46 B.C. enormous superiority of the enemy in light-armed troops. He equipped light horsemen and archers from the fleet, and succeeded in raising against Juba the Gaetulian tribes. The Mauretanian kings, Bogud and Bocchus, were Juba's natural rivals, and there still roamed in these regions a band of Catilinarians under Publius Sittius of Nuceria, who had eighteen years before become converted from a bankrupt Italian merchant into a leader of free bands. Bocchus and Sittius fell upon Numidia, occupied Cirta, and compelled Juba to send a portion of his troops to his southern and western frontiers. Still Caesar's position was unpleasant enough: his army was crowded together within a space of six square miles; corn was supplied by the fleet, but there was great dearth of forage. If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns, he might at least endlessly protract the war; this plan was advised by Cato, who offered at the same time to cross into Italy and call the republicans to arms. But the decision lay with Scipio, who resolved to continue the war on the coast. This blunder was all the more serious because the army which they opposed to Caesar was in a troublesome temper, and the strictness of the levy, the exhaustion of the country, and the devastation of many of the smaller townships had produced a feeling of exasperation in the region to which the war was transferred. The African towns declared, wherever they could, for Caesar, and desertion increased continually in the army. But Scipio marched with all his force from Utica, appeared before the towns occupied by Caesar, and repeatedly offered him battle. Caesar refused until all his veteran legions had arrived, when Scipio on his part grew. afraid, and nearly two months passed away in skirmishes and in efforts to procure supplies. When Caesar's last reinforcements had arrived he made a lateral movement towards the town of Thapsus, strongly garrisoned by the enemy. Scipio now commited the unpardonable blunder of risking a battle, April 6, 46 B.C., to save the town, on ground which placed the decision in the hands of the infantry of the line. He advanced to a position immediately opposite to Caesar's camp on the shore, and, at the same time, the garrison of Thapsus prepared for a sally. Caesar's campguard sufficed to repulse the latter; and his legions, forming a correct estimate of the enemy from their want of precision and from their ill-closed ranks, compelled a trumpeter to sound for the attack even before the general gave the signal. The right wing, in advance of the rest of the line, turned the ele 46 B.C. phants opposed to them back upon the ranks of the enemy; they then broke the left wing of their opponents, and overthrew the whole line. The old camp of the enemy was at a distance, and the new one was not yet ready, so that the defeated army was almost annihilated. The legionaries refused all quarter; they were tired of being hurried from one continent to another in pursuit of an enemy who, though always defeated, was never destroyed. Fifty thousand corpses covered the field of Thapsus, among which were those of several Caesarian officers suspected by the soldiers of sympathy with the enemy. The victorious army numbered no more than fifty dead. The struggle was over in Africa; Cato convoked the senate at Utica, and asked them to decide whether they would yield or continue their defense. At first the more courageous view seemed likely to prevail, but ultimately it was resolved to yield. Faustus Sulla and Lucius Afranius soon arrived with a body of cavalry and wished to defend the city after slaughtering en masse the untrustworthy citizens. Cato indignantly refused; and after checking, as far as he could, by his authority and by largesses, the fury of the soldiery, and after providing the means of flight for those who feared to trust themselves to the mercy of Caesar, he at last held himself released from his command, and, retiring to his chamber, plunged his sword into his breast. Few of the fugitive leaders escaped: Afranius and Faustus were delivered up to Caesar, and, when he did not order their immediate execution, were cut down by the soldiers. Metellus Scipio was captured by the cruisers of Sittius, and stabbed himself. King Juba, half expecting the issue, had caused a huge funeral pile to be prepared in the market-place of Zama, upon which he proposed to consume himself with all his treasures and the dead bodies of all the citizens. But the latter had no desire to adorn the funeral rites of the African Sardanapalus, and closed their gates when he appeared in company with Marcus Petreius. The king-one of those natures that become savage amid a life of dazzling and insolent enjoyment, and prepare for themselves even out of death an intoxicating feastresorted with Petreius to one of his country houses, where, after a copious banquet, he challenged Petreius to fight him in single combat. The conqueror of Catilina fell by the hand of the king, and the latter caused himself to be stabbed by one of his slaves. Labienus and Sextus Pompeius fled to Spain, and betook themselves to a piratical warfare by land and sea. 46 B.C. The kingdom of Massinissa was now broken up. The eastern portion was united with the kingdom of Bocchus, and King Bogud was rewarded with considerable gifts. Cirta was handed over to Publius Sittius as a settlement for his half-Roman bands; but this same district, as well as the largest and most fertile part of Numidia, was united as "New Africa" with the older province of Africa. The struggle which had lasted for four years thus terminated in the complete victory of the new monarch. The monarchy might no doubt be dated from the moment when Pompeius and Caesar had established their joint rule and overthrown the aristocratic constitution. But it was only the battlefields of Pharsalus and Thapsus that set aside the joint rule, and conferred fixity and formal recognition on the new monarch. Pretenders and conspiracies, even revolutions and restorations, might ensue, but the continuity of the free republic, uninterrupted during five hundred years, was broken through, and monarchy was established as an accomplished fact. That the constitutional struggle was at an end was proclaimed by Cato when he fell upon his sword at Utica. The republic was dead, the treasure was carried off-why should the sentinels remain? There was more nobility, and, above all, more judgment in the death of Cato than there had been in his life. He was not a great man; he was the ideal of unreflecting republicanism, and this has made him the favorite of all who make it their hobby; but he was the only man who honorably and courageously defended in the last struggle the great system doomed to destruction. Just because the shrewdest lie feels itself inwardly annihilated before the simple truth, and because all the dignity and glory of human nature ultimately depend not on shrewdness, but on honesty, Cato has played a greater part in history than many men far superior to him in intellect. It was a fearfully striking protest of the republic against the monarchy, that the last republican went as the first monarch came-a protest which tore asunder like gossamer all that so-called constitutional character with which Caesar invested his monarchy, and exposed in all its hypocritical falsehood the shibboleth of the reconciliation of all parties, under the egis of which despotism grew up. The unrelenting warfare which the ghost of the legitimate republic waged for centuries-from Cassius and Brutus down to Thrasea and Tacitus, nay, even far later—a warfare of plots and literature, was the legacy which the dying Cato bequeathed to his enemies. Immediately after his death the man was revered as a saint by the party of which in his 46 B.C. life he was often the laughing-stock and the scandal. But the greatest of these marks of respect was the involuntary homage which Caesar rendered to him when he made an exception to the contemptuous clemency with which he was wont to treat his opponents, and pursued him even beyond the grave with that energetic hatred which practical statesmen are wont to feel towards antagonists who oppose them in a domain of ideas, which is as dangerous in their view as it lies beyond their reach. Chapter XXXIII THE OLD REPUBLIC AND THE NEW MONARCHY C 46-44 B.C. AESAR was in his fifty-sixth year1 when the battle of Thapsus made him sole monarch of Rome. He was sprung from one of the oldest noble families of Latium, and traced his lineage back to the heroes of the Iliad and to the kings of Rome; and he spent the years of his boyhood like any other noble youth of the period, in playing with literature and verse-making, in love intrigues and the arts of the toilet, together with another art much studied at that period, that of always borrowing and never paying. But manhood found his vigor both of mind and body unimpaired; in fencing and riding he was a match for any of his soldiers, and the incredible rapidity of his journeys astonished both friend and foe. His power of intuition was remarkable, and displayed itself in the practicability and precision of his orders, even when he had not seen with his own eyes, while his memory never failed him. Although a gentleman, a man of genius, and a monarch, he had still a heart. His love for his mother was deep and lasting, while he was sincerely devoted to his wives, and, above all, to his daughter Julia. His fidelity to his associates was unwavering, and several of them, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, showed their attachment to him after his death. But, above all, Caesar was a realist and a man of sense; his passion was never stronger than he could control. Literature and verse-making occupied him at times, but in his sleepless hours he chose to meditate upon the inflections of Latin nouns and verbs. After the revels of his youth he avoided wine entirely, and though he enjoyed, even when a monarch, the society of women, he allowed them no influence over him. He prided himself upon his personal appearance, and covered the baldness of his later years with the 1 There is some uncertainty as to the exact year of Caesar's birth. The date has been frequently given as 100 B.C., following the statement of Suetonius and others, but various considerations have led modern writers to conjecture that the true date is 102 B.C. This is the year accepted by Mommsen. |