RUPTURE BETWEEN THE JOINT RULERS
Even before Pompey’s temporary assumption of the political dictatorship, however, the ruling triumvirate had been reduced to a simple partnership by the death of Crassus in one of the fateful campaigns of Roman history. The conference at Luca in 56 B.C. had given Crassus the governorship of Syria, together with an army thought sufficient to regulate affairs in the East. When he arrived in Syria early in 54 B.C. he found that hostilities had already begun with the Parthians, partly because of Pompey’s failure to arrange a workable peace with the Parthian state. But even Crassus’ burning ambition to become a great conqueror did not prevent him from pausing for months in Asia Minor to despoil a few rich temples and carry out other lucrative schemes, and not until 53 B.C. did he lead his army into the field.
Crassus made the fatal decision to march his army straight across the desert to reach the Parthian forces reportedly poised for flight. This error was matched by an equally significant tactical decision by the Parthians, to dispense entirely with their infantry in favor of heavily armored cavalry. In two successive desert battles at Carrhae and Sinnaca the Roman army of 40,000 was utterly destroyed, less than one-fourth escaping death or capture; and among the slain was Crassus. This signal proof that a well-led Asiatic army on the right terrain was more than a match for the hitherto invincible legions seemed to shake the Roman supremacy throughout the East. But political dissension among the Parthians, plus better Roman leadership in a theater of war quite different from the uncharted desert, enabled the Romans to turn back the Parthian invasion of western Asia Minor and once again stabilize the Roman rule there.
In Rome, meanwhile, the volcano of revolution was again whirling upward its clouds of stupefying smoke. The Romans began to have no longer a soldier or a denarius to be employed against the public foe, no longer a thought of the destinies of nations. One of the most dreadful signs of the times was that the huge national disaster of Carrhae and Sinnaca gave the politicians of that day far less concern than the wretched tumult on the Appian road in which, a couple of months after Crassus, Clodius the partisan leader perished; but it is easily conceivable and almost excusable. The breach between the two regents, long felt as inevitable and often announced as near, was now assuming a terrifying immediacy. Like the boat of the ancient Greek mariners’ tale, the Roman ship of state now found itself between two great rocks moving towards each other. Its crew, expecting at any moment the crash of collision, was paralyzed by nameless dread as they were borne deeper into the whirlpool; and all eyes were fastened there as no one gave a glance to the right or the left.
After Caesar had at the conference of Luca made considerable concessions to Pompey, and the regents had thus placed themselves substantially on an equal footing, their relation was not without the outward appearance of durability—so far as a division of the monarchical power can ever be lasting. It was another question whether the regents, at least for the present, were determined to keep together and mutually to acknowledge without reservation their rank as equals. That this was the case with Caesar, insofar as he had acquired the interval necessary for the conquest of Gaul at the price of equalization with Pompey, has been already set forth. But Pompey was hardly ever, even provisionally, a true partner in the joint enterprise. His was one of those mean and petty natures towards which it is dangerous to practice generosity. To his paltry spirit it appeared certainly a point of prudence to supplant at the first opportunity his reluctantly acknowledged rival, and his mean soul thirsted after retaliation on Caesar for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar’s indulgence.
But while it is probable that Pompey, in keeping with his dull and sluggish nature, never formally consented to let Caesar assume an equal rank, yet the design of breaking up the alliance doubtless grew upon him little by little. At any rate the public, which usually saw through Pompey’s views and intentions better than he did himself, could not be mistaken in thinking that with the death of the beautiful Julia (who died in the bloom of womanhood in the autumn of 54 B.C., and was soon followed to the tomb by her only child) the personal tie between her father and her husband was broken. Caesar attempted to re-establish these ties by asking for himself the hand of Pompey’s only daughter, and offered Octavia, his sister’s grand-daughter, who was now his nearest relative, in marriage to his fellow regent. But Pompey left his daughter to her existing husband Faustus Sulla, the son of Lucius Sulla, and he himself married the daughter of Quintus Metellus Scipio.
The personal breach had unmistakably begun, and it was Pompey who drew back his hand. The populace expected that a political breach would soon follow; but the understanding continued for a time to exist, at least in public affairs. The reason was that Caesar did not wish publicly to dissolve the relation before completing the conquest of Gaul, and Pompey did not wish to dissolve it before the governing authorities and Italy were entirely humbled by his receipt of the dictatorship. It is novel but understandable that under these circumstances the regents supported each other. After the near-disaster of Aduatuca in Gaul in 54 B.C., Pompey lent Caesar one of his Italian legions that had been dismissed on furlough, while Caesar granted his consent and his moral support to Pompey in the repressive measures which the latter took against the stubborn republican opposition.
Only after Pompey had procured at the beginning of 52 B.C. the undivided consulship and an influence in the capital outweighing that of Caesar, and after all the men capable of bearing arms in Italy had tendered their military oath to him personally and in his name, did he resolve to break formally with Caesar as soon as possible. The design quickly became quite apparent. That the prosecutions which followed the tumult on the Appian Way landed with harsh and unerring severity on Caesar’s old democratic partisans might perhaps pass as mere awkwardness. That the new law against electioneering intrigues, which was retroactive to 70 B.C., included also the dubious proceedings in Caesar’s campaign for the consulship might likewise be nothing more, although not a few Caesarians thought that they perceived in it a definite design.
But people could no longer shut their eyes, however willing they might be to do so, when Pompey did not select as his consular colleague his former father-in-law, as was fitting under the circumstances and was demanded in many quarters, but chose his new father-in-law Scipio, a puppet wholly dependent on him. Still less could they ignore it when Pompey got the governorship of the two Spains continued to him for five more years (that is, to 45 B.C.), plus a considerable sum appropriated from the state chest for the payment of his troops—not only without securing for Caesar a like prolongation of command and a similar grant of money, but even while laboring to effect Caesar’s recall before the end of the agreed-upon term.
These encroachments were unmistakably calculated to undermine Caesar’s position and eventually overthrow him. The moment could not be more favorable. Caesar had conceded so much to Pompey at Luca only because Crassus and his Syrian army would necessarily, in the event of any rupture with Pompey, be thrown into Caesar’s scale; for Crassus, who since Sulla’s day had been deeply hostile to Pompey and almost as long politically and personally allied with Caesar, and whose peculiar character would have made him content with being the new king’s banker, could always be counted on by Caesar, who could have no apprehension at all of seeing Crassus confronting him as an ally of his enemies. The catastrophe of June of 53 B.C., by which Crassus and his army perished in Syria, was therefore a terribly severe blow for Caesar also. A few months later the national insurrection in Gaul, just when it had seemed completely subdued, blazed up more violently than ever, and Caesar for the first time was pitted against an equal opponent in the Arvernian king Vercingetorix.
Once again fate had been working for Pompey. Crassus was dead, all Gaul was in revolt, Pompey was practically dictator of Rome and master of the Senate. What might have happened if now, instead of merely intriguing against Caesar, he had compelled the citizens or the Senate to recall Caesar at once! But Pompey never understood how to take advantage of fortune. He heralded the breach clearly enough: already in 52 B.C. his acts left no doubt about it, and in the spring of the following year he openly expressed his intention to break with Caesar. But he did not make the break, and allowed months to slip away unemployed.
But however Pompey might delay, the crisis was incesstantly urged on by the force of circumstances. The impending war was not a struggle between republic and monarchy (for that had been virtually decided years before) but a struggle between Pompey and Caesar for the possession of the crown of Rome. However, neither of the pretenders could have profited by uttering this plain truth, which would merely have driven into the opposing camp all those respectable citizens who desired the continuance of the republic and believed in its possibility. The old battle cries of Gracchus and Drusus, Cinna and Sulla, worn and meaningless as they were, still remained good enough for watchwords in the struggle of the two generals contending for the sole rule; and though for the moment both Pompey and Caesar ranked themselves officially with the so-called popular party, it was a foregone conclusion that Caesar would inscribe on his banner the people and democratic progress, Pompey the aristocracy and the legitimate constitution.
Caesar had no choice. He had from the outset been an earnest democrat. The monarchy as he envisioned it differed more in outward form than in reality from the Gracchan government of the people; and he was too magnanimous and too profound a statesman to conceal his colors and to fight under any other flag than his own. The immediate advantage which this battle cry brought to him was doubtless trifling: it was confined mainly to the circumstance that he was thereby relieved of the inconvenience of directly naming the kingly office, and thus alarming his own adherents and the mass of the lukewarm by that detested word. The democratic banner yielded little further positive gain, since the ideals of Gracchus had been rendered infamous and ridiculous by Clodius. Where was there now (with the possible exception of the Transpadanes) any important group which would have been induced by democratic battle cries to take part in the struggle?
This state of affairs would have decided Pompey’s part in the impending struggle, even if it had not been self-evident that he could enter it only as the general of the legitimate republic. Nature had destined him above all men to be a member of an aristocracy, and nothing but accident and selfish motives had carried him into the democratic camp as a deserter. That he should now revert to his Sullan traditions was not merely fitting, but in every way advantageous. Threadbare as was the democratic cry, the conservative slogan could not but have the more potent effect if it proceeded from the right man. Perhaps the majority, at any rate the best of the citizens, belonged to the constitutional party; and its numerical and moral strength might well influence powerfully, perhaps decisively, the impending struggle of the pretenders.
All that was lacking was a leader. Marcus Cato, its present head, fulfilled the functions of leadership (as he understood them) amid daily peril to his life and perhaps without hope of success. His fidelity to duty deserves respect, but to be the last at a forlorn post is commendable in the soldier, not in the general. He lacked the skill either to organize or to bring into timely action the powerful reserve which had sprung up almost spontaneously in Italy for the party of the overthrown government. For good reason he had never made any pretension to military leadership, on which everything ultimately depended. If instead of this man, who knew not how to act either as party chief or general, a leader of the political and military stature of Pompey should raise the banner of the existing constitution, the citizens of Italy would necessarily flock towards it in crowds, that under it they might help to fight against the kingship of Caesar if not for the kingship of Pompey.
To this was added another consideration at least as important. It was characteristic of Pompey, even when he had formed a resolve, not to be able to find his way to its execution. While he knew perhaps how to conduct war but certainly not how to declare it, the Catonian party, although assuredly unable to conduct it, was able and most willing to supply grounds for the war against the impending monarchy. According to Pompey’s intention, he would keep himself aloof and in his peculiar way now talk as though he would immediately depart for his Spanish provinces, now make preparations as though he would set out to take over the command on the Euphrates. Meanwhile the legitimate governing board, the Senate, was to break with Caesar, declare war against him, and entrust the conduct of it to Pompey. Then, yielding to the general desire, he was to come forward as the protector of the constitution against demagogic-monarchical plots, as an upright man and champion of the existing order of things against the profligates and anarchists, as the duly installed general of the Senate against the Imperator of the street, and so once more save his country.
Thus Pompey gained by the alliance with the conservatives a second army (in addition to his personal adherents) and a suitable war manifesto—advantages, to be sure, which were purchased at the high price of combining with those who were in principle opposed to him. Of the countless evils involved in this coalition, the only immediate one (though a very grave one) was that Pompey surrendered the power of commencing hostilities against Caesar when and how he pleased, and made himself dependent on all the accidents and caprices of an aristocratic corporation.
Thus the republican opposition, after having been obliged for years to play the mere spectator with no more voice than a whisper, was now brought back onto the political stage by the impending rupture between the regents. It consisted primarily of the men rallied round Cato, who were resolved in any case to struggle for the republic and against the monarchy, and the sooner the better. The pitiful outcome of the attempt made in 56 B.C. had taught them that by themselves they were in a position neither to conduct war nor even to begin it. It was known to everyone that while the entire Senate was with a few isolated exceptions averse to monarchy, the majority would restore the oligarchic government only if it might be restored without danger—in which case there would be a long time to wait.
Faced by the regents on the one hand, and on the other by this indolent majority which above all things desired peace at any price, and which was averse to any decided action and most of all to a rupture with one or other of the regents, the only possible way for Cato’s group to restore the old rule lay in a coalition with the less dangerous of the rulers. If Pompey acknowledged the oligarchic constitution and offered to fight for it against Caesar, the republican opposition must recognize him as its general, and in alliance with him compel the timid majority to a declaration of war. That Pompey was scarcely earnest in his fidelity to the constitution could indeed escape nobody. But undecided as he was in everything, he had by no means arrived at Caesar’s clear and firm conviction that the first business of the new monarch must be to sweep away once and for all the oligarchic lumber. In any event the war would train a really republican army and really republican generals. After the victory over Caesar there would be more favorable prospects of setting aside not merely one of the monarchs, but the monarchy itself. Desperate as was the cause of the oligarchy, Pompey’s offer to become its ally was the most favorable arrangement possible for it.
The alliance between Pompey and the Catonian party was concluded with comparative rapidity. Already during the dictatorship of Pompey a remarkable rapprochement had taken place between them. His whole behavior in the Milonian crisis, his abrupt repulse of the mob that offered him the dictatorship, his distinct declaration that he would accept this office only from the Senate, his unrelenting severity against all disturbers of the peace and especially against the ultrademocrats, the surprising complaisance with which he treated Cato and those who shared Cato’s views, appeared as much calculated to please the men of order as to offend Caesar. On their side Cato and his followers, instead of combating with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship on Pompey, had made it their own with but trifling changes of form, so that Pompey received the undivided consulship primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato.
While the Catonian party and Pompey had thus at least a tacit understanding as early as the beginning of 52 B.C., the alliance was in effect formally concluded when the consular elections for 51 B.C. went not to Cato himself, but (along with an insignificant man belonging to the Senate majority) to one of Cato’s most decided adherents, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Marcellus was no furious zealot and still less a genius, but a steadfast and strict aristocrat, just the right man to declare war if war was to be begun with Caesar. Under the circumstances this election, so surprising after the recent repression of the republican opposition, can hardly have occurred without the consent or at least the tacit permission of the regent of Rome. Slowly and clumsily, as was his wont, but steadily Pompey moved toward the rupture.
On the other hand it was not Caesar’s intention to fall out with Pompey at this moment. He could not indeed seriously desire to share the ruling power permanently with any colleague, least of all with a second-rater like Pompey. Beyond doubt he had long resolved after the conquest of Gaul to take the sole power for himself, if need be by force of arms. But a man like Caesar, in whom the officer was thoroughly subordinate to the statesman, could not fail to perceive that regulating the political organism by force of arms also disorganizes it deeply and often permanently. Therefore he could not but seek to solve the difficulty, if at all possible, without open civil war. And even if civil war were unavoidable, he could not wish to be driven to it when the rising of Vercingetorix in Gaul, imperiling all that had been obtained, occupied him without interruption from the winter of 53-52 B.C. to the winter of 52-51 B.C., and when Pompey and the constitutional party were dominant in Italy.
Accordingly he sought to preserve relations with Pompey and to attain, by peaceful means if at all possible, to the consulship for 48 B.C. that had already been promised to him at Luca. If after a conclusive settlement of Celtic affairs he should then be placed at the head of the state, the decided superiority which he held over Pompey even more as a statesman than as a general might enable him to outmaneuver the latter in the senate house and in the Forum without special difficulty. Perhaps it was possible to find for his awkward, vacillating, and arrogant rival some sort of honorable and influential position where he might be content to sink into obscurity. The repeated attempts of Caesar to keep himself related to Pompey by marriage may have been designed to pave the way for such a solution, and to settle the old quarrel through the succession of offspring inheriting the blood of both competitors. The republican opposition would then remain without a leader and therefore probably quiet, and peace would be preserved.
If this should not be successful, and if there should be (as was certainly possible) a necessity for resorting to arms, Caesar would as consul in Rome dispose of the compliant majority of the Senate. He could then impede or perhaps frustrate the coalition of the Pompeians and the republicans, and conduct the war far more suitably and more advantageously than if now as proconsul of Gaul he gave orders to march against the Senate and its general. Certainly the success of this plan depended on Pompey being good-natured enough to let Caesar still obtain the consulship for 48 B.C. assured to him at Luca. But even if it failed, it would have the advantage that Caesar had given practical and repeated evidence of the most yielding disposition. On the one hand time would thus be gained for attaining his objectives in Gaul, while on the other his opponents would be left with the odium of initiating the rupture and consequently the civil war—which was of the utmost importance for Caesar with respect to the majority of the Senate and the mercantile party, and even more with regard to his own soldiers.
On these views he acted. To be sure, through new levies in the winter of 52-51 B.C. he increased the number of his legions to eleven, including the one borrowed from Pompey. But at the same time he expressly and openly approved of Pompey’s conduct during the dictatorship and the restoration of order in the capital, rejected the warnings of officious friends as calumnies, reckoned every day by which he succeeded in postponing the conflict a gain, overlooked whatever could be overlooked and bore whatever could be borne. He adhered immovably only to one decisive demand: that when his governorship expired at the end of 49 B.C. he should have his second consulship, permissible under the law and promised to him by his colleague.
This demand became the battlefield of the diplomatic war which now began. If Caesar were compelled either to resign his office of governor before the last day of December, 49 B.C., or to postpone the assumption of the consulship in the capital beyond January 1st, there would be a gap between the governorship and the consulate when he would be without office and consequently liable to criminal impeachment—which according to law could not be brought against one who was in office. In such event the public had good reason to prophesy for him the fate of Milo, because Cato had for long been ready to impeach him and Pompey was a more than doubtful protector.
To attain that object Caesar’s opponents had a very simple device. According to the election laws every candidate for the consulship was obliged to appear personally before the presiding magistrate for his name to be inscribed in the official list of candidates before the election—that is, half a year before entering an office. It had probably been taken for granted in the conferences at Luca that Caesar would be released from this obligation, which was purely formal and was very often dispensed with. But the decree to that effect had not yet been issued, and, as Pompey now controlled the official machinery, Caesar depended in this respect on the good will of his rival.
Pompey incomprehensibly abandoned this completely secure position of his own accord. With his consent and during his dictatorship the personal appearance of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law. However, when the new election laws were issued soon afterwards, the obligation of candidates to appear personally was repeated in general terms, and no exception was added in favor of those exempted by earlier legislation. Strictly speaking, the privilege granted to Caesar was canceled by the later general law. Caesar complained, and the requisite clause was subsequently added but not confirmed by special decree of the people, so that this enactment by mere insertion could only be looked on de jure as null and void. Where Pompey, therefore, might have simply stuck to the law, he preferred first to make a spontaneous concession, then to recall it, and lastly to cloak this recall in a most disloyal manner.
While in this way the shortening of Caesar’s governorship was attempted indirectly, the regulations as to governorships issued at the same time sought the same object directly. The ten years for which the governorship had been granted to Caesar, in the last instance through the law proposed by Pompey himself together with Crassus, ran according to the usual mode of reckoning from March 1, 59 B.C., to the last day of February, 49 B.C. However, according to the earlier practice, the proconsul or propraetor had the right of taking over his provincial post immediately after the termination of his consulship or praetorship. Thus the successor of Caesar was to be nominated not from the urban magistrates of 50 B.C., but from those of 49 B.C., who therefore could not take over before January 1st, 48 B.C. So far Caesar still had during the last ten months of the year 49 B.C. a right to his command, not on the ground of the Pompeio-Licinian law, but according to the old rule that a command with a set term still continued after its expiration until the arrival of the successor. But now the new legislation of 52 B.C. granted the governorships not to the outgoing consuls and praetors, but to those who had served five or more years ago. This interval between the civil magistracy and the command, instead of the previous immediate sequence, made it no longer difficult to fill every legally vacant governorship immediately, so that the change of command for the Gallic provinces could take place on March 1, 49 B.C., instead of January 1 of 48 B.C.
The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompey are mixed in these arrangements in a remarkable manner with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition of the republican party. Years before these legal weapons could be used they had been duly prepared, on the one hand to compel Caesar, by sending his successors, to resign his command on the day when his term under Pompey’s own law expired (that is, on March 1), and on the other hand, if Caesar declined to resign, to enable the Senate to treat as null and void any votes cast for him in the elections. Caesar, not in a position to hinder these moves in the game, kept silent and let things take their own course.
Gradually the slow constitutional procedure unfolded itself. According to custom the Senate had to deliberate on the governorships of the year 49 B.C., so far as they went to former consuls, at the beginning of 51 B.C., and so far as they went to former praetors, at the beginning of 50 B.C. That earlier deliberation gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors for the two Gauls in the Senate, and thus the first occasion for open collision between the constitutional party supported by Pompey and the senatorial supporters of Caesar. The consul Marcus Marcellus accordingly introduced a proposal to give the two Gallic provinces as of March 1, 49 B.C., to the two consulars who were to be provided with governorships for that year.
The long-repressed indignation burst forth in a torrent once the sluice was opened, and everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar came forth in open discussion. For them it was a settled point that the right granted Caesar by exceptional law to announce his candidacy for the consulship in absentia had been canceled by a subsequent decree of the people, and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid. The Senate should in their opinion instruct this magistrate, now that the subjugation of Gaul was completed, to discharge immediately the soldiers who had served out their time. The cases where Caesar had bestowed citizenship rights and established colonies in Upper Italy were described by them as unconstitutional. In confirmation of this view Marcellus ordained that a respected senator of the Caesarian colony of Comum, who was entitled to lay claim to Roman citizenship even if his city had only Latin rights, should receive the punishment of scourging, which was admissible only in the case of noncitizens.
Caesar’s supporters (among whom the most notable was Gaius Vibius Pansa, formerly an officer in Caesar’s army and now tribune of the people) affirmed in the Senate that both equity and the state of Gallic affairs demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled ahead of time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command along with the consulship. Beyond doubt they pointed out that a few years earlier Pompey had in the same way combined the Spanish governorships with the consulship; that even at the present time, besides the important office of superintending the supply of food to the capital, he held the supreme command in Italy in addition to the Spanish; and that in fact all the men of Italy capable of bearing arms had been sworn in by him and had not yet been released from their oath.
The process began to take shape, but by no means rapidly. The majority of the Senate, seeing the breach approaching, allowed no sitting capable of issuing a decree to take place for months, and further months were lost through the solemn procrastination of Pompey. At length the latter broke the silence and ranged himself, in his usual reserved and vacillating fashion but plainly enough, on the side of the constitutional party against his former ally. He summarily rejected the demand of the Caesarians that their master should be allowed to combine the consulship and the proconsulship. This demand, he added with blunt coarseness, seemed to him no better than if a son should offer to flog his father. He also approved in principle the proposal of Marcellus, insofar as he too declared that he would not allow Caesar directly to attach the consulship to the proconsulship.
However, he also hinted (although without making any binding declaration on the point) that they would perhaps grant Caesar admission to the elections for 49 B.C. without requiring a personal appearance, as well as the continuance of his governorship at the utmost to November 13, 49 B.C. But in the meantime the incorrigible procrastinator consented to the postponement of the nomination of successors to the last day of February, 50 B.C., which Caesar’s representatives had asked probably on the ground of a clause of the Pompeio-Licinian law forbidding senatorial discussion of successors before the beginning of a magistrate’s last year of office.
To this end the decrees of the Senate were issued on September 29, 51 B.C. The filling of the Gallic governorships was placed on the agenda for March 1, 50 B.C. But already the Senate was attempting to break up the army of Caesar (just as had formerly been done by decree of the people with the army of Lucullus) by inducing his veterans to apply to the Senate for their discharge. Caesar’s supporters canceled these decrees, as far as they constitutionally could, by their tribunician veto. But Pompey distinctly declared that the magistrates were bound unconditionally to obey the Senate, and that intercessions and similar antiquated formalities would produce no change.
The aristocratic party, whose organ Pompey now made himself, thus betrayed its intention, in the event of a victory, of revising the constitution to remove everything which had even the semblance of popular freedom. Indeed, this was doubtless the reason why it did not avail itself of the comitia at all in its attacks against Caesar. The coalition between Pompey and the constitutional party was thus formally proclaimed, and sentence was evidently already passed on Caesar, with the date of its issuance simply postponed. The elections for the following year proved thoroughly adverse to him.
During these party maneuvers of his antagonists preparatory to war, Caesar had succeeded in quelling the Gallic insurrection and restoring peace in the whole subject territory. As early as the summer of 51 B.C., under the convenient pretext of defending the frontier but obviously because the legions in Gaul began to be unnecessary there, he moved one of them to northern Italy. He could not avoid perceiving now, if he had not earlier, that he would not be able to avoid drawing the sword against his fellow citizens. Nevertheless, as it was highly desirable to leave the legions for a further time in barely pacified Gaul, he still sought to procrastinate; and being well acquainted with the Senate majority’s extreme love of peace, he did not abandon the hope of still restraining them from declaring war despite the pressure from Pompey.
He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might for the present avoid open variance with the supreme governing board. In the spring of 50 B.C. the Senate upon Pompey’s suggestion requested that Pompey and Caesar each furnish a legion for the impending Parthian war, and in accordance with this resolution Pompey demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him some years before, so as to send it also to Syria. Caesar complied with the double demand, because neither the opportuneness of the senatorial decree nor the justice of Pompey’s demand could in themselves be disputed, and keeping within the bounds of the law and of formal loyalty was more important to Caesar than a few thousand soldiers. The two legions came without delay and placed themselves at the disposal of the government. However, instead of sending them to the Euphrates, the latter kept them at Capua in readiness for Pompey; and the public once more had the opportunity of comparing Caesar’s conciliatory efforts with his opponent’s perfidious preparation for war.
For the discussions with the Senate Caesar had succeeded in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many outstanding profligates of this epoch. He was unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness. He was also unsurpassed in the dissoluteness of his life, in his talent for borrowing (his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces) and in his moral and political want of principle. He had previously offered himself to be bought by Caesar and had been rejected. The talent which he thereafter displayed in his attacks on Caesar induced the latter to buy him up: the price was high, but the commodity was worth the money.
In the first months of his tribunate Curio had played the independent republican, and thundered against both Caesar and Pompey. He cashed in with rare skill on the apparently impartial position which this gave him, when in March of 50 B.C. the proposal for filling the Gallic governorships for the next year came up anew for discussion in the Senate. He expressed complete approval of the decree, but asked that it should at the same time be extended to Pompey and his extraordinary commands. His arguments—that a constitutional state of things could be brought about only by doing away with all exceptional positions, that Pompey as merely entrusted by the Senate with the proconsulship could still less than Caesar refuse obedience to it, and that the removal of but one of the two generals would only increase the danger to the constitution—carried complete conviction to superficial politicians and to the public at large. Further, Curio’s declaration that he intended to prevent any one-sided proceedings against Caesar by the veto constitutionally belonging to him met with much approval in and out of the Senate.
Caesar at once consented to Curio’s proposal and offered to resign his governorship and command at any moment, provided Pompey would do the same. (He might safely do so, for Pompey without his Italo-Spanish command was no longer formidable.) Pompey for that same reason could not avoid refusing. His reply—that Caesar must first resign, and that he meant speedily to follow the example thus set—was still more unsatisfactory in that he did not even specify a definite date for his retirement. Again the decision was delayed for months, as Pompey and the Catonians, perceiving the dubious humor of the majority of the Senate, did not venture to bring Curio’s proposal to a vote. Caesar employed the summer in pacifying the regions which he had conquered, in holding a great review of his troops on the Scheldt, and in making a triumphal march through the province of North Italy, which was entirely devoted to him. Autumn found him in Ravenna, the southern frontier town of his province.
At length the vote on Curio’s proposal could no longer be delayed, and it yielded a signal defeat of the party of Pompey and Cato. By a margin of 370 to 20 the Senate resolved that the proconsuls of Spain and Gaul should both be called upon to resign, and with boundless joy the good citizens of Rome heard the glad news of Curio’s achievement. Pompey was thus recalled by the Senate no less than Caesar; but while Caesar was ready to comply with the command, Pompey flatly refused obedience. The presiding consul Gaius Marcellus, cousin of Marcus Marcellus and like the latter belonging to the Catonian party, addressed a severe lecture to the servile senatorial majority; it was certainly vexatious to be beaten in their own camp, and beaten by a phalanx of poltroons. But where was victory to come from under a leader who, instead of bluntly dictating his orders to the senators, resorted in his later years once more to the instructions of a professor of rhetoric, that with rekindled eloquence he might encounter the youthful vigor and brilliant talents of Curio?
The coalition, thus defeated in the Senate, was in a most painful position. The Catonian section, which had undertaken to push matters to a rupture and to carry the Senate along with them, now saw their vessel vexingly stranded on the sandbanks of the indolent majority. Their leaders had to listen to the bitterest reproaches from Pompey. He pointed out emphatically and with entire justice the dangers of the seeming peace; and though it depended on himself alone to cut the knot by rapid action, his allies knew very well that they could never expect this from him, and that it was for them to fulfill their promise of bringing matters to a crisis. After the champions of the constitution and of senatorial government had already declared the constitutional rights of the citizens and of the tribunes of the people to be meaningless formalities, they now found themselves driven by necessity to treat the constitutional decisions of the Senate itself in a similar manner and, as the legitimate government would not let itself be saved with its own consent, to save it against its will. This was nothing new; both Sulla and Lucullus had been obliged to carry every energetic resolution conceived in the interest of the government with a high hand irrespective of it, just as Cato and his friends now proposed to do. The machinery of the constitution was in fact utterly obsolete, and the Senate was now (as the comitia had been for centuries) nothing but a worn-out wheel slipping constantly out of its track.
It was rumored in October of 50 B.C. that Caesar had moved four legions from Transalpine into Cisalpine Gaul and stationed them at Placentia. This transfer of troops was within the prerogative of the governor; Curio moreover proved to the Senate the utter groundlessness of the rumor; and that body rejected the proposal of the consul Gaius Marcellus to give Pompey orders to march against Caesar on the strength of it. Yet Marcellus, in concert with the two consuls elected for 49 B.C. who likewise belonged to the Catonian party, by virtue of their own official authority requested the general to put himself at the head of the two legions stationed at Capua, and to call the Italian militia to arms at his discretion. A more casual authorization for beginning a civil war can hardly be conceived, but people had no longer time to trouble over such secondary matters, and Pompey accepted the mission. The military preparations began, and Pompey left the capital in December of 50 B.C. in order personally to forward them.
Caesar had completely attained his object of putting the onus for starting the civil war on his opponents. He had, while himself keeping on legal ground, compelled Pompey to declare war, and to declare it not as representative of the legitimate authority, but as general of an openly revolutionary minority of the Senate which had overawed the majority. This result was not to be reckoned of slight importance, although the masses were not deceived for a moment as to the fact that the war concerned other things than questions of formal law. Now that war had been declared, it was to Caesar’s interest to strike as soon as possible. His opponents were just beginning to mobilize, and even the capital was not occupied. In ten or twelve days an army three times as strong as Caesar’s troops in Upper Italy could be collected at Rome; but it might not be impossible to surprise the undefended city, or even perhaps by a rapid winter campaign to seize all Italy, and thus preempt the best resources of his opponents before they could be brought to bear.
The sagacious and energetic Curio, who after resigning his tribunate had immediately gone to Caesar at Ravenna, vividly represented this state of affairs to his master—though Caesar hardly needed convincing that longer delay now could only be injurious. However, to forestall any complaints by his antagonists he had brought no troops to Ravenna itself. Thus he could do nothing for the present but order his whole force to set out posthaste; and he had to wait till at least the one legion stationed in Upper Italy reached Ravenna. Meanwhile he sent a communication to Rome which by its extreme submissiveness still further compromised his opponents in public opinion, and perhaps even, by his show of hesitation, tempted them to slacken their preparations against him.
In this communication Caesar dropped all the counter-demands which he formerly made on Pompey, and offered both to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, and to dismiss eight of his ten legions, at the term fixed by the Senate. He declared himself content if the Senate would grant him either the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria with one legion, or that of Cisalpine Gaul alone with two, not until his accession to the consulship, but only until after the close of the consular elections for 48 B.C. Thus he consented to those proposals which at the beginning of the discussions the senatorial party and even Pompey himself had pronounced satisfactory, and showed himself ready to remain in a private position between his election to the consulship and his accession to office.
Whether Caesar was in earnest in these astonishing concessions; whether he had confidence that he would be able to win against Pompey even after granting so much; or whether he reckoned that his opponents had already gone too far to find in these conciliatory proposals more than a proof that Caesar regarded his own cause as lost—can no longer be determined with certainty. The likelihood is that Caesar committed the fault of playing too bold a game, rather than the worse fault of promising something he did not intend to perform. If, strangely enough, his proposals had been accepted, he would probably have made good his word.
Curio undertook once more to represent his master in the lion’s den. In three days he made the journey from Ravenna to Rome. When the new consuls Lucius Lentulus and Gaius Marcellus the younger assembled the Senate for the first time on January 1, 49 B.C., Curio delivered in a full meeting the letter addressed by the general to the Senate. In Curio’s absence, the leadership of the Caesarian party in Rome had devolved upon the tribunes Marcus Antonius [Mark Antony], well known to the city gossip-chroniclers as Curio’s friend and accomplice in all his follies, but also as a brilliant cavalry officer in the Egyptian and Gallic campaigns, and Quintus Cassius, Pompey’s former quaestor. Both insisted on the immediate reading of the dispatch. The grave and clear words in which Caesar set forth, with all the irresistible force of truth, the imminence of civil war, the general wish for peace, the arrogance of Pompey, and his own yielding disposition; the proposals for compromise whose moderation doubtless surprised his own partisans; the distinct declaration that this was the last time that he should offer his hand for peace—all these made the deepest impression.
In spite of the dread inspired by the numerous soldiers of Pompey who flocked into the capital, the sentiment of the majority was so unmistakable that the consuls did not dare to let it find expression. Regarding Caesar’s renewed proposal that both generals resign their commands simultaneously, regarding all the conciliatory suggestions in his letter, and regarding the proposal made by Marcus Caelius Rufus and Marcus Calidius that Pompey be urged to depart immediately for Spain, the consuls refused to permit a vote—as in their capacity of presiding officers they were entitled to do. Even the proposal to defer a decision until the Italian levy was called up and could protect the Senate—made by Marcus Marcellus, who although a vehement partisan was simply not so blind to military realities as his party—was not allowed to be brought to a vote. Pompey let it be known through his usual mouthpiece, Quintus Scipio, that he was determined to take up the cause of the Senate now or never, and that he would let it drop if they delayed longer. The consul Lentulus said flatly that even the decision of the Senate was no longer controlling, and that if it should persevere in its cowardice, he would himself act and with his powerful friends take the necessary steps.
Thus overawed, the majority decreed what was commanded. Caesar was ordered at a definite and not distant day to give up Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul to Marcus Servilius Nonianus, and to dismiss his army, failing which he should be regarded a traitor. When the tribunes of Caesar’s party made use of their right of veto against this resolution, not only were they (as they at least asserted) threatened in the senate house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers, and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves’ clothing from the capital: the sufficiently overawed Senate also treated their constitutional interferences as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger, and in the usual forms called the whole citizenry to take up arms and all magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves at the head of the armies.
Now it was enough. When Caesar was informed by the tribunes who had fled to his camp of the reception which his proposals had met in the capital, he called together the soldiers of the thirteenth legion, which meanwhile had arrived from its cantonments near Tergeste (Trieste) at Ravenna, and unfolded before them the state of things. It was not merely the man of genius versed in the knowledge of men’s hearts, whose brilliant eloquence shone forth in this gripping crisis of his own and the world’s destiny. It was not even the generous and victorious commander-in-chief addressing soldiers whom he himself had called to arms, and who for eight years had followed his banners with daily increasing enthusiasm. There spoke, above all, the energetic and consistent statesman, who had now for nine-and-twenty years defended the cause of freedom in good times and bad; who had braved for it the daggers of assassins and the executioners of the aristocracy, the swords of the Germans and the waves of the unknown ocean, without ever yielding or wavering; who had torn to pieces the Sullan constitution, overthrown the rule of the Senate, and furnished the defenseless and unarmed democracy with protection and arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke not to the Roman public, whose republican enthusiasm had been long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns and villages of Northern Italy, who still felt freshly and purely the mighty influence of the thought of civic freedom; who were still capable of fighting and dying for ideals; who had themselves received for their country in a revolutionary way from Caesar the citizenship which the Roman government had refused; whom Caesar’s fall would leave once more at the mercy of the fasces, and who already possessed practical proofs of how the oligarchy proposed to use these against the Transpadanes.
Such were the listeners before whom such an orator pointed out the thanks which the nobility were preparing for the general and his army in return for the conquest of Gaul; the contemptuous setting aside of the comitia; the overawing of the Senate; the sacred duty of protecting with armed hand the tribunate of the people wrested five hundred years ago by their fathers arms in hand from the nobility, and of keeping the ancient oath, which their ancestors had sworn for themselves as for their children’s children, that they would man by man stand firm even unto death for the tribunes of the people. And when he, the leader and general of the popular party, summoned the soldiers of the people, now that conciliatory means had been exhausted and concession had reached its utmost limits, to follow him in the last, the inevitable, the decisive struggle against the equally hated and despised, equally perfidious and incapable, and in fact ludicrously incorrigible aristocracy, not an officer or a soldier could hold back. The order was given for the march. At the head of his vanguard Caesar crossed the narrow brook separating his province from Italy, which the constitution forbade the proconsul of Gaul to pass. When after nine years’ absence he trod once more the soil of his native land, he trod at the same time the path of revolution. “The die was cast.”