Napoleon III
History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2
“The Lacedæmonians imposed upon Athens vanquished a government of thirty rulers. These began by putting to death without judgment all those whose crimes marked them out to public hatred; the people rejoiced, and said it was well done. Afterwards, when the abuses of this power multiplied, good and bad alike were sacrificed at the instigation of caprice; the rest were in terror. Thus Athens, crushed under servitude, expiated cruelly her insensate joy. In our days, when Sylla, conqueror, caused to be butchered Damasippus and other men of that description, who had attained to dignities to the curse of the Republic, who did not praise such a deed? Those villains, those factious men, whose seditions had harassed the Republic, had, it was said, merited their death. But this was the signal for a great carnage. For if any one coveted the house or land of another, or only a vase or vestment, it was somehow contrived that he should be put in the number of the proscribed. Thus, those to whom the death of Damasippus had been a subject for joy, were soon themselves dragged to execution, and the massacres ceased not until Sylla had gorged all his followers with riches.
“It is true, I dread nothing of the sort, either from M. Tullius or from present circumstances; but, in a great state, there are so many different natures! Who knows if at another epoch, under another consul, master of an army, some imaginary plot may not be believed real? And if a consul, armed with this example and with a decree of the Senate, once draw the sword, who will stay his hand or limit vengeance?
“Our ancestors, conscript fathers, were never wanting in prudence or decision, and pride did not hinder them from adopting foreign customs provided they appeared good. From the Samnites they borrowed their arms, offensive and defensive; from the Etruscans, the greater part of the insignia of our magistrates; in short, all that, amongst their allies or their enemies, appeared useful to themselves, they appropriated with the utmost eagerness, preferring to imitate good examples than to be envious of them. At the same epoch, adopting a Grecian custom, they inflicted rods upon the citizens, and death upon criminals. Afterwards the Republic increased; and with the increase of citizens factions prevailed more, and the innocent were oppressed; they committed many excesses of this kind. Then the law Portia and many others were promulgated, which only sanctioned the punishment of exile against the condemned. This consideration, conscript fathers, is, in my opinion, the strongest for rejecting the proposed innovation. Certainly those men were superior to us in virtue and wisdom, who, with such feeble means, have raised so great an empire, whilst we preserve with difficulty an inheritance so gloriously acquired. Are we then to set free the guilty, and increase with them the army of Catiline? In no wise; but I vote that their goods be confiscated, themselves imprisoned in the municipia best furnished with armed force, to the end that no one may hereafter propose their restoration to the Senate or even to the people; that whoever shall act contrary to this measure be declared by the Senate an enemy of the State and of the public tranquillity.”963
With this noble language, which reveals the statesman, compare the declamatory speeches of the orators who pleaded for the penalty of death: “I wish,” cries Cicero, “to snatch from massacre your wives, your children, and the sainted priestesses of Vesta; from the most frightful outrages, your temples and sanctuaries; our fair country from the most horrible conflagration; Italy from devastation…964 The conspirators seek to slaughter all, in order that no one may remain to weep for the Republic, and lament over the ruin of so great an empire.”965 And when he speaks of Catiline: “Is there in all Italy a poisoner, is there a gladiator, a brigand, an assassin, a parricide, a forger of wills, a suborner, a debauchee, a squanderer, an adulterer; is there a disreputable woman, a corrupter of youth, a man tarnished in character, a scoundrel, in short, who does not confess to having lived with Catiline in the greatest familiarity?”966 Certainly, this is not the cool and impartial language which becomes a judge.
Cicero holds cheap the law and its principles; he must have, above all, arguments for his cause, and he goes to history to seek for facts which might authorise the putting to death of Roman citizens. He holds forth, as an example to follow, the murder of Tiberius Gracchus by Scipio Nasica, and that of Caius Gracchus by the consul Lucius Opimius;967 forgetting that but lately, in a famous oration, he had called the two celebrated tribunes the most brilliant geniuses, the true friends of the people;968 and that the murderers of the Gracchi, for having massacred inviolable personages, became a butt to the hatred and scorn of their fellow-citizens. Cicero himself will shortly pay with exile for his rigour towards the accomplices of Catiline.
Cæsar’s speech had such an effect upon the assembly that many of the senators, amongst others the brother of Cicero, adopted his opinion.969 Decimus Silanus, consul-elect, modified his own, and Cicero at last seemed ready to withdraw from his responsibility, when he said: “If you adopt the opinion of Cæsar, as he has always attached himself to the party which passes in the Republic as being that of the people, it is probable that a sentence of which he shall be the author and guarantee will expose me less to popular storms.”970 However, he persevered in his demand for the immediate execution of the accused. But Cato mainly decided the vacillating majority of the Senate by words the most calculated to influence his auditors. Far from seeking to touch the strings of the higher sentiments and of patriotism, he appeals to selfish interests and fear. “In the name of the immortal gods,” cried he, “I adjure you, you, who have ever held your houses, your lands, your statues, your pictures, in greater regard than the Republic, if these goods, of whatever kind they be, you desire to preserve; if for your enjoyments you would economise a necessary leisure; rise at last from your lethargy, and take in hand the Republic;”971 which means, in other terms: “If you wish to enjoy peaceably your riches, condemn the accused without hearing them.” This is what the Senate did.
A singular incident happened, in the midst of these debates, to show to what point Cæsar had awakened people’s suspicions. At the most animated moment of the discussion, a letter was brought to him. He read it with eagerness. Cato and other senators, supposing it to be a message from one of the conspirators, insisted upon its being read to the Senate. Cæsar handed the letter to Cato, who was seated near him. The latter saw it was a love-letter from his sister Servilia, and threw it back indignantly, crying out, “There! keep it, drunkard!”972 a gratuitous insult, since he himself did justice to the temperance of Cæsar the day when he said that, of all the men who had overthrown the State, he was the only one who had done it fasting.973 Cato expressed with still greater force the fears of his party when he said: “If, in the midst of such great and general alarms, Cæsar alone is without fear, it is for you as well as me an additional motive for fear.”974 Cato went further. After the condemnation of the accused to death, he tried to drive Cæsar to extremities by turning against them an opinion which the latter had expressed in their interest: he proposed to confiscate their goods. The debate became then warmer than ever. Cæsar declared that it was an indignity, after having rejected the humane part of his opinion, to adopt from it the rigorous spirit it contained, for the purpose of aggravating the lot of the condemned and adding to their punishment.975 As his protestation met with no echo in the Senate, he adjured the tribunes to use their right of intercession, but they remained deaf to his appeal. The agitation was at its height, and to put an end to it, the consul, in haste to terminate a struggle the issue of which might become doubtful, agreed that the confiscation should not form a part of the Senatus-consultum.
Whilst the populace outside, excited by the friends of the conspirators, raised seditious clamours, the knights who formed the guard around the Temple of Concord, exasperated by the language of Cæsar and the length of the debates, broke in upon the assembly; they surrounded Cæsar, and with threatening words, despite his rank of pontiff and of prætor-elect, they drew their swords upon him, which M. Curio and Cicero generously turned aside.976 Their protection enabled him to regain his home: he declared, however, that he would not appear again in the Senate until the new consuls could ensure order and liberty for the deliberations.
Cicero, without loss of time, went with the prætors to seek the condemned, and conducted them to the prison of the Capitol, where they were immediately executed. Then a restless crowd, ignorant of what was taking place, demanding what had become of the prisoners, Cicero replied with these simple words, “They have lived.”977
We are easily convinced that Cæsar was not a conspirator; but this accusation is explained by the pusillanimity of some and the rancour of others. Who does not know that in times of crisis, feeble governments always tax sympathy for the accused with complicity, and are not sparing of calumny towards their adversaries? Q. Catulus and C. Piso were animated against him with so deep a hatred that they had importuned the consul to include him in the prosecutions directed against the accomplices of Catiline. Cicero resisted. The report of his participation in the plot was not the less spread, and had been accredited eagerly by the crowd of the envious.978 Cæsar was not one of the conspirators; if he had been, his influence would have been sufficient to have acquitted them triumphantly.979 He had too high an idea of himself; he enjoyed too great a consideration to think of arriving at power by an underground way and reprehensible means. However ambitious a man may be, he does not conspire when he can attain his end by lawful means. Cæsar was quite sure of being raised to the consulship, and his impatience never betrayed his ambition. Moreover, he had constantly shown a marked aversion to civil war; and why should he throw himself into a vulgar conspiracy with infamous individuals, he who refused his participation in the attempts of Lepidus when at the head of an army? If Cicero had believed Cæsar guilty, would he have hesitated to accuse him, seeing he scrupled not to compromise, by the aid of a false witness, so high a personage as Licinius Crassus?980 How, on the eve of the condemnation, could he have trusted to Cæsar the custody of one of the conspirators? Would he have exculpated him in the sequel when the accusation was renewed? Lastly, if Cæsar, as will be seen afterwards, according to Plutarch, preferred being the first in a village in the Alps to being second in Rome, how could he have consented to be the second to Catiline?
The attitude of Cæsar in this matter presents nothing, then, which does not admit an easy explanation. Whilst blaming the conspiracy, he was unwilling that, to repress it, the eternal rules of justice should be set aside. He reminded men, blinded by passion and fear, that unnecessary rigour is always followed by fatal reactions. The examples drawn from history served him to prove that moderation is always the best adviser. It is clear also that, whilst despising most of the authors of the conspiracy, he was not without sympathy for a cause which approached his own by common instincts and enemies. In countries delivered up to party divisions, how many men are there not who desire the overthrow of the existing government, yet without the will to take part in a conspiracy? Such was the position of Cæsar.
On the contrary, the conduct of Cicero and of the Senate can hardly be justified. To violate the law was perhaps a necessity; but to misrepresent the sedition in order to make it odious, to have recourse to calumny to vilify the criminals, and to condemn them to death without allowing them a defence, was an evident proof of weakness. In fact, if the intentions of Catiline had not been disguised, the whole of Italy would have responded to his appeal, so weary were people of the humiliating yoke which weighed upon Rome; but they proclaimed him as one meditating conflagration, murder, and pillage. “Already,” it was said, “the torches are lit, the assassins are at their posts, the conspirators drink human blood, and dispute over the shreds of a man they have butchered.”981 It was by these rumours dexterously spread, by these exaggerations which Cicero himself afterwards ridiculed,982 that the disposition of the people, at first favourable to the insurrection, soon turned against it.983
That Catiline might have associated, like all promoters of revolutions, with men who had nothing to lose and everything to gain, cannot be disputed; but how can we believe that the majority of his accomplices was composed of criminals loaded with vices? By the confession of Cicero, many honourable individuals figured amongst the conspirators.984 Inhabitants of colonies and municipia belonging to the first families in their country, allied themselves with Catiline. Many sons of senators, and amongst others Aulus Fulvius,985 were arrested on their way to join the insurgents, and put to death by the order of their fathers. Nearly all the Roman youth, says Sallust, favoured at that time the designs of the bold conspirator, and, on the other hand, throughout the whole empire, the populace, eager for novelty, approved of his enterprise.986
That Catiline may have been a perverse and cruel man of the kind of Marius and Sylla, is probable; that he wished to arrive at power by violence, is certain; but that he had gained to his cause so many important individuals, that he had inspired their enthusiasm, that he had so profoundly agitated the peoples of Italy, without having proclaimed one great or generous idea, is not probable. Indeed, although attached to the party of Sylla by his antecedents, he knew that the only standard capable of rallying numerous partisans was that of Marius. Thus for a long time he preserved in his house, with a religious care, the silver eagle which had guided the legions of that illustrious captain.987 His speeches confirm still further this view: in addressing himself to his accomplices, he laments seeing the destinies of the Republic in the hands of a faction who excluded the greatest number from all participation in honours and riches.988 He wrote to Catulus, a person of the highest respect, with whom he was intimate, the following letter, deficient neither in simplicity nor in a certain grandeur, the calmness of which offers a striking contrast to the vehemence of Cicero: —
“L. Catiline to Q. Catulus, salutation, – Thy tried friendship, which has always been precious to me, gives me the assurance that in my misfortune thou wilt hear my prayer. I do not wish to justify the part I have taken. My conscience reproaches me with nothing, and I wish only to expose my motives, which truly thou wilt find lawful. Driven to extremity by the insults and injustices of my enemies, robbed of the recompense due to my services, finally hopeless of ever obtaining the dignity to which I am entitled, I have taken in hand, according to my custom, the common cause of all the unfortunate. I am represented as constrained by debts to this bold resolution: it is a calumny. My personal means are sufficient to acquit my engagements; and it is known that, thanks to the generosity of my wife and of her daughter, I have done honour to other engagements which were foreign to me. But I cannot see with composure unworthy men at the pinnacle of honours, whilst they drive me away from them with groundless accusations. In the extremity to which they have thus reduced me, I embrace the only part that remains to a man of heart to defend his political position. I should like to write more fully, but I hear they are setting on foot against me the last degree of violence. I commend to thee Orestilla, and confide her to thy faith. Protect her, I beseech thee, by the head of thy children. Adieu.”
The same sentiments inspired the band of conspirators commanded by Mallius. They reveal themselves in these words: “We call gods and men to witness that it is not against our country that we have taken up arms, nor against the safety of our fellow-citizens. We, wretched paupers as we are, who, through the violence and cruelty of usurers, are without country, all condemned to scorn and indigence, are actuated by one only wish, to guarantee our personal security against wrong. We demand neither power nor wealth, those great and eternal causes of war and strife among mankind. We only desire freedom, a treasure that no man will surrender except with life itself. We implore you, senators, have pity on your wretched fellow-citizens.”989
These quotations indicate with sufficient clearness the real character of the insurrection; and that the partisans of Catiline did not altogether deserve contempt is proved by their energy and resolution. The Senate having declared Catiline and Mallius enemies of their country, promised a free pardon and two hundred thousand sestertii990 to all who would abandon the ranks of the insurgents; “but not one,” says Sallust,991 “of so vast an assemblage, was persuaded by the lure of the reward to betray the plot; not one deserted from the camp of Catiline, so deadly was the disease, which, like a pestilence, had infected the minds of most of the citizens.” There is no doubt that Catiline, though without a conscience and without principles, had notwithstanding good feeling enough to maintain a cause that he wished to see ennobled, because, so far from offering freedom to the slaves, as Sylla, Marius, and Cinna had done, an example so full of charms for a conspirator,992 he refused to make use of them, in despite of the advice of Lentulus, who addressed him in these pregnant words: “Outlawed from Rome, what purpose can a Catiline have in refusing the services of slaves?”993 Finally, that among these insurgents, who are represented to us as a throng of robbers, ready to melt away without striking a blow,994 there existed, notwithstanding, a burning faith and a genuine fanaticism, is proved by the heroism of their final struggle. The two armies met in the plain of Pistoja, on the 5th of January, 692: a terrible battle ensued, and though victory was hopeless, not one of Catiline’s soldiers gave way. To a man they were slain, following the example of their leader, sword in hand; all were found lifeless, but with ranks unbroken, heaped round the eagle of Marius,995 that glorious relic of the campaign against the Cimbri, that venerated standard of the cause of the people.
We must admit that Catiline was guilty of an attempt to overthrow the laws of his country by violence; but in doing so he was only following the examples of a Marius and a Sylla. His dreams were of a revolutionary despotism, of the ruin of the aristocratic party, and, according to Dio Cassius,996 of a change in the constitution of the Republic, and of the subjugation of the allies. Yet would his success have been a misfortune: a permanent good can never be the production of hands that are not clean.997
Error of Cicero.
VI. Cicero believed that he had destroyed an entire party. He was wrong: he had only foiled a conspiracy, and disencumbered a grand cause of the rash men who were compromising it. The judicial murder of the conspirators gave them new life, and one day the tomb of Catiline was found covered with flowers.998 Laws may be justly broken when society is hurrying on to its own ruin, and a desperate remedy is indispensable for its salvation; and again, when the government, supported by the mass of the people, becomes the organ of its interests and their hopes. But when, on the contrary, a nation is divided into factions, and the government represents only one of them, its duty, if it intends to foil a plot, is to bind itself to the most exact and scrupulous respect for the law; for at such a juncture every measure not sanctioned by the letter of the law appears to be due rather to a selfish feeling of interest than to a desire for the general weal; and the majority of the public, indifferent or hostile, is always disposed to pity the accused, whoever he may be, and to blame the severity with which he was put down.
Cicero was intoxicated with his success. His vanity made him ridiculous.999 He thought himself as great as Pompey, and wrote to him with all the pride of a conqueror. But he received a chilling answer,1000 and in a short time saw the accomplishment of Cæsar’s prophetic words: “If even the greatest criminals are too severely dealt with, the heinousness of their offence is lost in the severity of their sentence.”1001
Even before the battle of Pistoja, whilst the pursuit of the adherents of Catiline was still being prosecuted, public opinion was already hostile to him who had urged the measure, and Metellus Nepos, sent recently from Asia by Pompey, openly found fault with Cicero’s conduct. When the latter, on quitting office, wished to address the people for the purpose of glorifying his consulship, Metellus, who had been elected tribune, silenced him with these words: “We will not hear the defence of the man who refused to hear the defence of accused persons,” and ordered him to confine himself to the usual oath, that he had in no way contravened the laws. “I swear,” answered Cicero, “that I have saved the Republic.” However loudly this boastful exclamation might be applauded by Cato and the bystanders, who hail him with Father of his Country, their enthusiasm will have but a short duration.1002
Cæsar Prætor (692).
VII. Cæsar, prætor-elect of the city (urbanus) the preceding year, entered upon his office in the year 692. Bibulus, his former colleague in the edileship, and his declared opponent, was his colleague. The more his influence increased, the more he seems to have placed it at the service of Pompey, upon whom, since his departure, the hopes of the popular party rested. He had more share than all the others in causing extraordinary honours to be decreed to the conqueror of Mithridates,1003 such as the privilege of attending the games of the circus in a robe of triumph and a crown of laurels, and of sitting in the theatre in the official dress of the magistrates, the prætexta.1004 Still more, he used all his endeavours to reserve for Pompey one of those opportunities of gratifying personal vanity which the Romans prized so highly.
It was the custom for those who were charged with the restoration of any public monument to have their name engraved on it when the work was completed. Catulus had caused his to be inscribed on the Temple of Jupiter, burnt in the Capitol in 671, and of which he had been intrusted with the rebuilding by Sylla. This temple, however, had not been entirely completed. Cæsar appealed against this infraction of the law, accused Catulus of having appropriated a part of the money intended for the restoration, and proposed that the completion of the work should be confided to Pompey on his return, that his name should be placed thereon instead of that of Catulus, and that he should perform the ceremony of dedication.1005 Cæsar thus not only gave a proof of deference to Pompey, but he sought to please the multitude by gaining a verdict against one of the most esteemed chiefs of the aristocratic party.
The news of this accusation caused a sensation in the Senate, and the eagerness with which the nobles hurried into the Forum to vote against the proposal was such, that on that day they omitted to go, according to custom, to congratulate the new consuls; a proof that in this case also it was entirely a question of party. Catulus pronounced his own defence, but without being able to gain the tribune; and the tumult increasing, Cæsar was obliged to give way to force. The affair went no farther.1006
The reaction of public opinion against the conduct of the Senate continued, and men did not hesitate to accuse it openly of having murdered the accomplices of Catiline. Metellus Nepos, supported by the friends of the conspirators, by the partisans of his patron, and by those of Cæsar, proposed a law for the recall of Pompey with his army, that he might, as he said, maintain order in the city, protect the citizens, and prevent their being put to death without a trial. The Senate, and notably Cato and Q. Minucius, offended already by the success of the army of Asia, offered a steady resistance to these proposals.
On the day when the tribes voted, scenes of the greatest turbulence took place. Cato seated himself between the prætor Cæsar and the tribune Metellus, to prevent their conversing together. Blows were given, swords were drawn,1007 and each of the two factions was in turn driven from the Forum; until at last the senatorial party gained the day. Metellus, obliged to fly, declared that he was yielding to force, and that he was going to join Pompey, who would know well how to avenge them both. It was the first time that a tribune had been known to abandon Rome and take refuge in the camp of a general. The Senate deprived him of his office, and Cæsar of that of prætor.1008 The latter paid no attention, kept his lictors, and continued the administration of justice; but, on being warned that it was intended to make use of compulsion against him, he voluntarily resigned his office, and shut himself up in his house.
Nevertheless, this outrage against the laws was not submitted to with indifference. Two days afterwards, a crowd assembled before Cæsar’s house: the people with loud cries urged him to resume his office; while Cæsar, on his part, engaged them not to transgress the laws. The Senate, which had met on hearing of this riot, sent for him, thanked him for his respect for the laws, and reinstated him in his prætorship.
It was thus that Cæsar maintained himself within the pale of the law, and obliged the Senate to overstep it. This body, heretofore so firm, and yet so temperate, no longer shrank from extraordinary acts of authority; a tribune and a prætor were at the same time obliged to fly from their arbitrary proceedings. Ever since the days of the Gracchi, Rome had witnessed the same scenes of violence, sometimes on the part of the nobles, at others on the part of the people.
The justice which the fear of a popular movement had caused to be rendered to Cæsar had not discouraged the hatred of his enemies. They tried to renew against him the accusation of having been an accomplice in Catiline’s conspiracy. At their instigation, Vettius, a man who had been formerly employed by Cicero as a spy to discover the plot, summoned him before the questor Novius Niger;1009 and Curius, to the latter of whom a public reward had been decreed, accused him before the Senate. They both swore to his enrolment among the conspirators, pretending that they had received their information from the lips of Catiline himself. Cæsar had no difficulty in defending himself, and appealed to the testimony of Cicero, who at once declared his innocence. The court, however, sat for a long time; and the rumour of the charge having been spread abroad in the city, the crowd, uneasy as to what might be Cæsar’s fate, assembled in great numbers to demand his release. So irritated they appeared, that to calm them, Cato conceived it necessary to propose to the Senate a decree ordering a distribution of wheat to the poor: a largess which cost the treasury more than 1,250 talents yearly (7,276,250 francs [£291,050]).1010
No time was lost in pronouncing the charge calumnious; Curius was deprived of his promised reward; and Vettius, on his way to prison, was all but torn to pieces before the rostra.1011 The questor Nevius was in like manner arrested for having allowed a prætor, whose authority was superior to his own, to be accused before his tribunal.1012
Not satisfied with conciliating the good-will of the people, Cæsar won for himself the favour of the noblest dames of Rome; and, notwithstanding his notorious passion for women, we cannot help discovering a political aim in his choice of mistresses, since all held by different ties to men who were then playing, or were destined to play, an important part. He had had important relations with Tertulla, the wife of Crassus; with Mucia, wife of Pompey; with Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius, who was consul in 696; with Postumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius, who was raised to the consulship in 703, and persuaded to join Cæsar’s party by her influence; but the woman he preferred was Servilia, sister of Cato and mother of Brutus, to whom, during his first consulship, he gave a pearl valued at six millions of sestertii (1,140,000 francs [£45,600]).1013 This connection throws an air of improbability over the reports in circulation that Servilia favoured an intrigue between him and her daughter Tertia.1014 Was it by the intermediation of Tertulla that Crassus was reconciled with Cæsar? or was that reconciliation due to the injustice of the Senate, and the jealousy of Crassus towards Pompey? Whatever was the cause that brought them together, Crassus seems to have made common cause with him in all the questions in which he was interested, subsequent to the consulship of Cicero.
Attempt of Clodius (692).
VIII. At this period a great scandal arose. A young and wealthy patrician, named Clodius, an ambitious and violent man, conceived a passion for Pompeia, Cæsar’s wife; but the strict vigilance of Aurelia, her mother-in-law, made it difficult to find opportunities for meeting privately.1015 Clodius, disguised in female apparel, chose, for the opportunity to enter her house, the moment when she was celebrating, by night, attended by the matrons, mysteries in honour of the Roman people.1016 Now, it was forbidden to a male to be present at these religious ceremonies, which it was believed that his presence even would defile. Clodius, recognised by a female slave, was expelled with ignominy. The pontiffs uttered the cry of sacrilege, and it became the duty of the vestals to begin the mysteries anew. The nobles, who had already met with an enemy in Clodius, saw in this act a means to compass his overthrow, and at the same time to compromise Cæsar. The latter, without condescending to inquire whether Pompeia was guilty or not, repudiated her. A decree of the Senate, carried by four hundred votes against fifteen, decided that Clodius must take his trial.1017 He defended himself by pleading an alibi; and, with the sole exception of Aurelia, not a witness came forward against him. Cæsar himself, when examined, declared that he knew nothing; and when asked to explain his own conduct, replied, with equal regard to his honour and his interest, “The wife of Cæsar must be above suspicion!” But Cicero, yielding to the malicious suggestions of his wife Terentia, came forward to assert that on the day of the event he had seen Clodius in Rome.1018 The people showed its sympathy with the latter, either because they deemed the crime one that did not deserve a severe punishment, or because their religious scruples were not so strong as their political passions. Crassus, on his part, directed the whole intrigue, and lent the accused funds sufficient to buy his judges. They acquitted him by a majority of thirty-one to twenty-five.1019
