The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0001/00018.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 30KB | 453 lines

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$Title{Julius Caesar
Chapter III: Advancement To The Consulship}
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$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
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$Subject{caesar
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$Date{1900}
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Title:       Julius Caesar
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

Chapter III: Advancement To The Consulship

     From this time, which was about sixty seven years before the birth of
Christ, Caesar remained for nine years generally at Rome, engaged there in a
constant struggle for power.  He was successful in these efforts, rising all
the time from one position of influence and honor to another, until he became
altogether the most prominent and powerful man in the city.  A great many
incidents are recorded, as attending these contests, which illustrate in a
very striking manner the strange mixture of rude violence and legal formality
by which Rome was in those days governed.

     Many of the most important offices of the state depended upon the votes
of the people; and as the people had very little opportunity to become
acquainted with the real merits of the case in respect to questions of
government, they gave their votes very much according to the personal
popularity of the candidate.  Public men had very little moral principle in
those days, and they would accordingly resort to any means whatever to procure
this personal popularity.  They who wanted office were accustomed to bribe
influential men among the people to support them, sometimes by promising them
subordinate offices, and sometimes by the direct donation of sums of money;
and they would try to please the mass of the people, who were too numerous to
be paid with offices or with gold, by shows and spectacles, and entertainments
of every kind which they would provide for their amusement.

     This practice seems to us very absurd; and we wonder that the Roman
people should tolerate it, since it is evident that the means for defraying
these expenses must come, ultimately, in some way or other, from them.  And
yet, absurd as it seems, this sort of policy is not wholly disused even in our
day.  The operas and the theaters, and other similar establishments in France,
are sustained, in part, by the government; and the liberality and efficiency
with which this is done, forms, in some degree, the basis of the popularity of
each succeeding administration.  The plan is better systematized and regulated
in our day, but it is, in its nature, substantially the same.

     In fact, furnishing amusements for the people and also providing supplies
for their wants, as well as affording them protection, were considered the
legitimate objects of government in those days.  It is very different at the
present time, and especially in this country.  The whole community are now
united in the desire to confine the functions of government within the
narrowest possible limits, such as to include only the preservation of public
order and public safety.  The people prefer to supply their own wants and to
provide their own enjoyments, rather than to invest government with the power
to do it for them, knowing very well that, on the latter plan, the burdens
they will have to bear, though concealed for a time, must be doubled in the
end.

     It must not be forgotten, however, that there were some reasons in the
days of the Romans for providing public amusements for the people on an
extended scale which do not exist now.  They had very few facilities then for
the private and separate enjoyments of home, so that they were much more
inclined than the people of this country are now to seek pleasure abroad and
in public.  The climate, too, mild and genial nearly all the year, favored
this.  Then they were not interested, as men are now, in the pursuits and
avocations of private industry.  The people of Rome were not a community of
merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching themselves, and adding to
the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of mankind by the products of their
labor.  They were supported, in a great measure, by the proceeds of the
tribute of foreign provinces, and by the plunder taken by the generals in the
name of the state in foreign wars.  From the same source, too - foreign
conquest - captives were brought home, to be trained as gladiators to amuse
them with their combats, and statues and paintings to ornament the public
buildings of the city.  In the same manner, large quantities of corn, which
had been taken in the provinces, were often distributed at Rome.  And
sometimes even land itself, in large tracts, which had been confiscated by the
state, or otherwise taken from the original possessors, was divided among the
people.  The laws enacted from time to time for this purpose were called
Agrarian laws; and the phrase afterward passed into a sort of proverb,
inasmuch as plans proposed in modern times for conciliating the favor of the
populace by sharing among them property belonging to the state or to the rich,
are designated by the name of Agrarianism.

     Thus Rome was a city supported, in a great measure, by the fruits of its
conquests, that is, in a certain sense, by plunder.  It was a vast community
most efficiently and admirably organized for this purpose; and yet it would
not be perfectly just to designate the people simply as a band of robbers.
They rendered, in some sense, an equivalent for what they took, in
establishing and enforcing a certain organization of society throughout the
world, and in preserving a sort of public order and peace.  They built cities,
they constructed aqueducts and roads; they formed harbors, and protected them
by piers and by castles; they protected commerce, and cultivated the arts, and
encouraged literature, and enforced a general quiet and peace among mankind,
allowing of no violence or war except what they themselves created.  Thus they
governed the world, and they felt, as all governors of mankind always do,
fully entitled to supply themselves with the comforts and conveniences of
life, in consideration of the service which they thus rendered.

     Of course, it was to be expected that they would sometimes quarrel among
themselves about the spoils.  Ambitious men were always arising, eager to
obtain opportunities to make fresh conquests, and to bring home new supplies,
and those who were most successful in making the results of their conquests
available in adding to the wealth and to the public enjoyments of the city,
would, of course, be most popular with the voters.  Hence extortion in the
provinces, and the most profuse and lavish expenditure in the city, became the
policy which every great man must pursue to rise to power.

     Caesar entered into this policy with his whole soul, founding all his
hopes of success upon the favor of the populace.  Of course, he had many
rivals and opponents among the patrician ranks, and in the Senate, and they
often impeded and thwarted his plans and measures for a time, though he always
triumphed in the end.

     One of the first offices of importance to which he attained was that of
quaestor, as it was called, which office called him away from Rome into the
province of Spain, making him the second in command there.  The officer first
in command in the province was, in this instance, a praetor.  During his
absence in Spain, Caesar replenished in some degree his exhausted finances,
but he soon became very much discontented with so subordinate a position. His
discontent was greatly increased by his coming unexpectedly, one day, at a
city then called Hades - the present Cadiz - upon a statue of Alexander, which
adorned one of the public edifices there.  Alexander died when he was only
about thirty years of age, having before that period made himself master of
the world.  Caesar was himself now about thirty-five years of age, and it made
him very sad to reflect that, though he had lived five years longer than
Alexander, he had yet accomplished so little.  He was thus far only the second
in a province, while he burned with an