The Classical World (55 page)

Caesar escaped execution and left for military service in the East. Here, hostile gossip later claimed that he became a sexual favourite of the king of Bithynia. There was nothing in it, but when Caesar was later insulted as ‘womanish’ he retorted brilliantly that Amazons had once ruled most of Asia and so his threat to dance on the heads of his senatorial enemies was not an empty one.
²
In 80
BC
a brave exploit in the Aegean won him the ‘civic crown’, a very high military distinction for saving a citizen’s life in battle: its oak wreath could then be worn in public and even senators would have to stand up in his presence at public games, a privilege which cannot have been lost on his high sense of dignity. He returned to Rome and gained fame, and hostility, for prosecuting a respected ex-consul for plundering his province. He then returned to the Greek East to study and let the hostility cool at Rome. Unlike the rising star, Pompey, Caesar had a quick, educated mind which was always interested in literature. But he too was a born fighter. He took a sweet, swift revenge on some pirates in the Aegean who tried to hold him to ransom. Aged twenty-six, he took troops back into Bithynia to stop defections there to Rome’s great enemy, Mithridates. Already, he was acting without orders.

Back at Rome, as Sulla’s reactionary settlement broke up, Caesar
held fast to the alternative populist line. His aunt was the widow of the popular hero Marius, and when she died he gave a funeral speech in the Forum which dwelt on her (and therefore his) very noble descent from gods and kings. The words would eventually seem prophetic when he himself seemed to rival both these types of dangerous ancestor. People noticed him, as they did when he displayed the insignia of Marius, the long-suppressed popular hero, in his aunt’s funeral procession. He even displayed Marius’ trophies, long concealed, up on the Capitol. Then, later in 69, Caesar left to serve as a junior magistrate in southern Spain. Here, he went on the usual assize-tour, hearing cases. In Cadiz, he is said to have seen a statue of Alexander the Great in the town’s main temple, and to have wept that he had done nothing memorable, although at his same age Alexander had already conquered the world.
³
Again, historians mostly doubt this story, but perhaps unwisely; it is a less likely story that Caesar also dreamed that he was raping his mother, signifying a wish to dominate (mother) Earth, the world. In Spain, at any rate, occasional attacks of epilepsy are specifically attested as beginning to afflict him.

At Rome, this ambitious young man was still very far indeed from global prominence. That honour went to the great all-conquering Pompey, whose exceptional command against the Mediterranean pirates had been supported by Caesar, the one senator to vote for it in 67 (a victory over the pirates would help the people by reducing the price of grain imports). Nonetheless, as an aedile (a citymagistrate) in 65, it was Caesar who was the greater showman. He paid for the customarygames, but added hugelyto their popular appeal by offering 320 pairs of gladiators in public combat, to be dressed with silver weaponry. They were intended, he said, as a funerary honour for his dead father. But his father had died twenty years earlier and this enormous show caused an anxious Senate to ‘recommend’ a prompt limit on the number of gladiators which anyone could present. Like the games, the cost of Caesar’s show would have been enormous. The higher reaches of a public career at Rome required huge expense, and never more so than in the intensely competitive late 60s. But Caesar borrowed hugely to pay for the costs and in the absence of glorious Pompey he borrowed from the vastly rich Crassus. Amid charges of corruption and conspiracy, the two of them were even suspected of
plotting a coup in 65, so that Crassus could sort out the highly rewarding kingdom of Egypt and Caesar, still only an aedile, could serve as Crassus the dictator’s second-in-command. Pompey, indeed, was absent and Egypt was certainly the great unresolved prize, whose grain and treasure would make its ‘captors’ uniquely powerful. Other partners were wrongly alleged later to have been in on the deal, but in 64 Cicero did hint that Crassus had been up to something.
⁴
We can only guess or reject the story (as most scholars do), not least because such a role for a humble aedile seems wholly incredible. But was Caesar a typical aedile?

What we do know is that he played prominent roles in the year 63, the fateful pinnacle of Cicero’s career. At the start, it was Caesar who promoted a sham trial in public to warn Cicero and others about abuse of the Senate’s so-called ‘ultimate decree’. In December, when Cicero then abused precisely this decree against living citizens who were already under arrest, it was Caesar who spoke so forcefully in the Senate in favour of imprisoning the offenders but not killing them. Here, too, he took a populist approach in support of ‘freedom’, one which he, but not Cicero, would never regret. In Cicero’s unpublished ‘inside story’, Caesar would later be roundly blamed (with Crassus) for backing Catiline in the first place and causing a near-revolution. Was this charge only the old Cicero’s sour hindsight or had there once again been more to Caesar’s early discredit than we know? Whatever the truth, it did not stop Caesar from two fine successes in this same year. He won the immensely prestigious ‘High Priesthood’ (as Pontifex Maximus he had an office, henceforward, in the heart of the Roman Forum and a house on the adjoining Sacred Way) and he was also elected to the praetorship, the next career step, for the year 62. The priesthood cost him a fortune in bribery and the praetorship began with his controversial support for the returning hero, Pompey: it did not stop Caesar gaining a command in Further Spain for 61
BC
.

This provincial command did not make him by first awakening his ambition (it was surelythere from his adolescence) but it was certainly crucial to his survival. On his return, a failure to pay his debts would be terminal, obliging him to become an exile. The recognized wayfor Romans to repay such debts was to soak a province for spoils, bribes and booty. By late 61 Caesar had done just that, byattacking enough
outlying tribes in Spain, and so he could start to think of the ultimate honours, a triumph and then a consulship back in Rome. This prospect really alarmed his traditionalist contemporaries, especially Cato, the arch-conservative who would never give Caesar the benefit of any doubt. Cato therefore obliged Caesar to choose between a triumph (already voted, in principle) or standing as consul. Coolly, Caesar chose to go for the consulship, obliging Cato to compromise and try to beat him at his own game by amassing a big fund for electoral bribery and ensuring that his own reliable kinsman, Bibulus, would be elected as Caesar’s fellow consul.

Both of them were dulyelected for the year 59, but, unlike Bibulus, Caesar prepared for his year of office by the artful ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Pompey and Crassus, a couple hitherto divided by personal enmity. Cunningly, Caesar saw they both had needs which he, as consul, could help them meet. As a major financier, Crassus needed a renegotiation of the tax-collecting contract in the province of Asia. Pompey needed two things, the ratification of the arrangements which he had personally imposed on Asia and the settlement of his veteran soldiers, who were still unrewarded from their victories in the East in the 60s. As for Caesar himself, he had a populist programme which would lead (so he hoped) to an ever greater and more profitable provincial command. Economic tension in Rome was running very high. Seeing trouble coming, surely, the senators had already allotted humdrum commands to these consuls after their year of office: not a Spain or Gaul, but ‘woods and tracks’ in Italy itself.

The year 59, Caesar’s consulship, is a climactic moment in Roman history. Previous ‘populists’ had fallen prey to the same weakness, their failure to escape reprisals from ‘traditionalists’ either during or after their hated year of office. Caesar’s plan was brutally simple: to carry Pompey and Crassus with him in a mutual balance of favours; to put laws directly to the people’s assemblies, despite the Senate’s opposition; to work with and through supportive tribunes who could veto such opposition; to ‘fix’ supportive tribunes for the following year and supportive consuls too, if possible; to be voted a major provincial command and then to leave Rome with the powers to carry it out, thus being untouchable by prosecution as he left the city. But his fellow consul, Bibulus, was flatly against him, and Caesar’s
‘populist’ legislation would have to go straight to the people to become law, because the senators would surely never recommend it. Traditionalists, as usual, would hate the tactic.

The ensuing manoeuvres are unforgettable in Roman public and political life: the addresses to public meetings; the gangs and cliques in the Forum; the parade of ‘imprisoning’ the intransigent Cato, although he was a tribune; the harassment of the obstructive consul Bibulus (a bucket of dung was once poured publicly over his head). Attempted ‘intercession’ byother hostile tribunes was evaded byviolence; it all sounds chaotic, but already in 62 even the man of principle, young Cato, had prevented a tribune from reciting an unwanted bill by having a fellow tribune jam his hand over the man’s mouth. In 59 Caesar’s colleague Bibulus countered by withdrawing to his house and claiming that irregularities in the heavens (observed only by him) made each possible day in the calendar unfit for the due course of public business. He also distributed posters with such scandalous attacks on Caesar that the common people crowded round to find out their fascinating contents, thereby blocking traffic in Rome’s streets.

Nonetheless, sufficient laws in Caesar’s programme were forced through. One, long planned, set out an eminently reasonable programme for the settlement of Pompey’s veteran soldiers and other needy citizens on land in Italy. Cleverly, the proposals would not involve confiscations from any private owner. Another law lowered the Asian tax contract to suit Crassus’ interests: Cato was still bitterly opposed to it. In April a second law then proposed the allotment of rich lands in Campania, behind the Bay of Naples, lands which had been first taken as ‘public’ after Roman victories over Hannibal in 211. It was deeply contentious. One aim was to give land to some 20,000 poor citizens in Rome and their families, part of the ‘dregs’, in the traditionalists’ view of them, who were such a distress and a possible danger in the city. To Cicero, this fine proposal seemed an outrage.

Even as late as August good legislation was still being brought forward, especially a complex law against unchecked extortion by Roman governors abroad. But to go so far Caesar had had to play extremely hard. Not only had Cato continued to oppose him, especially on the proposed assistance to Crassus and the tax-contractors. There was a real danger that once Pompey’s main needs were met he
too would veer off to join the conservative senators’ groupings, his more natural resting place. In the spring Pompey had married Caesar’s beloved only daughter, Julia, but even a tie by marriage was very fragile. In summer 59 Caesar therefore promoted an informer (it seems) to warn the ever-nervous Pompey of a high-grade plot against his life. The final allegations included the names of almost every ‘traditional’ senatorial opponent, whereupon the informer was conveniently killed while in prison.
⁵
Cicero was surelyright to see Caesar’s hand behind the affair: it scared Pompey, sure enough, and so it kept the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ in existence. But once again, it stank.

Friendly consuls could not, after all, be fixed for the following year, but a friendly tribune (Clodius) and a provincial command were forthcoming. Overturning the Senate’s earlier proposals of ‘woods and tracks’, Caesar obtained for himself by popular vote the far greater provinces of Cisalpine Gaul (nowadays north Italy) and Illyricum (what is now the Dalmatian coast), a promising base for conquests inland. Furthermore, they were voted for five whole years. To his great good fortune, the allotted commander for Transalpine Gaul had died in April and on news of danger from the surrounding tribes, even the senators panicked and anxiously added Transalpine Gaul to Caesar’s provinces. He was, after all, a proven general for what might be a major crisis and the combined commands would certainly preoccupy him.

What had shocked senatorial conservatives so far was Caesar’s sheer forcefulness, his contempt for their opposition (and themselves) and the populism of the laws for which he would now receive great public credit. The political footling of Bibulus and his obstructions were basically irrelevant but it was at least arguable that Caesar’s entire legislation was technically invalid as a result: if the matter was judged in court, the senators would probably‘fix’ a juryto uphold their view of ‘illegality’. Meanwhile, senators had seen their old, once-famous general Lucullus forced to grovel at Caesar’s feet. They were not above making a counter-proposal: could not Caesar wait and bring forward his legislation in the following year when they might no longer oppose him or even not threaten prosecution? But Caesar did not trust them and his dignity would never permit it. This time, the customary ‘concord’ among senators after a crisis could not be cosilyreasserted.

In the first weeks of 58, following his consulship, Caesar was outside Rome’s city-boundary, recruiting troops for his provincial command, but he was still accessible to the senators and daily news of politics within the city. It was imperative that attempts to undo his legislation in the new year did not succeed. In fact, Clodius (his supportive tribune) proved well up to the challenge. The incoming consuls were cleverly bought off with the offer of valuable provincial commands; populist laws continued to be brought forward, and there was even a fear that Clodius would become too powerful in his own right. Certainly Clodius had one grudge to settle, against Cicero, who (he felt) had let him down in 63
BC
. As neither Pompey nor Caesar was willing to intervene, Cicero anticipated his fate by leaving the city. By mid-March Caesar, too, was off on his way to Gaul.

As he rode north, he cut a fine figure on horseback, dark-eyed, tall for a Roman and already balding. As in Spain, three years earlier, a governorship would more than restore his finances and ought to allow for no end of future bribes back in Rome. But what then? If Caesar laid down his command and re-entered Rome as a private citizen, his enemies would prosecute him at once for the ‘illegalities’ in his year as consul. If he wanted to become a consul yet again, how could he realize his aim when he had to wait a statutory ten years before standing and when he would surely be forced to return to Rome so as to campaign for his election in person? Pompey and Crassus would not assist him for nothing and Cato, certainly, would not go away. The consulship of 59
BC
had been sensational, but it had created as many problems as it had addressed. With his armies in Gaul, proud Caesar was really out on a limb.