The Quarterly Review

Na graceful passage of his speech for Plancius, Cicero opens our eyes to the startling fact, that the bureaucracy and beau monde of the Roman Republic regarded provincial life as quite beneath their notice, and indeed looked on it as a mark of culture or good breeding to be absolutely indifferent to the history and conditions of the subjects of Rome. M. Juventius Laterensis, beaten by Cn. Plancius in the contest for the ædileship in the year B.C. 54, accused his successful rival, just before he entered on office, of the crime of sodalicium, or corruption of the tribes by the illegal organization of clubs. In pointing out the superior claims of Laterensis to the office, the junior counsel for the prosecution, M. Cassius Longinus, had referred to the excellent administration of Laterensis as pro-quæstor in Cyrene :

6 Who denies it?' retorts Cicero. But life in Rome hardly catches a whisper of provincial doings. I hope I shall not be thought guilty of arrogance if I refer to my own quæstorship. Let me tell you candidly what my own idea was when I was quæstor. I thought Rome did nothing but talk of my official success. I had sent home great store of corn at a time of exceptional dearth. I was praised by every class of people in my province. Honours hitherto unheard of were devised by the Sicilians to show their respect for me. When I retired from my government I felt sure my country would grant me, unasked, all she had to bestow. Well, when I landed at Puteoli, intending to travel thence by land to Rome, it so chanccd that it was Vol. 163.-No. 325.

the height of the season, when the beau monde muster there in force. Gentlemen of the jury, you could have knocked me down with a feather, when an acquaintance meeting me asked me when I had left Rome, and what was the news from the city. "I am on my way home from my province," replied I. "Ah, yes! to be sure," says he; "Africa, I think." Sicily," said I with hauteur, feeling by this time rather piqued. "What?" says a bystander, breaking in with an air as if nothing could escape him, "Is it possible you don't know the gentleman has been quæstor of Syracuse?"-Cicero, Pro Plancio," cc. 26, 27, §§ 63–66 (abridged).

Now Lilybæum, not Syracuse, was the department of Sicily over which Cicero had presided as quæstor; so that even the third guess had not hit the scene of his brilliant administration. Cicero goes on to say that he pocketed his pride, and mixed with the fashionable throng of visitors to the baths, feeling that he had obtained a political lesson which was far more valuable to him than to have been made the lion of Puteoli. He had learned that Rome's eyes are sharper than her ears; that you must keep yourself before the public, or you will be forgotten.

England, in her intense interest in merely insular politics, and her growing blindness to the importance of a real con-. tinuity in imperial action, is becoming more and more like the Republic of Rome, which riveted her gaze on the Forum, and shut her eyes to the world that lay under her. With us, party struggles eclipse every other subject of interest. In Rome the one absorbing topic was, who would be the new consuls. Even Cicero's letters suffer from this. We dread in them the mention of the comitia, as in those of Horace Walpole we regard with alarm the subject of gout. We grow weary of the ever-recurring record of sordid struggles for the consulship and censorship, struggles carried on with monotonous sameness of incident, not between principles but between persons, and decided by appeal not to the politics but to the pockets of the electors. Well did Lucan exclaim

'Letalisque ambitus urbi

Annua venali referens certamina Campo;'

and not even the genius of Cicero and all the vivacity of his narration could

'Create a soul under the ribs of Death.'

There is no reason why we should be surprised to find that Romans in the time of Cicero were prone to

When the Roman noble was not ashamed to confess with an easy smile that he did not know who was the governor of Asia, or of Spain, perhaps after all he had no reason to feel ashamed. Perhaps it did not make very much difference who went to the province, Verres or Cicero. As a matter of fact, for one such as Cicero there were hundreds such as Verres; but had the very reverse been true, though there had been a hundred Ciceros for one Verres, the provinces could not have had even a tolerable measure of well-being under the Republic. Rome tried to apply to the provinces the constitutional forms by which she goverened her own citizens, and the result was a state of things which the world had never seen before and probably will never see again. Under the same law, liberty swelled into license in Rome and shrank into a mere name in the provinces. At Rome, executive, legislative, and judicial functions were kept apart. In the provinces all three were tangled together in the grasp of the proconsul or proprætor. The liberties and lives of the provincials were in the hands of the governor, and their property was at the mercy of the publicans, who as Equites sat in judgment in Rome, on the crimes which they had committed, or hoped to commit, in the provinces, and secretly admired and envied the more daring of the plunderers whom they tried. We read with a sense of disappointment in the letters of Cicero, how even he failed in his effort to act the constitutional governor, when the law had made him a despot. If by a miracle a governor in one year, or at most two, succeeded in learning the needs of his province, he was obliged to leave it when he began to understand it; and the chances were a thousand to one that his successor would undo any good he had attempted. Did not the principle of assigning provinces by lot itself a denial, emphatic in its naïveté, of the rights of the governed-let loose the boor Mummius among the priceless art treasures of Greece, and confront the polished Cicero with the rude robber-hordes of Cilicia? But Cicero himself showed only negative virtues as proconsul. It never occurred even to him to attempt to develop the resources of his province, to remove abuses, or to introduce reforms. The provinces were the farm of the Roman people, and the provincials were the livestock. Montesquieu sums up the condition of Rome and her provinces under the Republic: la liberté était dans le centre

et la tyrannie aux extrémités.'

If the province felt but little interest in the question what ruler chance should assign to it, still less (as we have seen) did Rome concern herself about such matters. Whether a Cæcilius or a Cornelius obtained the province, it was well understood that

his sole object in condemning himself to the ennui of a year of provincial life was to qualify himself for buying the consulate, or for repaying the borrowed money with which he had already purchased it. But the individual Cornelius or Cæcilius coveted the province, as his only means of securing future opulence and distinction, or averting immediate ruin. From the time when the nobility of office superseded the patriciate of birth in Rome, all the young men of noble family thronged the avenues to office, and office was the only road to distinction for those who were not noble. Cicero was prouder of his consulate than of his Verrine orations. Catullus and Lucretius boast of the friendship of Memmius. It was easy for an average young Roman of noble family, and not very difficult for a young novus homo of ability, to become quæstor or tribune of the people; but to become consul or censor required years of strenuous effort. The first step to the consulate or censorship was usually the ædileship, which gave the holder of the office the opportunity of entertaining the mob with magnificent public amusements.

It was the duty of the ædiles to secure to the populace of Rome corn at a moderate price, and to superintend the publicgames. The provincial governors could supply to Rome large quantities of corn under cost price, and the provinces were eager to ingratiate themselves with the turba Remi by sending to the city, free of cost, the grain of which the governor would in any case have robbed them. Hence the ædiles found it easy to supply to the Roman rabble bread below cost price. But the expenditure on the games came out of their own pockets. And as the rivalry grew hotter between the competitors for the consulship, it became usual for a spirited candidate to give the people a munus or treat' in the way of a gladiatorial show. A munus sometimes costs as much as seven thousand pounds sterling. All this expenditure was recouped by the year of provincial government, which would also leave a handsome balance to bribe the jury who should try the successful candidate for bribing the tribes.

This indirect bribery of the people dated from the beginning. of the sixth century of Rome:

had

For five hundred years', writes Mommsen, the community been content with one festival in the year and with one circus. The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius Flaminius, added second festival and a second circus in the year B.C. 220: and by these institutions-the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated by hte very name of the new festival, the plebeian games-he probably purchased permission to give battle at the Trasimene lake.'-Hist. iii. P. 345, Eng. trans.

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