To most Romans, however, the war against Spartacus had been an embarrassment. Compared to Pompey’s achievement in slaughtering thousands of tribesmen in a far-off provincial war, Crassus’ rescue act in Rome’s backyard was something to forget. This is why, even though both men were voted laurel wreaths, Crassus had to be satisfied with a second-class parade, touring the streets of Rome not in a chariot but on foot. No pavement-pounding for Pompey, of course. Nothing but the best for the people’s hero. While Pompey, preening like a young Alexander, rode in a chariot pulled by four white horses, his trains of loot and prisoners snaking ahead of him through the streets, his adoring fans going wild, Crassus could only watch, and fume.
All the same, he was careful not to let his resentment show. Cheering crowds, however gratifying in themselves, were only means to an end, and that end, for Crassus, was always the substance of power. Infinitely more than a triumph, he wanted the consulship. With elections fast approaching, he performed a characteristically adroit somersault by suggesting to his great rival that they run on a joint ticket. Pompey, as nervous of Crassus’ political skills as Crassus was of Pompey’s popularity, at once agreed. Both men were duly elected unopposed.
Pompey was thirty-six when he became his country’s head of state, well below the minimum age set by Sulla. Uniquely for a consul, he had never even been a senator. Nervous about making gaffes, he had to ask a friend to write him a bluffer’s guide to the Senate House. Even so, for all his inexperience, Pompey was not the man to go tiptoeing around. Dash was what had raised him to the pinnacle of military glory, and dash was what he brought to the battlefields of politics. No sooner had he become consul than he introduced a bill to unmuzzle the tribunate and restore to it all the ancient privileges abolished by Sulla. The cornerstone of the dead dictator’s legislation was thereby casually demolished, and a colourful, and potentially destabilising, element restored to the Republic’s political life. The crowds, who had been demanding just such a measure for almost a decade, went delirious once more.
This time round, however, Crassus shared equally in their applause. Not wishing to miss out on the credit for giving the people back their ancient rights, he had been careful to co-sponsor the reform. Even Catulus, sensing the way the wind was blowing, had withdrawn his opposition. Not that this implied senatorial approval of Pompey. Far from it. His greatness, and the irregular nature of his consulship, remained deeply offensive to the traditionalist leaders of the Senate. This enabled Crassus, whose own consulship was entirely legal, to present himself as their champion. As he was always happiest doing, he chose to hedge his bets. With one hand he splashed out on huge public banquets and free supplies of grain for the poor, while with the other he poured poison into his fellow senators’ ears, abusing Pompey as a dangerous demagogue and manoeuvring to block off any further crowd-pleasing measures. As a result, rather than working together for the good of the Republic, as consuls were supposed to do, Pompey and Crassus were soon openly at each other’s throat.
Nothing excited the crowds in an arena more than to see a duel between two gladiators armed with different weapons and skills. The most popular form of combat set a swordsman, magnificently armoured with breastplate and helmet, against a nimble-footed trident-carrier, whose aim was to entangle the swordsman in the meshes of a net. Pompey and Crassus provided a similar spectacle: two opponents so different, yet so evenly matched that neither could establish an advantage over the other. Rather than providing the Romans with entertainment, however, the duel shocked and disturbed them. Slaves might fight to the death, but not the consuls of the Roman people. A gladiator might slash the throat of a defeated opponent, but for one of the two heads of state to finish off his fellow was an affront to every ideal of the Republic. Ultimately, Pompey and Crassus seem to have realised that they were both being equally damaged by their feud. Towards the end of their year in office, as they were presiding at a public assembly in the Forum, a citizen suddenly interrupted them and asked for permission to relate a dream. It was granted. ‘Jupiter,’ the citizen announced, ‘appeared to me, and told me to announce in the Forum that the consuls should not lay down their office until they have become friends.’40 There was a long pause. Then Crassus crossed to Pompey and took his hand. He praised his rival. The two were reconciled.
The episode sounds suspiciously like a put-up job, but that makes it no less significant. A decade after Sulla’s death, the idea that anyone might repeat what he had done, and establish a primacy over the state, still filled the Romans with horror. Powerful as Pompey and Crassus both were, neither could afford to be seen as more powerful than the other. This was the lesson that the Republic, even as it instilled in its citizens the desire to be the best, still insisted upon. Achievement was worthy of praise and honour, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state. However great a citizen might become, however great he might wish to become, the truest greatness of all still belonged to the Roman Republic itself.
A BANQUET OF CARRION
The Proconsul and the Kings
To the Romans, it was the intoxicating quality of power that made it so dangerous. To command the affairs of one’s fellow citizens and to lead them into war, these were awesome responsibilities, capable of turning anybody’s head. After all, what else had the Republic been founded upon if not this single great perception – that the taste of kingly authority was addictive and corrupting? Except, of course, that with Rome now the mistress of the world and the arbiter of nations, the authority of her consuls far exceeded any king’s. All the more reason, then, to insist on the checks that had always hedged about their office.
And yet – the growing extent of the Republic’s reach confronted the Romans with a dilemma. Now that they were the citizens not of a small city state but of a superpower, the demands on their attention appeared limitless. Wars flared up everywhere. The more distant and intractable the enemy, the greater the logistical demands upon the consuls. In extreme circumstances, this left the Senate with little choice but to appoint a magistrate who could take their place, who could be, as the Romans put it, ‘pro consule’. As the Republic’s empire expanded throughout the second century BC so recourse to proconsuls had become ever more common. By the nature of their duties, they might find themselves campaigning for a period far longer than the conventional single year. Pompey, for instance, had spent five years in Spain. The war was duly won, but not without raising conservative hackles back in Rome. Pompey’s grandstanding only confirmed the Senate in its distaste for extravagant commissions of proconsular power. The situation in Spain had been desperate, but elsewhere, if Rome’s interests were not immediately threatened, then senators might prefer to tolerate any amount of low-level anarchy rather than grant one of their peers a licence to clear it up.
Such was the situation with the province of Asia. There, the war against Mithridates had left a legacy of misery and chaos. The cities groaned under punitive exactions; the social fabric was nearing collapse; along the frontier, petty princelings snarled and snapped. Over the wounds of the ruined province Roman flies buzzed eagerly, not only ambitious young officers like Julius Caesar, but also the agents of the publicani, ruined by Mithridates, now drawn back by the scent of fresh blood. Despite everything, Asia remained Rome’s richest province – and this was precisely what prevented the Senate from imposing an equitable settlement on the region. Who could be trusted to administer it? No one had forgotten the last proconsul appointed to deal with trouble in the East. Even over his own supporters, Sulla cast a warning shadow.