ADVANCEMENT TO THE CONSULSHIP.
[Sidenote: Caesar's rise to power.]
From this time, which was about sixty-seven years before the birth of
Christ, Caesar remained for nine years generally at Rome, engaged there
in a constant struggle for power. He was successful in these efforts,
rising all the time from one position of influence and honor to another,
until he became altogether the most prominent and powerful man in the
city. A great many incidents are recorded, as attending these contests,
which illustrate in a very striking manner the strange mixture of rude
violence and legal formality by which Rome was in those days governed.
[Sidenote: Government of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Bribery and corruption.]
[Sidenote: Public amusements.]
Many of the most important offices of the state depended upon the votes
of the people; and as the people had very little opportunity to become
acquainted with the real merits of the case in respect to questions of
government, they gave their votes very much according to the personal
popularity of the candidate. Public men had very little moral principle
in those days, and they would accordingly resort to any means whatever
to procure this personal popularity. They who wanted office were
accustomed to bribe influential men among the people to support them,
sometimes by promising them subordinate offices, and sometimes by the
direct donation of sums of money; and they would try to please the mass
of the people, who were too numerous to be paid with offices or with
gold, by shows and spectacles, and entertainments of every kind which
they would provide for their amusement.
This practice seems to us very absurd; and we wonder that the Roman
people should tolerate it, since it is evident that the means for
defraying these expenses must come, ultimately, in some way or other,
from them. And yet, absurd as it seems, this sort of policy is not
wholly disused even in our day. The operas and the theaters, and other
similar establishments in France, are sustained, in part, by the
government; and the liberality and efficiency with which this is done,
forms, in some degree, the basis of the popularity of each succeeding
administration. The plan is better systematized and regulated in our
day, but it is, in its nature, substantially the same.
[Sidenote: Amusements for the people.]
In fact, furnishing amusements for the people, and also providing
supplies for their wants, as well as affording them protection, were
considered the legitimate objects of government in those days. It is
very different at the present time, and especially in this country. The
whole community are now united in the desire to confine the functions of
government within the narrowest possible limits, such as to include only
the preservation of public order and public safety. The people prefer to
supply their own wants and to provide their own enjoyments, rather than
to invest government with the power to do it for them, knowing very well
that, on the latter plan, the burdens they will have to bear, though
concealed for a time, must be doubled in the end.
[Sidenote: Provided by the government.]
[Sidenote: How the people were supported.]
[Sidenote: Agrarian laws.]
It must not be forgotten, however, that there were some reasons in the
days of the Romans for providing public amusements for the people on an
extended scale which do not exist now. They had very few facilities then
for the private and separate enjoyments of home, so that they were much
more inclined than the people of this country are now to seek pleasure
abroad and in public. The climate, too, mild and genial nearly all the
year, favored this. Then they were not interested, as men are now, in
the pursuits and avocations of private industry. The people of Rome were
not a community of merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching
themselves, and adding to the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of
mankind by the products of their labor. They were supported, in a great
measure, by the proceeds of the tribute of foreign provinces, and by the
plunder taken by the generals in the name of the state in foreign wars.
From the same source, too--foreign conquest--captives were brought home,
to be trained as gladiators to amuse them with their combats, and
statues and paintings to ornament the public buildings of the city. In
the same manner, large quantities of corn, which had been taken in the
provinces, were often distributed at Rome. And sometimes even land
itself, in large tracts, which had been confiscated by the state, or
otherwise taken from the original possessors, was divided among the
people. The laws enacted from time to time for this purpose were called
Agrarian laws; and the phrase afterward passed into a sort of proverb,
inasmuch as plans proposed in modern times for conciliating the favor of
the populace by sharing among them property belonging to the state or to
the rich, are designated by the name of _Agrarianism_.
[Sidenote: Government of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Its foreign policy.]
Thus Rome was a city supported, in a great measure, by the fruits of its
conquests, that is, in a certain sense, by plunder. It was a vast
community most efficiently and admirably organized for this purpose; and
yet it would not be perfectly just to designate the people simply as a
band of robbers. They rendered, in some sense, an equivalent for what
they took, in establishing and enforcing a certain organization of
society throughout the world, and in preserving a sort of public order
and peace. They built cities, they constructed aqueducts and roads; they
formed harbors, and protected them by piers and by castles; they
protected commerce, and cultivated the arts, and encouraged literature,
and enforced a general quiet and peace among mankind, allowing of no
violence or war except what they themselves created. Thus they
_governed_ the world, and they felt, as all governors of mankind always
do, fully entitled to supply themselves with the comforts and
conveniences of life, in consideration of the service which they
thus rendered.
[Sidenote: Caesar's policy.]
Of course, it was to be expected that they would sometimes quarrel among
themselves about the spoils. Ambitious men were always arising, eager to
obtain opportunities to make fresh conquests, and to bring home new
supplies, and those who were most successful in making the results of
their conquests available in adding to the wealth and to the public
enjoyments of the city, would, of course, be most popular with the
voters. Hence extortion in the provinces, and the most profuse and
lavish expenditure in the city, became the policy which every great man
must pursue to rise to power.
[Sidenote: His success.]
Caesar entered into this policy with his whole soul, founding all his
hopes of success upon the favor of the populace. Of course, he had many
rivals and opponents among the patrician ranks, and in the Senate, and
they often impeded and thwarted his plans and measures for a time,
though he always triumphed in the end.
[Sidenote: He is made quaestor.]
[Sidenote: Caesar leaves Spain.]
[Sidenote: His project.]
One of the first offices of importance to which he attained was that of
_quaestor_, as it was called, which office called him away from Rome
into the province of Spain, making him the second in command there. The
officer first in command in the province was, in this instance, a
praetor. During his absence in Spain, Caesar replenished in some degree
his exhausted finances, but he soon became very much discontented with
so subordinate a position. His discontent was greatly increased by his
coming unexpectedly, one day, at a city then called Hades--the present
Cadiz--upon a statue of Alexander, which adorned one of the public
edifices there. Alexander died when he was only about thirty years of
age, having before that period made himself master of the world. Caesar
was himself now about thirty-five years of age, and it made him very sad
to reflect that, though he had lived five years longer than Alexander,
he had yet accomplished so little. He was thus far only the second in a
province, while he burned with an insatiable ambition to be the first in
Rome. The reflection made him so uneasy that he left his post before his
time expired, and went back to Rome, forming, on the way, desperate
projects for getting power there.
[Sidenote: Caesar accused of treason.]
His rivals and enemies accused him of various schemes, more or less
violent and treasonable in their nature, but how justly it is not now
possible to ascertain. They alleged that one of his plans was to join
some of the neighboring colonies, whose inhabitants wished to be
admitted to the freedom of the city, and, making common cause with them,
to raise an armed force and take possession of Rome. It was said that,
to prevent the accomplishment of this design, an army which they had
raised for the purpose of an expedition against the Cilician pirates was
detained from its march, and that Caesar, seeing that the government
were on their guard against him, abandoned the plan.
They also charged him with having formed, after this, a plan within the
city for assassinating the senators in the senate house, and then
usurping, with his fellow-conspirators, the supreme power. Crassus, who
was a man of vast wealth and a great friend of Caesar's, was associated
with him in this plot, and was to have been made dictator if it had
succeeded. But, notwithstanding the brilliant prize with which Caesar
attempted to allure Crassus to the enterprise, his courage failed him
when the time for action arrived. Courage and enterprise, in fact, ought
not to be expected of the rich; they are the virtues of poverty.
[Sidenote: He is made aedile.]
[Sidenote: Gladiatorial shows.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's increasing popularity.]
Though the Senate were thus jealous and suspicious of Caesar, and were
charging him continually with these criminal designs, the people were on
his side; and the more he was hated by the great, the more strongly he
became intrenched in the popular favor. They chose him _aedile_. The
aedile had the charge of the public edifices of the city, and of the
games spectacles, and shows which were exhibited in them. Caesar
entered with great zeal into the discharge of the duties of this office.
He made arrangements for the entertainment of the people on the most
magnificent scale, and made great additions and improvements to the
public buildings, constructing porticoes and piazzas around the areas
where his gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts were to be
exhibited. He provided gladiators in such numbers, and organized and
arranged them in such a manner, ostensibly for their training, that his
enemies among the nobility pretended to believe that he was intending to
use them as an armed force against the government of the city. They
accordingly made laws limiting and restricting the number of the
gladiators to be employed. Caesar then exhibited his shows on the
reduced scale which the new laws required, taking care that the people
should understand to whom the responsibility for this reduction in the
scale of their pleasures belonged. They, of course, murmured against the
Senate, and Caesar stood higher in their favor than ever.
[Sidenote: Caesar thwarted.]
[Sidenote: His resentment.]
[Sidenote: The statutes of Marius restored.]
[Sidenote: Rage of the patricians.]
He was getting, however, by these means, very deeply involved in debt;
and, in order partly to retrieve his fortunes in this respect, he made
an attempt to have Egypt assigned to him as a province. Egypt was then
an immensely rich and fertile country. It had, however, never been a
Roman province. It was an independent kingdom, in alliance with the
Romans, and Caesar's proposal that it should be assigned to him as a
province appeared very extraordinary. His pretext was, that the people
of Egypt had recently deposed and expelled their king, and that,
consequently, the Romans might properly take possession of it. The
Senate, however, resisted this plan, either from jealousy of Caesar or
from a sense of justice to Egypt; and, after a violent contest, Caesar
found himself compelled to give up the design. He felt, however, a
strong degree of resentment against the patrician party who had thus
thwarted his designs. Accordingly, in order to avenge himself upon them,
he one night replaced certain statues and trophies of Marius in the
Capitol, which had been taken down by order of Sylla when he returned to
power. Marius, as will be recollected, had been the great champion of
the popular party, and the enemy of the patricians; and, at the time of
his down-fall, all the memorials of his power and greatness had been
every where removed from Rome, and among them these statues and
trophies, which had been erected in the Capitol in commemoration of some
former victories, and had remained there until Sylla's triumph, when
they were taken down and destroyed. Caesar now ordered new ones to be
made, far more magnificent than before. They were made secretly, and put
up in the night. His office as aedile gave him the necessary authority.
The next morning, when the people saw these splendid monuments of their
great favorite restored, the whole city was animated with excitement and
joy. The patricians, on the other hand, were filled with vexation and
rage. "Here is a single officer," said they, "who is attempting to
restore, by his individual authority, what has been formally abolished
by a decree of the Senate. He is trying to see how much we will bear. If
he finds that we will submit to this, he will attempt bolder measures
still." They accordingly commenced a movement to have the statues and
trophies taken down again, but the people rallied in vast numbers in
defense of them. They made the Capitol ring with their shouts of
applause; and the Senate, finding their power insufficient to cope with
so great a force, gave up the point, and Caesar gained the day.
[Sidenote: The Good Goddess.]
Caesar had married another wife after the death of Cornelia. Her name
was Pompeia, He divorced Pompeia about this time, under very
extraordinary circumstances. Among the other strange religious
ceremonies and celebrations which were observed in those days, was one
called the celebration of the mysteries of the Good Goddess. This
celebration was held by females alone, every thing masculine being most
carefully excluded. Even the pictures of men, if there were any upon the
walls of the house where the assembly was held, were covered. The
persons engaged spent the night together in music and dancing and
various secret ceremonies, half pleasure, half worship, according to the
ideas and customs of the time.
[Sidenote: Clodius.]
[Sidenote: Caesar divorces his wife.]
The mysteries of the Good Goddess were to be celebrated one night at
Caesar's house, he himself having, of course, withdrawn. In the
middle of the night, the whole company in one of the apartments were
thrown into consternation at finding that one of their number was a man.
He had a smooth and youthful-looking face, and was very perfectly
disguised in the dress of a female. He proved to be a certain Clodius, a
very base and dissolute young man, though of great wealth and high
connections. He had been admitted by a female slave of Pompeia's, whom
he had succeeded in bribing. It was suspected that it was with Pompeia's
concurrence. At any rate, Caesar immediately divorced his wife. The
Senate ordered an inquiry into the affair, and, after the other members
of the household had given their testimony, Caesar himself was called
upon, but he had nothing to say. He knew nothing about it. They asked
him, then, why he had divorced Pompeia, unless he had some evidence for
believing her guilty, He replied, that a wife of Caesar must not only be
without crime, but without suspicion.
[Sidenote: Quarrel of Clodius and Milo.]
[Sidenote: Violence of the time.]
Clodius was a very desperate and lawless character, and his subsequent
history shows, in a striking point of view, the degree of violence and
disorder which reigned in those times. He became involved in a bitter
contention with another citizen whose name was Milo, and each, gaining
as many adherents as he could, at length drew almost the whole city into
their quarrel. Whenever they went out, they were attended with armed
bands, which were continually in danger of coming into collision. The
collision at last came, quite a battle was fought, and Clodius was
killed. This made the difficulty worse than it was before. Parties were
formed, and violent disputes arose on the question of bringing Milo to
trial for the alleged murder. He was brought to trial at last, but so
great was the public excitement, that the consuls for the time
surrounded and filled the whole Forum with armed men while the trial was
proceeding, to ensure the safety of the court.
[Sidenote: Conspiracy of Catiline.]
[Sidenote: Warm debate in the Senate.]
[Sidenote: Caesar in danger of violence.]
In fact, violence mingled itself continually, in those times, with
almost all public proceedings, whenever any special combination of
circumstances occurred to awaken unusual excitement. At one time, when
Caesar was in office, a very dangerous conspiracy was brought to light,
which was headed by the notorious Catiline. It was directed chiefly
against the Senate and the higher departments of the government; it
contemplated, in fact, their utter destruction, and the establishment of
an entirely new government on the ruins of the existing constitution.
Caesar was himself accused of a participation in this plot. When it was
discovered, Catiline himself fled; some of the other conspirators were,
however, arrested, and there was a long and very excited debate in the
Senate on the question of their punishment. Some were for death. Caesar,
however, very earnestly opposed this plan, recommending, instead, the
confiscation of the estates of the conspirators, and their imprisonment
in some of the distant cities of Italy. The dispute grew very warm,
Caesar urging his point with great perseverance and determination, and
with a degree of violence which threatened seriously to obstruct the
proceedings, when a body of armed men, a sort of guard of honor
stationed there, gathered around him, and threatened him with their
swords. Quite a scene of disorder and terror ensued. Some of the
senators arose hastily and fled from the vicinity of Caesar's seat to
avoid the danger. Others, more courageous, or more devoted in their
attachment to him, gathered around him to protect him, as far as they
could, by interposing their bodies between his person and the weapons of
his assailants. Caesar soon left the Senate, and for a long time would
return to it no more.
[Sidenote: Caesar's struggle for the office of pontifex maximus.]
Although Caesar was all this time, on the whole, rising in influence and
power, there were still fluctuations in his fortune, and the tide
sometimes, for a short period, went strongly against him. He was at one
time, when greatly involved in debt, and embarrassed in all his affairs,
a candidate for a very high office, that of Pontifex Maximus, or
sovereign pontiff. The office of the pontifex was originally that of
building and keeping custody of the bridges of the city, the name being
derived from the Latin word _pons_, which signifies bridge. To this,
however, had afterward been added the care of the temples, and finally
the regulation and control of the ceremonies of religion, so that it
came in the end to be an office of the highest dignity and honor. Caesar
made the most desperate efforts to secure his election, resorting to
such measures, expending such sums, and involving himself in debt to
such an extreme, that, if he failed, he would be irretrievably ruined.
His mother, sympathizing with him in his anxiety, kissed him when he
went away from the house on the morning of the election, and bade hem
farewell with tears. He told her that he should come home that night the
pontiff, or he should never come home at all. He succeeded in gaining
the election.
[Sidenote: He is deposed.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's forbearance.]
[Sidenote: He is restored to office.]
At one time Caesar was actually deposed from a high office which he
held, by a decree of the Senate. He determined to disregard this decree,
and go on in the discharge of his office as usual. But the Senate, whose
ascendency was now, for some reason, once more established, prepared to
prevent him by force of arms. Caesar, finding that he was not
sustained, gave up the contest, put off his robes of office, and went
home. Two days afterward a reaction occurred. A mass of the populace
came together to his house, and offered their assistance to restore his
rights and vindicate his honor. Caesar, however, contrary to what every
one would have expected of him, exerted his influence to calm and quiet
the mob, and then sent them away, remaining himself in private as
before. The Senate had been alarmed at the first outbreak of the tumult,
and a meeting had been suddenly convened to consider what measures to
adopt in such a crisis. When, however, they found that Caesar had
himself interposed, and by his own personal influence had saved the city
from the danger which threatened it, they were so strongly impressed
with a sense of his forbearance and generosity, that they sent for him
to come to the senate house, and, after formally expressing their
thanks, they canceled their former vote, and restored him to his office
again. This change in the action of the Senate does not, however,
necessarily indicate so great a change of individual sentiment as one
might at first imagine. There was, undoubtedly, a large minority who
were averse to his being deposed in the first instance but, being
outvoted, the decree of deposition was passed. Others were, perhaps,
more or less doubtful. Caesar's generous forbearance in refusing the
offered aid of the populace carried over a number of these sufficient to
shift the majority, and thus the action of the body was reversed. It is
in this way that the sudden and apparently total changes in the action
of deliberative assemblies which often take place, and which would
otherwise, in some cases, be almost incredible, are to be explained.
[Sidenote: Caesar implicated in Catiline's conspiracy.]
[Sidenote: He arrests Vettius.]
After this, Caesar became involved in another difficulty, in consequence
of the appearance of some definite and positive evidence that he was
connected with Catiline in his famous conspiracy. One of the senators
said that Catiline himself had informed him that Caesar was one of the
accomplices of the plot. Another witness, named Vettius, laid an
information against Caesar before a Roman magistrate, and offered to
produce Caesar's handwriting in proof of his participation in the
conspirator's designs Caesar was very much incensed, and his manner of
vindicating himself from these serious charges was as singular as many
of his other deeds. He arrested Vettius, and sentenced him to pay a
heavy fine, and to be imprisoned; and he contrived also to expose him,
in the course of the proceedings, to the mob in the Forum, who were
always ready to espouse Caesar's cause, and who, on this occasion, beat
Vettius so unmercifully, that he barely escaped with his life. The
magistrate, too, was thrown into prison for having dared to take an
information against a superior officer.
[Sidenote: Caesar's embarrassment.]
[Sidenote: Spain is assigned to him.]
At last Caesar became so much involved in debt, through the boundless
extravagance of his expenditures, that something must be done to
replenish his exhausted finances. He had, however, by this time, risen
so high in official influence and power, that he succeeded in having
Spain assigned to him as his province, and he began to make preparations
to proceed to it. His creditors, however, interposed, unwilling to let
him go without giving them security. In this dilemma, Caesar succeeded
in making an arrangement with Crassus, who has already been spoken of as
a man of unbounded wealth and great ambition, but not possessed of any
considerable degree of intellectual power. Crassus consented to give the
necessary security, with an understanding that Caesar was to repay him
by exerting his political influence in his favor. So soon as this
arrangement was made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private manner, as
if he expected that otherwise some new difficulty would intervene.
[Sidenote: The Swiss hamlet.]
He went to Spain by land, passing through Switzerland on the way. He
stopped with his attendants one night at a very insignificant village of
shepherds' huts among the mountains. Struck with the poverty and
worthlessness of all they saw in this wretched hamlet, Caesar's friends
were wondering whether the jealousy, rivalry, and ambition which reigned
among men every where else in the world could find any footing there,
when Caesar told them that, for his part, he should rather choose to be
first in such a village as that than the second at Rome. The story has
been repeated a thousand times, and told to every successive generation
now for nearly twenty centuries, as an illustration of the peculiar type
and character of the ambition which controls such a soul as that
of Caesar.
[Sidenote: Caesar's ambition.]
Caesar was very successful in the administration of his province; that
is to say, he returned in a short time with considerable military glory,
and with money enough to pay all his debts, and famish him with means
for fresh electioneering.
[Sidenote: Manner of choosing the consuls.]
[Sidenote: Pompey and Crassus.]
He now felt strong enough to aspire to the office of consul, which was
the highest office of the Roman state. When the line of kings had been
deposed, the Romans had vested the supreme magistracy in the hands of
two consuls, who were chosen annually in a general election, the
formalities of which were all very carefully arranged. The current of
popular opinion was, of course, in Caesar's favor, but he had many
powerful rivals and enemies among the great, who, however, hated and
opposed each other as well as him. There was at that time a very bitter
feud between Pompey and Crassus, each of them struggling for power
against the efforts of the other. Pompey possessed great influence
through his splendid abilities and his military renown. Crassus, as has
already been stated, was powerful through his wealth. Caesar, who had
some influence with them both, now conceived the bold design of
reconciling them, and then of availing himself of their united aid in
accomplishing his own particular ends.
[Sidenote: The first triumvirate.]
He succeeded perfectly well in this management. He represented to them
that, by contending against each other, they only exhausted their own
powers, and strengthened the arms of their common enemies. He proposed
to them to unite with one another and with him, and thus make common
cause to promote their common interest and advancement. They willingly
acceded to this plan, and a triple league was accordingly formed, in
which they each bound themselves to promote, by every means in his
power, the political elevation of the others, and not to take any public
step or adopt any measures without the concurrence of the three. Caesar
faithfully observed the obligations of this league so long as he could
use his two associates to promote his own ends, and then he
abandoned it.
[Sidenote: Caesar a candidate for the consulship.]
Having, however, completed this arrangement, he was now prepared to push
vigorously his claims to be elected consul. He associated with his own
name that of Lucceius, who was a man of great wealth, and who agreed to
defray the expenses of the election for the sake of the honor of being
consul with Caesar. Caesar's enemies, however, knowing that they
probably could not prevent his election, determined to concentrate their
strength in the effort to prevent his having the colleague he desired.
They made choice, therefore, of a certain Bibulus as their candidate.
Bibulus had always been a political opponent of Caesar's, and they
thought that, by associating him with Caesar in the supreme magistracy,
the pride and ambition of their great adversary might be held somewhat
in check. They accordingly made a contribution among themselves to
enable Bibulus to expend as much money in bribery as Lucceius, and the
canvass went on.
[Sidenote: Caesar assumes the whole power.]
[Sidenote: He imprisons Cato.]
It resulted in the election of Caesar and Bibulus. They entered upon the
duties of their office; but Caesar, almost entirely disregarding his
colleague, began to assume the whole power, and proposed and carried
measure after measure of the most extraordinary character, all aiming at
the gratification of the populace. He was at first opposed violently
both by Bibulus and by many leading members of the Senate, especially by
Cato, a stern and inflexible patriot, whom neither fear of danger nor
hope of reward could move from what he regarded his duty. But Caesar was
now getting strong enough to put down the opposition which he
encountered with out much scruple as to the means. He ordered Cato on
one occasion to be arrested in the Senate and sent to prison. Another
influential member of the Senate rose and was going out with him. Caesar
asked him where he was going. He said he was going with Cato. He would
rather, he said, be with Cato in prison, than in the Senate with Caesar.
[Sidenote: Bibulus retires to his house.]
[Sidenote: The year of "Julius and Caesar."]
Caesar treated Bibulus also with so much neglect, and assumed so
entirely the whole control of the consular power, to the utter exclusion
of his colleague, that Bibulus at last, completely discouraged and
chagrined, abandoned all pretension to official authority, retired to
his house, and shut himself up in perfect seclusion, leaving Caesar to
his own way. It was customary among the Romans, in their historical and
narrative writings, to designate the successive years, not by a
numerical date as with us, but by the names of the consuls who held
office in them. Thus, in the time of Caesar's consulship, the phrase
would have been, "In the year of Caesar and Bibulus, consuls," according
to the ordinary usage; but the wags of the city, in order to make sport
of the assumptions of Caesar and the insignificance of Bibulus, used to
say, "In the year of Julius and Caesar, consuls," rejecting the name of
Bibulus altogether, and taking the two names of Caesar to make out the
necessary duality.