Decimus brought two essential things to the conspiracy. He had Caesar’s confidence and he had a band of gladiators. Without his trust in Decimus, Caesar would never have gone to the Senate on the Ides. Without the gladiators, the conspirators might not have survived the day themselves. Looking ahead, there was a third point. Decimus was about to start a term, given to him by Caesar, as governor of Italian Gaul. It was a strategic position, close to Rome and with two legions. Such a man could be enormously useful after the Ides.
Decimus owed even more to Caesar than Brutus did. Caesar had made Decimus’s career and, until the Ides, Decimus seemingly repaid him with faithful support. In later years, no one earned more scorn for ingratitude from Caesar’s loyalists than Decimus. The sources don’t reveal his motives, so we can only engage in informed speculation.
Like Brutus and Cassius, Decimus might have felt that his first loyalty was to the Republic. When writing to Decimus in 43 B.C., Cicero portrayed him as part of a cause. For all his support of Caesar, for all his mother’s flirtation with revolution, Decimus came from a family of Best Men and claimed descent from the founder of the Republic. Both Decimus’s father and his grandfather had slaughtered Populists in the city of Rome in what they considered the defense of the Republic. Now it was Decimus’s turn.
Yet, unlike Brutus or Cassius, Decimus was no philosopher, nor do his republican sentiments run very deep. In his eleven surviving single-authored letters—all from 44 or 43 B.C., ten of them to Cicero—Decimus refers only once to “liberating the Republic”; he is much more interested in military and political affairs. Although he was admirably brief as a writer, and although he was running a military campaign, his silence about why he fought is striking. By contrast, thirteen letters by Cicero to Decimus survive from the same period and five of them refer to liberty, tyranny, the assassination of Caesar, or the Republic.
When it comes to killing Caesar, self-interest suggests itself as Decimus’s motive. Decimus was ambitious, competitive, proud, and violent. He cared very much about his dignitas, a subject that comes up frequently in his correspondence with Cicero. If Cicero was a good judge of character—and he often was—then Decimus wanted fame and greatness. Caesar being Caesar, it is easy to imagine him telling Decimus that there was no limit to his ambitions. Yet Caesar was too shrewd to believe it. He could see Decimus’s limitations.
Decimus was the right man to conquer or govern Gaul but not to rule Rome. Decimus was a tactician, not a strategist. He took things personally, which made it difficult for him to postpone revenge, as a good leader needs to be able to do. Decimus was shrewd and capable of deceit but, like the Gauls whom he spent so much time with, he was passionate. For all his youth, Octavian’s acumen and judgment made him much better suited to succeed Caesar. Decimus was a soldier while Octavian was a politician to the core.
Decimus was not the sort of person to shrug off the rise of a rival. He rose to the top by serving Caesar in the field in Gaul and the Civil War. Now others would have the chance to do the same in Parthia while Decimus stayed behind. In particular, the new man who would serve in Parthia was Octavian. After a long ride with him from Gaul to Italy in 45 B.C., Decimus had at least an inkling of Octavian’s ruthless determination. If Decimus ever dreamed of being Caesar’s heir, he had to worry about Octavian. The more Decimus valued the signs of affection bestowed on him by Caesar—the place in his second chariot, the companionship of the dining couch at Lepidus’s—the more he might have resented the rise of Octavian.
Being governor of Italian Gaul and then consul was well and good, but Decimus knew where the real power lay in Caesar’s world—with the army. And the army was closest to Decimus’s heart. The army could win him the cherished goals of being hailed imperator, celebrating a triumph, and becoming one of the first men in Rome. By the end of 45 B.C. Octavian had joined the force that would fight Parthia while Decimus was still in Rome. Decimus might have reckoned that, once Caesar, Octavian, and a troupe of new heroes rode back home in triumph, he would be swept aside. Better to get rid of Caesar now and seize power while he still could.
Style perhaps played a role as well—Decimus was a very brave man and a hard man, and he might have bristled at the courtly affectations that were accruing to Caesar. Snobbery may have played a role. Like Antony, Decimus could sneer at Octavian as the heir of a freedman and a moneychanger. As a member of the old Roman elite, Decimus might not like rubbing shoulders with Caesar’s new senators, men he thought were beneath him. With perhaps a few exceptions, they were not barbarians or ex-legionaries but, rather, wealthy citizens of northern Italy and southern Gaul, descendants of Roman immigrant families in Spain, and centurions from the urban elite of all Italy and not just Rome. Yet that might have been enough to disgust senators who traced their ancestry back to early Rome. We know the name of only one centurion whom Caesar elevated to the Senate but it is worth noting—Gaius Fuficius Fango. His was no doubt a proud name in his hometown of Acerrae, a small city near Naples, but to a Roman elitist it sounded like it came from the gutter.
Then there is Paula Valeria, Decimus’s wife. She was a member of the Roman elite and was in touch with Cicero. Her brother is plausibly identified as Valerius Triarius, a man who fought with Pompey at Pharsalus and died either in that battle or before the end of the Civil War; Cicero became his children’s guardian. Perhaps Paula, like Porcia, felt that she had family blood to avenge and so encouraged her husband to break with Caesar. Paula, remember, had divorced her first husband on the very day of his return to Rome from military service so she could marry Decimus. Such a woman would not hesitate to advise a change of allegiance.
The sources offer no trace of any personal grudge against Caesar but they give abundant evidence of other personal grudges on Decimus’s part. Decimus’s cold-blooded betrayal of his chief becomes easier to understand if emotions like fear, loathing, and resentment came into play. And so he turned on Caesar.
6
WANTED: ASSASSINS
BRUTUS, CASSIUS, AND DECIMUS NOW mobilized followers. They had to decide how to kill Caesar and where and when, but first they needed to assemble a team. They had to move quickly but cautiously. Although Caesar had appointed many if not most of the 800–900 senators, quite a few senators had lost faith in the man who seemed to want to be king. Still, few were willing to commit murder, even on behalf of the Republic, and few were willing to risk their own lives. Fewer still could be trusted. Secrets did not last long in Rome. Besides, Caesar was planning to leave for the Parthian War on March 18. That left a window of about a month.
The leaders of the conspiracy wanted just the right number of followers. They needed enough men to surround Caesar and fight off his supporters but not so many men as to risk being discovered. They preferred trusted friends to new acquaintances. They wanted neither rash youths nor infirm elders. They sought men in the prime of life, like themselves. In the end, they focused on men around the age of forty, as were Brutus, Cassius, and Decimus. They screened potential recruits with well-crafted and innocent-sounding questions.
UNKINDEST CUTTERS: CAESAR’S FRIENDS
It was one thing for Caesar to lose the support of Brutus and Cassius. They owed a lot to him, but they were not really his men and had fought for Pompey. It was another thing for Caesar to lose others like Decimus, the very men who followed him for years, from Gaul to the Civil War and beyond. But that is just what happened. Writing about eighty years later, the thinker-statesman Seneca claimed that the plot had more of Caesar’s friends than his enemies in it. It’s tempting to believe that Seneca was right.
According to Nicolaus of Damascus, the conspirator-friends included Caesar’s civilian associates, his officers, and his soldiers. Nicolaus admits that some joined the plot because they were disturbed to see power go from the Republic into the hands of one man. They were also impressed by the quality of the men who led the plot, especially the Brutus family. But Nicolaus emphasizes their low, self-interested motives. They felt that
Caesar hadn’t rewarded them enough or that he had given away too much to the former supporters of Pompey. Nicolaus singles out some of Caesar’s soldiers, both officers and ordinary men, for feeling this way. As for the politicians, some wanted to replace Caesar as the leading man (or men) in Rome. And then there was Caesar’s famous policy of pardon or forgiveness toward his opponents in the Civil War. The policy earned gratitude and stirred anger.
Nicolaus makes Caesar’s policy of clemency a central grievance of the conspirators. On the one hand, Caesar’s clemency angered some of his longtime supporters, who wanted to see their former enemies humbled, not raised to equality. On the other hand, it annoyed the former Pompey supporters, Nicolaus says, to have to accept as a favor what they might have won on their own. Cato protested Caesar’s arrogance in claiming the right to “pardon” his enemies. Writing in the same vein, another ancient writer sums up the case against Caesar. “His very power of granting favors,” he says, “weighed heavily on free people.”
For Nicolaus, the conspiracy was more a matter of court intrigue and petty jealousy than of liberty and the Republic. This may reflect his life experience. Before coming to the court of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, Nicolaus served at the court of the infamous King Herod in Judaea, a place that had no shortage of plots. He also served as tutor to the children of Antony and Cleopatra, also not a job to foster political innocence. Nicolaus’s outlook on the conspiracy surely also reflects the situation of his later years, when he supported Augustus’s regime, a monarchy that looked down on the conspirators as villains.
Jealousy is a primitive emotion, easily discernible in children and animals. Yet even sophisticated Romans might have felt resentful of Caesar. So much talent, so much good fortune, so much power in one man! Jealousy was surely not enough on its own to give birth to a conspiracy, but it might have emboldened the conspirators.
Nicolaus leaves out one selfish motive on the part of the conspirators—fear of Octavian’s rising star. But since Nicolaus worked for Octavian Augustus he could hardly include that motive. Many people underestimated Octavian at the time because he was young and charming, but at least some of them surely felt threatened by the young favorite, especially when he joined the army for the Parthian War.
If Caesar’s friends turned on him now, it was not the first time. In 49 B.C., at the outbreak of the Civil War, Caesar had lost his right-hand man in Gaul, Titus Labienus. The two had been political allies even earlier, and in 50 B.C. Caesar offered to support Labienus for consul. Yet Labienus chose Pompey in the Civil War. Why?
After seeing Caesar close-up in Gaul for eight years, Labienus knew how his commander operated. He knew that the real power in Caesar’s Rome would go to military men and private advisors, not to senators and public officials. To be sure, the consulship that Caesar offered him was important, but a consulship in Caesar’s Rome was not what it once was. Caesar’s success in Gaul owed much more to Labienus than Caesar was willing to admit. If Caesar became first man in Rome, how long would he want Labienus around as a reminder? No wonder Labienus chose Pompey, especially if there is anything to the report that Labienus began to insist that Caesar treat him as an equal, which Caesar wouldn’t do. Labienus fought against Caesar until the last, dying on the battlefield at Munda in March 45 B.C.
The conspirators might have considered Labienus’s fate and concluded that bad things happened to men who were once close to Caesar.
We don’t know the order in which the other conspirators were recruited. It is likely though that Gaius Trebonius, who was Caesar’s longtime lieutenant, was an early convert. Not only was he immensely important, but he had already thought of killing Caesar. He was the only ex-consul in the conspiracy.
Trebonius was born around 90 B.C., making him about forty-six in 44 B.C. A key commander in Gaul and the Civil War, Trebonius had also done yeoman labor for Caesar as urban praetor in Rome in 48 B.C. and governor of Nearer Hispania in 46 B.C. Caesar rewarded Trebonius by naming him suffect (substitute) consul in 45 B.C. and choosing him as governor of the province of Asia (western Turkey) for 43 B.C. Yet perhaps Caesar insulted Trebonius when he appointed a one-day replacement for Trebonius’s consular colleague, who died in office on December 31, 45 B.C. It suggested how little Caesar thought of the so-called high honor bestowed on Trebonius.
A great soldier under Caesar, Trebonius had a political career of his own before Gaul when he was quaestor in 60 B.C. and People’s Tribune in 55 B.C. In the latter capacity, he proposed the law that gave Pompey and Crassus five-year special commands. Trebonius was also close to Cicero. The two exchanged letters and Trebonius helped the orator on his return from exile to Italy in 57 B.C. Cicero called Trebonius’s father “an ardent patriot,” which suggests that the father supported the Best Men. Trebonius was literate, charming, and very ambitious. He once wrote a poem based on a statement of Cicero, for example, and sent it to the orator as “a little gift.” So Trebonius kept in touch with the Republic’s greatest defender.
In short, Trebonius was no mere Caesarian loyalist—he knew how to think for himself. After the Ides, Cicero said that the Republic owed Trebonius a debt of thanks for preferring the liberty of the Roman People to the friendship of one man, and for choosing to drive away despotism rather than to share in it. Indeed, no one who had the friendship of Caesar would throw it away lightly.
It seems that Trebonius already decided to kill the dictator before Caesar returned from Hispania in 45 B.C. At least that is what Cicero claimed in a speech after the Ides of March. Trebonius was the man who, said Cicero, approached Mark Antony in Narbo (modern Narbonne, France) in summer 45 B.C. to recruit him for a plot against Caesar. Nothing came of it at the time but when the plot began gelling in February and March 44 B.C., Trebonius joined it. Afterward he expressed pride in his role in the events of the Ides and the hope that Rome would, at last, enjoy liberty in peace and quiet.
The two Servilius Casca brothers, Publius and Gaius, also joined the conspiracy. Both were senators but nothing is known of Gaius’s career. Publius was elected People’s Tribune for 43 B.C., which means that he had Caesar’s support. There is a hint in one source that Publius was short of funds, while Cicero called him a true lover of the Republic. We can’t be sure of either brother’s motives.
Two of Caesar’s less successful Gallic commanders joined the conspiracy as well: Servius Sulpicius Galba and Minucius Basilus. Both had reason for grudges. Galba’s poor generalship nearly cost his legion their lives in eastern Gaul (today’s Switzerland) in winter 57–56 B.C., as Caesar claims in his Commentaries. Galba no doubt saw things differently. Caesar supported his former officer for the consulship for 49 B.C., but Galba lost. This was enough, according to one ancient theory, to drive Galba into the conspiracy. Then too, Galba quarreled with Caesar because the latter insisted that Galba make good on an old debt. When Pompey was consul in 52 B.C., Galba guaranteed a loan that Pompey made, and Caesar wanted Galba to pay even after Caesar had confiscated Pompey’s property. Galba objected in public and Caesar backed down, but Galba still owed money as late as January 45 B.C.
Judging from his one surviving letter, Galba was a man of action. His writing is efficient and to the point. He puts himself in the center of things and comes off as energetic, courageous, and important. He cared, in short, about his reputation. Caesar failed him in the polls, pinched his purse, and embarrassed him in the Commentaries.
Minucius Basilus had his moment in the Ardennes Forest in northern France in 53 B.C. when he happened on the rebel Ambiorix. He stopped a dangerous foe but then let Ambiorix escape. A frustrated Caesar attributed the whole thing to fortune and nothing else. In the Civil War, one Basilus commanded a legion for Caesar in the Illyrian campaign and was defeated—perhaps he was the same man. Caesar made Minucius Basilus one of the praetors for 45 B.C., but he didn’t give him what every praetor wanted for the year following his office—a province to govern. Instead, he made him settle for a sum of money. This was a disappointment
because in Roman government the real money was made by exploiting the provincials. The monetary gift was also close to an insult. The Romans called public office an honor, a term they would not have applied to a sum of money. Minucius Basilus, who came from a senatorial family, expected more. It was this, we are told, that made him join the conspirators. In effect, Caesar gave Minucius Basilus a golden handshake—and Minucius Basilus came back with a dagger.
Last but not least was Lucius Tillius Cimber. He had a close connection to Caesar, although the nature of it does not survive. No surprise, there, because recording all of Caesar’s connections would take all the papyrus in Rome. A later source calls Cimber one of Caesar’s “fellow soldiers,” so perhaps he served in Gaul or the Civil War or both. He was praetor in 45 B.C. so he should have been at least forty then (the minimum age requirement for the job, although Caesar did not always observe the rules). Caesar assigned him the rich and important provinces of Bithynia and Pontus (in today’s Turkey) for 44 B.C., which speaks to Cimber’s favor in the dictator’s eyes. Cicero said afterward that Cimber was deeply grateful to Caesar for his personal kindnesses but, to his credit, Cimber preferred his fatherland. Actually, Cimber seems to have been thinking more of his family, specifically his brother, who fought for Pompey. He took it hard that Caesar would not let his brother come back from exile.
Cimber had a reputation as a brawler and a heavy drinker. To the philosopher Seneca, Cimber’s role in the conspiracy proves that even drunkards can be trusted with a secret. Cimber even supposedly make a joke about it. “Would I, who cannot tolerate my wine, tolerate anyone as a master?” he said.
Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827) Page 10
