Caesar: Life of a Colossus

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Caesar did not take over a Republic that was functioning effectively. The Civil War had disrupted the entire Roman world, but even before that the institutions of the State had been struggling for many years to cope with turbulent and often violent political struggles. Respect for tradition - and the extent to which Caesar himself felt this need not concern us too much, since he was aware of its importance to others - had to be balanced against the practical importance of providing effective government as soon as possible. There was also always the central importance of dealing with individuals, both those who had fought for him and deserved reward and those who had opposed him, and who now required either generosity to win them over or stern judgement. In the autumn of 46 BC Caesar began the colonisation programme to provide farms for his veteran soldiers. His intention was to employ public land or properties confiscated from dead or incorrigible Pompeians, but where this was insufficient land was to be bought at a fair rate. As he had told the mutineers, Caesar was anxious to avoid the upheaval and hardship caused when Sulla gave land to his troops. At first it seems that only the men who had served their full term of service were discharged - we do not know what proportion of the army this was - and the remainder were to wait until they were demobilised at the proper time. The focus was mainly on Italy, but there were also veterans settled in North Africa and in Transapline Gaul, where, for instance, the colony at Narbo seems to have been expanded. In the same way that he had given money to the people of Rome as well as the soldiers to commemorate his triumphs, Caesar now also included civilians in his colonisation programme. A number of colonies were created in the provinces, and even more planned as part of a programme that would see the resettling of 80,000 people. Caius Gracchus' plan of a colony on the site of Carthage was revived, and another new settlement was set down at Corinth, which like Carthage had been destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC. In some cases the selection of locations was intended to punish communities that had sided against him in the war, but even so this was not intended to be especially harsh. The whole programme of colonisation required immense effort, surveyors going out to all the regions under consideration, and correct ownership of land being investigated before lots were marked out and the process of allocating them to individuals begun. At every stage Caesar and his staff appear to have been open to pleas from interested parties. Cicero successfully secured an exemption for the community of Buthrotum in Epirus on behalf of his friend Atticus, who owned an estate and had interests there. As far as possible the intention was to satisfy the discharged veterans and civilian settlers without causing too much hardship to the regions where the colonies were set down - especially when these had influential friends.

  There was a great tradition of distribution of land to citizens by popularis politicians, stretching back far beyond the Gracchi. Caesar's agrarian law had been the cornerstone of his legislative programme in 59 BC, and now with greater freedom of action he had resumed his activity on a far greater scale. He rewarded his soldiers, and also removed a potentially volatile section of Rome's population and gave them the means to support themselves and their families. Politically he gained from this, and placed very many people in his debt, but at the same time it greatly increased the number of affluent citizens. There is no reason to doubt that Caesar - and indeed many contemporaries - did not feel that the programme of colonisation was good for the State as well as in his own interest. In 59 Bc even Cato had felt that the only thing wrong with Caesar's agrarian law was the man who presented it. Yet the scale of these projects was enormous and could not be rushed. Only a small part of his plans in this respect were complete by Caesar's death. Ambitious plans to drain the Pomptine marshes and so provide a fresh supply of good farmland do not seem to have moved beyond the theoretical stage, but do suggest plans for further distributions and so a major attempt to provide livelihoods for more poor citizens. Another project that does not seem to have been started was the plan to alter the course of the Tiber, improving river access and protecting parts of the city vulnerable to flooding.9

  Army officers, especially tribunes and centurions, also benefited from the land distribution. Caesar's more distinguished followers were rewarded with high office, and this resulted in a number of alterations to the traditional pattern of magistracies. In 47 BC he had increased the number of praetors from eight to ten. In the autumn of the following year there was insufficient time between returning from Africa and going to Spain for most elections to be held. Therefore, when he returned from Spain in October 45 BC he promptly had fourteen praetors and forty quaestors elected for what remained of the year, with sixteen praetors and another forty quaestors to take up office on 1 January 44 BC. At the same time he resigned his own consulship for 45 BC, which he had held without a colleague, just like Pompey in the opening months of 52 Bc. His legates Fabius and Trebonius were duly elected replacement or suffect consuls for the rest of the year. Although the Senate had granted him the right to appoint magistrates, Caesar contented himself with sending recommendations to be read aloud at the relevant voting assembly -'Caesar the dictator to [the name of the tribe]. I commend to you such and such to hold the dignity of office by your vote.' These seem always to have been successful, and it may well be that no rivals bothered to put their names forward. To some extent this preserved the proper formalities, but Caesar's obvious desire to grant to numerous followers the dignity and status of the high magistracies acted against this. When Fabius Maximus went to watch a play and was announced as consul, the audience is said to have yelled out, `He is no consul!' He died on the morning of his last day in office. Caesar received the news while presiding over a meeting of the Tribal Assembly, which was going to elect quaestors for the next year. Instead, he had the people reconvene as the Comitia Centuriata and vote for a new consul. Just after midday another of his legates from Gaul was chosen, Caius Caninius Rebilus, whose spell as consul therefore lasted no more than a few hours. A few days later Cicero joked that `in the consulship of Caninius nobody are lunch. However, nothing bad occurred while he was consul - for his vigilance was so incredible that throughout his entire consulship he never went to sleep.' At the time he is supposed to have urged everyone to rush and congratulate Caninius before his office expired. Privately he thought the affair more a matter for tears than wit.10

  Caesar's replacement consuls can rarely have had time to achieve much during their term of office, even supposing that they were granted any freedom of action and not simply expected to put through his legislation. Yet they gained the dignity and symbols of the office. Caesar actually granted ten former praetors consular status without ever holding the senior magistracy, for he had many followers to reward and limited time. Resigning and appointing replacements in this way was not illegal, but was unprecedented and scarcely added to the dignity of the office. In a similar way the dramatic increase in the numbers of other posts inevitably devalued these to some extent, but in this case there was more practical justification. Sulla had fixed the number of praetors at eight because this was adequate to provide enough governors for the provinces then controlled by the Republic. Since his day, Rome's empire had increased markedly by conquest and annexation and there was a real need for more magistrates to administrate the new provinces. Men elected to the quaestorship were automatically enrolled as senators, so that the House would be augmented by at least forty new members each year. Caesar was also granted the power to create new senators, and to grant patrician status as he felt necessary.

  Even before the disruption and losses of the Civil War the censorship had failed to function properly in practice, often because of squabbles between the colleagues holding the post. Thus the ranks of the Senate were depleted. Caesar appointed hundreds of new senators, compensating for the losses and then expanding the House dramatically. Sulla had doubled the Senate in size to around 600, but by the time of Caesar's death there were somewhere between 800-900 members. A few of these were men who had been expelled from its ranks in previous years, or whose families
had been barred from public life because of their Marian sympathies. Most of the new members were from established equestrian families, including many who came from the local aristocracies of Italy, but they may also have included a few former centurions. There were also a few from citizen families outside Italy, including a number of Gauls from the Cisalpine, and probably also Transalpine, provinces. There were jokes at the time of the `barbarians' taking off their trousers to put on a toga, and someone daubed up a slogan in the Forum proclaiming that it would be a good deed not to tell any of the new senators the way to the Senate House. It is unlikely that any of the `foreigners' added to the Senate were not fluent in Latin, well educated and in cultural respects little different from genuinely Roman aristocrats."

  A few of the appointments may have been unsuitable - as we have seen, Caesar is supposed often to have said that he would reward even criminals if they had helped him. A number of the men he appointed to provincial commands were subsequently charged with and condemned for corruption and extortion. One was the future historian Sallust, who had been left behind to govern Africa after Thapsus. In his writing he protested his innocence and it is just possible that he was more naive than corrupt. Another loyal follower with an established reputation for cruelty was refused a province by Caesar, who instead let him have a gift of money. Yet in general Caesar's new senators were probably little different from other members of the House. Corruption, pettiness, incompetence and many other vices had all in the past been displayed frequently by the scions of many of the oldest and noblest families of Rome. A more serious charge might be that in enlarging the Senate in this way Caesar made it too big to function effectively as a forum for debate. This is certainly possible, but there was so much business to conduct that only a small proportion was actually debated in the House during these last years of Caesar's life. More often matters were decided by Caesar and his advisors behind closed doors, who then issued a decree as if produced by the Senate, even including an invented list of attendees at the meeting. Cicero was surprised to receive a number of letters from rulers or communities in the provinces thanking him for voting to grant their petitions, since in most cases he had not even heard of them before and had certainly not taken part in any meeting to discuss the matter. So many things needed attention that there was simply not time to deal with them in the proper way, although it is interesting that Caesar ensured that his decisions were presented in the correct traditional form, especially to distant communities who would have no idea that this was a sham. Oppius and Balbus were his two main assistants in such work and both remained outside the Senate during his lifetime. Although the manner in which it was conducted was unprecedented and unconstitutional, it is notable that even his critics did not claim that Caesar and his associates generally did not make good and sensible administrative decisions.12

  Cicero was one of a large number of former Pompeians who had been pardoned by Caesar and now sat in the Senate - at least when it actually met - alongside his partisans. At first he resolved to take no part in debates, devoting his energies to writing instead of public life. Servilia's son Brutus was another such man, although he chose to be more active and was sent by Caesar to govern Cisalpine Gaul, probably as propraetor although he had not yet held the magistracy. His brother-in-law Cassius also accepted a post as legate around this time. Other Pompeians had ceased to fight, but had not formally surrendered themselves to Caesar for judgement and could not return to Italy without his permission, so waited in exile, hoping that family and friends would be able to persuade him to be lenient. It was rumoured that he took some pleasure in responding slowly in the case of his most vitriolic opponents, feeling that the nervousness this engendered was some small payment for the trouble they had caused him. One of these was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the consul for 51 BC, who had begun the concerted attack on Caesar's position and flogged the magistrate from Novum Comum (see p.363). He had not taken much active part in the Civil War that his actions had helped to precipitate, but still refused to write to Caesar directly. Instead his case was raised by Caesar's father-in-law Piso, backed by Marcellus' cousin, the consul for 50 Bc and the husband of Caesar's great-niece, as well as the other senators present at the meeting. Caesar granted their request, prompting Cicero to break his silence and launch into a speech of praise for the man who preferred to place the `auctoritas of the Senate and the dignity of the Republic before personal wrongs and suspicion'. Not long afterwards he made another speech - this time in the Forum rather than in the Senate - urging the recall of Quintus Ligarius. Plutarch says that before he began Caesar openly declared that Ligarius was an enemy who did not deserve mercy, but that, although his mind was already made up, he would still listen to Cicero for the sheer pleasure of hearing his oratory. In the event the speech moved him to tears and prompted an immediate pardon. Gradually a trickle of Pompeians, some of them very distinguished, returned to Rome and some at least to public life. Marcellus was not amongst them, for he was murdered by one of his household in a domestic dispute before he was able to enjoy his pardon. In addition a growing number of men who had remained neutral were persuaded to take office under Caesar, such as the noted jurist Sergius Sulpicius Rufus, who went out as governor to Greece. Cicero continued to be active publicly and for a while at least was optimistic, advising Caesar to do more to restore the Republic to a proper condition.13

  TIDYING UP

  Caesar's programme of colonisation removed a significant part of Rome's population, but he was also very concerned to improve and regulate the living conditions of those who remained. He looked closely at the system for giving out free grain to citizens and judged that it was subject to abuse and badly run. A new calculation of those eligible to receive this was made, based on a survey of the city's population conducted on a street-by-street basis, and making use of information provided by landlords for those living in their tenements. The overall number of recipients was reduced from 320,000 to 150,000 names. The new figure was fixed and arrangements made for the praetors to add new names when the deaths of recipients created vacancies on the lists. Some of those taken from the list are likely to have found work and a wage in Caesar's continuing and massive building projects focused around the saepta on the Campus Martius and his new Forum complex. Apart from his lavish shows and games, Caesar also found other ways to benefit Rome and seems likely to have been influenced by what he had seen in Hellenistic cities, most of all Alexandria. He granted citizenship to any doctor or teacher willing to come and work in Rome. In direct emulation of the famous Library at Alexandria, he gave orders for the creation of a similar centre of learning at Rome, placing Terentius Varro, the famous scholar - and former Pompeian commander in Spain - in charge of the task of gathering the works of Latin and Greek literature. Another plan involved the thorough codification of Roman law, but this may not have even begun and was not actually achieved for several centuries. 14

  One of Caesar's most lasting projects was the reorganisation of the calendar, and again this showed Hellenistic influence with the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes playing a leading role in the calculations. Rome's existing calendar consisted of 355 days, was based originally on the lunar cycle and needed constant modification. The college of pontiffs - of which Caesar was the most senior - were charged with adding extra or intercalary months at their discretion in an effort to keep the official year at least vaguely connected to the seasons of the natural year. It was a confusing system and one open to political manipulation, for instance, extending the year of office of an associate. During his time as proconsul of Cilicia, Cicero had been very nervous that someone would do this and thus postpone the date on which he could leave and return to Rome. By the time of the Civil War the calendar was running some three months ahead of the actual seasons. Caesar's system was far more logical and was intended to function without any need for annual changes. One intercalary month of about three weeks had already been inserted into 46 Bc at the end of February. Two more were now added betwee
n November and December so that the year eventually consisted of 445 days. This was to allow the new calendar to begin on 1 January 45 Bc at what was thought to be the proper time in the solar cycle. The Julian calendar had months that varied in length but added up to a total of 365 days. Every fourth year a single day, rather than an entire month, was added after 23 February. It does not seem to have been given its own number. This system remains in use with the Orthodox churches, but in the sixteenth century it was slightly modified under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII and this Gregorian calendar is the one followed today. Caesar's reform was practical and removed confusion and the possibility for political abuse. It also added ten days to the year, each of which was considered to be fas or a day on which public business, such as summoning the Senate or the Assemblies, could be conducted. Even so there is some sign that the change - or more accurately the fact that Caesar imposed it - was resented. When someone mentioned to Cicero that the constellation of Lyra was due to rise on the next day, he remarked snidely that obviously it did so in accordance with official command."