CAESAR.
At eight-and-twenty, Caesar, who not thirty years later was to die
master of Rome, was chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. "In all
his schemes and all his policy," said Cicero, "I discern the temper of a
tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how
delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive
him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the
liberties of Rome." As for his debts they were enormous. He had
contrived to spend his own fortune and the fortune of his wife; and he
was more than three hundred thousand pounds in debt. This was before he
had held any public office; and office, when he came to hold it,
certainly did not improve his position. He was appointed one of the
guardians of the Appian Way (the great road that led southward from
Rome, and was the route for travelers to Greece and the East). He spent
a great sum of money in repairs. His next office of aedile was still
more expensive. Expensive it always was, for the aedile, besides keeping
the temples and other public buildings in repair (the special business
signified by his name), had the management of the public games. An
allowance was made to him for his expenses from the treasury, but he was
expected, just as the Lord Mayor of London is expected, to spend a good
deal of his own money. Caesar far outdid all his predecessors. At one of
the shows which he exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of
gladiators fought in the arena; and a gladiator, with his armor and
weapons, and the long training which he had to undergo before he could
fight in public, was a very expensive slave. The six hundred and forty
would cost, first and last, not less than a hundred pounds apiece, and
many of them, perhaps a third of the whole number, would be killed in
the course of the day. Nor was he content with the expenses which were
more or less necessary. He exhibited a great show of wild beasts in
memory of his father, who had died nearly twenty years before. The whole
furniture of the theater, down to the very stage, was made on this
occasion of solid silver.
For all this seeming folly, there were those who discerned thoughts and
designs of no common kind. Extravagant expenditure was of course an
usual way of winning popular favors. A Roman noble bought office after
office till he reached one that entitled him to be sent to govern a
province. In the plunder of the province he expected to find what would
repay him all that he had spent and leave a handsome sum remaining.
Caesar looked to this end, but he looked also to something more. He
would be the champion of the people, and the people would make him the
greatest man at Rome. This had been the part played by Marius before
him; and he determined to play it again. The name of Marius had been in
ill repute since the victory of his great rival, Sulla, and Caesar
determined to restore it to honor. He caused statues of this great man
to be secretly made, on which were inscribed the names of the victories
by which he had delivered Rome from the barbarians. On the morning of
the show these were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the height of the
Capitol. The first feeling was a general astonishment at the young
magistrate's audacity. Then the populace broke out into expressions of
enthusiastic delight; many even wept for joy to see again the likeness
of their old favorite; all declared that Caesar was his worthy
successor. The nobles were filled with anger and fear. Catulus, who was
their leader, accused Caesar in the Senate. "This man," he said, "is no
longer digging mines against his country, he is bringing battering-rams
against it." The Senate, however, was afraid or unwilling to act. As for
the people, it soon gave the young man a remarkable proof of its favor.
What may be called the High Priesthood became vacant. It was an honor
commonly given to some aged man who had won victories abroad and borne
high honors at home. Such competitors there were on this occasion,
Catulus being one of them. But Caesar, though far below the age at which
such offices were commonly held, determined to enter the lists. He
refused the heavy bribe by which Catulus sought to induce him to
withdraw from the contest, saying that he would raise a greater sum to
bring it to a successful end. Indeed, he staked all on the struggle.
When on the day of election he was leaving his house, his mother
followed him to the door with tears in her eyes. He turned and kissed
her, "Mother," he said, "to-day you will see your son either High Priest
or an exile."
The fact was that Caesar had always shown signs of courage and ambition,
and had always been confident of his future greatness. Now that his
position in the country was assured men began to remember these stories
of his youth. In the days when Sulla was master of Rome, Caesar had been
one of the very few who had ventured to resist the great man's will.
Marius, the leader of the party, was his uncle, and he had himself
married the daughter of Cunia, another of the popular leaders. This wife
Sulla ordered him to divorce, but he flatly refused. For some time his
life was in danger; but Sulla was induced to spare it, remarking,
however, to friends who interceded for him, on the ground that he was
still but a boy, "You have not a grain of sense, if you do not see that
in this boy there is the material for many Mariuses." The young Caesar
found it safer to leave Italy for a time. While traveling in the
neighborhood of Asia Minor he fell into the hands of the pirates, who
were at that time the terror of all the Eastern Mediterranean. His first
proceeding was to ask them how much they wanted for his ransom. "Twenty
talents," (about five thousand pounds) was their answer. "What folly!"
he said, "you don't know whom you have got hold of. You shall have
fifty." Messengers were sent to fetch the money, and Caesar, who was
left with a friend and a couple of slaves, made the best of the
situation. If he wanted to go to sleep he would send a message
commanding his captors to be silent. He joined their sports, read poems
and speeches to them, and roundly abused them as ignorant barbarians if
they failed to applaud. But his most telling joke was threatening to
hang them. The men laughed at the free-spoken lad, but were not long in
finding that he was in most serious earnest. In about five weeks' time
the money arrived and Caesar was released. He immediately went to
Miletus, equipped a squadron, and returning to the scene of his
captivity, found and captured the greater part of the band. Leaving his
prisoners in safe custody at Pergamus, he made his way to the governor
of the province, who had in his hands the power of life and death. But
the governor, after the manner of his kind, had views of his own. The
pirates were rich and could afford to pay handsomely for their lives. He
would consider the case, he said. This was not at all to Caesar's mind.
He hastened back to Pergamus, and, taking the law into his own hands,
crucified all the prisoners.
This was the cool and resolute man in whom the people saw their best
friend and the nobles their worst enemy. These last seemed to see a
chance of ruining him when the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered and
crushed. He was accused, especially by Cato, of having been an
accomplice; and when he left the Senate after the debate in which he had
argued against putting the arrested conspirators to death, he was mobbed
by the gentlemen who formed Cicero's body-guard, and was even in danger
of his life. But the formal charge was never pressed; indeed it was
manifestly false, for Caesar was too sure of the favor of the people to
have need of conspiring to win it. The next year he was made praetor,
and after his term of office was ended, governor of Further Spain. The
old trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he could not leave Rome
till he had satisfied the most pressing of his creditors. This he did by
help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who stood security for nearly
two hundred thousand pounds. To this time belong two anecdotes which,
whether true or no, are curiously characteristic of his character. He
was passing, on the way to his province, a town that had a particularly
mean and poverty-stricken look. One of his companions remarked, "I dare
say there are struggles for office even here, and jealousies and
parties." "Yes," said Caesar; "and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be
the first man here than the second in Rome." Arrived at his journey's
end, he took the opportunity of a leisure hour to read the life of
Alexander. He sat awhile lost in thought, then burst into tears. His
friends inquired the cause. "The cause?" he replied. "Is it not cause
enough that at my age Alexander had conquered half the world, while I
have done nothing?" Something, however, he contrived to do in Spain. He
extended the dominion of Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the
affairs of the provincials to their satisfaction, and contrived at the
same time to make money enough to pay his debts. Returning to Rome when
his year of command was ended, he found himself in a difficulty. He
wished to have the honor of a triumph (a triumph was a procession in
which a victorious general rode in a chariot to the Capitol, preceded
and followed by the spoils and prisoners taken in his campaigns), and he
also wished to become a candidate for the consulship. But a general who
desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates of the city till it was
voted to him, while a candidate for the consulship must lose no time in
beginning to canvass the people. Caesar, having to make his choice
between the two, preferred power to show. He stood for the consulship,
and was triumphantly elected.
Once consul he made that famous Coalition which is commonly called the
First Triumvirate. Pompey was the most famous soldier of the day, and
Crassus, as has been said before, the richest man. These two had been
enemies, and Caesar reconciled them; and then the three together agreed
to divide power and the prizes of power between them. Caesar would have
willingly made Cicero a fourth, but he refused, not, perhaps, without
some hesitation. He did more; he ventured to say some things which were
not more agreeable because they were true of the new state of things.
This the three masters of Rome were not willing to endure, and they
determined that this troublesome orator should be put out of the way.
They had a ready means of doing it. A certain Clodius, of whom we shall
hear more hereafter, felt a very bitter hatred against Cicero, and by
way of putting himself in a position to injure him, and to attain other
objects of his own, sought to be made tribune. But there was a great
obstacle in the way. The tribunes were tribunes of the _plebs_, that is,
of the commons, whose interests they were supposed specially to protect;
while Clodius was a noble--indeed, a noble of nobles--belonging as he
did to that great Claudian House which was one of the oldest and
proudest of Roman families. The only thing to be done was to be adopted
by some plebeian. But here, again, there were difficulties. The law
provided that an adoption should be real, that the adopter should be
childless and old enough to be the father of his adopted son. The
consent of the priests was also necessary. This consent was never asked,
and indeed never could have been given, for the father was a married
man, had children of his own, and was not less than fifteen years,
younger than his new son. Indeed the bill for making the adoption legal
had been before the people for more than a year without making any
progress. The Three now took it up to punish Cicero for his presumption
in opposing them; and under its new promoters it was passed in a single
day, being proposed at noon made law by three o'clock in the afternoon
What mischief Clodius was thus enabled to work against Cicero we shall
hear in the next chapter but one.
His consulship ended, Caesar received a substantial prize for his
services, the government of the province of Gaul for five years. Before
he left Italy to take up his command, he had the satisfaction of seeing
Cicero driven into banishment. That done, he crossed the Alps. The next
nine years (for his government was prolonged for another period when the
first came to an end) he was engaged in almost incessant war, though
still finding time to manage the politics of Rome. The campaigns which
ended in making Gaul from the Alps to the British Channel, and from the
Atlantic to the Rhine, a Roman possession, it is not within my purpose
to describe. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to say a few words
about his dealings with our own island. In his first expedition, in the
summer of 55 B.C., he did little more than effect a landing on the
coast, and this not without considerable loss. In the next, made early
in the following year, he employed a force of more than forty thousand
men, conveyed in a flotilla of eight hundred ships. This time the
Britons did not venture to oppose his landing; and when they met him in
the field, as he marched inward, they were invariably defeated. They
then changed their tactics and retired before him, laying waste the
country as they went. He crossed the Thames some little way to the
westward of where London now stands, received the submission of one
native tribe, and finally concluded a peace with the native leader
Cassivelaunus, who gave hostages and promised tribute. The general
result of ten years' fighting was to add a great province to the empire
at the cost of a horrible amount of bloodshed, of the lives, as some
say, of two millions of men, women, and children (for Caesar, though not
positively cruel, was absolutely careless of suffering), and to leave
the conqueror master of the Roman world. The coalition indeed was broken
up, for Crassus had perished in the East, carrying on a foolish and
unprovoked war with the Parthians, and Pompey had come to fear and hate
his remaining rival. But Caesar was now strong enough to do without
friends, and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly commanded him to
disperse his army by a certain day, on pain of being considered an enemy
of the country. He continued to advance till he came to the boundaries
of Italy, a little river, whose name, the Rubicon, was then made famous
forever, which separated Cisalpine Gaul from Umbria. To cross this was
practically to declare war, and even the resolute Caesar hesitated
awhile. He thought his course over by himself; he even consulted his
friends. He professed himself pained at the thought of the war of which
his act would be the beginning, and of how posterity would judge his
conduct. Then with the famous words, "The die is cast," he plunged into
the stream. Pompey fled from Rome and from Italy. Caesar did not waste
an hour in pursuing his success. First making Italy wholly his own, he
marched into Spain, which was Pompey's stronghold, and secured it.
Thence he returned to Rome, and from Rome again made his way into
Macedonia, where Pompey had collected his forces. The decisive battle
was fought at Pharsalia in Thessaly; for though the remnants of Pompey's
party held out, the issue of the war was never doubtful after that day.
Returning to Rome (for of his proceedings in Egypt and elsewhere there
is no need to speak), he used his victory with as much mercy as he had
shown energy in winning it. To Cicero he showed not only nothing of
malice, but the greatest courtesy and kindness. He had written to him
from Egypt, telling him that he was to keep all his dignities and
honors; and he had gone out of his way to arrange an interview with him,
and he even condescended to enter into a friendly controversy. Cicero
had written a little treatise about his friend Cato; and as Cato had
been the consistent adversary of Caesar, and had killed himself rather
than fall into the hands of the master of Rome, it required no little
good nature in Caesar to take it in good part. He contented himself with
writing an answer, to which he gave the title of _Anti-Cato_, and in
which, while he showed how useless and unpractical the policy of Cato
had been, he paid the highest compliments to the genius and integrity of
the man. He even conferred upon Cicero the distinguished honor of a
visit; which the host thus describes in a letter to Atticus. "What a
formidable guest I have had! Still, I am not sorry; for all went off
very well. On December 8th he came to Philippus' house in the evening.
(Philippus was his brother-in-law.) The villa was so crammed with troops
that there was scarcely a chamber where the great man himself could
dine. I suppose there were two thousand men. I was really anxious what
might happen next day. But Barba Cassius came to my help, and gave me a
guard. The camp was pitched in the park; the house was strictly guarded.
On the 19th he was closeted with Philippus till one o'clock in the
afternoon. No one was admitted. He was going over accounts with Balbus,
I fancy. After this he took a stroll on the shore. Then came the bath.
He heard the epigram to Mamurra, (a most scurrilous epigram by
Catullus), and betrayed no annoyance. He dressed for dinner and sat
down. As he was under a course of medicine, he ate and drank without
apprehension and in the pleasantest humor. The entertainment was
sumptuous and elaborate; and not only this, but well cooked and seasoned
with good talk. The great man's attendants also were most abundantly
entertained in three other rooms. The inferior freedmen and the slaves
had nothing to complain of; the superior kind had an even elegant
reception. Not to say more, I showed myself a genial host. Still he was
not the kind of guest to whom we would say, 'My very dear sir, you will
come again, I hope, when you are this way next time.' There was nothing
of importance in our conversation, but much literary talk. What do you
want to know? He was gratified and seemed pleased to be with me. He told
me that he should be one day at Baiae, and another at Puteoli."
Within three months this remarkable career came to a sudden and violent
end. There were some enemies whom all Caesar's clemency and kindness had
not conciliated. Some hated him for private reasons of their own, some
had a genuine belief that if he could be put out of the way, Rome might
yet again be a free country. The people too, who had been perfectly
ready to submit to the reality of power, grew suspicious of some of its
outward signs. The name of King had been hateful at Rome since the last
bearer of it, Tarquin the Proud, had been driven out nearly seven
centuries before. There were now injudicious friends, or, it may be,
judicious enemies, who were anxious that Caesar should assume it. The
prophecy was quoted from the books of the Sibyl, that Rome might conquer
the Parthians if she put herself under the command of a king; otherwise
she must fail. On the strength of this Caesar was saluted by the title
of King as he was returning one day from Alba to the Capitol. The
populace made their indignation manifest, and he replied, "I am no king,
only Caesar;" but it was observed that he passed on with a gloomy air.
He bore himself haughtily in the Senate, not rising to acknowledge the
compliments paid to him. At the festival of the Lupercalia, as he sat
looking on at the sports in a gilded chair and clad in a triumphal robe,
Antony offered him a crown wreathed with bay leaves. Some applause
followed; it was not general, however, but manifestly got up for the
occasion. Caesar put the crown away, and the shout that followed could
not be misunderstood. It was offered again, and a few applauded as
before, while a second rejection drew forth the same hearty approval.
His statues were found with crowns upon them. These two tribunes
removed, and at the same time ordered the imprisonment of the men who
had just saluted him as king. The people were delighted, but Caesar had
them degraded from their office. The general dissatisfaction thus caused
induced the conspirators to proceed. Warnings, some of which we may
suppose to have come from those who were in the secret, were not
wanting. By these he was wrought upon so much that he had resolved not
to stir from his house on the day which he understood was to be fatal to
him; but Decimus Brutus, who was in the plot, dissuaded him from his
purpose. The scene that followed may be told once again in the words in
which Plutarch describes it: "Artemidoros, of Cnidus, a teacher of
Greek, who had thus come to be intimate with some of the associates of
Brutus, had become acquainted to a great extent with what was in
progress, and had drawn up a statement of the information which he had
to give. Seeing that Caesar gave the papers presented to him to the
slaves with him, he came up close and said, 'Caesar, read this alone and
that quickly: it contains matters that nearly concern yourself.' Caesar
took it, and would have read it, but was hindered by the crowd of
persons that thronged to salute him. Keeping it in his hand, he passed
into the House. In the place to which the Senate had been summoned stood
a statue of Pompey. Cassius is said to have looked at it and silently
invoked the dead man's help, and this though he was inclined to the
skeptical tenets of Epicurus. Meanwhile Antony, who was firmly attached
to Caesar and a man of great strength, was purposely kept in
conversation outside the senate-house by Decimus Brutus. As Caesar
entered, the Senate rose to greet him. Some of the associates of Brutus
stood behind his chair; others approached him in front, seemingly
joining their entreaties to those which Cimber Tullius was addressing to
him on behalf of his brother. He sat down and rejected the petition with
a gesture of disapproval at their urgency. Tullius then seized his toga
with both hands and dragged it from his neck. This was the signal for
attack. Casca struck him first on the neck. The wound was not fatal, nor
even serious, so agitated was the striker at dealing the first blow in
so terrible a deed. Caesar turned upon him, seized the dagger, and held
it fast, crying at the same time in Latin, 'Casca, thou villain, what
art thou about?' while Casca cried in Greek to his brother, 'Brother,
help!' Those senators who were not privy to the plot were overcome with
horror. They could neither cry nor help: they dared not even speak. The
conspirators were standing round Caesar each with a drawn sword in his
hand; whithersoever he turned his eyes he saw a weapon ready to strike,
and he struggled like a wild beast among the hunters. They had agreed
that every one should take a part in the murder, and Brutus, friend as
he was, could not hold back. The rest, some say, he struggled with,
throwing himself hither and thither, and crying aloud; but as soon as he
saw Brutus with a drawn sword in his hand, he wrapped his head in his
toga and ceased to resist, falling, whether by chance or by compulsion
from the assassins, at the pedestal of Pompey's statue. He is said to
have received three-and-twenty wounds. Many of his assailants struck
each other as they aimed repeated blows at his body." His funeral was a
remarkable proof of his popularity. The pit in which the body was to be
burned was erected in the Field of Mars. In the Forum was erected a
gilded model of the temple of Mother Venus. (Caesar claimed descent
through Aeneas from this goddess.) Within this shrine was a couch of
ivory, with coverlets of gold and purple, and at its head a trophy with
the robe which he had worn when he was assassinated. High officers of
state, past and present, carried the couch into the Forum. Some had the
idea of burning it in the chapel of Jupiter in the Capitol, some in
Pompey's Hall (where he was killed). Of a sudden two men, wearing swords
at their side, and each carrying two javelins, came forward and set
light to it with waxen torches which they held in their hands. The crowd
of bystanders hastily piled up a heap of dry brush-wood, throwing on it
the hustings, the benches, and any thing that had been brought as a
present. The flute players and actors threw off the triumphal robes in
which they were clad, rent them, and threw them upon the flames, and the
veterans added the decorations with which they had come to attend the
funeral, while mothers threw in the ornaments of their children.
The doors of the building in which the murder was perpetrated were
blocked up so that it never could be entered again. The day (the 15th of
March) was declared to be accursed. No public business was ever to be
done upon it.
These proceedings probably represented the popular feeling about the
deed, for Caesar, in addition to the genius which every one must have
recognized, had just the qualities which make men popular. He had no
scruples, but then he had no meannesses. He incurred enormous debts with
but a faint chance of paying them--no chance, we may say, except by the
robbery of others. He laid his hands upon what he wanted, taking for
instance three thousand pounds weight of gold from the treasury of the
Capitol and leaving gilded brass in its stead; and he plundered the
unhappy Gauls without remorse. But then he was as free in giving as he
was unscrupulous in taking. He had the personal courage, too, which is
one of the most attractive of all qualities. Again and again in battle
he turned defeat into victory. He would lay hold of the fugitives as
they ran, seize them by the throat, and get them by main force face to
face with the foe. Crossing the Hellespont after the battle of Pharsalia
in a small boat, he met two of the enemy's ships. Without hesitation he
discovered himself, called upon them to surrender, and was obeyed. At
Alexandria he was surprised by a sudden sally of the besieged, and had
to leap into the harbor. He swam two hundred paces to the nearest ship,
lifting a manuscript in his left hand to keep it out of the water, and
holding his military cloak in his teeth, for he would not have the enemy
boast of securing any spoil from his person.
He allowed nothing to stand in his way. If it suited his policy to
massacre a whole tribe, men, women, and children, he gave the order
without hesitation, just as he recorded it afterwards in his history
without a trace of remorse or regret. If a rival stood in his way he had
him removed, and was quite indifferent as to how the removal was
effected. But his object gained, or wherever there was no object in
question, he could be the kindest and gentlest of men. A friend with
whom he was traveling was seized with sudden illness. Caesar gave up at
once to him the only chamber in the little inn, and himself spent the
night in the open air. His enemies he pardoned with singular facility,
and would even make the first advances. Political rivals, once rendered
harmless, were admitted to his friendship, and even promoted to honor;
writers who had assailed him with the coarsest abuse he invited to his
table.
Of the outward man this picture has reached us: "He is said to have been
remarkably tall, with a light complexion and well-shaped limbs. His face
was a little too full; his eyes black and brilliant. His health was
excellent, but towards the latter end of his life he was subject to
fainting fits and to frightful dreams at night. On two occasions also,
when some public business was being transacted, he had epileptic fits.
He was very careful of his personal appearance, had his hair and beard
scrupulously cut and shaven. He was excessively annoyed at the
disfigurement of baldness, which he found was made the subject of many
lampoons. It had become his habit, therefore, to bring up his scanty
locks over his head; and of all the honors decreed to him by the Senate
and people, none was more welcome to him than that which gave him the
right of continually wearing a garland of bay."
He was wonderfully skillful in the use of arms, an excellent swimmer,
and extraordinarily hardy. On the march he would sometimes ride, but
more commonly walk, keeping his head uncovered both in rain and
sunshine. He traveled with marvelous expedition, traversing a hundred
miles in a day for several days together; if he came to a river he would
swim it, or sometimes cross it on bladders. Thus he would often
anticipate his own messengers. For all this he had a keen appreciation
of pleasure, and was costly and even luxurious in his personal habits.
He is said, for instance, to have carried with him a tesselated pavement
to be laid down in his tent throughout his campaign in Gaul.