As a young man his ardour of soul, working in a debased society without
ideals, made him simply more extravagant and more foppish than the
spendthrifts and rakes who surrounded him. Doubtless the scandalous
Suetonius has embellished the story of his early follies. Many of his
youthful escapades were, one suspects, carefully designed to bring
him into notice. It is probable that from a very early age he was
ambitious, and his family connections clearly marked out his career as
a democrat. He had the failure of Sulla before his eyes. The greatness
of his character lay chiefly in an instinctive hatred for muddle and
pretence. He could not fail to see the hopeless confusion into which
the Roman state had fallen. From the first, I think, he was aiming at
power for himself in order to put things straight. Whether self or
country came first in his calculations, it is hard, perhaps impossible,
to decide; but the historian is not necessarily a cynic when he demands
strong proof of altruism in the world of politics. To obtain power the
democratic side was the only possible one, for the nobles stood for
the predominance only of their class. Crassus was necessary to Cæsar
as his banker and creditor until he had acquired a fortune for himself
by conquest. Pompeius was the foremost soldier of the day, and it is
probable that Cæsar deliberately sought to climb over the shoulders
of Pompeius into monarchy. He saw--he could not help seeing, for it
was written plainly in the history of the past century--that for power
two things were necessary, the support of the mob in the forum and the
backing of a veteran army. At the time when Cæsar got Gaul for his
province there was a fresh movement towards imperial expansion. Foreign
conquest afforded some relief for the chagrins of internal politics. By
it Marius, Sulla, and Pompeius had become powerful. If Cæsar wanted to
eclipse them all, he must present Rome with a new province, the most
powerful of all bribes. It was in this spirit that he set out for Gaul.
If his ulterior motive was selfish it is certain that he threw himself
heart and soul, with all the burning energy of which his tireless
spirit was capable, into the work of conquest and civilisation.
[Illustration: Gallic Pottery]
And what a work it was! Archæology is now beginning to prove to history
that the so-called barbarians were by no means always savages. Even
the “naked woad-stained” Britons had their arts and industries and
political systems. The Gauls, when Cæsar attacked them, were well on
the road to civilisation. Druidism was a declining force, town-life
was beginning, and there was even a fairly artistic coinage. The
Gallic pottery is by no means destitute of beauty. As soldiers the
Gauls showed many of the qualities of their descendants, a devoted
impetuosity in the charge, coupled with a lack of tenacity in
resistance which always cost them dear. Much of Cæsar’s success was
due to his skill in dividing them against themselves, but many of his
difficulties arose from their fickle disposition. Mommsen, like a true
Bismarckian German, has a striking comparison of the ancient Gallic
Celt with the modern Irishman.
[Illustration: Gallic pottery]
“On the eve,” he says, “of parting from this remarkable nation, we may
be allowed to call attention to the fact that in the accounts of the
ancients as to the Celts on the Loire and the Seine we find almost
every one of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to
recognise as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears: the laziness
in the culture of the fields; the delight in tippling and brawling;
the ostentation ... the droll humour ... the hearty delight in singing
and reciting the deeds of past ages, and the most decided talent for
rhetoric and poetry; the curiosity--no trader was allowed to pass
before he had told in the open street what he knew, or did not know,
in the shape of news--and the extravagant credulity which acted on
such accounts ... the childlike piety which sees in the priest a
father and asks him for advice in all things” (this, by the way, was
apparently a characteristic of the contemporary Germans also), “the
unsurpassed fervour of national feeling, and the closeness with which
those who are fellow-countrymen cling together almost like one family
in opposition to the stranger; the inclination to rise in revolt
under the first chance leader that presents himself, but at the same
time the utter incapacity to preserve a self-reliant courage equally
remote from presumption and pusillanimity, to perceive the right time
for waiting and for striking, to obtain or even barely to tolerate
any organisation, any sort of fixed military or political discipline.
It is, and remains, at all times and places the same indolent and
poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisitive, credulous, amiable,
clever, but--from a political point of view--thoroughly useless nation;
and therefore its fate has been always and everywhere the same.”
The internal politics of Gaul seem to have been marked by a division
between two parties, one the conservative party of the aristocratic
knights, the other a nationalist and popular faction. Cæsar used these
divisions for the furtherance of his scheme of conquest. He was not
only a consummate general with an instinct for strategic points and
huge combinations, but he was also a superb regimental officer in the
making of soldiers. By the end of his ten years he had forged a small
but invincible army devoted to his interests and entirely confident
in his leadership. Personally, moreover, the Roman debauchee was the
best soldier in the army. Physically he was a stranger to weariness or
fatigue. He could travel immense distances with incredible rapidity,
alone on horseback, or with a handful of followers. He seemed
ubiquitous. In the battle, when his men wavered, he would leap down
into the ranks, sword in hand, or snatch the standard from the hand of
a centurion and fight among the foremost. No detail of fortification or
commissariat escaped him, and he, more than any one else, showed the
power of engineering in warfare. In the supreme battle against Pompeius
he even carried his devotion to the spade beyond reasonable limits
when he tried to circumvallate the much larger camp of his enemies.
One of his most surprising exploits was when half Gaul, supposed
to be pacified, rose in sudden revolt under Vercingetorix. With a
much smaller army he chased the rebels into the fortress of Alesia,
neglecting for the time all communication with his base, and fully
aware that a still larger army would soon advance to the relief of the
besieged. He therefore entrenched himself outside the gates of the city
and kept off the relieving force with one hand while he continued the
siege with the other. But while he was capable of brilliant strokes
of audacity like this, he was also a cold and cautious organiser of
victory, ready to meet his enemies on their own ground and with their
own weapons.
In this great war, which ended in the conquest of Gaul, Cæsar’s
expeditions to Britain were mere episodes which have been greatly
exaggerated in the traditional histories of our schools. They were
summer raids, like his dash across the Rhine, intended for a warning
to the barbarians of the hinterland; for it seems that communication
to and fro across the channel was continuous. It is probable enough
that the persuasions of the Roman traders who swarmed after the eagles
across Gaul had their influence also. Undoubtedly the Romans of this
generation were keenly alive to commercial openings, and always on
the search for mines, real or imaginary. Further, we cannot deny that
Cæsar in all his undertakings had one eye upon his political position
in Rome itself, and the “conquest of Britain,” that almost legendary
corner of the earth, concealed in boreal mists and embosomed in the
ever-flowing Ocean river, would be a sensational achievement calculated
to outshine the Oriental triumphs of Pompeius. One cannot but place
among the extravagances of hero-worship Mommsen’s belief that Cæsar
had a prophetic insight into the true nature of the “German Peril” for
Rome. When Cæsar took over the Gallic province there was no tremendous
German menace. There had always been occasional irruptions of the
barbarians from across the Rhine, and a steady German penetration of
the Netherlands. Cæsar did not lay down any intelligible frontier
policy: that was one of the achievements of Augustus. Both in Gaul
and Britain it was simply a forward movement by a general of bold and
untiring resolution, backed by an invincible army. The two trips to
Britain, like those across the Rhine, were reconnaissances only, and
the conquest of the island was one of the legacies which Cæsar intended
to reserve for the future. His successor very wisely declined it. There
was little immediate profit there, and the Gallic conquests had glutted
the Roman market with slaves.
Gaul had submitted easily to a force of less than forty thousand
Romans; then it had revolted unsuccessfully. In the end the whole
country acknowledged defeat and rapidly began to assimilate Latin
civilisation. Meanwhile in the imperial city the Republic was slowly
expiring by a natural death. Every winter Cæsar returned to the
Cisalpine part of his province to receive intelligence from Rome and
secure his position there. Clodius, the most evil of mob-leaders,
was his agent with the democracy. Clodius had managed to hound the
respectable Cicero into exile for his share in suppressing Catiline,
and when Cicero, who was really popular at Rome, had at length
persuaded Pompeius to allow his return, the great orator remained
thenceforward a timid and reluctant servant of the triumvirate,
defending their friends or prosecuting their enemies, with inward
reluctance, no doubt, but with unimpaired eloquence. With his
astonishing victories in Gaul the star of Julius was rising in the
political heavens. The commons of Rome were not only dazzled by his
successes, but captivated by his largesses. Meanwhile Pompeius was
living on his military reputation, and slowly squandering it by his
political incapacity. He continued to hold various high offices unknown
to the constitution; he became sole consul, a thing abhorrent to the
Roman system; he held the province of Spain and governed it from
Italy through his legates, and at the same time continued to exercise
a general oversight over the corn-supply of Rome. In fact there was
scarcely anything in the future position of a Roman emperor which had
not its precedent in the career of Pompeius. Had he wished it, or,
more probably, had he known how to obtain it, he and not Augustus
might easily have been the first Roman emperor. By taste and natural
sympathies he was an aristocrat, but the force of circumstances had
driven him into an uncomfortable position of alliance with Cæsar
the democrat and Crassus the plutocrat. This was in a large measure
the secret of his political helplessness. He, the conqueror of the
East, often found himself openly flouted, nay, actually hustled and
threatened in the streets, by the organised roughs. Meanwhile there
was a small but tenacious opposition party of aristocrats, who had no
discipline and therefore no leaders, but among whom Cato and Marcellus
were the most conspicuous. They had not the strength to offer any
consistent resistance to Cæsar’s progress, which they watched with
growing jealousy and alarm. They had not the sense to rally the
respectable elements in the state to their side. Both Cicero and
Pompeius would readily have joined them if they had made it possible.
Instead of that, they were content to carp at Cæsar’s achievements and
threaten him with a prosecution as soon as he should return to private
life. That was the stupidest mistake, for it made Cæsar resolve at all
costs to retain his command, and eventually precipitated the civil war.
As it can easily be seen, the coalition between Cæsar and Pompeius
was not a natural one: psychologically they had nothing in common,
and their interests soon began to diverge. Pompeius could hardly fail
to perceive that Cæsar was climbing by his help and at his expense.
The old general saw the memory of his great deeds eclipsed by the new
one, and there was no lack of mischief-makers to widen the breach.
The alliance had been cemented in a striking fashion at a conference
at Lucca in 56 B.C. when the conservatives were threatening to annul
Cæsar’s acts in Gaul. Cæsar had replied by inviting Pompeius to meet
him in his southern province; he also invited those senators who were
his friends to appear at the same time. Two hundred senators had
answered the invitation, and for the time being the opposition died
away into grumbling.
But now the breach was growing open to all men’s eyes. Cæsar’s charming
daughter, Julia, who had been married to Pompeius as a pledge of union,
and had done much to hold the two chiefs together, died at an early
age in the year 54. In the next year Crassus, the mediating third
party of the “triumvirate,” met his fate at Carrhæ. In the next there
were more than ordinary disorders over the elections, culminating in
a fierce battle in the forum between the rival gangs of Clodius for
the triumvirate and Milo for the senate. The senate-house was burnt
and Clodius slain. Pompeius then became sole consul, and proceeded,
under threat of his army, to introduce a series of laws almost openly
aimed at Cæsar. By the Pompeian law of magistrates Cæsar would be
compelled to appear in Rome as a private citizen for some months in
the year 49, at the mercy of his enemies, while Pompeius himself, by
having his titular command in Spain prolonged, would still be master
of an army. These laws were passed at the crisis of Cæsar’s fate in
Gaul, when the whole nation had risen in arms against him. But Cæsar
emerged victorious, and was now, in the year 50, free to consider his
position in regard to Pompeius and the senate. Cæsar himself maintains
that he was reluctant to resort to violence, and I think we may believe
him. Though nine legions were still under his command, he could hardly
venture to denude the newly conquered province of its garrisons,
while Pompeius was master of an equal number of legions, including
the veteran Spanish troops, and could levy any number of recruits or
reservists in Italy. Cæsar could not have faced the prospect of a civil
war with any confidence as to the result, even if he had been the sort
of man to provoke it without scruple. There is a further proof: as late
as 50 B.C. he resigned two legions to Pompeius, which would have been
madness if he had then intended to wade through bloodshed to a throne.
In all the abortive negotiations which preceded the outbreak of the
great civil war, Cæsar was prepared to resign everything except the one
condition upon which his very life depended, namely, that he should
not have to return to Rome as a defenceless private citizen. The civil
war was due to the mad folly of the conservatives led by Marcellus,
who had convinced themselves that Cæsar meant to sack Rome with his
Gallic cavalry and to reign as tyrant over its ashes. In the end they
succeeded in communicating their panic to Pompeius.
Conciliatory to the last, Cæsar was driven to show that he was in
earnest. Bidden to dismiss his army, and declared a public enemy, in
January 49 B.C. he took the decisive step of crossing the little river
Rubicon which marked the frontier of Italy. Even then it was only a
demonstration of force. Only 1500 men followed Cæsar to Rimini and
Arezzo, and he still offered peace on the most moderate terms. But the
panic-stricken and conscience-stricken senators, still believing in the
imminent sack of Rome, decided to leave their wives and children there
while they saved their precious necks, in headlong flight to Capua, and
then to Brindisi, and then to Greece. The great Pompeius showed equal
panic. Apparently demoralised by Cæsar’s swift and decisive movements,
he decided to give up Italy without a struggle and retire to the East,
where all his triumphs had been won. From there he would fight for the
lordship of the world.
But meanwhile Cæsar, by his clemency no less than by his bold
resolution, was winning all Italy to his side. Only one member of his
army--his old lieutenant-general Labienus--deserted him, while fresh
recruits even from the senatorial party daily joined him. Cool and
methodical as ever, he left Rome to recover from its panic, and the
East to wait until he had secured his hold upon the West. He knew the
value of a veteran army, and therefore turned his march first to Spain.
It took him but a short time to secure the capitulation of Pompeius’s
lieutenants in that province, and then at last he returned to Rome.
He was only in the city for eleven days, but in that time he was able
to remove the panic and disorder there. He restored credit, assured
the supply of corn, and got a grant of citizen rights for his faithful
provincials of Cisalpine Gaul.
Meanwhile the Pompeian army was gathering in northern Greece, and the
senators were breathing death and damnation against Cæsar. The final
struggle on the Albanian coast and in Thessaly, which culminated in the
great battle of Pharsalus (48 B.C.), decided the fate of the world.
The troops were fairly equal, if numbers and training are taken into
account; in numbers alone Cæsar was far inferior. But Cæsar’s men had
extraordinary devotion to their general, as he had to his beloved
legions. Never was there completer confidence between an army and its
leader than between Cæsar and his veterans. He could be merciless in
discipline. Once he had to decimate the Ninth Legion, but he could
move his grim legionaries to tears by a reproach. He shared all their
labours, he starved with them, and marched those prodigious forced
marches by their side. They trusted in his generalship, and they were
not disappointed. Pompeius showed, when at last he roused himself, that
he too had not forgotten the military art. It was a battle of giants;
Pompeius the more orthodox tactician, Cæsar incredibly bold, rapid,
and far-seeing. More than once it was touch and go. Cæsar had terrible
difficulties to face, above all in the necessity of transporting his
army across the wintry Adriatic in face of the enemy when he had no
fleet. The feat was accomplished by sheer audacity, and then he had to
face and contain a larger army, thoroughly well prepared and supplied,
with no base and no communications for his own men. He actually tried
to fling a line of earthworks round the Pompeian army while his own men
were starving. Yet it was by generalship that the battle of Pharsalus
was won.
Pompeius fled to Egypt for refuge, and was murdered there by
treacherous Alexandrians and renegade Romans. Cæsar, who had received
the submission of the whole provincial world with the exception of
King Juba’s African realm, followed Pompeius to Egypt, and on landing
was presented with his rival’s head. In Alexandria itself Cæsar had to
face one of the most serious crises of his life. For six months he held
the royal palace against a host of infuriated Orientals. In the palace
was Cleopatra, the wife and sister of the reigning Ptolemy, and then a
brilliant and fascinating young woman of twenty. Let us believe that
she was beautiful, and that the portrait-painters and coin-engravers of
her day were incompetent or disloyal.[18] But if rumour spoke truly,
Cæsar was by no means exclusive in his devotion to female charms. Her
son was named Cæsarion.
When at length Julius Cæsar escaped from the twofold entanglements of
love and battle at Alexandria, he had more fighting still before he
could make the earth his footstool. He spent a few days in Syria to
arrange the affairs of the East, and among other things gave orders
to build up the wall of Jerusalem, which had been thrown down by the
orders of Pompeius. Then he passed over to Asia Minor, and at Zela
crushed the rebellion of a Pontic successor of Mithradates. So back
to Italy for a few weeks, and there he found all in disorder, and his
legions, including the faithful Tenth, mutinying for their pay. He
settled the disorder at Rome by his mere presence, enacted laws to
relieve the economic distress there, and, having no money to pay his
soldiers, quelled their mutiny by sheer sleight of speech. Meanwhile
the broken Pompeians had gathered in thousands at the court of King
Juba, who himself had a formidable host. As soon as he could find time,
the restless conqueror crossed straight to Africa with as many soldiers
as he could muster, leaving the main force to follow. That was always
Cæsar’s way--to dart straight upon the scene of danger was his first
instinct. At his coming the marrow oozed out of the very bones of his
foe. He had a Scipio and a Cato, and a host of notable Romans arrayed
against him. At Thapsus, in April of the year 46, he smote them, and
slew (it is said) fifty thousand men--fourteen legions of Romans. There
at Utica, Cato died his famous Stoic death, far the noblest scene of
his mistaken life, and so became a theme for the glorification of Stoic
Republicanism for all time. Afranius, Scipio, King Juba, Faustus Sulla,
and many others, died also. A few stragglers found their way to Spain,
to continue the fight there under the two sons of Pompeius. Thither in
the next year, so soon as he had leisure, Cæsar followed them, and in
a last great battle at Munda he finished the resistance. Only Sextus
Pompeius was left of the Pompeian party, and he escaped for a time to
begin an interesting career as a gentleman-pirate.
In this manner the amazing Cæsar conquered the world. Now it was
unquestionably his. What was he to make of it? This story has been told
in vain unless it has shown that the city of Rome was rotten to the
core, with no sound elements left in it. Cæsar himself was a solitary
prodigy; he had no supporters worthy of his confidence. Labienus had
deserted him, Quintus Cicero, another of his legates in Gaul, had
also fought against him. Mark Antony was perhaps his right-hand man,
but Antony was nothing but a brilliant orator and a fair soldier; of
character or reputation he had not a shred. Brutus, to whom Cæsar
was personally devoted, had fought against him, and was--in spite
of Shakespeare and republican tradition--a vain and shallow egoist.
Cæsar had no brother and no legitimate son. Across in Apollonia his
little great-nephew Octavius was still at school. Julius Cæsar had
to reorganise a broken world alone. For a hundred years there had
been no peace in Rome, and no proper government in the empire. Every
year of its lingering agony, the Republic had drawn closer to the
inevitable issue in Monarchy. Even Cicero, when he tried to console
himself for the horrible disorders of Roman life by depicting an ideal
commonwealth, had been compelled to build it round a _princeps_ who
should maintain order, and thus allow liberty to exist. In practice
also the last century had seen a succession of “princes”--Gracchus,
Marius, Cinna, Sulla, Pompeius--all from the necessity of the case
forced into unconstitutional positions. And now Cæsar had succeeded
without a rival. Sulla had resigned power, and his work had almost
immediately fallen to pieces. There was now, even more than then, no
chance of building up a senatorial party, and indeed Cæsar had been
the lifelong victim of senatorial arrogance and folly. It was equally
impossible to build up a Roman democracy out of the demoralised
loungers in the forum.