was able to effect a junction with this force and descended into the plain of Thessaly, where at the battle of Pharsalus he was decisively defeated and fled to Egypt, pursued by Caesar, who learnt of his rival’s murder on landing at Alexandria. Here he remained for nine months, fascinated (if the story be true) by Cleopatra, and almost lost his life in an émeute. In June 47 B.C. he proceeded to the East and Asia Minor, where he “came, saw and conquered” Pharnaces, son of Mithradates the Great, at Zela. Returning to Italy, he quelled a mutiny of the legions (including the faithful Tenth) in Campania, and crossed to Africa, where a republican army of fourteen legions under Scipio was cut to pieces at Thapsus (6th of April 46 B.C.). Here most of the republican leaders were killed and Cato committed suicide. On the 26th to 29th July Caesar celebrated a fourfold triumph and received the dictatorship for ten years. In November, however, he was obliged to sail for Spain, where the sons of Pompey still held out. On the 17th of March 45 B.C. they were crushed at Munda. Caesar returned to Rome in September, and six months later (15th of March 44 B.C.) was murdered in the senate house at the foot of Pompey’s statue.
It was remarked by Seneca that amongst the murderers of Caesar were to be found more of his friends than of his enemies. We can account for this only by emphasizing the fact that the form of Caesar’s government became as time went on more undisguised in its absolutism,Caesar’s dictatorship. while the honours conferred upon seemed designed to raise him above the rest of humanity. It is explained elsewhere (see Rome: History, Ancient) that Caesar’s power was exercised under the form of dictatorship. In the first instance (autumn of 49 B.C.) this was conferred upon him as the only solution of the constitutional deadlock created by the flight of the magistrates and senate, in order that elections (including that of Caesar himself to the consulship) might be held in due course. For this there were republican precedents. In 48 B.C. he was created dictator for the second time, probably with constituent powers and for an undefined period, according to the dangerous and unpopular precedent of Sulla. In May 46 B.C. a third dictatorship was conferred on Caesar, this time for ten years and apparently as a yearly office, so that he became Dictator IV. in May 45 B.C. Finally, before the 15th of February 44 B.C., this was exchanged for a life-dictatorship. Not only was this a contradiction in terms, since the dictatorship was by tradition a makeshift justified only when the state had to be carried through a serious crisis, but it involved military rule in Italy and the permanent suspension of the constitutional guarantees, such as intercessio and provocatio, by which the liberties of Romans were protected. That Caesar held the imperium which he enjoyed as dictator to be distinct in kind from that of the republican magistrates he indicated by placing the term imperator at the head of his titles.[1] Besides the dictatorship, Caesar held the consulship in each year of his reign except 47 B.C. (when no curule magistrates were elected save for the last three months of the year); and he was moreover invested by special enactments with a number of other privileges and powers; of these the most important was the tribunicia potestas, which we may believe to have been free from the limits of place (i.e. Rome) and collegiality. Thus, too, he was granted the sole right of making peace and war, and of disposing of the funds in the treasury of the state.[2] Save for the title of dictator, which undoubtedly carried unpopular associations and was formally abolished on the proposal of Antony after Caesar’s death, this cumulation of powers has little to distinguish it from the Principate of Augustus; and the assumption of the perpetual dictatorship would hardly by itself suffice to account for the murder of Caesar. But there are signs that in the last six months of his life he aspired not only to a monarchy in name as well as in fact, but also to a divinity which Romans should acknowledge as well as Greeks, Orientals and barbarians. His statue was set up beside those of the seven kings of Rome, and he adopted the throne of gold, the sceptre of ivory and the embroidered robe which tradition ascribed to them. He allowed his supporters to suggest the offer of the regal title by putting in circulation an oracle according to which it was destined for a king of Rome to subdue the Parthians, and when at the Lupercalia (15th February 44 B.C.) Antony set the diadem on his head he rejected the offer half-heartedly on account of the groans of the people. His image was carried in the pompa circensis amongst those of the immortal gods, and his statue set up in the temple of Quirinus with the inscription “To the Unconquerable God.” A college of Luperci, with the surname Juliani, was instituted in his honour and flamines were created as priests of his godhead. This was intolerable to the aristocratic republicans, to whom it seemed becoming that victorious commanders should accept divine honours at the hands of Greeks and Asiatics, but unpardonable that Romans should offer the same worship to a Roman.
Thus Caesar’s work remained unfinished, and this must be borne in mind in considering his record of legislative and administrative reform. Some account of this is given elsewhere (see Rome: History, Ancient), but it may be well to single out from the list of his measures Legislative reforms.(some of which, such as the restoration of exiles and the children of proscribed persons, were dictated by political expediency, while others, such as his financial proposals for the relief of debtors, and the steps which he took to restore Italian agriculture, were of the nature of palliatives) those which have a permanent significance as indicating his grasp of imperial problems. The Social War had brought to the inhabitants of Italy as far as the Po the privileges of Roman citizenship; it remained to extend this gift to the Transpadane Italians, to establish a uniform system of local administration and to devise representative institutions by which at least some voice in the government of Rome might be permitted to her new citizens. This last conception lay beyond the horizon of Caesar, as of all ancient statesmen, but his first act on gaining control of Italy was to enfranchise the Transpadanes, whose claims he had consistently advocated, and in 45 B.C. he passed the Lex Julia Municipalis, an act of which considerable fragments are inscribed on two bronze tables found at Heraclea near Tarentum.[3] This law deals inter alia with the police and the sanitary arrangements of the city of Rome, and hence it has been argued by Mommsen that it was Caesar’s intention to reduce Rome to the level of a municipal town. But it is not likely that such is the case. Caesar made no far-reaching modifications in the government of the city, such as were afterwards carried out by Augustus, and the presence in the Lex Julia Municipalis of the clauses referred to is an example of the common process of “tacking” (legislation per saturam, as it was called by the Romans). The law deals with the constitution of the local senates, for whose members qualifications of age (30 years) and military service are laid down, while persons who have suffered conviction for various specified offences, or who are insolvent, or who carry on discreditable or immoral trades are excluded. It also provides that the local magistrates shall take a census of the citizens at the same time as the census takes place in Rome, and send the registers to Rome within sixty days. The existing fragments tell us little as to the decentralization of the functions of government, but from the Lex Rubria, which applies to the Transpadane districts enfranchised by Caesar (it must be remembered that Cisalpine Gaul remained nominally a province until 42 B.C.) we gather that considerable powers of independent jurisdiction were reserved to the municipal magistrates. But Caesar was not content with framing a uniform system of local government
- ↑ Suetonius, Jul. 76, errs in stating that he used the title imperator as a praenomen.
- ↑ The statement of Dio and Suetonius, that a general cura legum et morum was conferred on Caesar in 46 B.C., is rejected by Mommsen. It is possible that it may have some foundation in the terms of the law establishing his third dictatorship.
- ↑ Since the discovery of a fragmentary municipal charter at Tarentum (see Rome), dating from a period shortly after the Social War, doubts have been cast on the identification of the tables of Heraclea with Caesar’s municipal statute. It has been questioned whether Caesar passed such a law, since the Lex Julia Municipalis mentioned in an inscription of Patavium (Padua) may have been a local charter. See Legras, La Table latine d’Héraclée (Paris, 1907).
