The Classical World (56 page)

The Spectre of Civil War

So this is what their love affair, their scandalous union has come to – not secret backbiting, but outright war. As for my own affairs, I don’t know what plan to take, and I don’t doubt that the same question is going to trouble you. I have ties of obligation and friendship with these people. On the other hand, I love the cause, but hate the men
.

I do not suppose that it escapes you that when there is a dispute about affairs in a community, men ought to take the more respectable side so long as the dispute is political and not conducted by force of arms. But when it comes to actual war and army-camps, then they should choose the stronger and reckon that the better course is the one which is safer
.

Caelius to Cicero,
Letters to Friends
8.14 (
c
. 8 August 50
BC
)

Within two years of fighting beyond the Alps Caesar would become too successful, too quickly. In the name of Gallic ‘freedom’, he launched attacks on neighbouring tribes, including the Helvetii, who were preparing to migrate westwards into Gallic territory: ‘all men’, he wrote in his commentaries, ‘have a natural keenness for liberty, and hate the condition of servitude’.
¹
But then he exploited divisions among the Gauls so as to pick off their tribes separately and make them into a vast Roman province. The last thing Caesar wanted was to be recalled, mission completed. So, ‘enemies’ and dangers were discovered ever further afield.

In Rome, Pompey and Crassus were still pre-eminent, but there was plenty of scope for popular legislation. For the city, as Cicero’s
brother had described it in the mid-60s, was still ‘formed from the concourse of the peoples of the world’ and contained at least 750,000 inhabitants. This huge mass of citizen-freedmen, slaves and foreigners was the setting for the upper class’s intense disputes about order, ‘tradition’ and legal propriety. As tribune in 58, Clodius had restored the common people’s right to form social groups and associations, the ‘colleges’ which the Senate had simply declared ‘contrary to the interests of the Republic’ and abolished back in 64. He had also made the subsequent distribution of grain into a free monthly allotment. More than 300,000 citizens would be able to claim it, but it would be a vast burden on public funds and supply, although the allotment would sustain only one person, not an entire family. To increase funds, Clodius and others looked eastwards, not least to the rich domains of the Ptolemies in Cyprus. Clodius had an old grudge against its ruler and bya brilliant manoeuvre after Caesar’s departure, forced even the principled Cato to compromise in what was needed. By proposing legislation directly to the people, he had Cato appointed to take over Cyprus from its profligate Ptolemaic prince: the appointment was Cato’s publiclyvoted duty, so he could not refuse it. But by accepting, Cato was also accepting, indirectly, the legality of a whole chain of similarly approved legislation which he had contested, right back (some might say) to Caesar’s laws in 59: 6,000 talents came in from Cyprus’s resources.

Couriers and letters kept Caesar in touch. He is even said to have sent Clodius a letter approving the neat use of tribunes and an assembly-vote to compromise his rival Cato. The new settlement for Cyprus was also, usefully, a departure from Pompey’s previous dealings with a Ptolemaic prince. No doubt Caesar also heard of the amazing activities of the aedile in 58
BC
, Aemilius Scaurus. Scaurus, the stepson of Sulla, displayed five crocodiles and the first hippopotamus Rome had ever seen at his customary games. He then built an extraordinary theatre, three storeys high (of marble, glass and gilding), packed with gold cloth and (it was later said) 3,000 statues and room for 80,000 spectators. He even displayed the vast skeleton of a dinosaur, brought back from his service in the Near East, believing it was a monster from Greek mythology.
²
Popular life at Rome was really looking up, and like Clodius’ laws these games and
displays set a new standard in politicians’ competition for popular prestige.

What most concerned Caesar was the duration of his command ‘beyond the Alps’. In 59 it had been granted, it seems, on a yearly basis. His other command, ‘this side of the Alps, and Illyricum’, was secure, by contrast, for five years. There was the increasing danger that a senatorial rival with Gallic connections, Domitius Ahenobarbus, would get himself elected consul for 55 and force Caesar to be replaced. So Caesar turned again to his artful ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. By 56
BC
both Pompey and Crassus were wanting consulships again, to be followed by lucrative commands abroad, but neither of them was sure of the necessary popular support. Back in Rome, the free distribution of grain instituted by Clodius had been followed, predictably, by acute grain shortages. In autumn 57 Pompey had been given a commission to sort out the grain supply (with powers even ‘greater’ than those of other provincial governors, a fertile innovation), but the challenge was not easily met. Prices had stayed high and there were still shortages. Furthermore, the long-desired chance of intervening in Egypt had been denied to both him and Crassus. By early 56 neither man was the darling of the Roman populace and, in an atmosphere of violence and armed gangs, Pompey continued to fear for his life. When Caesar came south into Italy in spring 56, it was possible for a deal to be agreed. When he reached Ravenna in March, the first to come over was Crassus, because his ambitions were the more pressing. Then, byagreement at Lucca in mid-April, Pompey joined in the deal which was forming, for fear that his glorywould be eclipsed: there would be five-year commands in the provinces for each of them, preceded by consulships for Pompey and Crassus in 55. By postponing the year’s elections, they could count on support from troops whom Caesar would send to Rome for the voting and so they could keep out the rival threat of Ahenobarbus. Then, as the new consuls, Pompey and Crassus could prolong Caesar’s transalpine command for another five years in spring 55, by a law taken straight to the people.

The deal worked, although Caesar’s ‘commentaries’ never said a word about it. Previously, Caesar had even been thinking of a campaign in eastern Europe (Dacia) up to the Danube, but when his
command ‘beyond the Alps’ was sure to be prolonged, he sought new fields in the north-west in which to exploit it. In 56 it was quite likely that he had already been planning an invasion of Britain
³
and he certainly engaged in a gratuitous slaughter of two vulnerable German tribes. On receiving the news in Rome, Cato was so disgusted that he proposed that Caesar, by ancient precedent, should be handed over to the Germans in order to divert the anger of the gods from Rome. Instead, Caesar transferred himself to Britain, briefly in 55 and again in 54, when he took an elephant with him for show. Neither campaign was much of a success. The hopes of finding gold and precious metals in Britain were ill-founded and the effect was more of a raid than a solid conquest. But the publicitywas excellent: Britain was represented as ‘beyond the Ocean’ which had limited the ambitions of Alexander the Great. Back in Rome, Cicero had even been planning to write an epic poem on the ‘glorious conquest’, based on front-line reports from his brother. The news about Britain helped to stave off the danger that Caesar’s enemyAhenobarbus would contrive to replace him in the Gallic command after the consulship which would now be available to Ahenobarbus in 54.

In the city, the summer of 54 was exceptionally hot and tension was exacerbated by continuing shortages of grain. The political setting is still a challenge to our imaginations. Rome was home to such vast numbers and the fascinating politics of the next four years include intricate briberyscandals (Ahenobarbus and his noble colleagues tried to nominate their successors in return for payment), localized bouts of violence (gangs erupted in the city, made up of soldiers, freed slaves, artisans, shopkeepers and trained gladiators) and, in 53 and 52, yet another crisis over the consulship. And yet there was no popular uprising for a change of constitution, no challenge to the total system. The main continuing question was the scope of Pompey’s ambitions. After the consulship of 55 he had been allotted the provinces of Spain, a chance for glory, but since 54 he had preferred to wait with troops outside Rome’s boundaries and govern Spain through subordinates. His most personal link with Caesar now ended: his wife Julia, Caesar’s beloved daughter, died in childbirth. The people of Rome gave her a fine funeral, but what would Pompey now choose to do? He was, after all, becoming an old man. In 53 he lost one major competitor,
then in 52 another. The first to go was the elderly Crassus, now in his late fifties, whose consulship had been followed by the granting of a command in the East against the hostile Parthians. At last, Crassus might return with the full glory of a military triumph, denied him after his actions against Spartacus in the late 70s: its absence had continued to needle the old man. In fact, he was too incompetent and was tricked into defeat by the Parthians in 53, costing him his life and most of his army.

In Rome, January 52 then saw the spectacular end of the most effective of the populists, Clodius. He was attacked on the Appian Way by a gang loyal to his conservative rival Milo, and what began as an accident ended with Clodius’ brutal murder. His corpse was brought into the city, where his wife’s impassioned mourning helped to incite the popular mood. Two of the tribunes added a eulogy over the dead man in the Forum, whereupon the crowd carried his corpse right into the Senate house and tried to cremate their champion on a bonfire of smashed furniture and documents. The house itself caught fire and its ashes were watched by spectators until nightfall. Meanwhile crowds rampaged in Rome and attacked anyone who was seen wearing jewels or fine clothes in the streets. There was no established police force and the one option seemed to be to call on Pompey to restore order with troops. Waiting outside the city, he had already used his power as an ex-consul inside the city in 53. Now he was voted a sole consulship, his third. It was a ‘divine’ one, according to an alarmed and thankful Cicero, and yet it was only two years since his last one. Caesar, by contrast, was still observing the proper ten-year interval between consulships and would not stand for election until summer 49, hoping to take up office in January 48. Meanwhile ambitious young men, new faces and those who simply relished a fight, were leaving Italy to seek promotions with Caesar in the West. Increasingly, he could reward them from his booty and so a real ‘Caesarian clique’ was building up outside Rome.

The crucial long-term question was whether Caesar would be allowed to stand as a candidate for a consulship while absent: if he had to return to canvass for it and laydown his power as a commander, his opponents would prosecute him inside Rome’s boundaries, probably before an intimidated and bribed court. In March 52 Caesar seemed
to get what he wanted: the ten tribunes, supported by Pompey, carried a law which allowed him the unusual step of a candidacy in absence. Traditionalists in the Senate were by passed by it, but many other questions remained open: how would Caesar and Pompey coexist? Was it expected that, like Pompey, Caesar could now stand for a consulship earlier than 49, in (say) 50? If he was elected consul again, whatever would he do this time?

The answers were to mark a real rupture of the Roman Republic: why had such a crisis come? Abroad, the provinces were being ruled by individual governors with powers to do much as they wished and scope to extort huge gains from their subjects. These commands inflated their resources for competition back at Rome, but their victims, the provincials, did not bring about a crisis by rebelling against this type of rule. Nearer home, the previous bitter conflicts between senators and many of the knights and between Romans and Italians were also irrelevant: since the 70s the aftermath of the Social War and of Sulla’s brief ‘solution’ for the jury-courts had largely settled down. In the 50s, however, Romans themselves would still think of ‘luxury’ as a major culprit. As consuls in 55, Pompey and Crassus, inordinately rich men, had considered introducing measures to curb it. In 51 the arch-traditionalist Cato amused the plebs by giving ‘old-fashioned’ games, in disapproval at recent ostentation: he offered simple wreaths, not gold, as prizes and gave small presents of food to the spectators.

We have a sense, here, of men with a traditional obsession, like the ‘gypsies’ or ‘single mothers’ of modern political rhetoric, which is diverting them from the real structural weaknesses. For, despite the years of rhetoric, luxury had marvellously proliferated. Upper-class Romans were building magnificent villas as second homes along the coastline of the Bay of Naples, supporting them on piers of concrete and adorning them with the rows of pillars and terraces which we can enjoy in later paintings of them, preserved for us at Pompeii. These attacks on nature were the work of ‘Xerxes in a toga’, said moralists, recalling the canal-digging of this former Persian king. Since Pompey’s conquests in Asia, fine gems had reached avid Roman buyers, prompting collections of their different types. In the kitchen, specialized local delicacies were increasingly sought and identified,
whether huge snails from north Africa or home-grown dormice raised in special ‘dormouse-houses’ (
gliraria
): ‘theyare fattened in jars which many keep even inside the villa; acorns, walnuts or chestnuts are put inside and when a cover is put on the jars they become fat in the dark.’ There were even flocks of peacocks, kept for display and consumption. In classical Athens, one prominent aristocrat displayed ‘Persian’ peacocks, a gift from the Persian king, and sold eggs to fascinated visitors: his son was then prosecuted for treating the birds as his own. At Rome, peacocks began to be bred by the hundred in the early first century
BC
and, before long, a flock was reckoned to yield a small fortune of an income: ‘a flock of 100’ would produce a tenth of the property qualification to be an upper-class knight.