III.—­Pompey and Caesar

The young Graccus Pompeius was the most distinguished of the Sullan party; Crassus was the wealthiest and most powerful of the Equestrian group; Lepidus was the popular leader.  A popular insurrection which he headed was suppressed, and he disappeared, but Sertorius, once an associate of Marius, had obtained a remarkable personal ascendancy in Spain, and, in league with the Mediterranean pirates, threatened to be a formidable foe of the new constitution.  For some years he maintained a gradually waning resistance against the arms of Pompeius, but finally was assassinated.

Meanwhile Tigranes, King of Armenia, had been developing a powerful monarchy; and mutual distrust had brought on another war with Mithridates, successfully conducted by Lucullus.  Out of this war arose a struggle with Tigranes, on whom an overwhelming defeat was inflicted at Tigranocerta.  But the brilliant achievements of Lucullus were nullified by the mutinous conduct of the troops, and the factious conduct of the home government.  The gross inefficiency of that government was shown by the immense extension of organised piracy, and by the famous slave revolt under Spartacus, which seriously endangered the state.

Pompeius on his return from Spain was barred on technical grounds from the triumph and the consulship which he demanded.  He was thus driven into an alliance with the democratic party, and with Crassus.  The result was the fall of the Sullan constitution, and the restoration of checks on the power of the senate.  Pompeius might have grasped a military despotism; he did not, but he did receive extraordinary powers for dealing with the whole Eastern question, and when that work was settled successfully, he would be able to dictate his own terms.

Pompeius began his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation.  He crushed Mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of Tigranes; Mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an insurrection.  Anarchy in Syria warranted Pompeius in annexing the Seleucid dominion.  The whole of the nearer East was now a part of the Roman empire; and was thenceforth ruled not as protectorates, but as a group of provinces.  Egypt alone was not incorporated.

Meanwhile, the democratic party at Rome were dominant, though their policy was inconsistent and opportunist.  Probably the leading men, such as Crassus and the rising Gaius, Julius Caesar, stood aside from the wilder schemes, such as the Catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly fostered them.  Catiline’s projects were betrayed, and the illegal execution of the captured conspirators by the consul Cicero was hailed by Cato and the senatorial party as a triumph of patriotic statesmanship.  Catiline himself was crushed in the field.