Agave seized the head of Crassus, and used it instead of the mask that represented the head of Pentheus in the wild dance at the end of the play. Orodes was charmed with the idea and presented the tragedian with a talent of silver.

We must not blame Crassus too much for the disaster of Carrhae. Probably any other Roman general of the day, with the possible exception of Cæsar, would have suffered a defeat under the same circumstances. For the Parthian method of war was utterly unknown to the Romans, and the legion, a splendid weapon against any other foe, was useless here. In later campaigns, profiting by Crassus's experience, the generals of the West never attempted to attack the Parthian in the open with an army of the old Roman type. They took into the field large bodies of cavalry and tens of thousands of foot-archers. These last proved especially successful against the troops of the Arsacidae, for the Parthian bow, having to be used on horseback, was necessarily short, and was out-ranged by that of the foot-soldier. Hence the Orientals had the choice between being overmatched in archery and being forced to charge home. In both cases they usually fared ill when engaging with the Romans. There never was a second Carrhae, but it is hard to see how the first could have been avoided.

It was a strange and inappropriate end to the life of Crassus that he should go down to history with his name attached to an error in military tactics, rather than to some political or financial fiasco. But a certain inevitable futility attached to all that he undertook. He wanted power, and thrice in his life the power was placed within his hand. But when he had it, he could not use it, for he was equally destitute of an ideal and of a programme. Even if Pompey had not always been at his side to check his ambition, we see that he would

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never have achieved anything great. The story of his career shows just how much and how little mere wealth, ambition, and industry, without genius, an inspiring personality, or an honest enthusiasm could accomplish in Roman politica

CHAPTER VII

CATO

AMONG all the statesmen with whom we have to deal in this last century of the Roman Republic, there were only two who were unselfish in their aims, looked for no personal profit, and devoted their lives to fighting for their party and their theory of the constitution. These were the two men who, among all the figures of this troubled time, bore the least similarity to each otherLucius Cornelius Sulla and Marcus Porcius Cato. Save that each was a devoted and disinterested partisan of the Optimate faction, there is absolutely no resemblance between them. What Sulla was we have already seen -an Epicurean to the core, gay, fastidious, taking life easily save in the moments of actual crisis in war or politics, but when the heat of the fray was upon him capable of systematic cruelty on the widest scale. In all save his reactionary politics and his contempt for monarchy and its trappings, he was a typical Hellenized Roman of the decadence. Cato, on the other hand, was consistent in his reaction; he looked back to old Roman ideals, not merely in politics, but in social manners, dress, bearing, and morals. He is the most complete instance in history of what we may call deliberate archaism,-the careful observance of the customs and views of an extinct generation by a man who was clever enough to see the strangeness of what he was doing, and yet persevered in it. For Cato was no mere Don Quixote, as Mommsen calls him; he did not spend his life in fighting monsters that were unreal, tilting

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at windmills or at flocks of sheep, or taking innkeepers and milkmaids for castellans and princesses. On the contrary, he knew precisely whom he was fighting with, and what he was fighting for, and used every means that an honourable man might, the most practical and positive no less than those mere constitutional figments in which the Roman mind delighted to deal. Unlike a Don Quixote, he was a thoroughly successful minister of finance, and an excellent and practical soldier. It was only because he fought for an impossible ideal, and because he was foiled by meaner and pettier souls, that he can possibly be called by the mocking name which Mommsen has imposed on him.

M. Cato was the great-grandson of old Cato the censor, a fact which was destined to colour his whole life, for it was his dearest wish to copy in everything, down to tricks of language and dress, a man who had already been noted as somewhat quaint and old-fashioned eighty years before. Hence came his reputation for eccentricity. It was in imitating his ancestor that Cato learnt to despise all fine raiment to such an extent that he habitually dressed in sombre colours. He would sit in the tribunal without his shoes, refused to ride when going about on public missions with his friends, and would not wear a hat even when he was marching across Africa in midsummer. It was probably the example of the elder Cato, too, that induced the younger to show the one concession to the spirit of the times of which he was ever guiltyto study Greek philosophy, and keep at home as a sort of private chaplain a tame philosopher named Athenodorus, whom he had picked up at Ephesus.

It is fortunate that Plutarch has preserved for us a long and detailed life of Cato. It is from anecdotes there related that we are able to make out how a man who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and some

what idealistic in his political views, was able to exercise so considerable a sway over the politics of his own day-the sway always exerted by the man who knows his own mind, is perfectly consistent, and is ready at any personal risk, however great, to act in accordance with his conscience. In a time when every one else was peculiarly slack and acquiescent, and given to the grossest opportunism, the man who refused to yield to the stress of affairs or the spirit of the times, and rigidly did his duty, got an influence far beyond that to which his merely intellectual powers entitled him.

Cato was born in B.C. 95. The earliest notices that we have of him show him displaying the same inflexible courage and the same adherence to old views, wrong as well as right, which distinguished him down to his death. His father died when he was very young, and he was brought up by his maternal uncle, the celebrated popular leader Drusus. The house of Drusus was haunted, during his agitation, by the prominent Italians for whom he was working, the men who afterwards led the revolt when he had been murdered. Q. Pompaedius Silo was staying with Drusus when he fell in with the boy Cato, aged five, and his younger half-brother, Servilius Caepio. "Come, my good children, you will help your uncle Drusus, will you not, to assist us poor Italians in getting our freedom," said the Marsian. Servilius lisped a polite assent; but Cato had already picked up political views, and did not love Italians. He said not a word, and appeared from his silence and his surly looks inclined to deny the request. Pompaedius, half irritated, half in jest, took him to the window and held him out of it by the scruff of his neck, threatening, if he would not promise, to let him drop. This he did in a harsh tone, and at the same time gave him several shakes, as if he were about to But as the child bore this for some time without

let go.