History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

Sylla had judged truly: many Mariuses, in effect, had met together in Cæsar: Marius, the great captain, but with a larger military genius; Marius, the enemy of the oligarchy, but without hatred and without cruelty; Marius, in a word, no longer the man of a faction, but the man of his age.

Cæsar in Asia (673, 674).

III. Cæsar could not remain a cold spectator of the sanguinary reign of Sylla, and left for Asia, where he received the hospitality of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. A short time afterwards he took part in the hostilities which continued against Mithridates. The young men of good family who wished to serve their military apprenticeship followed a general to the army. Admitted to his intimacy under the name of contubernales, they were attached to his person. It was in this capacity that Cæsar accompanied the prætor M. Minucius Thermus,788 who sent him to Nicomedes to claim his co-operation in the siege of Mitylene, occupied by the troops of Mithridates. Cæsar succeeded in his mission, and on his return aided in the capture of the city. Having saved the life of a Roman soldier, he received from Thermus a civic crown.789

Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Cæsar’s relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius.790 The motives of his conduct were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the soldiers who followed his triumphal car.791 But these sarcasms, which told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, magis odio firmata quam præsidio,792 were only set afloat by his adversaries very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement when political parties shrink from no calumny793 to mutually decry each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have ruined the reputation of Cæsar more than this accusation, for such a crime was not only abhorred in the army,794 but, committed with a foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman dignity. Wherefore Cæsar, whose love for women ought to have shielded him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation.795

After having made his first campaign at the siege of Mitylene, Cæsar served in the fleet of the proconsul P. Servilius (676), commissioned to make war on the Cilician pirates, who subsequently received the surname of Isauricus, because he had taken Isaura, their chief place of refuge,796 and conquered part of Cilicia. However, he remained but a short time with Servilius, for, having been informed of the death of Sylla, he returned to Rome.797

Cæsar on his return to Rome (676).

IV. The Republic, divided into two parties, was on the eve of falling into civil war through the diversity of opinion between the two consuls, Lepidus and Catulus. They were ready to come to blows. The former, elevated to the consulship by the influence of Pompey, against the advice of Sylla, fomented an insurrection. “He lighted up,” says Florus, “the fire of civil war at the very funeral pyre of the dictator.”798 He wished to abrogate the Cornelian laws, restore to the tribunes their power, to the proscribed their rights, to the allies their lands.799 These designs against the system established by the dictator agreed with Cæsar’s ideas, and endeavours were made, by seductive offers, to draw him into the intrigues which were then going on; but he kept aloof.800

The Senate succeeded in making the consuls swear that they would be reconciled, and thought to ensure peace by giving each a military command. Catulus received the government of Italy, and Lepidus that of Cisalpine Gaul. The latter, before going to his province, visited Etruria, where the partisans of Marius flocked to him. The Senate, informed of these doings, recalled him to Rome, towards the end of the year, to hold the comitia.801 Lepidus, leaving Brutus the prætor encamped near Mutina (Modena), marched back to Rome at the head of his army. Beaten by Catulus and Pompey at the bridge of Milvius, he withdrew to the coast of Etruria, and, after a new defeat, fled to Sardinia, where he ended his career miserably.802 Perpenna, his lieutenant, went, with the wreck of his army, to rejoin Sertorius in Spain.

Cæsar acted wisely in keeping out of these movements, for not only did the character of Lepidus inspire him with no confidence,803 but he must have thought that the dictatorship of Sylla was too recent, that it had inspired too many fears, and created too many new interests, to admit of the reaction, still incomplete in men’s minds, succeeding by arms. For the present, they must limit themselves to acting on public opinion, by branding with words the instruments of the past tyranny.

The most general way of entering on a political career was by instituting a prosecution against some high personage.804 Its success mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.

Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the honours of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Cæsar of excesses committed in his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the creatures of the dictator.805 Public opinion did not praise Cæsar the less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable celebrity.806 Encouraged by this success, Cæsar cited C. Antonius Hybrida before the prætor M. Lucullus for having, at the head of a body of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning from Asia.807 The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Cæsar’s in favour of a certain Decius the Samnite,808 without doubt the same mentioned by Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received by Aulus Cluentius.809 Thus Cæsar boldly offered himself as the defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make reputations.

These attacks were certainly a means of attracting public attention, but they also showed the courage of the man, since the partisans of Sylla were still all in power.

Cæsar goes to Rhodes (678-680).

V. Notwithstanding his celebrity as an orator, Cæsar resolved to keep out of the troubles which agitated Italy, and doubtless felt his presence in Rome useless to his cause and irksome to himself. It is often advantageous to political men to disappear for a time from the scene; they thus avoid compromising themselves in daily struggles without aim, and their reputation, instead of losing, increases by absence. During the winter of 678 Cæsar again quitted Italy, for the purpose of going to Rhodes to complete his studies. This island, then the centre of intellectual lights, the dwelling-place of the most celebrated philosophers, was the school of all the well-born youth. Cicero himself had gone there for lessons some years before.

In his passage, Cæsar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of Jassius.810 Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus, these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded twenty talents (£2,329) for his ransom. He offered fifty (£11,640), which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner, and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the neighbouring towns.811 Though the allied provinces and towns were in this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious, as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a sum.

Left alone with a physician and two slaves812 in the midst of these ferocious brigands, he held them in awe by his force of character, and passed nearly forty days on board without ever loosing either his sandals or his girdle, to avoid all suspicion of wishing to escape by swimming.813 He seemed less a captive, says Plutarch, than a prince surrounded by his guards; now playing with them, now reciting poems to them, he made himself loved and feared, and laughingly told them that, once free, he would have them crucified.814 Yet the remembrance of Rome recurred to his mind, and recalled the strifes and enmities he had left there. He was often heard to say, “What pleasure Crassus will have at knowing me in these straits!”815

As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbour of the island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them. But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an evasive manner. Cæsar returned to Pergamus, and had them crucified.816

He went afterwards to Rhodes, to attend the lessons of Apollonius Molo, the most illustrious of the masters of eloquence of that time, who had formerly been to Rome, in 672, as the Rhodian ambassador. About the same time one of his uncles, the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, was appointed governor of Bithynia, bequeathed by Nicomedes to the Roman people, and charged, with Lucullus, to oppose the new invasions of Mithridates. Cotta, beaten by land and sea near Chalcedon, was reduced to great straits, and Mithridates was advancing against Cyzicus, an allied town, which Lucullus afterwards relieved. On another side, Eumachius, a lieutenant of the King of Pontus, ravaged Phrygia, where he massacred all the Romans, and seized several of the southern provinces of Asia Minor. The rumours of war, the perils into which the allies were falling, took Cæsar from his studies. He went over into Asia, levied troops on his own authority, drove out from the province the king’s governor, and kept in allegiance towns whose faith was doubtful or shaken.817

Cæsar Pontiff and Military Tribune (680-684).

VI. Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Cæsar’s being clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died suddenly in Gaul the following year.818

This circumstance obliged him to return to Rome. The sea continued to swarm with pirates, who must necessarily owe him a grudge for the death of their comrades. The better to escape them, he crossed the Adriatic in a boat of four oars, accompanied only by two friends and ten slaves.819 In the passage, thinking that he saw sails in the horizon, he seized his sword, resolved to sell his life dearly; but his fears were not justified, and he landed safe and sound in Italy.

Immediately on his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, and succeeded by a large majority over his rival, C. Popilius.820 This already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either by election or by the choice of the generals.821 Cæsar does not seem to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed from all quarters.

In Spain Sertorius successfully continued the war begun in 674 against the lieutenants of Sylla, joined in 677 by Perpenna, at the head of thirty cohorts,822 he had got together a formidable army, bravely maintained the standard of Marius, and given the name of Senate to an assemblage of 300 Romans. Vanquisher of Metellus for several years, Sertorius, gifted with a vast military genius, exercising great influence over the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, and master of the passes,823 was dreaming of crossing the Alps. The Spaniards had already given him the name of a second Hannibal. But Pompey, sent in all haste to Spain, reinforced the army of Metellus, deprived Sertorius of all hope of penetrating into Italy, and even drove him far back from the Pyrenees. The united efforts of the two generals, however, did not effect the subjugation of Spain, which, since 680, had been entirely re-conquered by Sertorius. But soon after this, his lieutenants experiencing reverses, desertion began among his soldiers, and he himself lost his confidence. Yet he would have resisted for a long time still, had not Perpenna caused him to be assassinated by an infamous act of treachery. This murder did not profit its author. Though Perpenna succeeded Sertorius in the command of the troops, he found himself an object of their hatred and contempt. Soon defeated and taken prisoner by Pompey, he was put to death. Thus ended the war in Spain in 682.

In Asia, Lucullus successfully pursued the campaign against Mithridates, who courageously maintained the struggle, and had even been able to come to an understanding with Sertorius. Lucullus beat him in Cappadocia (683), and forced him to take refuge with Tigranes, his son-in-law, King of Armenia, who soon experienced a sanguinary defeat, and lost his capital, Tigranocerta.

In the East, the barbarians infested the frontiers of Macedonia, the pirates of Cilicia sailed from end to end of all the seas with impunity, and the Cretans flew to arms to defend their independence.

Italy was torn by the Servile War. This disinherited class had risen up anew, despite the bloody repression of the Sicilian insurrection from 620 to 623. It had acquired the knowledge of its strength chiefly from the circumstance that each party in the civil troubles had by turns granted its liberty to increase the number of its respective adherents. In 681, seventy gladiators, kept at Capua, revolted; their chief was Spartacus, formerly a soldier, made prisoner, then sold as a slave. In less than a year his band had so much increased that consular armies were needed to combat him, and, having gained a victory in Picenum, for a moment he had entertained the thought of marching upon Rome at the head of 40,000 men.824 Nevertheless, forced to withdraw to the south of Italy, he contended against the Roman forces successfully for two years, when at last, in 683, Licinius Crassus, at the head of eight legions, conquered him in Apulia. Spartacus perished in the fight; the remainder of the army of slaves separated into four bodies, one of which, retiring towards Gaul, was easily dispersed by Pompey, who was returning from Spain. The 6,000 prisoners taken in the battle fought in Apulia were hanged all along the road from Capua to Rome.

Occasions for making himself perfect in the art of war were not wanting to Cæsar; but we can understand his inaction, for Sylla’s partisans alone were at the heads of the armies; in Spain, Metellus and Pompey – the first the brother-in-law of the Dictator, the second formerly his best lieutenant; in Italy, Crassus, the enemy of Cæsar, equally devoted to the party of Sylla; in Asia, Lucullus, an old friend of the Dictator, who had dedicated his “Memoirs”825 to him. Cæsar, then, found everywhere either a cause he would not defend, or a general under whom he would not serve. In Spain, however, Sertorius represented the party he would most willingly have embraced; but Cæsar had a horror of civil wars. Whilst faithful to his convictions, he seems, in the first years of his career, to have carefully avoided placing between him and his adversaries that eternal barrier which for ever separates the children of the same country, after blood has once been shed. He had it at heart to be able, in his exalted future, to appeal to a past pure from all violence, so that, instead of being the man of a party, he might rally round him all good citizens.

The Republic had triumphed everywhere, but she had yet to reckon with her conquering generals: she found herself in the presence of Crassus and Pompey, who, proud of their successes, advanced upon Rome at the head of their armies, to demand or seize the chief power. The Senate could be but little at ease as to the intentions of the latter, who, not long before, had sent an insolent letter from Spain, in which he menaced his country with the sword unless they sent him the supplies necessary to carry on the war against Sertorius.826 The same ambition animated Pompey and Crassus: neither of the two would be the first to disband his army; each, indeed, brought his own to the gates of the city. Both were elected consuls, allowed a triumph, and forced by the augurs and public opinion to be reconciled together; and they held out their hands to each other, disbanded their troops, and for some time the Republic recovered an unexpected calm.827

CHAPTER II

(684-691.)

State of the Republic (684).

I. WHEN Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still seethed in her bosom.828

Sylla believed he had re-established the Republic on its ancient basis, but, instead, he had thrown everything into disorder. The property, the life even of each citizen, was at the mercy of the stronger; the people had lost the right of appeal, and their legitimate share in the elections; the poor, the distribution of wheat; the tribuneship, its secular privileges; and the influential order of the knights, their political and financial importance.

At Rome, no more guarantee for justice; in Italy, no more security for the rights of citizenship, so dearly acquired; in the provinces, no more consideration for subjects and allies. Sylla had restored their prerogatives to the upper class without being able to restore their former prestige; having made use of only corrupt elements, and appealed to only sordid passions, he left behind him a powerless oligarchy, and a thoroughly distracted people. The country was divided between those whom his tyranny had enriched and those whom it had despoiled; the one fearing to lose what they had just acquired, the other hoping to regain what they had lost.

The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the pleasures of luxury, kept the new men829 out of the highest offices, and, by a long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate, exclaimed: – “Instead of the virtues of our ancestors we have luxury and avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favour.”830

The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless traffic, where every mean of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus.831 The sale of consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost recognised. Those who bought votes were called divisores; the go-betweens were interpretes; and those with whom was deposited the purchase money832 were sequestres. Numerous secret societies were formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he obtained.833

All the sentences of the tribunals composed of senators were dictated by a venality so flagrant, that Cicero brands it in these terms: – “I will demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which have sullied the judicial powers for the ten years that they have been entrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the knightly order has administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive years, without the faintest suspicion resting on any of its members of having received money for a judgment delivered; how, since senators alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Calidius has been able to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require less than 300,000 sestertii to condemn a prætor; how, when the senator P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor Hortensius, the money he had received in his quality of judge was included in his fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both senators, having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of the crime of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain senators, when their names were taken from the urn held by C. Verres, then prætor urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused, without having heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator, judge in this same suit, receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges, and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I, then, sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs on the whole order?”834

Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of the great at Rome, the conquered peoples835 were always a prey to the exactions of the magistrates, and Verres was a type of the most shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the Ocean and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to it.”836 The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow, either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive rate of interest; and the nobles, giving themselves up to usury, held the provinces in their power.

The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,” says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule; with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy, were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army.”837