History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

The first care of the new consul was to establish the practice of publishing daily the acts of the Senate and those of the people, in order that public opinion might bear with all its weight upon the resolutions of the conscript fathers, whose deliberations had previously been often secret.1103 The initiative taken by Cæsar from the commencement of his consulship, in questioning the senators on the projects of laws, is an evidence that he had the fasces before Bibulus. We know, in fact, that the consuls enjoyed this honour alternately for a month, and it was in the period when they were invested with the signs distinctive of power that they were permitted to ask the advice of the senators.1104

Agrarian Laws.

II. He proposed next, in the month of January, an agrarian law founded upon wise principles, and which respected all legitimate rights. The following were its principal provisions: —

Partition of all the free part of the ager publicus, except that of Campania and that of Volaterræ; the first excepted originally on account of its great fertility,1105 and the second guaranteed to all those who had got it into their possession.1106– In case of insufficiency of territory, new acquisitions, by means either of money coming from Pompey’s conquests, or from the overplus of the public revenues. – Prohibition of all appropriation by force. – The nomination of twenty commissioners to preside at the distribution of the lands, with exclusion of the author of the proposal. – Estimate of private lands for sale, made according to the declaration at the last census, and not according to the valuation of the commissioners. – Obligation upon each senator to swear obedience to the law, and to engage never to propose anything contrary to it.

It was, as may be seen, the project of Rullus, relieved from the inconveniences pointed out with so much eloquence by Cicero. In fact, instead of ten commissioners, Cæsar proposed twenty, in order to distribute among a greater number a power of which men feared the abuse. He himself, to avoid all suspicion of personal interest, excluded himself from the possibility of forming part of it. The commissioners were not, as in the law of Rullus, authorised to act according to their will, and tax the properties arbitrarily. Acquired rights were respected; those territories only were distributed of which the State had still the full disposal. The sums arising from Pompey’s conquests were to be employed in favour of the old soldiers; and Cæsar said himself that it was just to give the profit of that money to those who had gained it at the peril of their lives.1107 As to the obligation of the oath imposed upon the senators, it was not an innovation, but an established custom. In the present case, the law having been voted before the elections, all the candidates, and especially the tribunes of the following year, had to take the engagement to observe it.1108

“Nobody,” says Dio Cassius,1109 “had reason for complaint on this subject. The population of Rome, the excessive increase of which had been the principal aliment of seditions, was called to labour and a country life; the greater part of the countries of Italy, which had lost their inhabitants, were re-peopled. This law insured means of existence not only to those who had supported the fatigues of the war, but also to all the other citizens, without causing expenditure to the State or loss to the nobles; on the contrary, it gave to several honours and power.”

Thus, while some historians accuse Cæsar of seeking in the populace of Rome the point of support for his ambitious designs, he, on the contrary, obtains a measure, the effect of which is to transport the turbulent part of the inhabitants of the capital into the country.

Cæsar, then, read his project to the Senate; after which, calling the senators by their names, one after the other, he asked the opinion of each, declaring his readiness to modify the law, or withdraw it altogether, if it were not agreeable to them. But, according to Dio Cassius, “It was unassailable, and, if any disapproved of it, none dared to oppose it; what afflicted its opponents most was, that it was drawn up in such a manner as to leave no room for a complaint.”1110 So the opposition was limited to adjourning from time to time, under frivolous pretexts. Cato, without making a direct opposition, alleged the necessity of changing nothing in the constitution of the Republic, and declared himself the adversary of all kind of innovation; but, when the moment came for voting, he had recourse again to his old tactics, and rendered all deliberation impossible by speaking the entire day, by which he had already succeeded in depriving Cæsar of the triumph.1111 The latter lost patience, and sent the obstinate orator to prison; Cato was followed by a great number of senators, and M. Petreius, one of them, replied to the consul, who reproached him for withdrawing before the meeting was closed: “I would rather be in prison with Cato than here with thee.” Regretting, however, this first movement of anger, and struck by the attitude of the assembly, Cæsar immediately restored Cato to liberty; then he dismissed the Senate, addressing them in the following words: “I had made you supreme judges and arbiters of this law, in order that, if any one of its provisions displeased you, it should not be referred to the people; but, since you have refused the previous deliberation, the people alone shall decide it.”

His attempt at conciliation having failed with the Senate, he renewed it towards his colleague, and, in the assembly of the tribes, adjured Bibulus to support his proposal. On their side, the people joined their entreaties with those of Cæsar; but Bibulus, inflexible, merely said: “You will not prevail with me, though you were all of one voice; and, as long as I shall be consul, I will suffer no innovation.”1112

Then Cæsar, judging other influences necessary, appealed to Pompey and Crassus. Pompey seized happily this opportunity for speaking to the people: he said that he not only approved the agrarian law, but that the senators themselves had formerly admitted the principle, in decreeing, on his return from Spain, a distribution of lands to his soldiers and to those of Metellus; if this measure had been deferred, it was on account of the penury of the treasury, which, thanks to him, had now ceased. Then, replying to Cæsar, who asked him if he would support the law in case it were opposed by violence, “If any one dared to draw his sword,” he cried, “I would take even my buckler;” meaning by that, that he would come into the public place armed as for the combat. This bold declaration of Pompey, supported by Crassus and Cæpio,1113 silenced all opposition except that of Bibulus, who, with three tribunes his partisans, called an assembly of the Senate in his own house, where it was resolved that at all risk the law should be openly rejected.1114

The day of meeting of the comitia having been fixed, the populace occupied the Forum during the night. Bibulus hurried with his friends to the temple of Castor, where his colleague was addressing the multitude; he tried in vain to obtain a hearing, was thrown down from the top of the steps, and obliged to fly, after seeing his fasces broken to pieces and two tribunes wounded. Cato, in his turn, tried to mount the rostra; expelled by force, he returned, but, instead of treating of the question, seeing that nobody listened to him, he attacked Cæsar with bitterness, until he was dragged a second time from the tribune. Calm being restored, the law was adopted. Next day Bibulus tried to propose to the Senate its abrogation; but nobody supported him, such was the effect of this burst of popular enthusiasm;1115 from this moment he took the part of shutting himself up at home during the residue of Cæsar’s consulship. When the latter presented a new law on the days of the comitia, he contented himself with protesting, and with sending by his lictors to say that he was observing the sky, and that consequently all deliberation was illegal.1116 This was to proclaim loudly the political aim of this formality.

Cæsar was far from yielding to this religious scruple, which, indeed, had lost its authority. At this very time Lucullus wrote a bold poem against the popular credulity, and for some time the observation of the auspices had been regarded as a puerile superstition; two centuries and a half before, a great captain had given a remarkable proof of this. Hannibal, then a refugee at the court of King Prusias, engaged the latter to accept his plans of campaign against the Romans; the king refused, because the auspices had not been favourable. “What!” cried Hannibal, “have you more confidence in a miserable calf’s liver than in the experience of an old general like me?”1117

Be this as it may, the obligation not to hold the comitia while the magistrate was observing the sky was a law; and to excuse himself for not having observed it, as well as to prevent his acts from being declared null, Cæsar, before quitting his office, brought the question before the Senate, and thus obtained a legal ratification of his conduct.

The law being adopted by the people, each senator was called to take his oath to observe it. Several members, and, among others, Q. Metellus Celer, M. Cato, and M. Favonius,1118 had declared that they would never submit to it; but when the day of taking the oath arrived, their protests vanished before the fear of the punishment decreed against those who abstained, and, except Laterensis, everybody, even Cato, took the oath.1119

Irritated at the obstacles which he had encountered, and sure of the approval of the people, Cæsar included, by a new law, in the distribution of the public domain, the lands of Campania and of Stella, omitted before out of deference to the Senate.1120

In carrying the law into effect, Pompey’s veterans received lands at Casilinum, in Campania;1121 at Minturnæ, Lanuvium, Volturnum, and Aufidena, in Samnium; and at Bovianum; Clibæ, and Veii, in Etruria;1122 twenty thousand fathers of families having more than three children were established in Campania, so that about a hundred thousand persons became husbandmen, and re-peopled with free men a great portion of the territory, while Rome was relieved from a populace which was inconvenient and debased. Capua became a Roman colony, which was a restoration of the democratic work of Marius, destroyed by Sylla.1123 It appears that the ager of Leontinum, in Sicily, was also comprised in the agrarian law.1124 The nomination of the twenty commissioners, chosen among the most commendable of the consulars, was next proceeded with.1125 Of the number were C. Cosconius and Atius Balbus, the husband of Cæsar’s sister. Clodius could not obtain admission among them,1126 and Cicero, after the death of Cosconius, refused to take his place.1127 The latter, in his letters to Atticus, blames especially the distribution of the territory of Capua, as depriving the Republic of an important revenue; and inquires what will remain to the State, unless it be the twentieth on the enfranchisement of slaves, since the rights of toll had already been abandoned through the whole of Italy; but it was objected with reason that, on the other hand, the State was relieved from the enormous charges imposed by the necessity of distributing wheat to all the poor of Rome.

Nevertheless, the allotment of the ager Campanus and of the ager of Stella met with many delays; it was not yet terminated in 703, since at that epoch Pompey was advised to hasten the distribution of the last-mentioned lands, in order that Cæsar, on his return from Gaul, might not have the merit of it.1128

Cæsar’s various Laws.

III. We have seen how, in previous years, Cato was instrumental in refusing the request of those who farmed the taxes of Asia to have the terms of their leases lowered. By this rigorous measure, the Senate had estranged from itself the equestrian order, whose complaints had been far from unreasonable. In fact, the price paid for the farming of the revenues of Asia had been heavy during the war against Mithridates, as may be learnt from the speech of Cicero against the Manilian Law; and the remission of a portion of the money due to the State was a measure not without some show of justice to excuse it. Cæsar, when he became consul, influenced by a sense of justice no less than by policy, lost no time in proposing a law to remit to the farmers of the revenue one-third of the sums for which they were responsible.1129 He first addressed himself to the Senate; but that body having refused to deliberate on the question, he found himself compelled to submit it to the people,1130 who adopted his opinion. This liberality, so far beyond what they had hoped for, filled the farmers of the revenue with joy, and rendered them devoted to the man who showed himself so generous: he advised them, however, publicly, to be more careful in future, and not overbid in an inconsiderate manner at the time of the sale of the taxes.1131

The agrarian law, and the law concerning the rents, having satisfied the interests of the proletaries, the veterans, and the knights, it became important to settle the just demands of Pompey. Therefore Cæsar obtained from the people their approbation of all the acts of the conqueror of Mithridates.1132 Lucullus had been till then one of the most earnest adversaries of this measure. He could not forget the glory of which Pompey had frustrated him; but his dread of a prosecution for peculation was so great, that he fell at Cæsar’s feet, and forswore all opposition.1133

The activity of the consul did not confine itself to internal reforms; it extended to questions which were raised abroad. The condition of Egypt was precarious: King Ptolemy Auletes, natural son of Ptolemy Lathyrus, was afraid lest, in virtue of a forged will of Ptolemy Alexander, or Alexas, to whose fall he had contributed, his kingdom might be incorporated with the Roman Empire.1134 Auletes, perceiving his authority shaken in Alexandria, had sought the support of Pompey during the war in Judæa, and had sent him presents, and a large sum of money, to engage him to maintain his cause before the Senate.1135 Pompey had offered himself as his advocate; and Cæsar, whether from policy, or from a wish to please his son-in-law, caused Ptolemy Auletes to be declared a friend and ally of Rome.1136 At his demand, the same favour was granted to Ariovistus, king of the Germans, who, after having made war upon the Ædui, had withdrawn from their country at the invitation of the Senate, and had expressed a desire to become an ally of Rome. It was entirely the interest of the Republic to conciliate the Germans, and send them to the other bank of the Rhine, whatever might be the views of the consul regarding his future command in Gaul.1137 Next, he conferred some privileges on certain municipia and satisfied many ambitions; “for,” says Suetonius, “he granted everything that was asked of him: no man dared oppose him, and, if any one attempted, he knew how to intimidate him.”1138

Among the cares of the consul was the nomination of tribunes devoted to him, since it was they generally who proposed the laws for the people to ratify.

Clodius, on account of his popularity, was one of the candidates who could be most useful to him; but his rank of patrician obliged him to pass by adoption into a plebeian family before he could be elected, and that he could only do in virtue of a law. Cæsar hesitated in bringing it forward; for if, on the one hand, he sought to conciliate Clodius himself, on the other, he knew his designs of vengeance against Cicero, and was unwilling to put into his hands an authority which he might abuse. But when, towards the month of March, at the trial of C. Antonius, charged with disgraceful conduct in Macedonia, Cicero, in defending his former colleague, indulged in a violent attack upon those in power, on that same day Clodius was received into the ranks of the plebeians,1139 and soon afterwards became, together with Vatinius, tribune-elect.1140 There was a third tribune, whose name is unknown, but who was equally won over to the interests of the consul.1141

Thus Cæsar, as even Cicero admits, was alone more powerful already than the Republic.1142 Of some he was the hope; of others, the terror; of all, master irrevocably. The inactivity of Bibulus had only served to increase his power.1143 Thus it was said in Rome, as a jest, that men knew of no other consulship than that of Julius and Caius Cæsar, making two persons out of a single name; and the following verses were handed about: —

“Non Bibulo quidquam nuper sed Cæsare factum est:

Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.”1144

And as popular favour, when it declares itself in favour of a man in a conspicuous position, sees something marvellous in everything that concerns his person, the populace drew a favourable augury from the existence of an extraordinary horse born in his stables. Its hoofs were forked, and shaped like fingers. Cæsar was the only man who could tame this strange animal, the docility of which, it was said, foreboded to him the empire of the world.1145

During his first consulship, Cæsar caused a number of laws to be passed, the greater part of which have not descended to us. Some valuable fragments, however, of the most important ones have been preserved, and among others, the modifications in the sacerdotal privileges. The tribune Labienus, as we have seen, in order to secure Cæsar’s election to the office of pontiff, had granted the right of election to seventeen tribes selected by lot. Although this law seemed to authorise absentees to become candidates for the priesthood, the people and the priests disputed the right of those who did not solicit the dignity in person. Endless quarrels and disturbances were the result. To put an end to these, Cæsar, while confirming the law of Labienus, announced that not only those candidates who appeared in person, but those at a distance also, who had any title whatever to that honour, might offer themselves as candidates.1146

He turned his attention next to the provinces, whose condition had always excited his sympathy. The law intended to reform the vices of the administration (De provinciis ordinandis) is of uncertain date; it bears the same title as that of Sylla, and resembles it considerably. Its provisions guaranteed the inhabitants against the violence, the arbitrary conduct, and the corruption of the proconsuls and proprætors, and fixed the allotments to which these were entitled.1147

It released the free states, liberæ civitates, from dependence upon governors, and authorised them to govern themselves by their own laws and their own magistrates.1148 Cicero himself considered this measure as the guarantee of the liberty of the provinces;1149 for, in his speech against Piso, he reproaches him with having violated it by including free nations in his government of Macedonia.1150 Lastly, a separate proviso regulated the responsibility and expenses of the administration, by requiring that on going out of office the governors should deliver, at the end of thirty days, an account explaining their administration and their expenses, of which three copies were to be deposited, one in the treasury (ærarium) at Rome, and the others in the two principal towns of the province.1151 The proprætors were to remain one year, and the proconsuls two, at the head of their governments.1152

The generals were in the habit of burdening the people they governed with exorbitant exactions. They extorted from them crowns of gold (aurum coronarium), of considerable value, under pretence of the triumph, and obliged the countries through which they passed to bear the expenses of themselves and their attendants. Cæsar remedied these abuses, by forbidding the proconsuls to demand the crown before the triumph had been decreed,1153 and by subjecting to the most rigorous restrictions the contributions in kind which were to be furnished.1154 We may judge how necessary these regulations were from the fact that Cicero, whose government was justly considered an honest one, admits that he drew large sums from his province of Cilicia eight years after the passing of the law Julia.1155

The same law forbad all governors to leave their provinces, or to send their troops out of them to interfere in the affairs of any neighbouring State, without permission of the Senate and the people,1156 or to extort any money from the inhabitants of the provinces.1157

The law by similar provisions diminished the abuse of free legations (legationes liberæ). This was the name given to the missions of senators, who, travelling into the provinces on their own affairs, obtained by an abuse the title of envoy of the Roman people, to which they had no right, in order to be defrayed the expenses and costs of travelling. These missions, which were for an indefinite time, were the subject of incessant1158 complaints. Cicero had limited them to a year: Cæsar prescribed a still narrower limit, but its exact length is unknown.1159

As a supplement to the preceding measures he brought in a law (De pecuniis repetundis), the provisions of which have often been confounded with those of the law De provinciis ordinandis. Cicero boasts of its perfection1160 and justice. It contained a great number of sections. In a letter from Cœlius to Cicero, the 101st chapter of the law is referred to. Its object was to meet all cases of peculation, out of Italy as well as in Rome. Persons who had been wronged could demand restitution before a legal tribunal of the sums unjustly collected.1161 Though the principal provisions of it were borrowed from the law of Sylla on the same subject, the penalty was more severe and the proceedings more expeditious. For instance, as the rich contrived, by going into voluntary exile before the verdict, to elude the punishment, it was provided that in that case their goods should be confiscated, in part or wholly, according to the nature of the crime.1162 If the fortune of the defendant was not sufficient for the repayment of the money claimed, all those who had profited by the embezzlement were sought out and jointly condemned.1163 Finally, corruption was attacked in all its forms,1164 and the law went so far as to watch over the honesty of business transactions. One article deserves special remark, that which forbad a public work to be accepted as completed if it were not absolutely finished. Cæsar had doubtless in mind the process which he had unsuccessfully instituted against Catulus for his failure to complete the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

We may for the most part consider as Cæsar’s laws those which were passed at his instigation, whether by the tribune P. Vatinius, or the prætor Q. Fufius Calenus.1165

One of the laws of the former authorised the accuser in a suit, as well as the accused, to challenge for once all the judges: down to this time they had only been permitted to challenge a certain number.1166 Its object was to give to all the same guarantee which Sylla had reserved exclusively to the senators, since for the knights and plebeians he limited the challenge to three.1167 Vatinius had also conferred on five thousand colonists, established at Como (Novum Comum), the rights of a Roman city. This measure1168 flattered the pride of Pompey, whose father, Pompeius Strabo, had rebuilt the town of Comum; and it offered to other colonists the hope of obtaining the qualification of Roman citizens, which Cæsar subsequently granted to them.1169

Another devoted partisan of the consul, the prætor Q. Fufius Calenus,1170 proposed a law which in judicial deliberations laid the responsibility upon each of the three orders of which the tribunal was composed: the senators, the knights, and the tribunes of the treasury. Instead of pronouncing a collective judgment, they were called upon to express their opinion separately. Dio Cassius explains the law in these terms: “Seeing that in a process all the votes were mixed together, and that each order took to itself the credit of the good decisions, and threw the bad ones to the account of the others, Calenus had a law made that the different orders should vote independently, in order to know thus, not the opinion of individuals, since the vote was secret, but that of each order.”1171

All the laws of Cæsar were styled “Julian laws;” they received the sanction of the Senate, and were adopted without opposition,1172 and even Cato himself did not oppose them; but when he became prætor, and found himself obliged to put them into execution, he was little-minded enough to object to call them by their name.1173