Two of Sulla’s former protégés rose to the occasion. The first was thirty-three-year-old Cnaeus Pompeius (our Pompey), who put down the Spanish rebellion with some difficulty. He was a delightful man to look at. According to Plutarch, “his hair swept back in a kind of wave from the forehead, and the configuration of his face around the eyes gave him a melting look, so that he was supposed (although the resemblance was not a close one) to resemble statues of Alexander the Great.” His appearance belied a vigorous organizational energy. A decade previously, on Sulla’s return from his eastern wars, he had raised (entirely against the law) an army of his own from the district of Picenum, northeast of Rome, where his family had estates. At the scandalously early age of twenty-three he had appointed himself its commander and been active in wiping out opposition from the defeated popularis regime. He had acted so ruthlessly that he had been nicknamed the Butcher Boy (adulescens carnifex). It was in these early campaigns that he won the formal, and much politer, cognomen of Magnus, the Great—a not altogether deserved compliment, but another link with the memory of Alexander.
Sulla, duly grateful and impressed, promoted Pompey and married him to his stepdaughter. But he soon grew alarmed by his young general’s growing prestige and their relationship cooled. In fact, success failed to go to the young man’s head. He enjoyed recognition and liked to be busy, but he had no intention of following in his patron’s footsteps and taking over the state.
The second of Sulla’s former lieutenants to distinguish himself was Marcus Licinius Crassus, a distant relative of the old orator under whom Cicero had trained in his student days. Probably about forty, Crassus was able, affable and unscrupulous. His father and brother had been killed by populares when Marius was in power and Crassus had escaped to Spain, where his family had connections. He spent eight months hiding in a cave (friends supplied him with food and a couple of attractive slave girls to while away the time) and came out only on Sulla’s return to Rome. However, despite his experiences he developed no particular political convictions and was happy to support populares in the future whenever it suited him.
Crassus made his fortune from the proscription, buying up on the cheap the property of those who had been killed. Like Chrysogonus, he was rumored to have inserted an innocent man into the list in order to get hold of his money. He noticed that jerry-built apartment blocks had a tendency to collapse or catch fire and, whenever this happened, he purchased adjacent buildings at knockdown prices—sometimes even while fires were still blazing. He trained teams of slaves as architects and builders and became one of the wealthiest property developers in Rome. He owned silver mines and landed estates and would say that no one could claim to be rich unless he could afford to pay an army’s wages.
Crassus lived modestly but his house was open to everyone; guests at his dinner parties were usually ordinary people rather than members of the great families. He lent freely to all and sundry, although he was pitiless when it came to repayment. In the street he was polite and unaffected and was good at flattering people and getting them on his side. He liked to be well-liked and generally was.
Crassus was given the command against Spartacus. The former slave had turned out to be a first-rate general and posed a growing threat. He was in negotiation with the Republic’s great opponent in the eastern provinces, Mithridates, King of Pontus, and it was feared he might even march on Rome. But Crassus too was an effective campaigner and in 71 he defeated the slave army in a decisive and bloody battle, during which Spartacus and more than twelve thousand of his companions lost their lives. Crassus crucified six thousand of the survivors in rows along the Appian Way all the way from Capua, where the revolt had started, to the walls of Rome. He won his victory in the nick of time. Pompey had been recalled from Spain to help dispose of the slaves and arrived with his army just as the battle was coming to an end. There was nothing more to do than help mop up the fugitives, but much to Crassus’s irritation, his rival managed to gain a good deal of the credit for a success in which he had played only a minor role.
In fact, the one thing that most upset Crassus throughout his life was Pompey’s predominance. Once when someone said, “Pompey the Great is coming,” he laughed and asked, “AS great as what?” AS a rule Crassus did not bear grudges. This was not because he had a good heart but because other people rarely engaged his emotions. He had little difficulty in dropping friends or making up quarrels as occasion served. Cicero, whose view of friendship was different, had a very low opinion of him.
The two generals deserved the state’s gratitude for their military accomplishments, but the Senate regarded them as serious threats to the status quo. Yet despite the fact that Pompey was underage, had not yet become a Senator nor yet been elected to any of the magistracies, it proved impossible to stop him from standing as candidate with Crassus for the Consulship in 70. They stood out from the common run of their contemporaries, and had no trouble getting elected.
Pompey and Crassus were on very poor personal terms, and neither wished to be put at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the other. AS a result, they hesitated for some time before disbanding their armies; but they could see that if they did not hold firm as partners in the face of Senatorial opposition, they would be picked off separately. Pompey’s glamour made him popular with the voters and there was general relief at the winding up of the slave revolt. The candidates added to their appeal by announcing a program of reforms that did away with many of the key components of Sulla’s constitution; in particular, they revived the powers of the Tribunes. This was not a disinterested measure, for it gave powerful generals a handy mechanism for bullying or bypassing the Senate.
Another reform under consideration at this time was of particular interest to Cicero. Sulla had transferred the right to sit on juries from the equites to the Senate. The result had been judgment by peers at its most debased. Senators were often charged with corruption and there had been a long line of scandalous acquittals, due to bribery and the unwillingness of jurors to condemn their friends and colleagues. In extortion cases in particular it seemed next to impossible to secure a conviction.
The problem came into sharp focus when a group of leading Sicilians decided to sue their former governor, Caius Verres, who had served an unusually long term of three years, thanks to the demands that Spartacus had made on the time of his appointed successor. During this period Verres had behaved with a greed and ruthlessness that was unusual even by Roman standards.
The chain of events that led to the complaint went back a couple of years. Verres got to know Sthenius, a distinguished Sicilian from the town of Thermae. Both men were art lovers and collectors and for a while they had been on good terms. The governor had persuaded his new friend to part with much of his collection. But when he also demanded some of the city’s unique heritage of Greek sculpture (including a sixth-century BC statue of the poet Stesichorus), it was too much for Sthenius, who convinced the local council to say no.