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HISTORY OF JULIUS CAESAR
BY
JACOB ABBOTT
WITH ENGRAVINGS
1904
[Illustration: THE PIRATES AT ANCHOR.]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear,
distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great personages
who have in various ages of the world made themselves celebrated as
leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken in the public
affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest influence on the
history of the human race. The end which the author has had in view is
twofold: first, to communicate such information in respect to the
subjects of his narratives as is important for the general reader to
possess; and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons from the events
described and the characters delineated as they may legitimately teach
to the people of the present age. Though written in a direct and simple
style, they are intended for, and addressed to, minds possessed of some
considerable degree of maturity, for such minds only can fully
appreciate the character and action which exhibits itself, as nearly all
that is described in these volumes does, in close combination with the
conduct and policy of governments, and the great events of
international history.
CONTENTS.
Chapter
I. MARIUS AND SYLLA.
II. CAESAR'S EARLY YEARS.
III. ADVANCEMENT TO THE CONSULSHIP.
IV. THE CONQUEST OF GAUL.
V. POMPEY.
VI. CROSSING THE RUBICON.
VII. THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA.
VIII. FLIGHT AND DEATH OF POMPEY.
IX. CAESAR IN EGYPT.
X. CAESAR IMPERATOR.
XI. THE CONSPIRACY.
XII. THE ASSASSINATION.
ENGRAVINGS.
THE PIRATES AT ANCHOR.
MAP OF ROME.
ROMAN PLEBEIANS.
A ROMAN FORUM.
THE LANDING IN ENGLAND.
CROSSING THE RUBICON.
ROMAN STANDARD-BEARERS.
DEATH OF POMPEY.
POMPEY'S PILLAR.
CLEOPATRA'S BARGE.
THE ELEPHANTS MADE TORCH-BEARERS.
POMPEY'S STATUE.
BURNING OF CAESAR'S BODY.
[Illustration: ANCIENT ROME.]
JULIUS CAESAR.
CHAPTER I.
MARIUS AND SYLLA.
[Sidenote: Three great European nations of antiquity.]
There were three great European nations in ancient days, each of which
furnished history with a hero: the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and
the Romans.
[Sidenote: Alexander.]
Alexander was the hero of the Greeks. He was King of Macedon, a country
lying north of Greece proper. He headed an army of his countrymen, and
made an excursion for conquest and glory into Asia. He made himself
master of all that quarter of the globe, and reigned over it in Babylon,
till he brought himself to an early grave by the excesses into which his
boundless prosperity allured him. His fame rests on his triumphant
success in building up for himself so vast an empire, and the admiration
which his career has always excited among mankind is heightened by the
consideration of his youth, and of the noble and generous impulses
which strongly marked his character.
[Sidenote: Hannibal.]
[Sidenote: His terrible energy.]
The Carthaginian hero was Hannibal. We class the Carthaginians among the
European nations of antiquity; for, in respect to their origin, their
civilization, and all their commercial and political relations, they
belonged to the European race, though it is true that their capital was
on the African side of the Mediterranean Sea. Hannibal was the great
Carthaginian hero. He earned his fame by the energy and implacableness
of his hate. The work of his life was to keep a vast empire in a state
of continual anxiety and terror for fifty years, so that his claim to
greatness and glory rests on the determination, the perseverance, and
the success with which he fulfilled his function of being, while he
lived, the terror of the world.
[Sidenote: Julius Caesar.]
The Roman hero was Caesar. He was born just one hundred years before the
Christian era. His renown does not depend, like that of Alexander, on
foreign conquests, nor, like that of Hannibal, on the terrible energy of
his aggressions upon foreign foes, but upon his protracted and dreadful
contests with, and ultimate triumphs over, his rivals and competitors at
home. When he appeared upon the stage, the Roman empire already
included nearly all of the world that was worth possessing. There were
no more conquests to be made. Caesar did, indeed, enlarge, in some
degree, the boundaries of the empire; but the main question in his day
was, who should possess the power which preceding conquerors
had acquired.
[Sidenote: The ancient Roman empire.]
[Sidenote: The provinces.]
The Roman empire, as it existed in those days, must not be conceived of
by the reader as united together under one compact and consolidated
government. It was, on the other hand, a vast congeries of nations,
widely dissimilar in every respect from each other, speaking various
languages, and having various customs and laws. They were all, however,
more or less dependent upon, and connected with, the great central
power. Some of these countries were provinces, and were governed by
officers appointed and sent out by the authorities at Rome. These
governors had to collect the taxes of their provinces, and also to
preside over and direct, in many important respects, the administration
of justice. They had, accordingly, abundant opportunities to enrich
themselves while thus in office, by collecting more money than they paid
over to the government at home, and by taking bribes to favor the rich
man's cause in court. Thus the more wealthy and prosperous provinces
were objects of great competition among aspirants for office at Rome.
Leading men would get these appointments, and, after remaining long
enough in their provinces to acquire a fortune, would come back to Rome,
and expend it in intrigues and maneuvers to obtain higher offices still.
[Sidenote: Foreign wars.]
[Sidenote: The victorious general.]
Whenever there was any foreign war to be carried on with a distant
nation or tribe, there was always a great eagerness among all the
military officers of the state to be appointed to the command. They each
felt sure that they should conquer in the contest, and they could enrich
themselves still more rapidly by the spoils of victory in war, than by
extortion and bribes in the government of a province in peace. Then,
besides, a victorious general coming back to Rome always found that his
military renown added vastly to his influence and power in the city. He
was welcomed with celebrations and triumphs; the people flocked to see
him and to shout his praise. He placed his trophies of victory in the
temples, and entertained the populace with games and shows, and with
combats of gladiators or of wild beasts, which he had brought home with
him for this purpose in the train of his army. While he was thus
enjoying his triumph, his political enemies would be thrown into the
back ground and into the shade; unless, indeed, some one of them might
himself be earning the same honors in some other field, to come back in
due time, and claim his share of power and celebrity in his turn. In
this case, Rome would be sometimes distracted and rent by the conflicts
and contentions of military rivals, who had acquired powers too vast for
all the civil influences of the Republic to regulate or control.
[Illustration: ROMAN PLEBEIANS.]
[Sidenote: Military rivals.]
[Sidenote: Marius and Sylla.]
[Sidenote: The patricians and plebeians.]
[Sidenote: Civil contests.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel about the command of the army.]
[Sidenote: Sylla's violence.]
There had been two such rivals just before the time of Caesar, who had
filled the world with their quarrels. They were Marius and Sylla. Their
very names have been, in all ages of the world, since their day, the
symbols of rivalry and hate. They were the representatives respectively
of the two great parties into which the Roman state, like every other
community in which the population at large have any voice in governing,
always has been, and probably always will be divided, the upper and the
lower; or, as they were called in those days, the patrician and the
plebeian. Sylla was the patrician; the higher and more aristocratic
portions of the community were on his side. Marius was the favorite of
the plebeian masses. In the contests, however, which they waged with
each other, they did not trust to the mere influence of votes. They
relied much more upon the soldiers they could gather under their
respective standards and upon their power of intimidating, by means of
them, the Roman assemblies. There was a war to be waged with
Mithridates, a very powerful Asiatic monarch, which promised great
opportunities for acquiring fame and plunder. Sylla was appointed to the
command. While he was absent, however, upon some campaign in Italy,
Marius contrived to have the decision reversed, and the command
transferred to him Two officers, called tribunes, were sent to Sylla's
camp to inform him of the change. Sylla killed the officers for daring
to bring him such a message, and began immediately to march toward Rome.
In retaliation for the murder of the tribunes, the party of Marius in
the city killed some of Sylla's prominent friends there, and a general
alarm spread itself throughout the population. The Senate, which was a
sort of House of Lords, embodying mainly the power and influence of the
patrician party, and was, of course, on Sylla's side, sent out to him,
when he had arrived within a few miles of the city, urging him to come
no further. He pretended to comply; he marked out the ground for a camp;
but he did not, on that account, materially delay his march. The next
morning he was in possession of the city. The friends of Marius
attempted to resist him, by throwing stones upon his troops from the
roofs of the houses. Sylla ordered every house from which these
symptoms of resistance appeared to be set on fire. Thus the whole
population of a vast and wealthy city were thrown into a condition of
extreme danger and terror, by the conflicts of two great bands of armed
men, each claiming to be their friends.
[Sidenote: Defeat of Marius.]
Marius was conquered in this struggle, and fled for his life. Many of
the friends whom he left behind him were killed. The Senate were
assembled, and, at Sylla's orders, a decree was passed declaring Marius
a public enemy, and offering a reward to any one who would bring his
head back to Rome.
[Sidenote: His flight.]
Marius fled, friendless and alone, to the southward, hunted every where
by men who were eager to get the reward offered for his head. After
various romantic adventures and narrow escapes, he succeeded in making
his way across the Mediterranean Sea, and found at last a refuge in a
hut among the ruins of Carthage. He was an old man, being now over
seventy years of age.
[Sidenote: Return of Marius.]
[Sidenote: He marches against Rome.]
Of course, Sylla thought that his great rival and enemy was now finally
disposed of, and he accordingly began to make preparations for his
Asiatic campaign. He raised his army, built and equipped a fleet, and
went away. As soon as he was gone, Marius's friends in the city began to
come forth, and to take measures for reinstating themselves in power.
Marius returned, too, from Africa, and soon gathered about him a large
army. Being the friend, as he pretended, of the lower classes of
society, he collected vast multitudes of revolted slaves, outlaws, and
other desperadoes, and advanced toward Rome. He assumed, himself, the
dress, and air, and savage demeanor of his followers. His countenance
had been rendered haggard and cadaverous partly by the influence of
exposures, hardships, and suffering upon his advanced age, and partly by
the stern and moody plans and determinations of revenge which his mind
was perpetually revolving. He listened to the deputations which the
Roman Senate sent out to him from time to time, as he advanced toward
the city, but refused to make any terms. He moved forward with all the
outward deliberation and calmness suitable to his years, while all the
ferocity of a tiger was burning within.
[Sidenote: Executions by order of Marius.]
As soon as he had gained possession of the city, he began his work of
destruction. He first beheaded one of the consuls, and ordered his head
to be set up, as a public spectacle, in the most conspicuous place in
the city. This was the beginning. All the prominent friends of Sylla,
men of the highest rank and station, were then killed, wherever they
could be found, without sentence, without trial, without any other
accusation, even, than the military decision of Marius that they were
his enemies, and must die. For those against whom he felt any special
animosity, he contrived some special mode of execution. One, whose fate
he wished particularly to signalize, was thrown down from the
Tarpeian Rock.
[Sidenote: The Tarpeian Rock.]
The Tarpeian Rock was a precipice about fifty feet high, which is still
to be seen in Rome, from which the worst of state criminals were
sometimes thrown. They were taken up to the top by a stair, and were
then hurled from the summit, to die miserably, writhing in agony after
their fall, upon the rocks below.
[Sidenote: The story of Tarpeia.]
[Sidenote: Subterranean passages.]
The Tarpeian Rock received its name from the ancient story of Tarpeia.
The tale is, that Tarpeia was a Roman girl, who lived at a time in the
earliest periods of the Roman history, when the city was besieged by an
army from are of the neighboring nations. Besides their shields, the
story is that the soldiers had golden bracelets upon their arms. They
wished Tarpeia to open the gates and let them in. She promised to do so
if they would give her their bracelets; but, as she did not know the
name of the shining ornaments, the language she used to designate them
was, "Those things you have upon your arms." The soldiers acceded to her
terms; she opened the gates, and they, instead of giving her the
bracelets, threw their _shields_ upon her as they passed, until the poor
girl was crushed down with them and destroyed. This was near the
Tarpeian Rock, which afterward took her name. The rock is now found to
be perforated by a great many subterranean passages, the remains,
probably, of ancient quarries. Some of these galleries are now walled
up; others are open; and the people who live around the spot believe, it
is said, to this day, that Tarpeia herself sits, enchanted, far in the
interior of these caverns, covered with gold and jewels, but that
whoever attempts to find her is fated by an irresistible destiny to lose
his way, and he never returns. The last story is probably as true as
the other.
[Sidenote: Escape of Sylla's wife.]
Marius continued his executions and massacres until the whole of Sylla's
party had been slain or put to flight. He made every effort to discover
Sylla's wife and child, with a view to destroying them also, but they
could not be found. Some friends of Sylla, taking compassion on their
innocence and helplessness, concealed them, and thus saved Marius from
the commission of one intended crime. Marius was disappointed, too, in
some other cases, where men whom he had intended to kill destroyed
themselves to baffle his vengeance. One shut himself up in a room with
burning charcoal, and was suffocated with the fumes. Another bled
himself to death upon a public altar, calling down the judgments of the
god to whom he offered this dreadful sacrifice, upon the head of the
tyrant whose atrocious cruelty he was thus attempting to evade.
[Sidenote: Illness of Marius.]
[Sidenote: Sylla outlawed.]
By the time that Marius had got fairly established in his new position,
and was completely master of Rome, and the city had begun to recover a
little from the shock and consternation produced by his executions, he
fell sick. He was attacked with an acute disease of great violence. The
attack was perhaps produced, and was certainly aggravated by, the great
mental excitements through which he had passed during his exile, and in
the entire change of fortune which had attended his return. From being
a wretched fugitive, hiding for his life among gloomy and desolate
ruins, he found himself suddenly transferred to the mastery of the
world. His mind was excited, too, in respect to Sylla, whom he had not
yet reached or subdued, but who was still prosecuting his war against
Mithridates. Marius had had him pronounced by the Senate an enemy to his
country, and was meditating plans to reach him in his distant province,
considering his triumph incomplete as long as his great rival was at
liberty and alive. The sickness cut short these plans, but it only
inflamed to double violence the excitement and the agitations which
attended them.
[Sidenote: Marius delirious.]
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.]
As the dying tyrant tossed restlessly upon his bed, it was plain that
the delirious ravings which he began soon to utter were excited by the
same sentiments of insatiable ambition and ferocious hate whose calmer
dictates he had obeyed when well. He imagined that he had succeeded in
supplanting Sylla in his command, and that he was himself in Asia at the
head of his armies. Impressed with this idea, he stared wildly around;
he called aloud the name of Mithridates; he shouted orders to imaginary
troops; he struggled to break away from the restraints which the
attendants about his bedside imposed, to attack the phantom foes which
haunted him in his dreams. This continued for several days, and when at
last nature was exhausted by the violence of these paroxysms of phrensy,
the vital powers which had been for seventy long years spending their
strength in deeds of selfishness, cruelty, and hatred, found their work
done, and sunk to revive no more.
[Sidenote: Return of Sylla.]
[Sidenote: Marius's son.]
[Sidenote: Proscriptions and massacres of Sylla.]
Marius left a son, of the same name with himself, who attempted to
retain his father's power; but Sylla, having brought his war with
Mithridates to a conclusion, was now on his return from Asia, and it was
very evident that a terrible conflict was about to ensue. Sylla advanced
triumphantly through the country, while Marius the younger and his
partisans concentrated their forces about the city, and prepared for
defense. The people of the city were divided, the aristocratic faction
adhering to the cause of Sylla, while the democratic influences sided
with Marius. Political parties rise and fall, in almost all ages of the
world, in alternate fluctuations, like those of the tides. The faction
of Marius had been for some time in the ascendency, and it was now its
turn to fall. Sylla found, therefore, as he advanced, every thing
favorable to the restoration of his own party to power. He destroyed the
armies which came out to oppose him. He shut up the young Marius in a
city not far from Rome, where he had endeavored to find shelter and
protection, and then advanced himself and took possession of the city.
There he caused to be enacted again the horrid scenes of massacre and
murder which Marius had perpetrated before, going, however, as much
beyond the example which he followed as men usually do in the commission
of crime. He gave out lists of the names of men whom he wished to have
destroyed, and these unhappy victims of his revenge were to be hunted
out by bands of reckless soldiers, in their dwellings, or in the places
of public resort in the city, and dispatched by the sword wherever they
could be found. The scenes which these deeds created in a vast and
populous city can scarcely be conceived of by those who have never
witnessed the horrors produced by the massacres of civil war. Sylla
himself went through with this work in the most cool and unconcerned
manner, as if he were performing the most ordinary duties of an officer
of state. He called the Senate together one day, and, while he was
addressing them, the attention of the Assembly was suddenly distracted
by the noise of outcries and screams in the neighboring streets from
those who were suffering military execution there. The senators started
with horror at the sound. Sylla, with an air of great composure and
unconcern, directed the members to listen to him, and to pay no
attention to what was passing elsewhere. The sounds that they heard
were, he said, only some correction which was bestowed by his orders on
certain disturbers of the public peace.
[Sidenote: Executions.]
[Sidenote: Extent of Sylla's proscriptions.]
[Sidenote: Man's nature.]
Sylla's orders for the execution of those who had taken an active part
against him were not confined to Rome. They went to the neighboring
cities and to distant provinces, carrying terror and distress every
where. Still, dreadful as these evils were, it is possible for us, in
the conceptions which we form, to overrate the extent of them. In
reading the history of the Roman empire during the civil wars of Marius
and Sylla, one might easily imagine that the whole population of the
country was organized into the two contending armies, and were employed
wholly in the work of fighting with and massacring each other. But
nothing like this can be true. It is obviously but a small part, after
all, of an extended community that can be ever actively and personally
engaged in these deeds of violence and blood. Man is not naturally a
ferocious wild beast. On the contrary, he loves, ordinarily, to live in
peace and quietness, to till his lands and tend his flocks, and to enjoy
the blessings of peace and repose. It is comparatively but a small
number in any age of the world, and in any nation, whose passions of
ambition, hatred, or revenge become so strong as that they love
bloodshed and war. But these few, when they once get weapons into their
hands, trample recklessly and mercilessly upon the rest. One ferocious
human tiger, with a spear or a bayonet to brandish, will tyrannize as he
pleases over a hundred quiet men, who are armed only with shepherds'
crooks, and whose only desire is to live in peace with their wives and
their children.
[Sidenote: Husbandmen.]
[Sidenote: How the Roman edifices were built.]
[Sidenote: Standing armies.]
Thus, while Marius and Sylla, with some hundred thousand armed and
reckless followers, were carrying terror and dismay wherever they went,
there were many millions of herdsmen and husbandmen in the Roman world
who were dwelling in all the peace and quietness they could command,
improving with their peaceful industry every acre where corn would ripen
or grass grow. It was by taxing and plundering the proceeds of this
industry that the generals and soldiers, the consuls and praetors, and
proconsuls and propraetors, filled their treasuries, and fed their
troops, and paid the artisans for fabricating their arms. With these
avails they built the magnificent edifices of Rome, and adorned its
environs with sumptuous villas. As they had the power and the arms in
their hands, the peaceful and the industrious had no alternative but to
submit. They went on as well as they could with their labors, bearing
patiently every interruption, returning again to till their fields after
the desolating march of the army had passed away, and repairing the
injuries of violence, and the losses sustained by plunder, without
useless repining. They looked upon an armed government as a necessary
and inevitable affliction of humanity, and submitted to its destructive
violence as they would submit to an earthquake or a pestilence. The
tillers of the soil manage better in this country at the present day.
They have the power in their own hands, and they watch very narrowly to
prevent the organization of such hordes of armed desperadoes as have
held the peaceful inhabitants of Europe in terror from the earliest
periods down to the present day.
[Sidenote: Julius Caesar.]
[Sidenote: Sylla's animosity against him.]
[Sidenote: Caesar refuses to repudiate his wife.]
[Sidenote: His flight.]
When Sylla returned to Rome, and took possession of the supreme power
there, in looking over the lists of public men, there was one whom he
did not know, at first what to do with. It was the young Julius Caesar,
the subject of this history. Caesar was, by birth, patrician, having
descended from a long line of noble ancestors. There had been, before
his day, a great many Caesars who had held the highest offices of the
state, and many of them had been celebrated in history. He naturally,
therefore, belonged to Sylla's side, as Sylla was the representative of
the patrician interest. But then Caesar had personally been inclined
toward the party of Marius. The elder Marius had married his aunt, and,
besides, Caesar himself had married the daughter of Cinna, who had been
the most efficient and powerful of Marius's coadjutors and friends.
Caesar was at this time a very young man, and he was of an ardent and
reckless character, though he had, thus far, taken no active part in
public affairs. Sylla overlooked him for a time, but at length was about
to put his name on the list of the proscribed. Some of the nobles, who
were friends both of Sylla and of Caesar too, interceded for the young
man; Sylla yielded to their request, or, rather, suspended his
decision, and sent orders to Caesar to repudiate his wife, the daughter
of Cinna. Her name was Cornelia. Caesar absolutely refused to repudiate
his wife. He was influenced in this decision partly by affection for
Cornelia, and partly by a sort of stern and indomitable
insubmissiveness, which formed, from his earliest years, a prominent
trait in his character, and which led him, during all his life, to brave
every possible danger rather than allow himself to be controlled. Caesar
knew very well that, when this his refusal should be reported to Sylla,
the next order would be for his destruction. He accordingly fled. Sylla
deprived him of his titles and offices, confiscated his wife's fortune
and his own patrimonial estate, and put his name upon the list of the
public enemies. Thus Caesar became a fugitive and an exile. The
adventures which befell him in his wanderings will be described in the
following chapter.
[Sidenote: Sylla made dictator.]
[Sidenote: He resigns his power.]
Sylla was now in the possession of absolute power. He was master of
Rome, and of all the countries over which Rome held sway. Still he was
nominally not a magistrate, but only a general returning victoriously
from his Asiatic campaign, and putting to death, somewhat irregularly,
it is true, by a sort of martial law persons whom he found, as he said,
disturbing the public peace. After having thus effectually disposed of
the power of his enemies, he laid aside, ostensibly, the government of
the sword, and submitted himself and his future measures to the control
of law. He placed himself ostensibly at the disposition of the city.
They chose him dictator, which was investing him with absolute and
unlimited power. He remained on this, the highest pinnacle of worldly
ambition, a short time, and then resigned his power, and devoted the
remainder of his days to literary pursuits and pleasures. Monster as he
was in the cruelties which he inflicted upon his political foes, he was
intellectually of a refined and cultivated mind, and felt an ardent
interest in the promotion of literature and the arts.
[Sidenote: Opinion of mankind in regard to Marius and Sylla.]
The quarrel between Marius and Sylla, in respect to every thing which
can make such a contest great, stands in the estimation of mankind as
the greatest personal quarrel which the history of the world has ever
recorded. Its origin was in the simple personal rivalry of two ambitious
men. It involved, in its consequences, the peace and happiness of the
world. In their reckless struggles, the fierce combatants trampled on
every thing that came in their way, and destroyed mercilessly, each in
his turn, all that opposed them. Mankind have always execrated their
crimes, but have never ceased to admire the frightful and almost
superhuman energy with which they committed them.