Cicero - Anthony Everitt [75]
When he reached the end of the processional route, the Capitol Hill, Pompey dedicated 8 million sesterces to the goddess Minerva and promised a shrine in honor of Venus the Victorious at the new theater he was to build on the Field of Mars. Surely, he may reasonably have felt, his glorious deeds would win him the gratitude of the Senate and People of Rome.
Towards the end of the year Cicero, powerless, witnessed a serious blow to his ideal of an “alliance of all the classes.” The equites, mainly traders and businessmen, on whom Cicero relied for much of his political support, were annoyed by a Senatorial decree which removed their immunity from prosecution when sitting as jurors. The effect was simply to put them on an equal footing with Senators, but, while they kept their feelings to themselves, they resented the reform.
Not long afterwards a delegation of equites asked the Senate to review their tax-farming concessions in the provinces of Asia Minor. On reflection, they felt that they had bid too high for the contracts and that their profit margins were at risk. Crassus was behind the move. His support for the tax farmers was in part a bid to counterbalance Pompey’s huge new power base in Asia Minor. Plutarch writes: “Giving up all attempts to equal Pompey in military matters, Crassus devoted himself to politics. Here by taking pains, by helping people in the law courts or with loans … he acquired an influence and a reputation equal to that which Pompeius had won by all his great military expeditions.”
Cicero was furious but had no choice but to support the claim. “The demand was disgraceful,” he wrote to Atticus on December 5, “a confession of recklessness. But there was the gravest danger of a complete break between Senate and equites if it had been turned down altogether.” Cato was his usual obstructive self and made sure that the Senate resisted the request. The equites began to think that if Cicero could not get them what they wanted, they would have to look elsewhere for favors.
Early in 60 a Tribune, Lucius Flavius, brought forward a comprehensive bill to distribute land to Pompey’s soldiers. It was carefully and unprovocatively framed and, after proposing some amendments, Cicero supported it. Private interests were to be protected and he welcomed the prospect that, if properly organized, “the dregs of the urban population can be cleared out and Italy repeopled.” To critics who argued that he was abandoning his constitutionalist position, he replied that Pompey “has become more constitutionally minded and less inclined to court popularity with the masses.” In other words, if Pompey’s wishes were granted, he might be persuaded to abandon the radicals and join the conservative interest.
The optimates saw things in a very different light and opposed the measure from start to finish. This had little to do with its intrinsic merits. They were thinking in exclusively competitive terms; anything that enhanced Pompey’s standing would diminish theirs. It would not be long before this ill-conceived attack brought about the exact opposite of what was intended.
Had there been more conservative politicians of real ability, the history of these years might have been quite different. The bloodlettings earlier in the century under Marius and Sulla had depopulated the ruling class and, with the deaths of senior figures (including, recently, that of that elderly pillar of the political establishment Catulus), the talent on the Senate’s benches was much reduced. The increasing wealth that flowed from the provinces had reduced the appeal of, and the necessity for, a political career. Major personalities such as Hortensius and Lucullus (the able general who had preceded Pompey in the east) had withdrawn into a private life of, in Cicero’s opinion, scandalous luxury.
Of course, Cato did not fall into this category. But his inability to compromise made him as fatal to his cause, Cicero believed, as the moral dereliction