Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  The day after the massacre of the Gauls at Alesia, seventy-four of the Gallic standards were brought to Caesar. Vercingetorix himself rode out of the city gates resplendent in his Gallic armour of bronze helmet embossed with animal figures, his iron cuirass and gold-plated belt. Halting before Caesar, he stripped himself, handed over his javelin and long broadsword and lay prone on the ground in abject surrender.34 Caesar’s great adversary had been vanquished. And yet, as he looked on, Caesar knew that the real showdown was only just about to begin.

  RUBICON

  When Caesar’s dispatches from Gaul brought the news of his victory to Rome, the Senate decreed an unprecedented twenty days of public celebration. Caesar, too, contributed to the party: he paid for gladiatorial games, as well as a lavish public banquet in memory of his daughter. To give the impression that the feast was his very own special gift to the Roman people, he had some of the food prepared in his house. Indeed, he let slip no opportunity for generosity. Corn was distributed ‘without limit or measure’ to the plebs, and low-interest loans were given to those in need of money. Senators and knights (the rank below senator) who were in debt, as well as slaves and freedmen accused of crimes, all took advantage of Caesar’s largesse.35

  Later, there would be treats of a more cerebral kind. Caesar’s eight volumes of Commentaries on the Gallic War were published in 50 BC. These books glorified his dazzling exploits, even eclipsing the collective memory of Pompey’s conquests in the east. Easily copied and distributed, they would be a public relations coup like no other. They also showed that Caesar was not just a master general, but a master of literary technique. Written in crystal clear, quotable language accessible to many, Caesar’s compositions reminded everyone who read them of the sheer sophistication of his mind. Indeed, he even wrote a scholarly essay on Latin grammar. But the Commentaries on the Gallic War were also a timely reminder of the central political principle for which Caesar stood: ‘All men by nature desire liberty and hate the condition of slavery.’36 It was with the liberty of the people in mind – at least the liberty of the Roman people – that Caesar made his first preparations for a return to Rome and to his enemies in the Senate.

  The battle lines of the old conflict between Caesar and Cato’s conservative allies were now reconfigured in one burning question: when would Caesar give up his command? Caesar knew that as soon as he became a private citizen, Cato would pounce and prosecute him for his alleged crimes as consul in Rome and proconsul in Gaul. Yet the idea that he, Caesar, the man who had sweated blood to win Gaul for the glory and benefit of the republic, might be treated like a petty criminal was absolutely out of the question. Who was the whinging Cato to tell Caesar what to do? Such a prospect was completely beneath Caesar’s dignity.

  There was only one way out of Cato’s trap: to stand again for the consulship. It was not customary to hold the consulship more than once within a ten-year period. It clashed with the principle of republican power-sharing. So, with his sights set on standing for office for 49 BC, Caesar marshalled all his allies in Rome to bypass the conservatives in the Senate and propose a special bill direct to the people. This proposed law would extend his command in Gaul until 49 BC, then allow him to stand for office without having even set foot in the city. Although his enemies in the Senate hissed, such was Caesar’s popularity after Gaul that all ten tribunes of the people supported the bill and it was passed in 52 BC. But the law was only the beginning of the debate.

  As the months passed, Caesar’s command came under attack after attack. Every time a senator tried to revoke the bill and deprive him of his command, a carefully deployed tribune would veto. ‘You know the routine,’ wrote one contemporary observer. ‘There will be a decision about Gaul. Somebody will come along with a veto. Then somebody else will stand up . . . So we shall have a long, elaborate charade.’37 As if by centrifugal force, the members of the Roman élite found themselves forced to take a stand on one side or another. A clique of Caesareans, young, ambitious and growing in numbers, believed that Caesar was the stronger, that reform of the republic and its corrupt, discredited senators was paramount and, above all, that greater political and financial rewards lay with him. Cato, meanwhile, rallied the traditional senators under the banner of defending the constitution of the republic. They came in their droves. Caesar’s unprecedented demands made it easy for Cato to present him as the would-be tyrant, as the man bent on destroying the republic, the man whose grotesque greed and ambition were driving him to seize power. But on the question of which side to take, there was one man who had yet to declare his hand.

  Since his appointment to the sole consulship, Pompey’s behaviour towards his old ally had been highly ambivalent. In the last months of his office in 52 BC he had used his influence to support the bill of ten tribunes granting Caesar the special privilege of standing for the consulship in absentia. However, the warm overtures of the aristocratic constitutionalists, and their appointment of him to stand for the sole consulship, had persuaded him that the path to winning both power and respect did not lie exclusively with Caesar and his maverick ways. So when, after the death of Julia, Caesar offered Pompey his great-niece Octavia in marriage, Pompey turned him down flat.

  The woman he eventually chose was beautiful, graceful and cultivated in literature, music, geometry and philosophy. The union caused quite a scandal because his new wife was half Pompey’s age. But in Cornelia, Pompey had found not just a woman to love, but also a place in high society, for the blood running in her veins could not have been bluer. She was the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio, a scion of one of the great patrician families in Rome, a family that could boast among its forebears Publius Scipio, the slayer of Hannibal; a family now at the very heart of the senatorial establishment.

  So while he was supposed to have been restoring order to the streets of Rome, Pompey had donned wedding garlands and married Cornelia. As if to spell out just how cosily he was now bedded down with the constitutionalists, in August 52 BC, once peace had returned to the streets of Rome, Pompey willingly gave up his sole consulship before his term of office had expired and invited his new father-in-law Metellus Scipio to join him as his consular colleague.38 The former gangster was now behaving like a pillar of republican respectability. Cato knew he had Pompey just where he wanted him. Now he went for the kill.

  In a bid to drive an unmistakable wedge between Pompey and Caesar, an intense pressure offensive began. While the consuls of 51 BC attacked Caesar publicly in the Senate for holding on to his command, Cato worked on Pompey privately, playing to the general’s insecurity. Caesar was now a far more powerful man than Pompey, went his line of reasoning. Was Pompey the Great just going to sit back and watch his old ally return to Rome at the head of an army and tell everyone what to do? What right did Caesar have to dictate to us? No man’s dignity was greater than the republic. Cato’s sniping soon showed signs of paying off. In September 51 BC Pompey made an announcement. Caesar, he said, should give up his command in the spring of the following year and allow for a successor to be appointed. Pompey was pressed on the matter: what if one of Caesar’s tribunes vetoed the proposal? ‘... and supposing my son chooses to take his stick to me?’39 With these words, Pompey abandoned the comfort of the fence and severed all ties with Caesar.

  Although the conservative politicians had now secured their strongman, it took a massive outpouring of love and support from the people to make Pompey feel like one. When he recovered from a serious illness while in Naples, Roman citizens up and down Italy rejoiced, in bouts of sacrificing and feasting. As he made his way back to Rome, Pompey was mobbed by people wearing garlands, carrying torches and pelting him with flowers. The effect of this enormous public celebration proved intoxicating, even blinding: ‘Pompey began to feel a kind of over-confidence in himself, which went far beyond considerations based on facts.’40

  Pompey’s lack of a grasp on reality was now made worse. The Senate requested that both he and Caesar give up one legion from
their commands to quell unrest on Rome’s eastern frontier in Parthia. As Caesar had borrowed an extra legion from the republic’s army, both legions were to come from Caesar’s army. The Senate’s request allowed him the opportunity to pose as a friend of peace, as the man who wanted to bring about a resolution to the crisis. With that in mind, Caesar willingly handed over both legions. When they arrived in Italy, one of their officers by the name of Appius belittled Caesar’s army and his achievements in Gaul. Pompey did not need any troops other than these two legions, he said. They were sufficient to handle the threat posed by Caesar. Pompey’s confidence was boosted even higher. He had easily built Caesar up, the great general thought to himself; now he could just as easily pull him down. When, later on, a senator, alarmed at Pompey’s lack of preparation, asked him with what legions he would defend the republic should Caesar march on Rome, Pompey serenely replied that there was nothing at all to worry about. ‘I have only to stamp my foot upon the ground,’ he said, ‘and there will rise up armies of infantry and armies of cavalry.’41

  In mid-50 BC a dissolute ally of Caesar by the name of Marcus Caelius Rufus declared that the love affair between Pompey and Caesar was over.42 From the slave to the tax collector, from the beggar to the senator, there were now only two words on the lips of every Roman: civil war. And yet as both sides stepped ever closer to outright confrontation in the latter half of the year, the majority of the Senate wanted to pull back from the precipice. In November the senators voted by 370 to 22 for peace.43 But that meant only one thing: giving in to Caesar’s wishes. To Cato that was simply unconscionable.

  The weakness of the Senate now served to stiffen the resolve of Cato and his closest allies, provoking even the arch-constitutionalists to actions with no legal authority. After the vote the consul of 50 BC Gaius Claudius Marcellus cried, ‘Have your way. Be slaves to Caesar!’ and stormed out of the Senate. He and his fellow consul then went to Pompey’s house on the outskirts of the city and, in a highly staged piece of melodrama, put a sword in his hand. With it they commanded him to take the field against Caesar in defence of the republic, and granted him both the legions stationed in Italy and the right to levy more. Pompey did his best to avoid appearing the aggressor, replying solemnly, ‘If there is no other way.’ In reality, though, he too now wanted war.44

  On the first day of the new year 49 BC Caesar again presented himself as the advocate of peace, believing he had the Senate cowed. The newly elected tribune Mark Antony, Caesar’s mouthpiece in Rome, read out a letter from the proconsul: for his many successes in Gaul, the Roman people had granted him the legal right to stand for office in absentia. While he expected that privilege to stand, he was prepared to lay down his arms on the one condition that Pompey did too.

  In response, one of the new consuls, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus launched a tirade. Now was not the time to be weak, he said. If the senators caved in, the consuls would have no option but to deploy Pompey and his army anyway. He was the source of the republic’s safety and if they did not act now, they could not rely on Pompey’s help later. The majority were so stung by these threats that when Pompey’s father-in-law Metellus Scipio stood up and proposed that a date should be fixed by which Caesar must lay down his arms or else be declared an enemy of the state, the majority of the Senate agreed with him. When the motion was taken to the people’s assembly, Mark Antony vetoed it, so the stalemate continued.45

  Caesar tried again. If the Senate would not lay down arms, then nor would he simply give up his office and hand himself over to them for prosecution. He was, however, prepared to make concessions. He proposed giving up both provinces of Gaul and the ten legions stationed there so long as he could retain the province of Illyricum and its one legion. Once again, this proposal collided with the steamroller of Cato and his faction. On no account was Caesar to dictate conditions to the Senate, they cried. With this, the political process came to a dead end and war was now inevitable. The consuls passed an ‘ultimate decree’ of the Senate. Steps must now be taken, it said, o ensure that the republic came to no harm. Bellowing threats and abuse, the consul Lentulus then promptly threw Mark Antony and his followers out of the Senate House.46

  The lives of Caesar’s allies in Rome were now in danger. Mark Antony, Caelius and the former tribune Gaius Scribonius Curio were given six days to leave the city or be killed. They disguised themselves as slaves and made their escape stowed on the back of wagons. Such an unseemly exit was a fitting conclusion to the stand-off, for it gave Caesar one final proof of the Senate’s injustice, one last piece of propaganda. The contemptuous, corrupt and arrogant senators had yet again insulted the liberty of the Roman people by threatening the tribunes and violating the sanctity of their persons. To illustrate the point Caesar paraded his humiliated friends before his army, clad just as they were in the clothes of slaves.47

  The action now moved south. The Rubicon is a small river that once marked the boundary between Gaul and Italy. It was against the law for Roman commanders to bring troops out of their province and into Italy, so the decision to cross the river under arms amounted to an irrevocable declaration of war. But on 10 January 49 BC it was to the Rubicon that Caesar, upon hearing the news from Rome, now sent ahead a detachment of his boldest soldiers. This decision was typical of the man. He was against collecting the full weight of his ten legions from the other side of the Alps because ‘better results could be obtained by surprise, daring and taking the quickest advantage of the moment’.48 On the afternoon before he set off from his camp to join them, Caesar watched some gladiators exercise. He then took a bath, got dressed in the toga of his rank and sat down to make polite conversation with his friends over dinner. It was as though he had no fear. When it became dark he quietly took leave of his guests and slipped away.

  Today no one knows where the Rubicon lies or whether it even still exists. To add to the mystery, the river is not even mentioned by Caesar in his account of the civil war. Nonetheless, all other Greek and Roman historians have focused their accounts on the moment before he crossed the Rubicon. Their attention to this reflects the ancient world’s enduring fascination with trying to work out what was going through Caesar’s mind at this critical instance. Some say he hesitated and nearly lost his nerve, paralysed at the thought of going to war with his fellow Romans.49 Others say that a spirit appeared, stole a trumpet from one of his soldiers and, letting out a loud blast, crossed to the other side; Caesar took it as a sign and did the same.50 All agree, however, that Caesar said, ‘The die is cast,’ and with those words, he crossed the river.

  The republic, with its ancient system of free elections, democracy and concord between the classes of Roman society, was in the hands of Pompey and Caesar. Although they did not yet know it, the very thing that both sides were fighting for was to become the very thing they would destroy. The fight for liberty would reverberate across the entire Roman world.

  THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY

  The march of Caesar’s thirteenth legion through Italy was as swift and clinical as a bolt of lightning. But just as effective was Caesar’s clever campaign of spin. Its slogan was ‘Clemency’. Within a day, he had reached Ariminum (now called Rimini); the town voluntarily opened its gate and came over to Caesar without so much as the unsheathing of a sword. Other towns, including Auximum, Asculum, Picenum and Corfinium, followed suit, even though they had troops stationed there who had been levied in Pompey’s name. The form these engagements took was the same. The Pompeian officers attempted a meagre resistance; once captured, they were immediately discharged, free to decide which side they were on; the majority of their soldiers deserted to Caesar’s army and the towns were thanked. The general himself described his spin offensive in a letter of the time: ‘I have of my own accord decided to show all possible clemency and to reconcile myself to Pompey . . . Let this be a new style of conquest, to make mercy and generosity our shield.’51 That style was proving very effective.

  In Rome, Caesar’s enemies were thrown into a
fit of panic. They had hoped that the respectable classes in towns throughout Italy would rise up as one in defence of the republic against the invader. But as Caesar waged his blitzkrieg without significant opposition, they quickly realized that they had hopelessly misread the majority view. The senator Cicero was astonished by the complete reversal of advantage between Pompey and Caesar:

  [Do] you see what sort of man this is into whose hands the state has fallen, how clever, alert, well-prepared? I truly believe that if he takes no lives and touches no man’s property, those who dreaded him most will become his warmest admirers. Both town and country people talk to me a great deal. They really think of nothing except their fields and their bits of farms and investments. And look how the tables are turned! They fear the man they used to trust and love the man they used to dread.52

  Militarily too, the constitutionalists were utterly wrong-footed. Pompey did not expect Caesar to attack so swiftly, believing that their forces would not meet until the spring.53 Blinded by arrogance, Caesar’s opponents had failed to complete the levy of the troops in Italy, and there was now no time to wait for Pompey’s legions in Spain to reach Rome. The two legions that Pompey did have outside the city walls were simply no match for Caesar’s eleven.

  A plague of quarrelling and rabid recrimination broke out in the senatorial faction, infecting even the mind of their champion. Indeed it paralysed him. Pompey’s old friendship with their common enemy was to blame for arming Caesar in the first place, cried one senator. And where were those armies that he had so proudly boasted would come to him at the stamp of his foot, whinged another. Was Pompey stamping now?54 The anarchy in the senatorial ranks was echoed on the streets of Rome in one poetic account. All magistrates threw off their robes of office, ordinary people moved through the streets like ghosts heavy with sorrow and fear, and the temples were thronged with women in mourning who threw themselves on the floor and tore at their hair.55 The city was convulsed with the fear of Roman fighting Roman, of Caesar’s unstoppable, relentless advance on Rome.