History of Rome (Mommsen) - Roman Portraits

Roman Portraits

Several writers have remarked on Mommsen's ability to interpret personality and character. The following highlights are drawn from Mommsen's renderings of figures of ancient Rome, namely: Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Drusus, Sulla, Pompey, Cato, Caesar, and Cicero.

• Hannibal Barca (247-183). Of Carthage, not of Rome, in fact a sworn enemy of Rome, as the Roman people became acquainted with him. No Punic writer has left us an account of him, but only his 'enemies' whether Greek or Roman. Mommsen tells us, "the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness." It is "true that he hated" and knew "how to hate" and that "a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been less than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents." His father Hamilcar served Carthage as an army general; Hannibal's "youth had been spent in the camp." As a boy on horseback he'd become "a fearless rider at full speed." In his father's army he had performed "his first feats of arms under the paternal eye". In Hispania his father spent years building colonies for Carthage from which to attack Rome; but the son saw his father "fall in battle by his side." Under his brother-in-law Hasdrubal, Hannibal led cavalry with bravery and brilliance; then Hasdrubal was assassinated. By "the voice of his comrades" Hannibal at 29 years took command of the army. "ll agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy." His "inventive craftiness" made him "fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him." He carefully studied the Roman character. "By an unrivalled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of his enemy." He was often seen in disguise. Yet nothing he did at war "may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times." "The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst of times mutinied against him." Following the war Hannibal the statesman served Carthage to reform the city-state's constitution; later as an exile he exercised influence in the eastern Mediterranean. "He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all."

• Scipio Africanus (235-183). His father a Roman general died at war in Hispania; years earlier his son Publius Cornelius Scipio (later Africanus) had saved his life. As then no one offered to succeed to his father's post, the son offered himself. The people's comitia accepted the son for the father, "all this made a wonderful and indelible impression on the citizens and farmers of Rome." Publius Scipio "himself enthusiastic" about others, accordingly "inspired enthusiasm." The Roman Senate acquiesqued to the mere military tribune serving in place of a praetor or consul, i.e., his father. "He was not one of the few who by their energy and iron will constrain the world to adopt and to move in new paths for centuries, or who at any rate grasp the reins of destiny for years till its wheels roll over them." Though he won battles and conquored nations, and became a prominent statesman at Rome, he was not an Alexander or a Caesar. "Yet a special charm lingers around the form of that graceful hero; it is surrounded, as if with a dazzling halo... in which Scipio with mingled credulity and adroitness always moved." His enthusiasm warmed the heart, but he did not forget the vulgar, nor fail to follow his calculations. "ot naïve enough to share the belief of the multitude in his inspirations... yet in secret thoroughly persuaded that he was a man specially favored of the gods." He would accept merely to be an ordinary king, but yet the Republic's constitution applied even to heroes such as him. "o confident of his own greatness that he knew nothing of envy or of hatred, courteously acknowledged other men's merits, and compassionately forgave other men's faults." After his war-ending victory over Hannibal at Zama, he was called Africanus. He was an excellent army officer, a refined diplomat, an accomplished speaker, combining Hellenic culture with Roman. "He won the hearts of soldiers and of women, of his countrymen and of the Spaniards, of his rivals in the senate and of his greater Carthaginian antagonist. His name was soon on every ones lips, and his was the star which seemed destined to bring victory and peace to his country." Yet his nature seemed to contain "strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel." It was said he set "the fashion to the nobility in arogance, title-hunting, and client-making." In his politics Scipio Africanus "sought support for his personal and almost dynastic opposition to the senate in the multitude." No demagogue, however, he remained content to merely be "the first burgess of Rome".

• Tiberius Gracchus (163-133). His maternal grandfather was Scipio Africanus. His father Tiberius Gracchus Major was twice consul, a powerful man at his death in 150. The young widow Cornelia Africana "a highly cultivated and notable woman" declined marriage to an Egyptian king to raise her children. She was "a highly cultivated and notable woman". Her eldest son Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus "in all his relations and views... belonged to the Scipionic circle" sharing its "refined and thorough culture" which was both Greek and Roman. Tiberius "was of a good and moral disposition, of gentle aspect and quiet bearing, apparently fitted for anything rather than for an agitator of the masses." At that time political reform was widely discussed among aristocrats; yet the senate always avoided it. Tiberius declared for reform. Perhaps he was personally motivated by an incident as questor with the Army on campaign in Hispania: there he had escaped a terrible ordeal because of his elite connections. Reformist ideals of this "young, upright and proud man" were nourished by Hellenic rhetoricians. "hen his intentions became known... there was no want of approving voices, and many a public placard summoned the grandson of Africanus to think of the poor people and the deliverance of Italy." In 134 he became a tribune of the people. "The fearful consequences of the previous misgovernment, the political, military, economic, and moral decay of the burgesses, were just at that time naked and open to the eyes of all. ... So Gracchus immediately after entering on office, proposed the enactment of an agrarian law." The land reform was to benefit small holders, to restore prosperity to the "free farmers" of Italy; it concerned rural state lands de facto long held in the possession of wealthy families both of Rome and of Latin allies. His proposed law seemed to garner senate support, but it was effectively vetoed by another tribune acting on behalf of powerful Roman landowners; twice his bill was vetoed. Tiberius Gracchus then turned to the people's assembly, which deposed the offending tribune and itself passed the land reform law.

"Rome about this period was governed by the senate. Anyone who carried a measure of administration against the majority of the senate made a revolution. It was revolution against the spirit of the constitution, when Gracchus submitted the domain question to the people; and revolution also against... the tribunician veto." Too, the people's assembly was a great tumultuous crowd and unfit to pass legislation. Yet senate governance had become so corrupt that a person who would replace it "might benefit the commonwealth more than he injured it. ¶ But such a bold player Tiberius Gracchus was not. He was a tolerably capable, thoroughly well-meaning, conservative patriot, who simply did not know what he was doing." Angry aristocrats from the senate caught and clubbed to death Gracchus; 300 other reformers died with him. The senate then closed ranks, saying that Tiberius Gracchus "had wished to seize the crown."

Yet the land commission mandated by the reform law of Tiberius was allowed to meet and for several years managed to substantially increase the number of small farmers who owned their own land. Scipio Aemilianus (184-129), an in-law and adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus and thus cousin to the Gracchi, played an ambiguous rôle. A good soldier, fine orator, trustworty, and known for steadfast probity, his politics put him in between the aristocracy and the reformers. Against the oligarchy he brought the ballot to criminal proceedings before popular tribunals. Yet he mostly opposed land reforms; "rightly or wrongly, the remedy seemed to him worse than the disease." Eventually on behalf of allied Latin landowners he influenced the termination of the land commission. As a result he, too, was assassinated--probably by a land reformer.

• Gaius Gracchus (154-121). Gaius was the younger brother of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and the second son of Cornelia Africana. Gaius set himself the project of reforming the constitutional order of the Senate and People of Rome.

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• Gaius Marius (157-86). "Son of a poor day-labourer" in an Italian village, Marius was "reared at the plough". He joined the army as soon as he could. Noted for his ability and fine appearance, he served during campaigns in Hispania and by age 23 became an officer. Back home, he planned an army career, but regardless of merit he "could not attain those political offices, which alone led to the higher military posts, without wealth and without connections. The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the Julii." In 115 he served as praetor and in 107 as consul. In Africa he then led an army; serving under him was Sulla, who captured Jugurtha which ended the war. Again Marius became consul, for an unprecedented four consecutive terms (104-101), during which in Germania he led an army to victory. " brave and upright man, who administered justice impartially", he was "uncorruptable." " skillful organizer... an able general, who kept the soldier under discipline at the same time won his affections... looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the proper time." Not a man of "eminent military capacity", he enjoyed "the reputation for such capacity."

" of unparalelled honour among the consulars and the triumphators. But he was none the better fitted on that account for the brilliant circle. His voice remained harsh and loud, and his look wild, as if he still saw before him Libyans or Cimbrians, and not well-bred and perfumed colleagues. ... is want of political culture was unpardonable... what was to be thought of a consul who was so ignorant of constitutional etiquette as to appear in triumphal costume in the senate! In other respects too the plebeian character clung to him. He was not merely--according to aristocratic phraseology--a poor man, but, what was worse, frugal, and a declared enemy of all bribery and corruption. After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond of his cups... he knew not the art of giving feasts, and kept a bad cook. It was likewise awkward that the consular understood nothing but Latin and declined conversation in Greek. ... Thus he remained throughout his life a countryman cast adrift among aristocrats."

Marius, "a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination", started out as no revolutionary. Yet the "hostile attacks of the aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of opponents" where "he speedily found himself elevated" as the new popular leader. "he men of quality acknowledged his services" in gaining crucial military victories. Yet "with the people he was more popular than any one before or after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughnesss; he was called by the multitude a third Romulus." Meanwhile, "the wretched government oppressed the land more heavily than did the barbarians." On Marius, "the first man of Rome, the favorite of the people... devolved the task of once more delivering Rome." His "sensuous passion" was stirred. Yet to this rustic and soldier "the political proceedings of the capital were strange and incongruous: he spoke ill as he commanded well." Firmer he was "in the presence of lances and swords" that amid "applause and hisses". "f he would not deceive the expectations of his party" and "if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs."

Yet his efforts at social reform would end very badly. "He knew neither the art of gaining his antagonists, nor that of keeping his own party in subjection." He stirred the proletariat to unworthy acts beyond the law; although he nobly shrank from the excess, he accepted the results. Once popular, a "gallant man", he slowly came to be seen in a different light, as a "laughing-stock". Later, during his seventh consulship in 86, many of his political opponents were murdered. "He had taken vengeance on the whole genteel pack that embittered his victories and envenomed his defeats". Regretfully Marius at last emerged as "the crackbrained chief of a reckless band of robbers" which earned him "the hatred of the entire nation".

• Livius Drusus (d.91). His father of the same name, acting as tribune but on behalf of the Senate, had sponsored rival programs and "caused the overthrow of Gaius Gracchus." The son also held "strictly conservative views." "He belonged to the circle of the highest nobility and possessed a colossal fortune; in disposition too he was a genuine aristocrat--a man emphatically proud." Yet he followed "the beautiful saying, that nobility implies obligation." He had in earnest turned away from the "frivolity" common to elite society. "rustworthy and strict in morals, he was respected rather than properly beloved" by the common people, "to whom his door and his purse were always open." Later he became tribune; as political events unfolded Drusus became less an antagonist and more the disciple of the late Gaius Gracchus. He championed reforms to remedy the corruption in the courts caused by equite merchants (who then acted as the judex); to this reform he added the grant of Roman citizenship to Italians. After the apparent victory of these reforms in the senate, followed by their repeal, while yet vigorous he was murdered. Following his death the Social War started throughout Italy over citizenship rights.

• Cornelius Sulla (158-78).

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• Pompeius Magnus (106-48). His father was Pompeius Strabo, a consul who earned a triumph in the Social War. Pompey himself came into great public prominence during his 20s under the rule of Sulla. He was neither an "unconditional adherent" nor an "open opponent" of Sulla, who "half in recognition, half in irony" first called Pompey 'the Great'. Sound in body and mind, a good athlete, a skilled rider and fencer, the youthful Pompey had won extraordinary military honors and public acclaim. "Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means corresponded with these unprecedented successes. He was neither a bad nor an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary." An "excellent soldier", he was "without trace of any higher gifts." As commander Pompey was cautious and delivered "the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority". "His integrity was of a rich man... too rich to incur special risks, or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace". His reputation for "integrity and disinterestness" came less from his virtue than from a senate rife with vice. Yet as a landowner he was fair-minded; he did not join "revolting schemes in which the grandess of that age" expanded their domains by infringing on their "humbler neighbors". A good man, "he displayed attachment to his wife and children." He was "the first to depart from the barbarous custom of putting to death the captive kings" of countries fighting Rome. "His 'honest countenance' became almost proverbial." Yet at Sulla's command Pompey quit his beloved wife and then later ordered the execution of soldiers loyal to him, all due to Sulla and politics. He was not cruel, but he was cold. A shy man, "he spoke in public not without embarassment; and generally was angular, stiff, and awkward in intercourse." "For nothing was he less qualified than for a statesman." His aims uncertain, unable to decide on means, short sighted, "he was wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision under a cloak of solemn silence." He often would "deceive himself that he was deceiving others." Like Marius, "Pompeius was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party."

His exalted social position also remained fundamentally ambivalent. Allied to the aristocracy by his consular ancestry and through Sulla, he disliked Sulla personally and worked against the Sullan constitution, and his family gens was of recent vintage and not fully accepted by the nobility. Pompey maintained links to the Populares and joined Caesar in the triumvirate. Yet, to the contrary, he was well suited to associate with the senate oligarchy because his "dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality, his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want of all initiative" and his "mediocrity, so characteristic of the genuine Optimate". An "affinity" existed, "subsisted at all times between Pompeius, burgesses and the senate." Pompeius, however, refused to fit in. "eized with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed with dangerous rapidity and ease", he began to compare himself to Alexander the Great, and far above any senator. "His political position was utterly perverse." He was conflicted; "deeply indignant when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him" he nonetheless "trembled at the mere thought of doing anything unconstitutional." His "much agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradition." Pompey for Mommsen was the "most tiresome and most starched of all artificial great men." He died before his wife and son, when one of his old soliers stabbed him from behind as he stepped ashore in Egypt. "Of all pitiful parts there is none more pitiful than that of passing for more than one really is."

• Cato Uticensis (95-46). His mother's brother was the reformer Livius Drusus. His father's grandfather was the famous censor, Cato the Elder (234-149). Here, Cato (also called 'the Younger') was a rare man among the aristocracy, "a man of the best intentions and of rare devotedness", yet Quixotic and cheerless. Although honourable, steadfast, earnest, and strongly attached "to country and to its hereditary constitution" he possessed little practical understanding. Cato, "dull in intellect and sensuously as well as morally destitute of passion", might have made "a tolerable state accountant." Walking "in the sinful capital as a model citizen and mirror of virtue" he would 'scold' those out of line. His ancestor Cato the Elder worked as a farmer, his anger had made him an orator; wielder of plough and sword, in politics "his narrow, but original and sound common sense ordinarily hit the nail on the head." The younger Cato, however, inspired by the example of his great-grandfather, made a "strange caricature" of him. Formal and philosophical, a follower of the Stoa, the younger Cato would speak in "scholastic wisdom" and appeared as "this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals." Yet like his ancestor, he began "to travel on foot instead of riding, to take no interest, to decline badges of distinction as a soldier", and like the legendary king Romulus to appear shirtless. In "an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully with the multitude." As "the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent and insight, at any rate integrity and courage... he soon became the champion of the Optimate party." He never missed a senate meeting, and "as long as he lived he checked the details of the public budget." Yet unfortunately in politics he simply lacked common sense. Cato's tactics seemed to consist of nothing more than "setting his face against every one who deviated" from the traditional catechism of the aristocracy, which of course worked as much against the Optimates as for them. By his character and his actions this "Don Quixote of the aristocracy" proved the exhaustion of senate politics.

After Caesar's victory at Thapsus ending the civil war, Cato tended to the welfare of the republican remnant at Utica, then took his own life by the sword. "Cato was anything but a great man." Yet he was the only man who "honourably and courageously championed in the last struggle the great republican system doomed to destruction." "Cato has played a greater part in history than many men far superior to him in intellect. It only heightens the deep and tragic significance of his death that he was himself a fool; in truth it is just because Don Quixote is a fool that he is a tragic figure." Yet Cato inspired the republican protest against Caesar's victory, which "tore asunder like gossamer all that so-called constitutional character with which Caesar invested his monarcy", and exposed as hypocritical "the reconciliation of all parties" under the Empire. "The unrelenting warfare which the ghost of the legitimate republic waged for centuries" against the Empire, from Cassius and Brutus to Thrasea and Tacitus, "a warfare of plots and of literature" was Cato's legacy. Soon after his death this "republican opposition" began to "revere as a saint" Cato who in life was frequently a "laughing-stock" and a "scandal". "But the greatest of these marks of respect was the involuntary homage which Caeser rendered to him, when he made an exception in the contemptuous clemency" he offered defeated opponents. Cato alone he pursued even beyond the grave "with that energetic hatred which practical statesmen are wont to feel toward antagonists opposing them from a region of ideas which they regard as equally dangerous and impracticable."

• Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44),

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• Tullius Cicero (106-43). An opportunist, "accostomed to flirt at times with the democrats, at times... with the aristocracy, and to lend his services as an advocate to every influential man under impeachment without distinction of person or party". Wealth and commerce were then "dominant in the courts" and the lawyer Cicero had made himself well accomplished as "the eloquent pleader" and "the courtly and witty champion." He was not an aristocrat, but a novus homo; he belonged to no party, but cultivated connections enough among both optimates and populares. Elected consul in 63, he ducked legal responsibility in the Catilina conspiracy. "As a statesman without insight, idea, or purpose, Cicero figured successively as democrat, as aristocrat, and as a tool of the triumvirate, and was never more than a short-sighted egoist." "He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks, and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din; no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him". In Latin, "his importance rests on his mastery of style". Yet as an author, he was "a dabbler", a "journalist in the worst sense of that term", and "poor beyond all conception in ideas". His letters "reflect the urban or villa life of the world of quality" yet remain in essence "stale and empty". As an orator "Cicero had no conviction and no passion; he was nothing but an advocate". He published his court pleadings; his orations can be "easy and agreeable reading." He used anecdote to excite sentimentality, "to enliven the dry business" of law "by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort". Yet "the serious judge" will find such "advantages of a very dubious value" considering his "want of political discernment in the orations on constitutional questions and of juristic deduction in the forensic addresses, the egotism forgetful of its duty... the dreadful barrenness of thought". Yet as a "mouthpiece" for politicians Cicero "was useful on account of his lawyer's talent of finding a reason, or at any rate words, for everything."

Nonetheless Momsen acknowledges that those works of Cicero which are presented in the "stylistic dialogue" form are "not devoid of merit". De Oratore and other rhetorical writings contain "a store of practical forensic experience and forensic anecdotes of all sorts easily and tastefully set forth, and in fact solve the problem of combining didactic instruction with amusement." Cicero's treatise De Republica presents a then popular idea "that the existing constitution of Rome is substantially the ideal state-organisation sought for by the philosophers." Yet it is "a singular mongrel compound of history and philosophy." Relying on the Greeks for both ideas and literary devices, De Republica contains "comparative originality, inasmuch as the elaboration shows throughout Roman local colouring, and the proud consciousness of political life, which the Roman was certainly entitled to feel as compared with the Greeks." In these dialogues Cicero's fictional advocates are shown gathered, including statesmen from the Scipionic circle, which "furnish a lively and effective framework... for the scientific discussion."