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The aristocracy divided the consulships, praetorships, and quaestorships among themselves, and after the year of office the provincial prizes were then distributed. Of the nature of their government a picture has been left by Cicero, himself one of the senatorial party, and certainly not to be suspected of having represented it as worse than it was in the famous prosecution of Verres.
It was recorded, at any rate, that all the rest save those mentioned should be allowed to return under a general amnesty and with a right to a quarter of their confiscated property; that tribuneships, praetorships and priesthoods should be given to some of them immediately; that Sextus himself should be chosen consul and be appointed augur, should obtain seventeen hundred and fifty myriads of denarii from his paternal estate, and should govern Sicily, Sardinia and Achaea for five years, not receiving deserters nor acquiring more ships nor keeping any garrisons in Italy, but bending his efforts to secure peace on the sea for the peninsula, and sending a stated amount of grain to the people of the City.
For in that unnatural and bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden. Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition men desired praetorships and provinces only as the license to pillage, and government was but the excuse of rapine.
The arena where a man salutes a dummy emperor before a disguised one kills him? The senate, where they buy and sell the consulates and praetorships and guaestorships? The tribunals where justice goes by privilege? The temples where as many gods as there are, Romans yell for sacrifices to enrich the priests?
A debate too arose between Gallus and the Emperor: for Gallus moved "that the magistrates should be henceforth elected but once every five years; that the legates of the legions, who had never exercised the Praetorships, should be appointed Praetors; and that the Prince should nominate twelve candidates every year."
It would be wasted labor to trace minutely the particulars of so miserable a scene, or the motives of the principal actors in it Pompey, bound to Caesar by engagement and conviction, yet jealous of his growing fame, without political conviction of his own, and only conscious that his weight in the State no longer corresponded to his own estimate of his merits Clodius at the head of the starving mob, representing mere anarchy, and nourishing an implacable hate against Cicero Cicero, anxious for his own safety, knowing now that he had made enemies of half the Senate, watching how the balance of factions would go, and dimly conscious that the sword would have to decide it, clinging, therefore, to Pompey, whose military abilities his civilian ignorance considered supereminent Cato, a virtuous fanatic, narrow, passionate, with a vein of vanity, regarding all ways as wrong but his own, and thinking all men who would not walk as he prescribed wicked as well as mistaken the rest of the aristocracy scuffling for the plunder of Egypt, or engaged in other enterprises not more creditable the streets given over to the factions the elections the alternate prize of bribery or violence, and consulates and praetorships falling to men more than half of whom, if Cicero can be but moderately believed, deserved to be crucified.
Nevertheless the number of the ordinary supreme annual magistrates was not enlarged; and there thus devolved on eight magistrates to be annually nominated apart from all else at least twelve special departments to be annually occupied. Of course it was no mere accident, that this deficiency was not covered once for all by the creation of new praetorships.
With these exceptions, the administration fell back into its old condition. The tribunes ceased to agitate. The consulships and the praetorships fell to the candidates whom the Senate supported. Whether the oligarchy had learnt any lessons of caution from the brief political earthquake which had shaken but not overthrown them remained to be seen.
Nevertheless the number of the ordinary supreme annual magistrates was not enlarged; and there thus devolved on eight magistrates to be annually nominated apart from all else at least twelve special departments to be annually occupied. Of course it was no mere accident, that this deficiency was not covered once for all by the creation of new praetorships.
As for the men of high rank, he promised to some of them future consulships and praetorships, some he consoled with other offices and honors, and to all held out hopes of favor by the solicitude he showed to rule with the general good-will; insomuch that upon the death of Maximus one day before his consulship was ended, he made Caninius Revilius consul for that day.
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