Caesar: Life of a Colossus

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  When Cicero and Antonius formally took up office on 1 January 63 BC, they were immediately confronted with a radical land bill proposed by the tribune Publius Servilius Rullus. This involved a huge allocation of plots of land to poor citizens, beginning with the State-owned territory in Campania - almost all that was left of the ager publicus after the re-distributions initiated by the Gracchi. Since this would be inadequate for the numbers involved, the Republic was then to buy the extra land needed. The law guaranteed a good price to sellers, declared that all sales should be voluntary and explicitly exempted the farms of Sullan veterans settled on confiscated land after the civil war. It was clear that even property in the provinces might be sold to raise the funding required. A commission of ten (decemviri) with propraetorian imperium for five years were to oversee the implementation of this programme, these being elected by the vote of a smaller assembly consisting of seventeen instead of thirty-five tribes. The project was on a massive scale, and the powers of the board of ten correspondingly great, but the problem it addressed was very real. Rural Italy had suffered badly in recent decades and there were clearly large numbers of poor citizens whose situation was desperate in the extreme. Many of the dispossessed had drifted to Rome, where they often struggled to find enough paid employment to provide for themselves and their families. There were opportunities and work in the city, but not all who went there found success. Rents were high, living conditions could be extremely squalid in the crowded insulae and debt was a terrible burden for many of the poor, who unlike the nobility could not hope to make themselves rich through public office.

  The Rullan land bill would not have solved all of these problems on its own, but it would have done something to alleviate them. At first it was supported by all ten of the year's tribunes. It is also extremely likely that Crassus and Caesar were enthusiastic backers of Rullus and probably both hoped to win election to the board of ten. Pompey's attitude is harder to judge. On the one hand the bill would probably have provided farms for his veterans when he brought them back from campaigns that were now nearly complete. Yet if Crassus had played a key role in the programme then this would also mean that they and many other citizens were indebted to his great rival. Some of the tribunes were his keen supporters, which makes it seem unlikely that he actively opposed the bill, but he may simply not have had the time to develop too fixed an opinion as he was still so far from Rome. Cicero was set against the proposal from the very start, and throughout his life consistently disliked similar legislation. Many prominent senators were also opposed to Rullus and the new consul may have felt that this was a also a good chance to ingratiate himself with these men, whose enthusiasm for him had so far been lukewarm at best. In a series of speeches to the Senate and meetings of the People in the Forum, Cicero savaged the proposed law The ten commissioners were demonised as `kings' for their extraordinary powers, and dark motives alleged for the shadowy men who were claimed to be really behind the bill. These sinister figures - never named, but it is generally assumed that he meant Crassus and probably Caesar as well - wished to set themselves up as rivals to Pompey. At least one of the tribunes had already broken the consensus and declared that he would veto the bill. Cicero's rhetoric won the day, and the land law was abandoned.14

  In the coming months Caesar prosecuted Caius Calpurnius Piso, an exconsul who had recently returned from governing Cisalpine Gaul. Amongst the charges of extortion and maladministration was the accusation that he had unjustly executed a Gaul from the Po Valley. Once again Caesar was championing the cause of the inhabitants of this region, but with no more success than his previous efforts. Piso was successfully defended by Cicero, who added the auctoritas of his current office to his formidable oratory. Yet the fact that Caesar had brought the case, and doubtless also the skill and enthusiasm with which he pressed it, earned him the lasting enmity of Piso. Later in the year Caesar appeared on behalf of a Numidian client, a young nobleman who was trying to assert his independence from King Hiempsal. The king's son Juba was present in exchanges that became increasingly heated. At one point Caesar grabbed Juba by the beard. It may have been the deliberate gesture of an orator seeking to exploit most Romans' latent xenophobia, but is more likely to have been a genuine burst of anger. For all Caesar's impeccable manners and aristocratic poise - this was the guest who graciously accepted even the humblest hospitality and criticised his companions when they complained - throughout his life he was prone to occasional bursts of temper. Whatever his motive, the dispute was settled in favour of the king. Caesar did not abandon his client, but kept him hidden in his own house until he was able to smuggle him out of Rome."

  On several occasions during 63 BC Caesar was associated with one of the tribunes of the year, Titus Labienus. The two men were probably old acquaintances, being of a similar age and both having served in Cilicia and Asia under Servilius Isauricus in the seventies BC. Labienus seems to have come from Picenum, an area dominated by the estates of Pompey's family, and it is likely that there was some connection. As tribune, he passed a bill granting extraordinary honours to Pompey. The great commander was granted the right to wear the laurel wreath and purple cloak of a triumphing general whenever he went to the games and the full regalia if he attended a chariot race. Caesar is said to have been the instigator and chief supporter of these measures. Suetonius also credits him with having inspired the prosecution brought by Labienus against Caius Rabirius, an ageing and fairly undistinguished member of the Senate. The charge was an archaic one of perduellio - something like high treason - and referred to events that had occurred not long after Caesar's birth thirty-seven years earlier. Rabirius had been one of the men who followed the consuls to massacre the supporters of Saturninus and Glaucia. Labienus' uncle was amongst those who died. A very late, and quite probably unreliable, source claims that Rabirius actually displayed Saturninus' head at a dinner held soon afterwards. The prosecution may well have charged him with killing the tribune, whose person was sacrosanct by law, but since a slave was rewarded for this deed this must be extremely unlikely. In 100 BC the Senate had passed its ultimate decree (the senatus consultum ultimum), instructing Marius and his fellow consul to protect the Republic by whatever means were necessary. Caesar and Labienus do not seem to have been challenging the Senate's right to pass this decree, or of magistrates to obey it, but were concerned with how it should be implemented. The belief that Marius had accepted the surrender of the radicals, who were subsequently killed by a mob that had climbed onto the roof of the Senate House, seems to have formed part of the case. The senatus consultum ultimum gave magistrates the power to use force against citizens who were threatening the Republic, but it was less clear whether these lost all legal protection once they had given in and were no longer in a position to do harm. 16

  Many of the details of the trial are obscure. This is especially true of the prosecution's case, which is known principally from the speech Cicero made in Rabirius' defence. Much the same is true of the Rullan land bill, which again is largely known through Cicero's detailed and extremely hostile rhetoric. The whole affair was distinctly odd, in the first place simply because of the enormous lapse of time. It seems doubtful that there were many witnesses left alive, particularly considering the great loss of life amongst Rome's elite during the civil war. There was also no modern procedure for conducting a trial on a perduellio charge. Sulla had established a permanent court to deal with cases of a similar, but lesser crime of maiestas - effectively an offence against the majesty of the Roman people, rather like the idea found in some modern sports of `bringing the game into disrepute'. However, Caesar and Labienus deliberately chose the older crime, the legislation dealing with which was believed to date back over five hundred years to the time of Rome's kings. The archaic procedure included death by crucifixion, a penalty no longer imposed on a citizen by any other law, and did not appear to permit the normal voluntary exile for the guilty. A board of two judges (duumviri) was appointed by lot to try the case. Caesar was
one, and his distant cousin Lucius Julius Caesar, who had been consul the year before, the other. While this seems highly suspicious, there is no particular reason to assume collusion with the praetor who oversaw the selection process and it may simply have been coincidental.

  Rabirius was found guilty by both judges and condemned to death. He was allowed to appeal to the Roman people, in the form of the Comitia Centuriata. Not only Cicero but also the orator whom he had supplanted as the greatest in Rome, Quintus Hortensius, defended the old man against Labienus. This was most probably the occasion on which Cicero delivered the speech that he subsequently published. In it he emphasised that Saturninus richly deserved his fate, pointed out that Rabirius was not the man who killed him, although repeatedly claiming that he wished his client could boast of the deed. He attacked the cruelty inherent in the revival of this long forgotten law, and, as was fairly standard in the Roman courts, blackened Labienus' name, hinting cryptically at his `well-known' immorality. With more justification the consul complained that he had only been given an unusually short time in which to speak. His efforts do not seem to have convinced the voters who had assembled for the Comitia, in spite of the fact that some are supposed to have been moved to sympathy for the accused because of Caesar's blatant hostility as judge. Soon it was obvious that the vote would condemn Rabirius, but then the whole unorthodox business came to a fittingly bizarre conclusion. Its structure drawn from the early Roman army, the Comitia Centuriata had always met on the Campus Martins, outside the formal boundary of the city. In those days Rome had still been small and its enemies nearby. The gathering for voting purposes of all those obliged to do military service inevitably left the city vulnerable to a surprise attack. Therefore, to guard against this threat, it was the practice to station sentries on the vantage point offered by the Janiculum Hill. As long as these men were in place and keeping watch, a red flag was flown from the hilltop and the Comitia Centuriata could go about its business. If the flag was lowered, it was a sign that Rome was in danger, and that her citizens must immediately break up the Assembly and take up their arms. The custom remained in Caesar's day, and would continue for centuries afterwards, even though its function had long become obsolete. Before the Comitia completed its voting on Rabirius' fate, the praetor Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer gave the order for the flag to be lowered. The Assembly was dissolved without giving a verdict. No one ever made any effort to reconvene the trial. 17

  None of the sources explain why Metellus acted in this way. Was he acting to protect Rabirius, or instead providing Labienus and Caesar with a facesaving way of ending the whole affair without having to convict and punish an elderly and unimportant senator? It is clear from the willingness with which they abandoned the case afterwards that condemning him was never their principal aim. They had questioned whether the senatus consultum ultimum overrode all other laws and citizens' rights, but had provided no clear answer or altered the law in any way. In practical terms the most that they may have achieved was to inject a note of caution into the actions of any future magistrate operating in response to such a decree. Personally the trial was a success for both Labienus and Caesar. The Comitia that met to pass judgement on Rabirius was most probably packed with their supporters and with those who were stirred by the case and the broader issue, so should probably not be seen as typical in its composition. Many citizens lacked the time, interest or opportunity to attend - it would indeed have been physically impossible to fit all those eligible to attend into the location where the Comitia Centuriata met. Yet even so this Assembly more than any other was weighted in favour of the better off. That it was clearly willing to condemn Rabirius does indicate that many of these citizens sympathised with the prosecution's case. Once again, Caesar was making sure that he was prominent in public life and associated with popular causes. His popularity was demonstrated later in the year when another meeting of the Comitia Centuriata elected him praetor for 62 BC, for which he was for the first time eligible.

  The praetorship was an important post, which brought with it the certainty of receiving a provincial command after the year of office as long as a man wanted such a post. Competition for it was fierce, and more than half of former quaestors would never win the higher office. However, as things turned out, this success was far less dramatic than another electoral victory Caesar won during the last months of 63 BC. The post of Pontifex Maximus, head of the college of fifteen pontiffs of which he was a member, became vacant on the death of the current incumbent, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius - yet another representative of the prolific Metelli whose already considerable prominence had been further boosted by their support for Sulla. The dictator had placed the selection of the appointments to this and other senior priesthoods in the hands of the Senate. However, at some point in the year Labienus had passed a bill reverting to the former practice of appointment by popular election. A cut-down Tribal Assembly, with seventeen tribes chosen by lot rather than the full thirty-five was given this task. It is not clear when this law was passed, and whether Metellus' death was anticipated or the legislation rushed through in its aftermath. Three market days, which effectively meant twenty-four days in total, had to elapse between the publication of a bill and its being put to the vote of an assembly. Caesar spoke in favour of the bill and soon after it became law announced his candidature."

  The Pontifex Maximus was an office of immense prestige, in many ways the most important of all Roman priesthoods. As a result it was eagerly sought by many of the Republic's leading men. Catulus was standing for the post, as was Publius Servilius Isauricus, Caesar's old commander from Cilicia. Both were older and far more distinguished than Caesar in terms of the offices and honours they had held. Had the appointment still been controlled by the Senate, it is virtually certain that Catulus would have been appointed. In an election the outcome was far less certain, for the voters remembered Caesar's lavish spending as aedile, and his constant support for popular causes. He also seems to have spent lavishly during the campaign, giving gifts and doing favours to win over the key men in each tribe. His rivals were doing the same, and in one sense the reliance on the vote of only seventeen tribes instead of the full assembly made it easier to employ bribery. As the campaign went on, Catulus became deeply concerned that the upstart Caesar had turned into a serious challenger. Great though his auctoritas was, it would certainly be dented by an electoral defeat, especially one inflicted by a man so much his junior. Knowing that Caesar's debts were huge even before the campaign had begun, Catulus wrote to him offering him a considerable sum of money on condition that he withdrew from the race for the priesthood. Caesar interpreted this as a sign of weakness and immediately took out new loans to have more to spend on wooing the tribes. It was a desperate gamble. His creditors were relying on his prospects for the future, chiefly the high office and the opportunities for profit that these would bring. In itself the office of Pontifex Maximus brought no real financial reward, but Caesar could not afford any electoral failure. If he could no longer win over the voters, then he would begin to look like a very poor risk for his creditors. These might well press him for repayment of his debts, before his fortunes failed altogether and he was utterly ruined.

  When the day of the election came - there is no record of when this was, but it must have been near the end of 63 BC - Caesar knew that the result would for him decide more than simply whether or not he won the post. Aurelia was there, and kissed him in parting before he left. Caesar told her that he would either return home as Pontifex Maximus or he would not return at all. This is one of the rare mentions of Aurelia from these years, but once again indicates the vital role she played in her son's life. It is notable that the story has Caesar speaking in this way to his mother rather than to his wife Pompeia or to any of his lovers. Although we cannot be absolutely certain, it does seem that Aurelia lived in her son's household. Perhaps in some way she symbolised the debt that Caesar owed to his family, making every success not simply significant to him, bu
t part of restoring its importance and status. The contest for the priesthood was a gamble, and the price of failure very serious, certainly sufficient to retard his public career and possibly to terminate it. Yet before taking the gamble Caesar had done everything that he could to promote his success. Backing down from the challenge, as Catulus had tried to persuade him to do, was against Caesar's instincts, for he was a gambler at heart, though never a wild one. He had raised the stakes by spending even more, but he had also judged that his prospects of success were good and hence that the risk was justified. Failure was a real possibility, but Caesar seems to have estimated that the odds on his success were good. Given Catulus' hostility to him in the past, most recently following the erection of Marius' trophies, his offer suggested that his main rival had reached a similar conclusion.19