From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (25 page)

Caesar’s expenditure was lavish. His building programme and public works might give employment, but they cost money. So did his veteran settlement, and he virtually doubled the pay of the thirty-five legions that he retained. He had, however, raised large sums of money from the cities that had opposed him (thus, e.g., Thapsus and Utica had to pay large fines), and as the war went on he was less careful to spare the estates of stubborn Pompeians. He also looked after the Treasury when necessary: e.g. in 46 when no quaestors had been elected, he entrusted it to two of his prefects. The reduced corn-dole and the restored
portoria
would help, but economy was not indispensible: the Treasury contained 175 million
denarii
and Caesar’s own estate was worth 25 million. There was enough for the moment; if need arose, excuse might be found to annex Egypt (and pacify Cleopatra), while further conquests would bring in yet more treasure.

Caesar was in fact planning further warfare. As far back as 58 he had been conscious of threats to the north-east frontier (p. 107). Ten years later he sent Gabinius to check the Delmatae (in Bosnia); Gabinius was defeated, but his successor Vatinius was somewhat more successful. More serious was the growth of the Dacian empire of Burebistas farther east. Caesar planned that in 44 he would march against him, as a preliminary to a great attack on Parthia. He expected to be away three years and in order to avoid a second Carrhae he strengthened his legions with 10,000 horsemen and a body of archers and proposed to advance through Armenia rather than Mesopotamia. His motives are uncertain. True, he had a slight excuse in that Caecilius Bassus, a Pompeian, who had been giving trouble in Syria, had received some help from Parthia. To avenge Crassus would be popular, to win further military glory would make Caesar’s grip on Rome yet tighter. Before he left he made sure that the important provinces in the west and the eighteen legions in them were in the hands of governors that he could trust. Had he lived, he might well have anticipated Augustus in advancing the Roman frontier to the Danube, though the rumours that he intended to return through Russia and Germany may be exaggerations; how he would have settled the eastern frontier remains unknown.

Caesar no doubt intended that during his absence the Senate should continue to exercise its old functions: he could be more happy about this in view of its present composition. Depleted by civil war, it needed replenishing; further, if it was to provide half the
iudices
(p. 122), its numbers could well be increased. Caesar therefore raised its numbers to 900. He had come to power as a
princeps
, as a faction leader, whose party comprised senators, equites and centurions, businessmen and provincials, kings and dynasts. After his victory these required their suitable rewards, and for some this would be entry into
the Senate. Thus the new senators would naturally be his adherents. A very few were centurions, freedmen or provincials: the stories of the trousered Gauls who did not know the way to the Senate-House merely parodies the fact that Caesar admitted a few notables from Gaul (who may indeed have been of Roman origin). A large number of the new senators will have been Roman knights, men of substance, many of them from the propertied classes of the Italian towns, men who had made their wealth from agriculture, industry or banking. In so far as they came from the parts of Italy enfranchised during the Social War, Caesar’s policy will have helped to unite Italy – whether or not that was one of his conscious motives – and Cicero’s phrase
tota Italia
, which the end of that war had made a theoretical reality, now began to be realized in fact.
²⁵
This newly constituted Senate, in which a majority owed allegiance to Caesar, would obviously reflect his wishes despite a small surviving Optimate opposition. Further, he had taken care to gather into his own hands control of those functions that the Senate had in the past regarded as peculiarly its own: finance, foreign policy and the provincial commands. True, he often consulted it even here (e.g. the privileges that he had granted to the Jews were confirmed by a
senatus-consultum
), but at the other extreme Cicero once complained that his name had been added to a draft decree at a meeting which he had not even attended. With the bulk of the Senate acquiescent, Caesar must have felt that he could leave Rome with safety.

Caesar also controlled the magistrates. He increased their numbers, raising the praetors from 8 to 16, the aediles from 4 to 6, and the quaestors from 20 to 40, but he did not thereby increase their prestige.
^25a
As dictator he was not subject to the tribunician veto and he had superior
imperium
to all other magistrates whom he could thus control. He was even offered the right to nominate some of the magistrates, but he preferred merely to control the elections. It may also be noted that he received the right to create new patricians and to grant priesthoods. Though he did not interfere directly with the consulship, his attitude towards it gave great offence to the older nobility. It has been seen that no consuls (nor any curule magistrates) were elected for 47 or for 45 until the last months of the year (pp. 119, 121), while in 46 he appointed eight prefects who helped the Master of the Horse, Lepidus, to manage affairs in Rome (probably starting in 45) during his own absence in Spain. Thus by overshadowing both magistrates and Senate, Caesar was becoming dangerously powerful.

In the last resort Caesar’s power might rest on the support of his legions and veterans, but it had been vested in proper constitutional forms. Its basis was the dictatorship, which had been granted to him in varying forms and for
varying periods, but which early in 44 he received ‘for life’. Compared with this all his other offices were secondary. His consulships (in 48 and 46–44) had been useful in cloaking his rise to power in Republican form: even his sole consulship in 45 had a precedent in that of Pompey in 52. He had not sought the tribunate as a means either to win popularity or to introduce reform, though he knew how to use tribunes (as Trebonius or Curio) for his personal advantage. As a patrician he could not have held the office unless he had followed Clodius’ example of becoming a plebeian, nor did he receive in 48 the authority of a tribune (
tribunicia potestas
) as the historian Dio Cassius records; but in 44 he was granted the personal inviolability of the tribunes (
sacrosanctitas
) and the right to sit with them on certain public occasions.
²⁶
He had been Pontifex since 63 and augur since 47: he was thus well-placed to control the religious organization of the State. He could exercise censorial powers through the
praefectura morum
which he had received in 46. Like other victorious generals, he had been hailed by his troops as
imperator
, but he did not use this word as a title to describe his power, nor as a
praenomen
.
²⁷
He needed neither additional titles nor the further powers (e.g. to declare war and make peace) that some later writers wrongly ascribe to him. The dictatorship, which raised him above the veto of tribunes and the
imperium
of all other magistrates, was enough. He could dominate Senate, magistrates and people: his patronage was all-pervasive.

Honours were heaped on him especially in the last few months of his life: some he welcomed as deserved, others merely reflected the empty flattery of an obsequious Senate. The month Quinctilis was renamed Iulius (July). After Munda he was named Parens Patriae, and in the games which celebrated the battle his statue was carried with that of Victory. His statue was placed in the temple of Quirinus (deified Romulus), another near those of the kings of Rome, and yet another showed him with a globe beneath his feet; his chariot was set up opposite the temple of Juppiter. As a
triumphator
he was granted the right to a gilded chair, a triumphal robe and a laurel crown on public occasions. In 44 his head appeared on Roman coins, a practice developed by Hellenistic kings but not despised two years later by so good a Republican as Brutus.
²⁸
A temple was erected to his Clemency; a new college of priests, the Julian Luperci, was established (two other
gentes
, the Fabii and Quinctii, were already linked in this way with the Luperci); and a priest (fl
amen
) was appointed, perhaps in Caesar’s honour rather than for his worship. Antony was made the fl
amen
, but it is not probable that Caesar was associated with Juppiter by the grant of a title Juppiter Julius, nor that a cult was created in his honour in Rome during his life-time. The evidence for such a view is confusing and confused, since soon after his death a cult of Divus Iulius was established. Whatever the truth, it is unlikely that Caesar himself deliberately sought divine worship for himself in Rome, though Roman generals in
Greece and the East had received divine honours for the last 150 years: in this Caesar was no exception when he was described in an inscription at Ephesus as ‘god manifest and common saviour of the life of man’.

Caesar had acquired autocratic power, but whether he intended to use this authority to overthrow the Republic and become king remains uncertain. The meaning of several incidents early in 44 is ambiguous. Two tribunes, Flavus and Marullus, removed a diadem (the symbol of monarchy) which had been put on Caesar’s statue, and said that he had threatened to punish anyone who spoke of him as king; they also prosecuted persons who hailed Caesar as Rex when he was returning from the Latin Festival (26 January); Caesar had replied that he was not King but Caesar (‘non sum rex sed Caesar’; Rex was a Roman
cognomen
, just as King is an English surname). At the Lupercalia on 15 February he refused a diadem which was offered to him by M. Antony, his colleague in the consulship; he ordered it to be dedicated to Juppiter Capitolinus and an entry to be recorded in the Fasti that he had declined royalty. Then a Sibylline oracle was discovered, which was interpreted to mean that the Parthians could only be defeated by a king: and Caesar was preparing his Parthian expedition. Only rumours about this interpretation were known before it was officially reported to the Senate: how Caesar would then have tried to counter this move cannot be known. If it is believed that Caesar was seeking monarchy, all these incidents will be interpreted as his efforts to win it: for instance, if when Antony offered him the crown the crowd had gone wild with enthusiasm, he would have accepted it. On the other hand they can be explained otherwise, some as attempts by Caesar to kill rumours that he wanted to become king and others as attempts by his political enemies to embarrass him.

Some have thought that Caesar sought to become a Roman
rex
, reviving the monarchy that had preceded the Republic five hundred years earlier, despite the hatred which the Romans had for the word
rex
. Others have believed that he found a model for his would-be monarchy in the Hellenistic kings, whom, one by one, Rome had overthrown. This view, that he wished to be Basileus not Rex, may find support in contemporary rumours that he intended to transfer the capital to Alexandria and to marry Cleopatra and legitimize their son Caesarion. But far more probably these rumours were set on foot by his political enemies in order to discredit him; nor is it likely that, although he had spent a winter in Alexandria, he thought highly of Hellenistic monarchy as a form of government. Monarchy suggests the need for dynastic planning. But although Caesar, who had no legitimate son, adopted his grand-nephew Octavian, there is no decisive evidence that he intended the young man to ‘succeed’ him. The idea that he named Octavian as his Magister Equitum belongs to the propaganda of his enemies, while a clause in his will, appointing guardians for any son that might be born to
him, suggests that he thought his wife Calpurnia might yet bear a son. Others again believe that Caesar had not yet reached a final determination to destroy the form of the Republic. It is true that with realistic vision he regarded the Republic as ‘appellatio sine corpore ac specie’. He had not fought his way to victory and power in order to let the world relapse into anarchy, and if he could brand Sulla’s retirement from the dictatorship as political ineptitude, he scarcely would have repeated the mistake. He must have realized that some form of autocratic control was necessary, but since he was on the point of leaving for a three-years’ campaign in the East, it is not likely that he had already formulated his ultimate plans in detail. Thus while the pattern of Hellenistic monarchy may safely be rejected, it was wiser to avoid too close an attribution to him of aims which he himself had perhaps not yet finally determined.
²⁹

Whatever his future plans may have been, his present power and conduct were sufficient to bring about his death. Many nobles were not reconciled to the overshadowing of their traditional powers in the Senate and resented his autocratic behaviour. They will have disliked the oath, by which the Senate bound itself to protect his life, while his dismissal of his personal bodyguard of Spanish horsemen enabled them to break it with greater ease. They naturally took offence at any lack of courtesy on his part, as when he failed to stand up to greet members of the Senate who went in a body to inform him of a grant of honours: he will have appeared to some as a patron receiving his clients. There is no reason to believe that illness undermined his physical or intellectual powers, but he was ageing and impatient: ‘satis diu vel naturae vixi vel gloriae’. During his last months he showed a certain lack of responsibility which contrasts with the hopes he had inspired in men like Cicero in 46: his earlier geniality and humanity were overshadowed at times by bitterness and overbearing conduct (
superbia
). Whether this was superficial or was due to more deep-seated causes, arising from the corrupting influence of power, it was sufficient to emphasize his depotism and provoke his assassination.
³⁰
His enemies tried to undermine his popularity by spreading wild rumours of his alleged intentions and then turned to more drastic action.

A conspiracy was formed and since many of the conspirators were men who had served Caesar faithfully and could expect further support from him, it must be assumed that their motives were not mean or petty. They regarded him as a tyrant and tyrannicide became a duty in the interest of Liberty and the Republic: they did not stop to consider a fact which Caesar himself is said to have remarked upon, namely that his removal would merely involve the Republic in further trouble and civil wars. Caesar must have suspected that his life might be in peril, but he disdained any precautions: ‘It was better to die than to live in dread of death.’ Despite the fact that there were at least sixty
men involved in the conspiracy, the secret was well kept. The leader of the move was C. Cassius Longinus, praetor in 44, who had once described Caesar as his ‘old and merciful master’. The figurehead was his colleague and brother-in-law, M. Iunius Brutus, who claimed descent from the Brutus who had killed Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome in 510 B.C. A student and philosopher rather than a man of action, he was deeply attached to the Republican tradition. As a young mint-official in 60 or 59 he had issued coins with portraits of his ancestor and the inscription ‘libertas’, while the half-brother of his mother Servilia was Cato whose influence over him was so great as to lead him in the civil war to support Pompey, though the latter had in 77 been responsible for the death of Brutus’ father. After Pharsalus Brutus had accepted pardon and office from Caesar, but he was not reconciled with him at heart, and his marriage with Cato’s daughter Porcia in 45 renewed his links with the Republican tradition. Once he was persuaded where his duty lay, Brutus threw himself into the conspiracy with energy. Urged on by the prospect of Caesar’s departure for the East, the conspirators decided to strike on the Ides (15th) of March.
³¹
Undeterred by the fears of his wife Calpurnia Caesar attended the fatal meeting of the Senate. Unarmed, he was surrounded by a group of conspirators who drew their hidden daggers and stabbed him to death: he fell at the foot of Pompey’s statue.

Caesar’s outstanding abilities are unquestioned.
³²
One of the world’s greatest soldiers, he was also a writer of great distinction and an orator of the first rank. Urbane, cultured and courteous, he possessed a will of steel and an intensity of intellect that may have been reflected in his tall spare figure, his clear complexion and his lively dark eyes. An aristocrat by birth and nature, he had a true Roman sense of the practical: clear in purpose and swift in decision, he could be ruthless and coldblooded, but was more often clement and generous. The charm, as well as the force, of his personality captivated the loyalty of his troops and supporters, but awareness of his genius engendered in him a certain aloofness. That spark of mysticism and idealism that burned in the heart of Alexander the Great was lacking in Caesar whose genius matched Alexander’s in many ways: if Caesar worshipped a goddess it was Fortuna or Venus. His family connexions led him away from the Optimates; he became a
popularis
but no democrat. With immense skill he played the game of politics, using the weapons of his day to win power and preeminence. That he carried through so great a programme of reform in so short a time was due in part to his desire and flair for administrative efficiency which he perhaps valued more than the support of public opinion: in his last years he carried measures which would please some and displease other sections of the community. He made no attempt to bind Senators, Equites and people into a
concordia ordinum
: as long as the army was loyal, he could impose his will without courting all men. Whether his gifts as a
politician were matched by his statesmanship is a question to which the Ides of March have obscured the answer. Caesar must have realized that the Republic could not be revived in its old form – Sulla’s career and the fate of his constitution had shown that. A selfish oligarchy of nobles and capitalists, who exploited the provincials in the interests of themselves and of an idle urban mob, had failed to preserve law and peace, let alone to set their house in better order. The days of the city-state were over, and Rome must recognize her responsibilities to the non-political orders in Italy and the provinces. That Caesar’s mind must have been moving towards some form of monarchy as the only practical solution of the constitutional problem is probable enough. But an outraged group of nobles, many of whom honestly but blindly identified the Republican government of their day with Liberty, prevented Caesar from revealing to the world the solution that he would have decided to apply to its ills.