[Sidenote: B.C. 55.] The conference at Lucca and the Senate's
indifference had determined Cicero to throw in his lot with the
trimmers. He had remonstrated with Pompey on the imprudence of
prolonging Caesar's command. Pompey, he thought, would find out in time
that he had made Caesar too strong for him; but Pompey had refused to
listen, and Cicero had concluded that he must consider his own
interests. His brother Quintus joined the army in Gaul to take part in
the invasion of Britain, and to share the dangers and the honors of the
winter which followed it. Cicero himself began a warm correspondence
with Caesar, and through Quintus sent continued messages to him.
Literature was a neutral ground on which he could approach his
political enemy without too open discredit, and he courted eagerly the
approval of a critic whose literary genius he esteemed as highly as his
own. Men of genuine ability are rarely vain of what they can do really
well. Cicero admired himself as a statesman with the most unbounded
enthusiasm. He was proud of his verses, which were hopelessly
commonplace. In the art in which he was without a rival he was modest
and diffident. He sent his various writings for Caesar's judgment.
"Like the traveller who has overslept himself," he said, "yet by
extraordinary exertions reaches his goal sooner than if he had been
earlier on the road, I will follow your advice and court this man. I
have been asleep too long. I will correct my slowness with my speed;
and as you say he approves my verses, I shall travel not with a common
carriage, but with a four-in-hand of poetry." [1]
"What does Caesar say of my poems?" he wrote again. "He tells me in one
of his letters that he has never read better Greek. At one place he
writes [Greek: rathumotera] [somewhat careless]. This is his word. Tell
me the truth, Was it the matter which did not please him, or the
style?" "Do not be afraid," he added with candid simplicity; "I shall
not think a hair the worse of myself." [2]
His affairs were still in disorder. Caesar had now large sums at his
disposition. Cicero gave the highest proof of the sincerity of his
conversion by accepting money from him. "You say," he observed in
another letter, "that Caesar shows every day more marks of his
affection for you. It gives me infinite pleasure. I can have no second
thoughts in Caesar's affairs. I act on conviction, and am doing but my
duty; but I am inflamed with love for him." [3]
With Pompey and Crassus Cicero seemed equally familiar. When their
consulship was over, their provinces were assigned as had been
determined. Pompey had Spain, with six legions. He remained himself at
Rome, sending lieutenants in charge of them. Crassus aspired to equal
the glory of his colleagues in the open field. He had gained some
successes in the war with the slaves which persuaded him that he too
could be a conqueror; and knowing as much of foreign campaigning as the
clerks in his factories, he intended to use Syria as a base of
operations against the Parthians, and to extend the frontier to the
Indus. The Senate had murmured, but Cicero had passionately defended
Crassus;[4] and as if to show publicly how entirely he had now devoted
himself to the cause of the "Dynasts," he invited Crassus to dine with
him the day before his departure for the East.
The position was not wholly pleasant to Cicero. "Self-respect in
speech, liberty in choosing the course which we will pursue, is all
gone," he wrote to Lentulus Spinther--"gone not more from me than from
us all. We must assent, as a matter of course, to what a few men say,
or we must differ from them to no purpose.--The relations of the
Senate, of the courts of justice, nay, of the whole Commonwealth are
changed.--The consular dignity of a firm and courageous statesman can
no longer be thought of. It has been lost by the folly of those who
estranged from the Senate the compact order of the equites and a very
distinguished man [Caesar]." [5] And again: "We must go with the times.
Those who have played a great part in public life have never been able
to adhere to the same views on all occasions. The art of navigation
lies in trimming to the storm. When you can reach your harbor by
altering your course, it is a folly to persevere in struggling against
the wind. Were I entirely free I should still act as I am doing; and
when I am invited to my present attitude by the kindness of one set of
men, and am driven to it by the injurious conduct of the other, I am
content to do what I conceive will conduce at once to my own advantage
and the welfare of the State.--Caesar's influence is enormous. His
wealth is vast. I have the use of both, as if they were my own. Nor
could I have crushed the conspiracy of a set of villains to ruin me,
unless, in addition to the defences which I always possessed, I had
secured the goodwill of the men in power." [6]
[Sidenote: B.C. 54.] Cicero's conscience could not have been easy when
he was driven to such laborious apologies. He spoke often of intending
to withdraw into his family, and devoting his time entirely to
literature; but he could not bring himself to leave the political
ferment; and he was possessed besides with a passionate desire to
revenge himself on those who had injured him. An opportunity seemed to
present itself. The persons whom he hated most, after Clodius, were the
two consuls Gabinius and Piso, who had permitted his exile. They had
both conducted themselves abominably in the provinces, which they had
bought, he said, at the price of his blood. Piso had been sent to
Macedonia, where he had allowed his army to perish by disease and
neglect. The frontiers had been overrun with brigands, and the outcries
of his subjects had been audible even in Rome against his tyranny and
incapacity. Gabinius, in Syria, had been more ambitious, and had
exposed himself to an indignation more violent because more interested.
At a hint from Pompey, he had restored Ptolemy to Egypt on his own
authority and without waiting for the Senate's sanction, and he had
snatched for himself the prize for which the chiefs of the Senate had
been contending. He had broken the law by leading his legions over the
frontier. He had defeated the feeble Alexandrians, and the gratified
Ptolemy had rewarded him with the prodigious sum of ten thousand
talents--a million and a half of English money. While he thus enriched
himself he had irritated the knights, who might otherwise have
supported him, by quarrelling with the Syrian revenue farmers, and,
according to popular scandal, he had plundered the province worse than
it had been plundered even by the pirates.
When so fair a chance was thrown in his way, Cicero would have been
more than human if he had not availed himself of it. He moved in the
Senate for the recall of the two offenders, and in the finest of his
speeches he laid bare their reputed iniquities. His position was a
delicate one, because the senatorial party, could they have had their
way, would have recalled Caesar also. Gabinius was Pompey's favorite,
and Piso was Caesar's father-in-law. Cicero had no intention of
quarrelling with Caesar; between his invectives, therefore, he was
careful to interweave the most elaborate compliments to the conqueror
of Gaul. He dwelt with extraordinary clearness on the value of Caesar's
achievements. The conquest of Gaul, he said, was not the annexation of
a province. It was the dispersion of a cloud which had threatened Italy
from the days of Brennus. To recall Caesar would be madness. He wished
to remain only to complete his work; the more honor to him that he was
willing to let the laurels fade which were waiting for him at Rome,
before he returned to wear them. There were persons who would bring him
back, because they did not love him. They would bring him back only to
enjoy a triumph. Gaul had been the single danger to the Empire. Nature
had fortified Italy by the Alps. The mountain-barrier alone had allowed
Rome to grow to its present greatness, but the Alps might now sink into
the earth, Italy had no more to fear.[7]
The orator perhaps hoped that so splendid a vindication of Caesar in
the midst of his worst enemies might have purchased pardon for his
onslaught on the baser members of the "Dynastic" faction. He found
himself mistaken. His eagerness to revenge his personal wrongs
compelled him to drink the bitterest cup of humiliation which had yet
been offered to him. He gained his immediate purpose. The two governors
were recalled in disgrace, and Gabinius was impeached under the new
Julian law for having restored Ptolemy without orders, and for the
corrupt administration of his province. Cicero would naturally have
conducted the prosecution; but pressure of some kind was laid on, which
compelled him to stand aside. The result of the trial on the first of
the two indictments was another of those mockeries of justice which
made the Roman law-courts the jest of mankind. Pompey threw his shield
over his instrument. He used his influence freely. The Egyptian spoils
furnished a fund to corrupt the judges. The speech for the prosecution
was so weak as to invite a failure, and Gabinius was acquitted by a
majority of purchased votes. "You ask me how I endure such things,"
Cicero bitterly wrote, in telling the story to Atticus; "well enough,
by Hercules, and I am entirely pleased with myself. We have lost, my
friend, not only the juice and blood, but even the color and shape, of
a commonwealth. No decent constitution exists in which I can take a
part. How can you put up with such a state of things? you will say.
Excellently well. I recollect how public affairs went awhile ago, when
I was myself in office, and how grateful people were to me. I am not
distressed now, that the power is with a single man. Those are
miserable who could not bear to see me successful. I find much to
console me." [8] "Gabinius is acquitted," he wrote to his
brother.--"The verdict is so infamous that it is thought he will be
convicted on the other charge; but, as you perceive, the constitution,
the Senate, the courts, are all nought. There is no honor in any one of
us.--Some persons, Sallust among them, say that I ought to have
prosecuted him. I to risk my credit with such a jury! what if I had
acted, and he had escaped then! but other motives influenced me. Pompey
would have made a personal quarrel of it with me. He would have come
into the city.[9]--He would have taken up with Clodius again. I know
that I was wise, and I hope that you agree with me. I owe Pompey
nothing, and he owes much to me; but in public matters (not to put it
more strongly) he has not allowed me to oppose him; and when I was
flourishing and he was less powerful than he is now, he let me see what
he could do. Now when I am not even ambitious of power, and the
constitution is broken down, and Pompey is omnipotent, why should I
contend with him? Then, says Sallust, I ought to have pleased Pompey by
defending Gabinius, as he was anxious that I should. A nice friend
Sallust, who would have me push myself into dangerous quarrels, or
cover myself with eternal infamy!" [10]
Unhappy Cicero, wishing to act honorably, but without manliness to face
the consequences! He knew that it would be infamous for him to defend
Gabinius, yet at the second trial Cicero, who had led the attack on him
in the Senate, and had heaped invectives on him, the most bitter which
he ever uttered against man, nevertheless actually did defend Gabinius.
Perhaps he consoled himself with the certainty that his eloquence would
be in vain, and that his extraordinary client this time could not
escape conviction. Any way, he appeared at the bar as Gabinius's
counsel. The Syrian revenue farmers were present, open-mouthed with
their accusations. Gabinius was condemned, stripped of his spoils, and
sent into banishment. Cicero was left with his shame. Nor was this the
worst. There were still some dregs in the cup, which he was forced to
drain. Publius Vatinius was a prominent leader of the military
democratic party, and had often come in collision with Cicero. He had
been tribune when Caesar was consul, and had stood by him against the
Senate and Bibulus. He had served in Gaul in Caesar's first campaigns,
and had returned to Rome, at Caesar's instance, to enter for higher
office. He had carried the praetorship against Cato; and Cicero in one
of his speeches had painted him as another Clodius or Catiline. When
the praetorship was expired, he was prosecuted for corruption; and
Cicero was once more compelled to appear on the other side, and defend
him, as he had done Gabinius. Caesar and Pompey, wishing perhaps to
break completely into harness the brilliant but still half unmanageable
orator, had so ordered, and Cicero had complied. He was ashamed, but he
had still his points of satisfaction. It was a matter of course that,
as an advocate, he must praise the man whom, a year before, he had
spattered with ignominy; but he had the pleasure of feeling that he was
revenging himself on his conservative allies, who led the prosecution.
"Why I praised Vatinius," he wrote to Lentulus, "I must beg you not to
ask either in the case of this or of any other criminal. I put it to
the judges that since certain noble lords, my good friends, were too
fond of my adversary [Clodius], and in the Senate would go apart with
him under my own eyes, and would treat him with warmest affection, they
must allow me to have my Publius [Vatinius], since they had theirs
[Clodius], and give them a gentle stab in return for their cuts at me."
[11] Vatinius was acquitted. Cicero was very miserable. "Gods and men
approved," he said; but his own conscience condemned him, and at this
time his one consolation, real or pretended, was the friendship of
Caesar. "Caesar's affectionate letters," he told his brother, "are my
only pleasure; I attach little consequence to his promises; I do not
thirst for honors, or regret my past glory. I value more the
continuance of his good-will than the prospect of anything which he may
do for me. I am withdrawing from public affairs, and giving myself to
literature. But I am broken-hearted, my dear brother;--I am
broken-hearted that the constitution is gone, that the courts of law
are naught; and that now at my time of life, when I ought to be leading
with authority in the Senate, I must be either busy in the Forum
pleading, or occupying myself with my books at home. The ambition of my
boyhood--
Aye to be first, and chief among my peers--
is all departed. Of my enemies, I have left some unassailed, and some I
even defend. Not only I may not think as I like, but I may not hate as
I like,[12] and Caesar is the only person who loves me as I should wish
to be loved, or, as some think, who desires to love me." [13]
[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] The position was the more piteous, because Cicero
could not tell how events would fall out after all. Crassus was in the
East, with uncertain prospects there. Caesar was in the midst of a
dangerous war, and might be killed or might die. Pompey was but a weak
vessel; a distinguished soldier, perhaps, but without the intellect or
the resolution to control a proud, resentful, and supremely
unscrupulous aristocracy. In spite of Caesar's victories, his most
envenomed enemy, Domitius Ahenobarbus, had succeeded after all in
carrying one of the consulships for the year 54. The popular party had
secured the other, indeed; but they had returned Appius Claudius,
Clodius's brother, and this was but a poor consolation. In the year
that was to follow, the conservatives had bribed to an extent which
astonished the most cynical observers. Each season the elections were
growing more corrupt; but the proceedings on both sides in the fall of
54 were the most audacious that had ever been known, the two reigning
consuls taking part, and encouraging and assisting in scandalous
bargains. "All the candidates have bribed," wrote Cicero; "but they
will be all acquitted, and no one will ever be found guilty again. The
two consuls are branded with infamy." Memmius, the popular competitor,
at Pompey's instance, exposed in the Senate an arrangement which the
consuls had entered into to secure the returns. The names and
signatures were produced. The scandal was monstrous, and could not be
denied. The better kind of men began to speak of a dictatorship as the
only remedy; and although the two conservative candidates were declared
elected for 53, and were allowed to enter on their offices, there was a
general feeling that a crisis had arrived, and that a great catastrophe
could not be very far off. The form which it might assume was the
problem of the hour.
Cicero, speaking two years before on the broad conditions of his time,
had used these remarkable words: "No issue can be anticipated from
discords among the leading men, except either universal ruin, or the
rule of a conqueror, or a monarchy. There exists at present an
unconcealed hatred implanted and fastened into the minds of our leading
politicians. They are at issue among themselves. Opportunities are
caught for mutual injury. Those who are in the second rank watch for
the chances of the time. Those who might do better are afraid of the
words and designs of their enemies." [14]
The discord had been suspended, and the intrigues temporarily checked,
by the combination of Caesar and Pompey with Crassus, the chief of the
moneyed commoners. Two men of equal military reputation, and one of
them from his greater age and older services expecting and claiming
precedency, do not easily work together. For Pompey to witness the
rising glory of Caesar, and to feel in his own person the superior
ascendency of Caesar's character, without an emotion of jealousy, would
have demanded a degree of virtue which few men have ever possessed.
They had been united so far by identity of conviction, by a military
detestation of anarchy, by a common interest in wringing justice from
the Senate for the army and people, by a pride in the greatness of
their country, which they were determined to uphold. These motives,
however, might not long have borne the strain but for other ties, which
had cemented their union. Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, to whom
he was passionately attached; and the personal competition between them
was neutralized by the third element of the capitalist party
represented by Crassus, which if they quarrelled would secure the
supremacy of the faction to which Crassus attached himself. There was
no jealousy on Caesar's part. There was no occasion for it. Caesar's
fame was rising. Pompey had added nothing to his past distinctions, and
the glory pales which does not grow in lustre. No man who had once been
the single object of admiration, who had tasted the delight of being
the first in the eyes of his countrymen, could find himself compelled
to share their applause with a younger rival without experiencing a
pang. So far Pompey had borne the trial well. He was on the whole,
notwithstanding the Egyptian scandal, honorable and constitutionally
disinterested. He was immeasurably superior to the fanatic Cato, to the
shifty Cicero, or the proud and worthless leaders of the senatorial
oligarchy. Had the circumstances remained unchanged, the severity of
the situation might have been overcome. But two misfortunes coming near
upon one another broke the ties of family connection, and by destroying
the balance of parties laid Pompey open to the temptation of patrician
intrigue. In the year 54 Caesar's great mother Aurelia, and his sister
Julia, Pompey's wife, both died. A child which Julia had borne to
Pompey died also, and the powerful if silent influence of two
remarkable women, and the joint interest in an infant, who would have
been Caesar's heir as well as Pompey's, were swept away together.
The political link was broken immediately after by a public disaster
unequalled since the last consular army was overthrown by the Gauls on
the Rhone; and the capitalists, left without a leader, drifted away to
their natural allies in the Senate. Crassus had taken the field in the
East, with a wild ambition of becoming in his turn a great conqueror.
At first all had gone well with him. He had raised a vast treasure. He
had plundered the wealthy temples in Phoenicia and Palestine to fill
his military chest. He had able officers with him; not the least among
them his son Publius Crassus, who had served with such distinction
under Caesar. He crossed the Euphrates at the head of a magnificent
army, expecting to carry all before him with the ease of an Alexander.
Relying on his own idle judgment, he was tempted in the midst of a
burning summer into the waterless plains of Mesopotamia; and on the
15th of June the great Roman millionaire met his miserable end, the
whole force, with the exception of a few scattered cohorts, being
totally annihilated.
The catastrophe in itself was terrible. The Parthians had not provoked
the war. The East was left defenceless; and the natural expectation was
that, in their just revenge, they might carry fire and sword through
Asia Minor and Syria. It is not the least remarkable sign of the times
that the danger failed to touch the patriotism of the wretched factions
in Rome. The one thought of the leaders of the Senate was to turn the
opportunity to advantage, wrest the constitution free from military
dictation, shake off the detested laws of Caesar, and revenge
themselves on the author of them. Their hope was in Pompey. If Pompey
could be won over from Caesar, the army would be divided. Pompey, they
well knew, unless he had a stronger head than his own to guide him,
could be used till the victory was won, and then be thrust aside. It
was but too easy to persuade him that he was the greatest man in the
Empire; and that as the chief of a constitutional government, and with
the Senate at his side, he would inscribe his name in the annals of his
country as the restorer of Roman liberty.
The intrigue could not be matured immediately. The aristocracy had
first to overcome their own animosities against Pompey, and Pompey
himself was generous, and did not yield to the first efforts of
seduction. The smaller passions were still at work among the baser
senatorial chiefs, and the appetite for provinces and pillage. The
Senate, even while Crassus was alive, had carried the consulships for
53 by the most infamous corruption. They meant now to attack Caesar in
earnest, and their energies were addressed to controlling the elections
for the next year. Milo was one of the candidates; and Cicero, who was
watching the political current, reverted to his old friendship for him,
and became active in the canvass. Milo was not a creditable ally. He
already owed half a million of money, and Cicero, who was anxious for
his reputation, endeavored to keep him within the bounds of decency.
But Milo's mind was fastened on the province which was to redeem his
fortunes, and he flung into bribery what was left of his wrecked credit
with the desperation of a gambler. He had not been praetor, and thus
was not legally eligible for the consulate. This, however, was
forgiven. He had been aedile in 54, and as aedile he had already been
magnificent in prodigality. But to secure the larger prize, he gave as
a private citizen the most gorgeous entertainment which even in that
monstrous age the city had yet wondered at. "Doubly, trebly foolish of
him," thought Cicero, "for he was not called on to go to such expense,
and he has not the means." "Milo makes me very anxious," he wrote to
his brother. "I hope all will be made right by his consulship. I shall
exert myself for him as much as I did for myself;[15] but he is quite
mad," Cicero added; "he has spent £30,000 on his games." Mad, but
still, in Cicero's opinion, well fitted for the consulship, and likely
to get it. All the "good," in common with himself, were most anxious
for Milo's success. The people would vote for him as a reward for the
spectacles, and the young and influential for his efforts to secure
their favor.[16]
The reappearance of the "Boni," the "Good," in Cicero's letters marks
the turn of the tide again in his own mind. The "Good," or the
senatorial party, were once more the objects of his admiration. The
affection for Caesar was passing off.
[Sidenote: B.C. 52.] A more objectionable candidate than Milo could
hardly have been found. He was no better than a patrician gladiator,
and the choice of such a man was a sufficient indication of the
Senate's intentions. The popular party led by the tribunes made a
sturdy resistance. There were storms in the Curia, tribunes imprisoning
senators, and the Senate tribunes. Army officers suggested the election
of military tribunes (lieutenant-generals), instead of consuls; and
when they failed, they invited Pompey to declare himself Dictator. The
Senate put on mourning, as a sign of approaching calamity. Pompey
calmed their fears by declining so ambitious a position. But as it was
obvious that Milo's chief object was a province which he might
misgovern, Pompey forced the Senate to pass a resolution that consuls
and praetors must wait five years from their term of office before a
province was to be allotted to them. The temptation to corruption might
thus in some degree be diminished. But senatorial resolutions did not
pass for much, and what a vote had enacted a vote could repeal. The
agitation continued. The tribunes, when the time came, forbade the
elections. The year expired. The old magistrates went out of office,
and Rome was left again without legitimate functionaries to carry on
the government. All the offices fell vacant together.
Now once more Clodius was reappearing on the scene. He had been silent
for two years, content or constrained to leave the control of the
democracy to the three chiefs. One of them was now gone. The more
advanced section of the party was beginning to distrust Pompey.
Clodius, their favorite representative, had been put forward for the
praetorship, while Milo was aspiring to be made consul, and Clodius had
prepared a fresh batch of laws to be submitted to the sovereign people;
one of which (if Cicero did not misrepresent it to inflame the
aristocracy) was a measure of some kind for the enfranchisement of the
slaves, or perhaps of the sons of slaves.[17] He was as popular as
ever. He claimed to be acting for Caesar, and was held certain of
success; if he was actually praetor, such was his extraordinary
influence, and such was the condition of things in the city, that if
Milo was out of the way he could secure consuls of his own way of
thinking, and thus have the whole constitutional power in his hands.[18]
Thus both sides had reason for fearing and postponing the elections.
Authority, which had been weak before, was now extinct. Rome was in a
state of formal anarchy, and the factions of Milo and Clodius fought
daily, as before, in the streets, with no one to interfere with them.
Violent humors come naturally to a violent end. Milo had long before
threatened to kill Clodius. Cicero had openly boasted of his friend's
intention to do it, and had spoken of Clodius in the Senate itself as
Milo's predestined victim. On the evening of the 13th January, while
the uncertainty about the elections was at its height, Clodius was
returning from his country house, which was a few miles from Rome on
"the Appian Way." Milo happened to be travelling accidentally down the
same road, on his way to Lanuvium (Civita Indovina), and the two rivals
and their escorts met. Milo's party was the largest. The leaders passed
one another, evidently not intending a collision, but their followers,
who were continually at sword's point, came naturally to blows. Clodius
rode back to see what was going on; he was attacked and wounded, and
took refuge in a house on the roadside. The temptation to make an end
of his enemy was too strong for Milo to resist. To have hurt Clodius
would, he thought, be as dangerous as to have made an end of him. His
blood was up. The "predestined victim," who had thwarted him for so
many years, was within his reach. The house was forced open. Clodius
was dragged out bleeding, and was despatched, and the body was left
lying where he fell, where a senator, named Sextus Tedius, who was
passing an hour or two after, found it, and carried it the same night
to Rome. The little which is known of Clodius comes only through
Cicero's denunciations, which formed or colored later Roman traditions;
and it is thus difficult to comprehend the affection which the people
felt for him; but of the fact there can be no doubt at all; he was the
representative of their political opinions, the embodiment, next to
Caesar, of their practical hopes; and his murder was accepted as a
declaration of an aristocratic war upon them, and the first blow in
another massacre. On the following day, in the winter morning, the
tribunes brought the body into the Forum. A vast crowd had collected to
see it, and it was easy to lash them into fury. They dashed in the
doors of the adjoining senate-house, they carried in the bier, made a
pile of chairs and benches and tables, and burnt all that remained of
Clodius in the ashes of the senate-house itself. The adjoining temples
were consumed in the conflagration. The Senate collected elsewhere.
They put on a bold front, they talked of naming an interrex--which they
ought to have done before--and of holding the elections instantly, now
that Clodius was gone. Milo still hoped, and the aristocracy still
hoped for Milo. But the storm was too furious. Pompey came in with a
body of troops, restored order, and took command of the city. The
preparations for the election were quashed. Pompey still declined the
dictatorship, but he was named, or he named himself, sole consul, and
at once appointed a commission to inquire into the circumstances of
Milo's canvass, and the corruption which had gone along with it. Milo
himself was arrested and put on his trial for the murder. Judges were
chosen who could be trusted, and to prevent intimidation the court was
occupied by soldiers. Cicero undertook his friend's defence, but was
unnerved by the stern, grim faces with which he was surrounded. The
eloquent tongue forgot its office. He stammered, blundered, and sat
down.[19] The consul expectant was found guilty and banished, to return
a few years after like a hungry wolf in the civil war, and to perish as
he deserved. Pompey's justice was even-handed. He punished Milo, but
the senate-house and temples were not to be destroyed without
retribution equally severe. The tribunes who had led on the mob were
deposed, and suffered various penalties. Pompey acted with a soldier's
abhorrence of disorder, and, so far, he did what Caesar approved and
would himself have done in Pompey's place.
But there followed symptoms which showed that there were secret
influences at work with Pompey, and that he was not the man which he
had been. He had taken the consulate alone; but a single consul was an
anomaly; as soon as order was restored it was understood that he meant
to choose a colleague; and Senate and people were watching to see whom
he would select as an indication of his future attitude. Half the world
expected that he would name Caesar, but half the world was
disappointed. He took Metellus Scipio, who had been the Senate's second
candidate by the side of Milo, and had been as deeply concerned in
bribery as Milo himself; shortly after, and with still more
significance, he replaced Julia by Metellus Scipio's daughter, the
widow of young Publius Crassus, who had fallen with his father.
Pompey, however, did not break with Caesar, and did not appear to
intend to break with him. Communications passed between them on the
matter of the consulship. The tribunes had pressed him as Pompey's
colleague. Caesar himself, being then in the north of Italy, had
desired, on being consulted, that the demand might not be insisted on.
He had work still before him in Gaul which he could not leave
unfinished; but he made a request himself that must be noticed, since
the civil war formally grew out of it, and Pompey gave a definite
pledge, which was afterwards broken.
One of the engagements at Lucca had been that, when Caesar's command
should have expired, he was to be again consul. His term had still
three years to run; but many things might happen in three years. A
party in the Senate were bent on his recall. They might succeed in
persuading the people to consent to it. And Caesar felt, as Pompey had
felt before him, that, in the unscrupulous humor of his enemies at Rome
he might be impeached or killed on his return, as Clodius had been, if
he came back a private citizen unprotected by office to sue for his
election. Therefore he had stipulated at Lucca that his name might be
taken and that votes might be given for him while he was still with his
army. On Pompey's taking the power into his hands, Caesar, while
abandoning any present claim to share it, reminded him of this
understanding, and required at the same time that it should be renewed
in some authoritative form. The Senate, glad to escape on any terms
from the present conjunction of the men whom they hoped to divide,
appeared to consent. Cicero himself made a journey to Ravenna to see
Caesar about it and make a positive arrangement with him. Pompey
submitted the condition to the assembly of the people, by whom it was
solemnly ratified. Every precaution was observed which would give the
promise, that Caesar might be elected consul in his absence, the
character of a binding engagement.[20]
It was observed with some surprise that Pompey, not long after,
proposed and carried a law forbidding elections of this irregular kind,
and insisting freshly on the presence of the candidates in person.
Caesar's case was not reserved as an exception or in any way alluded
to. And when a question was asked on the subject, the excuse given was
that it had been overlooked by accident. Such accidents require to be
interpreted by the use which is made of them.
[1] _Ad Quintum Fratrem_, ii. 15.
[2] "Ego enim ne pilo quidem minus me amabo."--_Ibid_., ii. 16. Other
editions read "te."
[3] "Videor id judicio facere: jam enim debeo: sed amore sum
incensus."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 1.
[4] Ad Crassum. _Ad Familiares_, v. 8.
[5] Ad Lentulum. _Ad Fam_., i. 8.
[6] _Ibid_., i. 9.
[7] _De Provinciis Consularibus_.
[8] _To Atticus_, iv. 16.
[9] Pompey, as proconsul with a province, was residing outside the
walls.
[10] _Ad Quintum fratrem_, iii. 4.
[11] _Ad Familiares_, i. 9.
[12] "Meum non modo animum, sed ne odium quidem esse liberum."--_Ad
Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 5.
[13] See the story in a letter to Atticus, lib. iv. 16-17.
[14] _De Haruspicum Responsis_.
[15] "Angit unus Milo. Sed velim finem afferat consulatus: in quo enitar
non minus, quam sum enisus in nostro."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_,
iii. 9.
[16] _Ad Familiares_, ii. 6.
[17] "Incidebantur jam domi leges quae nos nostris servis addicerent....
Oppressisset omnia, possideret, teneret lege novâ, quae est inventa
apud eum cum reliquis legibus Clodianis. Servos nostros libertos suos
fecisset."--_Pro Milone_, 32, 33. These strong expressions can
hardly refer to a proposed enfranchisement of the libertini, or sons
of freedmen, like Horace's father.
[18] "Caesaris potentiam suam esse dicebat.... An consules in praetore
coercendo fortes fuissent? Primum, Milone occiso habuisset suos
consules."--_Pro Milone_, 33.
[19] The _Oratio pro Milone_, published afterwards by Cicero, was the
speech which he intended to deliver and did not.
[20] Suetonius, _De Vitâ Julii Caesaris_. Cicero again and again
acknowledges in his letters to Atticus that the engagement had really
been made. Writing to Atticus (vii. 1), Cicero says: "Non est locus ad
tergiversandum. Contra Caesarem? Ubi illae sunt densae dexterae? Nam
ut illi hoc liceret adjuvi rogatus ab ipso Ravennae de Caelio tribuno
plebis. Ab ipso autem? Etiam a Cnaeo nostro in illo divino tertio
consulatu. Aliter sensero?"