The procession set off from outside the city, crossed the pomoerium and wound its way towards the center. At its head placards displayed the names of all the countries over which the great general was triumphing: Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis (mythical home of Medea and the Golden Fleece), Iberia, Albania, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Palestine, Judaea and Arabia. They claimed that Pompey had captured no fewer than 1,000 fortified places, nearly 900 cities and 800 pirate ships; and had founded 39 new cities. Even more spectacular were the resources now flowing into the city. Inscriptions boasted that Rome’s tax revenues had jumped from 200 million sesterces every year to 340 million thanks to Pompey’s annexation of new territories. He was also bringing to the Treasury a vast quantity of coined money and gold and silver plate. Captured weapons, shields, armor, swords and spears were carried on wagons. There were trophies for every engagement in which Pompey or his lieutenants had been victorious. The polished bronze and steel would have glinted in the sunlight and clattered together, adding a counterpoint to the harsh military music of bands. The crowds would have wished to see Rome’s great bogeyman, Mithridates, in chains. His suicide had made that impossible, but in his place a monumental statue of the king was included in the parade.
On the second day of the Triumph the most distinguished prisoners of war were put on show. This was one of the high points of the ceremony, with the packed citizenry booing the Republic’s humiliated enemies as they walked past only a few feet away. Five of Mithridates’ children were in the procession, and one of his sisters. They were accompanied by the King of Armenia’s wife and son and the King of the Jews, together with captured pirate chiefs. Following them came a huge portrait of Pompey fashioned from pearls.
Finally, Pompey himself appeared in a gem-encrusted chariot; he had a wreath of bay leaves on his head and was dressed in a purple toga decorated with golden stars. A cloak belonging to Alexander the Great hung from his shoulders. His face was covered in red lead, for the victor was supposed to represent Jupiter, king of the gods. A slave also stood in the chariot and whispered in his ear: “Remember that you are human.” Behind the chariot marched columns of soldiers who held sprays of laurel and chanted triumphal songs: they also sang, by ancient tradition, obscene lyrics satirizing their general.
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 of the others did. “As for our dear friend Cato,” he observed to Atticus while the land bill was being debated, “I have as warm a regard for him as you do. The fact remains that with all his patriotism, he can be a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as if he were living in Plato’s Republic instead of Romulus’s cesspool.”
By June the political atmosphere was overheating. The Consul, Metellus Celer, placed all kinds of obstacles in the way of Flavius, who eventually lost his temper and dragged him off to the prison not far from the rear of the Senate House. The Consul preserved his sangfroid and resisted offers of help from other Tribunes. (They could, for example, have vetoed the arrest.) Instead he called a Senate meeting at the prison. Flavius, undaunted, placed himself across the entry to prevent the Senators from going in. The Consul, however, countered this move by having a hole knocked through the wall. AS he had doubtless calculated, public opinion swung decisively in his support. An embarrassed Pompey intervened and called Flavius off. He did not proceed with the bill. This incident marked the end of any possible rapprochement between him and the Senate.
Cicero was not enjoying the situation in which he found himself. His efforts to keep in favor with all sides meant that he had to behave with unaccustomed circumspection and keep his emotions—and his tongue—under control. The only advantage that accrued from his support for the land bill and his growing closeness to Pompey was popularity in an unexpected quarter: as he wrote to Atticus, “those conspirators of the wine table, our goateed young bloods.” Curio, Caelius and other budding populares were pleased with him. He was cheered at the Games and gladiatorial shows “without a single wolf whistle.” Otherwise he took what consolation he could in spending more time with his family and in literary pursuits.