was added by a decree of the senate Transalpine Gaul also.[1] This command not only opened to him a great military career, but enabled him, as the master of the valley of the Po, to keep an effective watch on the course of affairs in Italy.
Early the next year the attack upon himself which Cicero
had foreseen was made. P. Clodius (q.v.) as tribune brought
forward a law enacting that any one who had put a
Roman citizen to death without trial by the people
should be interdicted from fire and water. Cicero,
Banishment and recall of Cicero,
58–57 = 696–97.
finding himself deserted even by Pompey, left Rome in
a panic, and by a second Clodian law he was declared
to be outlawed.[2] With Caesar away in his province, and
Cicero banished, Clodius was for the time master in Rome.
But, absolute as he was in the streets, and recklessly as he
parodied the policy of the Gracchi by violent attacks on the
senate, his tribunate merely illustrated the anarchy which now
inevitably followed the withdrawal of a strong controlling
hand. A reaction speedily followed. Pompey, bewildered
and alarmed by Clodius's violence, at last bestirred himself.
Cicero's recall was decreed by the senate, and early in August
57 in the comitia centuriata, to which his Italian supporters
flocked in crowds, a law was passed revoking the sentence of
outlawry passed upon him.
Intoxicated by the acclamations which greeted him, and
encouraged by Pompey's support, and by the salutary effects
of Clodius's excesses, Cicero's hopes rose high.[3] With
indefatigable energy he strove to reconstruct a solid
constitutional party, but only to fail once more.
Renewal of the coalition, 65 = 698.
Pompey was irritated by the hostility of a powerful
section in the senate, who thwarted his desires for a fresh
command and even encouraged Clodius in insulting the conqueror
of the East. Caesar became alarmed at the reports
which reached him that the repeal of his agrarian law was
threatened and that the feeling against the coalition was growing
in strength; above all, he was anxious for a renewal of his
five years' command. He acted at once, and in the celebrated
698.
699.
conference at Luca (56) the alliance of the three
self-constituted rulers of Rome was renewed. Cicero succumbed
to the inevitable and withdrew in despair from public life.
Pompey and Crassus became consuls for 55. Caesar's
command was renewed for another five years, and to
each of his two allies important provinces were assigned for a
similar period—Pompey receiving the two Spains and Africa, and
Crassus Syria.[4] The coalition now divided between them the
control of the empire. For the future the question was, how
long the coalition itself would last. Its duration proved to be
Death of Crassus,
53 = 701.
700.
short. In 53 Crassus was defeated and slain by the
Parthians at Carrhae, and in Rome the course of
events slowly forced Pompey into an attitude of
hostility to Caesar. The year 54 brought with it a
renewal of the riotous anarchy which had disgraced
Rome in 58-57. Conscious of its own helplessness, the senate,
with the eager assent of all respectable citizens, dissuaded
Pompey from leaving Italy; and he accordingly left his provinces
to be governed by his legates. But the anarchy and
confusion only grew worse, and even strict constitutionalists
like Cicero talked of the necessity of investing Pompey with some
extraordinary powers for the preservation of order.[5] At last
in 52 he was elected sole consul, and not only 50, but
Pompey sole consul, 52 = 702.
his provincial command was prolonged for five years
more, and fresh troops were assigned him.[6] The rôle
of “saviour of society” thus thrust upon Pompey was
one which flattered his vanity, but it entailed
consequences which it is probable he did not foresee, for it brought
him into close alliance with the senate, and in the senate there
was a powerful party who were resolved to force him into heading
the attack they could not successfully make without him
upon Caesar. It was known that the latter, whose command
705.
706.
Proposed recall of Caesar. 703-4. 705.
expired in March 49, but who in the ordinary course
of things would not have been replaced by his successor
until January 48, was anxious to be allowed to stand
for his second consulship in the autumn of 49 without coming
in person to Rome.[7] His opponents in the senate
were equally bent on bringing his command to an end
at the legal time, and so obliging him to disband his
troops and stand for the consulship as a private person,
or, if he kept his command, on preventing his standing for
the consulship. Through 51 and 50 the discussions
in the senate and the negotiations with Caesar
continued, but with no result. On 1st January 49 Caesar
made a last offer of compromise. The senate replied by requiring
him on pain of outlawry to disband his legions. Two
tribunes who supported him were ejected from the senate-house,
and the magistrates with Pompey were authorized to take
measures to protect the republic. Caesar hesitated no longer;
Caesar crosses the Rubicon, 49 = 705.
709.
he crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy. The
rapidity of his advance astounded and bewildered
his foes. Pompey, followed by the consuls, by the
majority of the senate and a long train of nobles,
abandoned Italy as untenable, and crossed into
Greece.[8] At the end of March Caesar entered Rome as the
master of Italy. Four years later, after the final victory of
Munda (45), he became the undisputed master of the
Roman world.[9]
The task which Caesar had to perform was no easy one.
It came upon him suddenly; for there is no sufficient reason
to believe that Caesar had long premeditated revolution,
or that he had previously aspired to anything
more than such a position as that which Pompey had
Dictatorship of Caesar, 48-44 =
706–10.
already won, a position unrepublican indeed, but
accepted by republicans as inevitable.[10] War was
forced upon him as the alternative to political suicide, but
success in war brought the responsibilities of nearly absolute
power, and Caesar's genius must be held to have shown
itself in the masterly fashion in which he grasped the situation,
rather than in the supposed sagacity with which he is
said to have foreseen and prepared for it. In so far as he failed,
his failure was mainly due to the fact that his tenure of power
was too short for the work which he was required to perform.
From the very first moment when Pompey's ignominious
retreat left him master of Italy, he made it clear that he was
neither a second Sulla nor even the reckless anarchist which
many believed him to be.[11] The Roman and Italian public were
- ↑ Suet. Jul. 22; Dio Cass. xxxviii. 8; App. B.C. ii. 13; Plut. Caes. 14.
- ↑ Both laws were carried in the concilium plebis. The first merely reaffirmed the right of appeal, as the law of Gaius Gracchus had done. The second declared Cicero to be already by his own act in leaving Rome “interdicted from fire and water”—a procedure for which precedents could be quoted. Clodius kept within the letter of the law.
- ↑ Cicero's speech Pro Sestio gives expression to these feelings; it contains a passionate appeal to all good citizens to rally round the old constitution. The acquittal of Sestius confirmed his hopes. See Ad Q. Fr. ii. 4.
- ↑ Livy, Epit. cv.; Dio Cass. xxxix. 33. For Cicero's views, see Ep. ad Fam. i. 9; Ad Att. iv. 5.
- ↑ A dictatorship was talked of in Rome; Plut. Pomp. 54; Cic. Ad Q. Fr. iii. 8. Cicero himself anticipated Augustus in his picture of a princeps civitatis sketched in a lost book of the De republica, written about this time, which was based upon his hopes of what Pompey might prove to be; Ad Att. viii. 11; August. De civ. Dei, v. 13.
- ↑ Plut. Pomp. 54; App. B.C. ii. 24.
- ↑ For the rights of the question involved in the controversy between Caesar and the senate, see Mommsen, Rechtsfrage zw. Caesar and d. Senat; Guiraud, Le Différend entre César et le Sénat (Paris, 1878), and the article Caesar.
- ↑ Cicero severely censures Pompey for abandoning Italy, but strategically the move was justified by the fact that Pompey's strength lay in the East, where his name was a power, and in his control of the sea. Politically, however, it was a blunder, as it enabled Caesar to pose as the defender of Italy.
- ↑ For the Civil Wars, see Caesar; Cicero; and Pompey.
- ↑ On this, as on many other points connected with Caesar, divergence has here been ventured on from the views expressed by Mommsen in his brilliant chapter on Caesar (Hist. of Rome, bk. v. cap. xi.). Too much stress must not be laid on the gossip retailed by Suetonius as to Caesar's early intentions.
- ↑ Cicero vividly expresses the revulsion of feeling produced by Caesar's energy, humanity and moderation on his first appearance in Italy. Compare Ad Att. vii. 11, with Ad Att. viii. 13.
