The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,061 pages of information about The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5).

The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,061 pages of information about The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5).
war, for example, where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed, and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay in the system and in the government as such—­primarily, so far as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position of the able general with reference to a governing college incapable of any energetic resolution.  In maritime police likewise the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system of sending legions against the coursers of the sea.  The expeditions of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete, were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against the pirates.  Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged with rods to make it subject to him.  Doubtless therefore the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure primarily on the government of the restoration.  A similar misrule had indeed always come along with the re-establishment of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged so corrupt and pernicious.  But, when a government cannot govern, it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also the right to overthrow it.  It is, no doubt, unhappily true that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are found who are able and willing to wield against that government the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution which is in such a case legitimate.  But if the game attempted with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears such fruits.  For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come.  The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.

CHAPTER III

The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution

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The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.