, depending on state corn for their subsistence, on the sale of their votes for their luxuries, and on street-riots for their fun. The assemblies were almost entirely dependent on the management of the presiding magistrate, or on leaders of gangs, like Clodius, who organized the dangerous 'rowdy' class, slave or free, into 'brotherhoods' or 'guilds,' much as Tweed ruled the streets and the elections of New York by manipulating the companies of firemen. The English Cæsareans* speak of the assembly as if it had been the Roman people with a voice and an opinion of its own. The Roman politicians knew better; they recognized that the unimpeded initiative was everything, and that the affirmative answer could be obtained to one proposal as easily as to another. For instance, when it is suggested that Cicero might be recalled from exile by a simple decision of the Senate that he had never been legally banished, Cicero objects that nothing is gained by that procedure, for the same tribune who would veto the decree of the people to restore him, would likewise veto the declaratory resolution of the Senate.† The tribunician veto is alone regarded as important; there is not a hint that there can be any difficulty about the popular vote. In like manner, when the triumvirs became unpopular about the middle of Cæsar's first consulship, and the people hissed both the master (Pompey) and his adherents (Cæsar and Crassus)' in the theatre, the reply was a threat to stop their supplies of corn. Popular indignation mattered nothing; so long as they had the support of Clodius and his street gang, the voices were never wanting to give the sanction of the Assembly to their most arbitrary acts. As Cicero says, 'The wills of the people were not seduced, but their manhood was paralysed.' Those who represent the despotic as the popular cause, and at the same time look on the Assemblies as the legitimate exponents of public opinion, must settle the matter with the memory of their own heroes. Julius and Augustus never for a moment dreamed of breathing life into this dead body; they used the comitial machinery as the merest form, and Tiberius practically abolished it.. Now, in view of the helplessness of the Assemblies, it is manifest that the right of initiative in legislation gains supreme importance. It is like the power of proposing a plebiscite, a They would do well to take a lesson in this matter from the chief of their own school. Mommsen is above all things the first of Roman antiquarians, and the antiquarian in him often serves to keep in check the vagaries of the politician. † Ad Att. III. xv. 5. power power which sufficed to paralyse Parliamentary government under the second French Empire. Commit this power to a single person, and that person is monarch of Rome. The Romans met the difficulty by a device, which worked tolerably while constitutional morality retained its vigour, but which proved the fruitful seed of mischief in the decay of their institutions. The notion of limited powers had, as Dr. Arnold has pointed out, hardly any place in their political ideas. They set up one exaggerated authority to counteract another. Instead of deciding questions by a majority of votes in each board, they armed every magistrate with the full powers of his college, thus looking to consul against consul and tribune against tribune.* The result was, that in the last century of the Republic there were actually twenty magistrates, every one of whom, by virtue of his jus agendi' either cum populo' or 'cum plebe,' possessed the right to give to any proposal he might read to the mob the force of an Act of Parliament. It is obvious that such a state of things would be absolute anarchy, if the annual magistrates were allowed to use their powers of initiative according to their own personal caprice. Hence arose the constitutional practice, that all questions should be referred to the permanent governing body, the Senate, and that the people should only be called on to confirm what the Senate had advised. This obligation on the part of the magistrates was not defined by any positive law; nevertheless it was as much part of the Constitution as it is part of the constitution in England that the Crown shall appoint ministers who have the confidence of the House of Commons. To appeal directly to the people against the opinion of the Senate was at Rome precisely what appealing to the personal wishes of the Sovereign against the policy adopted by Parliament would be in England. In Rome, as in England, the constitutional government was supported on ordinary occasions by custom and moral force. If a magistrate uses his acknowledged legal right unconstitu tionally, the Senate brings to bear on him the weight of a solemn vote of want of confidence (senatui videri contra Rempublicam facturum), or it instructs another magistrate to treat with him (agere cum tribuno), and the refractory power yields. As Not that, as Mr. Froude says (p. 21), 'The constitutional means of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures lay in a Consul's veto,' etc. A tribune could veto a consul s action, but not vice versa. The curule magistrates. not having intercessio' as against a tribune, could only resort to obnuntiatio," the report of an unfavourable omen. + So Fufius tribunus tum concessit' (ad Att. I. xiv. 5), in the affair of Clodius' sacrilege. Cicero thinks (wrongly, no doubt, for Curio meant revolution) that |