V
CÆSAR SUPREME
With his return begins the period of Cæsar’s full autocratic power in the largest sense of that term; honors extraordinary were heaped upon him and the whole machinery of government was in his hands. He was perpetual Tribune, and so might check all legislation which did not meet his approval. Moreover, he was made sole Censor, which position included not only the guardianship of manners and morals, but also gave him authority over the composition of the Senate, and the even more valuable supervision of contracts and financial affairs. Besides this there was the dictatorship and the consulship. No opposition could come from the religious side, for he was Pontifex Maximus and a member of all the religious colleges.
His position was not so novel as the way he used it. Sulla also had established personal autocratic rule, and Pompeius, who was looked to by the conservatives to preserve republican government, had been completely oblivious of constitutional traditions when they clashed with his interests. Cæsar did not abdicate as did Sulla, nor did he hypocritically veil his purposes as Pompeius had done. There was much ostentatious display in the way of triumphs, festivals, games, and largesses, to celebrate the conqueror’s victories, nor were deeds of cruelty absent in the Gallic triumph. Vercingetorix, who had spent six years in a Roman dungeon, was put to death in accordance with old-fashioned republican brutality.
Some citizens felt disgust at the extravagant expenditure of the autocrat, but this kind of discontent was not so deep as the resentment caused among the upper classes by the introduction of a virtual monarchy. Their point of view is vividly presented in Cicero’s correspondence during the closing years of Cæsar’s rule. He suffered all the more intensely because he had to belie his own principles and live on friendly terms with the man who had destroyed his ideals and robbed him of his chances of political distinction. Cæsar advanced oblivious of criticism, safe in the possession of uncontested powers. There were many things to do, and there was nothing to which he hesitated to set his hands. It was not a time to follow the maxim, “quieta non movere.”
Among the most difficult problems was the allotment of land to the discharged veterans. The plan followed was not to establish them in new colonies, but to incorporate them in existing communities. Apparently private rights were respected, for no serious complaints are recorded. A much-needed reform was taken in hand when Cæsar, using his power as Censor, reduced the number of those who received the dole of corn from 320,000 to 150,000 persons. Equally creditable was the extension of the Roman citizenship to non-Italians, special classes being chosen for this privilege, such as medical practitioners and teachers. Other measures were economic, such as the restoration of customs duties, or had a social aim like the attempt to extend free labor where slaves were commonly used. Municipal administration received special attention, rules being made for the maintenance of streets and lanes, for the control of wheeled traffic, and to prevent public ground from being occupied by the erectors of stands and platforms.
In general, the exceptional position of the city of Rome was not preserved; rather, provincial towns were organized after the model of the imperial metropolis. Probably it was this bold step in reducing Rome to the level of other towns, a proceeding strictly in harmony with Cæsar’s consistent and established policy of equal and fair treatment to the provinces, that led to the idle bit of gossip that he thought of transferring the capital to the East, to Alexandria or Troy. Criminal legislation was stiffened by adding to the recognized sentence of exile forfeiture of property as a penalty. Care was taken that Roman citizens should not travel abroad for a lengthy period, a provision probably intended to protect the provincials from the presence of needy individuals who would make use of official favor for questionable financial schemes. But perhaps the most striking of all these measures from the personal point of view was a law restricting the tenure of provincial governorship. There were to be no more chances open for a series of campaigns under one leader such as Cæsar had waged in Gaul.
Under this personal government there was little place for a Senate except as a registering body, and Cæsar did not always allow it to perform even this humble function. It came to have a make-believe existence. Decrees were drawn up in its name that had actually never come before it, and the conqueror’s unpopularity with the Senators was increased by the introduction of new members, who had no aristocratic traditions to maintain.
As an example of the versatility of his mind, no better one can be given than the fact that Cæsar’s work in bringing order out of chaos was extended to reorganization of the old Roman calendar, under which the year lasted only 355 days, and attempts were made to make the solar and civil years coincide by the occasional introduction of an intercalary month, a process often guided by political or superstitious motives. Since experienced scientists from Alexandria were called on as experts, Cæsar’s reformed calendar of 365 1/4 days with an intercalating day every fourth year was sufficiently accurate to stand for centuries, and with a slight correction is still in use in the civilized world.
The machinery of legislation, important and sound as it was, was not entirely depended upon to reveal the whole policy of the ruler. Cæsar is said to have explained in his public speeches that his ideal was not a despotism, but the paternal rule of a father over his children. He tried to live up to this standard, making a noteworthy display of doing so by his generous treatment of his adversaries during the period of the civil war. Some of his most truculent enemies were pardoned by an act of grace, a treatment which induced Cicero to try his hand again at the kind of decorative oratory he had displayed in his early panegyric on Pompeius. Popular as this clemency was, it did not shelter Cæsar from severe criticism when he renewed his amour with Cleopatra, now summoned to Rome, it was said on his invitation, and it was supposed that he was about to marry her, a foreign queen, as the first step to the attainment, by regular process, of regal power for himself.
Invincible as Cæsar was in war, and conciliatory as he was to those who had served against him, there was still a body of Pompeian partisans in Spain, Labienus and Cnæus Pompeius among them, who felt that there was reason for resistance and a chance of success. Cæsar’s governors in the peninsula had proved incompetent either to hold the loyalty of the provincials, or to prevent the mutiny of the troops when the Pompeian leaders appeared on Spanish ground. All they could do was to clamor for their leader’s presence. He left Rome hurriedly in December, 46. This, his last campaign, was conducted with an army inferior in numbers to that of his opponents. It was an arduous struggle, characterized by conspicuous barbarity on both sides, for neither depended on Roman legionaries alone. The Pompeians had native allies and liberated slaves, and both sides were helped by auxiliary troops from the wild tribesmen of Mauretania. After winning and taking the town of Cordova, Cæsar forced the eldest son of Pompeius to fight a pitched battle at Munda. (March 17, 45 B.C.)
The two armies met here in a life and death struggle, Cnæus Pompeius appealing to his men to avenge his father, while Cæsar’s veterans, responding to the battle cry of Venus the Victorious, the patron goddess of the Cæsarian house and its mythical foundress, made it plain that the cause for which they fought was also a personal one. Neither side could look for quarter; Pompeius had already shown his temper by cruel dealings with the provincials who had opposed him, and Cæsar’s men were not likely to deal mercifully with those who had rekindled the flame of civil war and so deprived them of a well-earned peace. Both in attack and defense each side showed equal bravery and obstinacy. For some time the issue seemed dubious; Cæsar to rally his own men had to take sword in hand and engage in the thick of the struggle. Finally, when the Pompeians made a change of their order to help the wing of their army which was being hard pressed by the tenth legion, the movement gave the Cæsarians a chance to put their opponents in confusion and finally to flight. On the Pompeian side 30,000 are reported to have been slain; among the dead were Labienus, Cæsar’s right-hand man in the Gallic campaign, and Cnæus Pompeius himself, who escaped from the field but was taken and put to death afterward.
Before the return to Italy the affairs of the Spanish provinces had to be set in order; special favors were distributed to the loyal communities in the way of franchise or immunities, and this reconstructive work seems to have been accompanied by financial exactions. The return to Italy was not made until September, and for a whole month Cæsar remained outside the walls of Rome. To mark the victory at Munda there was nothing tangible to do in the way of increasing the autocratic power of the supreme and all-embracing magistrate and executive; there were, however, no visible limitations to the servility of the Senate and Assembly. Fifty days’ thanksgiving, yearly games commemorative of the victory, special distinctions of dress, extraordinary honorific titles, a state residence on the Palatine, built after the model of a temple of the gods; special statues in holy places connected with communal worship, all these were voted, and most of them accepted by the conqueror.
After the Spanish war, gold and silver coins were minted, having on one side the laurel-crowned head of Cæsar, with the inscription Cæsar Imperator, and on the reverse the figure of conquering Venus, lance in one hand and on the other a Victory. The conqueror was now treated as being beyond the ordinary human standard. This recognition of superhuman qualities is made plainer in an inscription, placed under a relief of Cæsar (introduced on a metallic map of the world), which reads, “he is a demigod.” The Oriental idea of deification, opposed as it was to the whole genius of government in Rome, was now adopted there. With Julius Cæsar began the custom of deifying the supreme ruler of Rome, and it is significant that, although he refused a ten-year consulship, he did not protest against this use of religion for the purpose of adulation.
Now that the supreme authority was unassailably placed in the hands of a single individual, who was protected in its exercise from any legal opposition in Rome, Cæsar showed no hesitation in taking the full responsibility of his position. The Western provinces had for some time been practically under his personal control. He was virtually the founder and the creator of the Roman Empire in the West. The foundation laid by him lasted for hundreds of years. But as military lord of the Roman world he had also to deal with the situation of the East. There especially the extension of the Parthian rule was dreaded, and also anticipated, for the moral effect of the defeat of Crassus a few years before had been immense. Cæsar saw that a war in the East could alone restore the prestige of Rome, and also that it was not safe to leave the conduct of such a war in other hands. His plan was first to conquer the Parthians, and through their territory to reach the Caspian Sea. Afterwards by the way of the Black Sea he meant to march along the Danube, where there were wild tribes which had to be taught to respect the power of Rome, and finally to return to Italy by the way of Germany. Such was the mighty program now developed in the vision of the conqueror. In its details it bore the marks of the bold imagination and the political sagacity which characterized his genius, but the immediate necessity was to bring the Parthian war to an end, and so restore confidence on the Eastern frontier. After the return from Spain the transfer of the bulk of the Roman army to the East was being prepared for.
It was in connection with this purpose that there first arose, apparently, the idea of conferring on Cæsar the title of king. It was said that an oracle of the Sibylline Books had declared that only a king could get the better of the Parthians in war. Such a designation was especially antagonistic to Roman political principles; personal rule was tolerated, but not divine right by family descent. Some preparations had been made for the introduction of this alien conception by the act of the Senate, according to which the title “Imperator,” associated directly with the name of Cæsar, should pass to his legal heir. The road to a succession being now marked out, the whole question of the title could not long be left undecided. Imperator was locally understood, but made no claim on subject races. To test popular feeling, Marcus Antonius offered the Imperator a diadem, the insignia of royalty. This was refused, but it was noted that the offer did not call forth the enthusiastic response that was anticipated, nor was Cæsar’s rejection of the symbol openly deplored. Still, the desire for some accommodation with the terms of the oracle was not abandoned. It seemed possible that in Rome Cæsar might bow to public opinion by employing only the title of Imperator, while in the provinces he could exercise royal powers and use the royal title. It was supposed that some arrangement of this sort would be made by a regular decree before he set out for the Parthian campaign.
Opposition was bound to develop at this point from the convinced republicans in the Senate; they were strongly represented there, and Cæsar was responsible for their presence. He had gathered about him men of both parties, making a special effort by his generosity to win over some of the most convinced of the senatorial partisans who had followed Pompeius and had fought the victor to the end of the African campaign. But even Cæsar’s own appointees and adherents were by no means reconciled to the program which would openly do away with the republic; they wished it still to exist as an institution, and they had no wish to provide for the continuance of personal rule beyond the terms of Cæsar’s own life.
The party of Pompeius was by no means inactive; they wrote freely as apologists for their own side, and they did not hesitate in their intrigues to hold up Cæsar as an ambitious autocrat guilty of cruelty on the battlefield, and now that peace was restored, using his claims to mask his aim to establish a tyranny. These views were found among the Senators. Cæsar either thought he was unassailable or reckoned on their gratitude as an obstacle which would separate their theory and their practice. This attitude was only one example of a general want of alertness that seemed to characterize the conqueror after the close of the Spanish campaign.
All the old republican antipathies against royalty were called into life. Cæsar’s statue was now seen on the capitol between the figures of Rome’s ancient kings. Another statue, that of Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the republic, recalled to men’s minds the quick and ready method of dealing with kings and tyrants. This old-fashioned republican doctrine was not lost on a disciple and nephew of Cato, Marcus Brutus, who had made peace with Cæsar after the battle of Pharsalus. He claimed to be a descendant of the famous liberator, and by this very fact had influence in heading any movement against the new autocratic system. His personal abilities were of a mediocre order; but he was obstinate and self-consciously vain of his integrity, and could be paraded as a concrete argument to strengthen the republican cause, when others might hesitate to take extreme steps.
But the real motive power in the organization of the conspiracy against Cæsar was found in Caius Cassius, also holding prætorian office like Brutus. The two had not before been friendly, although both were partisans of Pompeius. Cassius, with his dark and gloomy temperament and sarcastic tongue, was not likely to accept the sententious pomposity of his brother Prætor at that high standard of value exacted by Brutus from his friends. What drew them together was their common republican sympathies. Brutus was asked by Cassius what would be his attitude at the next meeting of the Senate when the question of the royal title would be discussed. Brutus replied that he would not be present. Cassius said that Brutus’s position as Prætor imposed upon him the obligation of attending the meeting. At this Brutus answered that if he went he would defend the cause of liberty.
Such was the basis of the understanding between the two, and the agreement for common action was accepted, not only by the remnant of the old Pompeian party, but by those as well who called themselves the partisans of Cæsar. Even Caius Trebonius, who had served the cause of Cæsar in the city and on the battlefield for many years, agreed that the freedom of the Roman people was to be preferred to the friendship of an individual. He had once before spoken plainly to Marcus Antonius of Cæsar’s ingratitude and of the misfortunes of the republic, but had found no sympathy. Another of Cæsar’s companions in arms, Tullius Cimber, felt personally injured because the commander had exiled his brother.
Both sides had grievances. The Pompeians were not to be won by tactful treatment to accept Cæsar’s schemes, while his own followers often felt that their allegiance had secured no more favors from him than the open enmity of his former opponents. All experienced the common pressure of an exalted and unlimited authority, and were prepared to act together. The exact details of the conspiracy are obscure; they must have been arranged between the 15th of February and the 5th of March, on which date the Senate was to be called together in a building erected by Pompeius, to decide whether Cæsar was to be allowed to bear outside of Rome the title of king. The conspirators were at one against accepting such a proposal.
Cæsar seemed not to realize his danger, since he paid no attention to the warnings that came to him. His mind was filled with the prospect of the Eastern war. Everyone realized that another victory would render all opposition unavailing. The conspirators would have to act before Cæsar could set out for the new campaign. In the plan to be followed the leading Senators were all accomplices. The way would be easy, provided Cæsar’s fellow Consul, Marcus Antonius, who could be relied upon to defend him, were prevented from coming to the Senate. Trebonius was to see that Antonius was detained and kept occupied elsewhere, while another of Cæsar’s friends of long standing, Decimus Brutus, undertook the necessary persuasion of the dictator should the latter hesitate to come to the Curia.
Cæsar, as had been arranged, took his seat in the consular chair; the place next his was vacant, his colleague not being present. There was no time to be lost, for Marcus Antonius might appear at any moment. Tullius Cimber, showing much vehemence, drew near to the Consul, making a plea for the return of his brother from exile. As Cæsar hesitated, the prearranged signal for the murder was immediately acted upon. Cimber with both hands tore apart Cæsar’s toga; at the same time Casca aimed at his neck a blow which glanced and struck the breast. Cæsar appears to have thought that it was only an act of personal vengeance from which he could protect himself. He sprang to his feet, snatched his toga from the hands of Cimber, and threw himself on the arm of Cassius, at the same time defending himself with the stylus of his tablet. He was strong and active, and might have got the better of his two antagonists, but as he turned on Casca he received a wound in the side, then several others from the conspirators as they closed in upon him. No one of the Senators, whom he had created, came to his help. All was over in a moment, for he made no further resistance when he saw the arm of Marcus Brutus, specially bound to him by personal favors, raised to strike. He fell at the feet of the statue of Pompeius, his body pierced by twenty-three wounds. The corpse was brought back to his dwelling by three slaves in the litter in which he had been carried to the Senate. All the rest of his retinue of clients and friends had fled.
The assassination, its method of accomplishment, and the men who planned and carried it out, bound as all of them were by some kind of obligation to the conqueror, can hardly win sympathy even from those who hate autocratic rule, and think the man who destroys a democracy beyond the law. The conspirators had not the personal character of the traditional tyrannicides of Greece. There is something of a pose in the whole action. Brutus and his fellows were representing a clique and cannot be called in any sense the executors of the will of the people. It would have been more fitting if the old precedent followed in the legendary expulsion of the former kings of Rome, banishment, had been adopted here. After all, Cæsar was giving the Roman empire a better kind of government than the Senatorial oligarchy. The cause of the conspirators was weak, and the men who carried it out, as events soon showed, were even weaker than their cause. Only verbally were the interests of republicanism represented by the murderers of Cæsar. The Senate and People of Rome existed as they had done of old; but the elements in each were different. In the people of Cæsar’s days there was nothing that resembled the ancient community of the plebeians. Military expansion had long since destroyed the old civil constitution; the assemblies in the Forum were legal only in name, for they disguised the irregularities of mob rule, giving opportunities for violence and corruption on the largest scale. Even the Senate was virtually a new creation filled with Cæsar’s enemies and certainly incapable from its membership of preparing a genuine restoration of republican institutions. It had stood, even before the civil war, at a time when the oligarchy of wealth and descent had recovered its lost ground through the patronage of Sulla, for governmental inefficiency.
The one man with genius and creativeness adequate to restore a practical republican government was Cæsar himself, and to him republican ideals meant nothing. He was a realistic statesman, who saw the road to monarchy as the short cut to good government, and took it unhesitatingly. At no point in Cæsar’s career is there any evidence that he believed in anything but personal rule. Alike skeptical of higher appeals and with a contempt for shams, he never wavered at any stage in his well-planned pursuit of autocratic power. His fight with the Senatorial oligarchy, who alone blocked his way, was conducted with the directness of a military campaign. There was little personal feeling, for he treated men as pawns, whether they were friends or enemies. When their power to help or to oppose him was gone, they were of no significance; so, at the close of the civil war, it was easy to exercise a clemency or a patronage which meant little. There was a superficial amiability in these acts which indicated a contempt of individuals rather than spontaneous humanity. His cold, clear-cut character seemed to work out problems in a bloodless atmosphere alike free from prejudices and from prepossessions.
Cæsar’s benefactions and his enmities were alike self-centered. The whole force of a nature extraordinarily versatile and incessantly active was turned to one end, and the various stages of his political career are explained by the closing years of his life. It was his purpose to overthrow the Senatorial aristocrats. The purpose was a most worthy one, and it is difficult to see how it could have been done except by extra-legal means, for the Senatorial faction made the laws, and so held all the cards in their hands. Their motto of government was “Heads I win, tails you lose”; and the claim of legality with such a leader as Pompeius, who had no respect for the constitution, was altogether disingenuous. Cæsar was a shrewder politician than any member of the Senatorial faction, far more brilliant in conception and far quicker in action than his rival Pompeius. After clearing the field of his opponents, he showed less creative capacity than in his preparatory work.
Of course, the time was short between his murder and the close of the last campaign in the civil war, but the government he established was a kind of sham republicanism after the Sullan model, only with a different center of gravity. He seems to have planned a better system of administration, and meant that it should be worked in a way regardful of the public interests of a great empire; but the machinery was to remain the same, except that the various magistracies were either to be held by himself or filled by men of his own selection. The shadow of republicanism was to cover a monarchical rule, and in this respect the conservatism of Cæsar was epoch-making, for it continued to influence the whole genius of the Roman imperial system for centuries.
As a general Cæsar was fortunate in having at his command an army which represented the result of years of technical training acquired in the almost continuous campaigns of the Romans. He did not have to create his army; the material for his conquests was ready to hand. He added nothing new to the art of war as it was already known, but the legion under him had a commander of great versatility, who understood how to use it to the best advantage under any given conditions. This genius in providing for the maintenance of his army repeatedly gave him the advantage over the enemy in the Gallic wars, for it enabled him to defer the decisive engagement until all conditions were favorable for his own side.
Another characteristic of his strategy was his skill in using fortified camps. He was a born engineer, and the engineering feats of his campaigns are evidently recounted with great satisfaction in his “Commentaries.” It is evident that they played a decisive part in securing success both during the Gallic campaigns and in the civil war. Indeed, one of the most important contributions of the Romans to the art of warfare was superior technique in fortifications, and in protection of camps, aided by which the defensive of a numerically smaller force could be made to balance the offensive of superior numbers. The sole method of overcoming such resistance was by starving out the army placed in a fortified camp. In his campaigns Cæsar showed remarkable versatility in using the argument of hunger as well as the argument of the sword, and he was quick to turn from one to the other as occasion required.
He seems never to have burdened himself with a pedantic following of rules. Plutarch tells us he had read the accounts of Alexander’s great victories. So far as his own “Commentaries” are concerned, there is a studied vagueness, which, as has been mentioned, often leaves important points in obscurity. He is very sparing of giving personal reflections on the progress of the war he is describing. It is noteworthy, therefore, that he once blames Pompeius for repressing the enthusiasm of his troops, saying that it is the general’s business to encourage the emotional element in battle.
He is also fond of calling attention to the rôle played by fortune or chance, and so he has been often blamed for the risks he was willing to take because he trusted too much to luck, and it is said that he conducted warfare in the spirit of a gambler. Like Napoleon, he appears to have believed in his star, but the references to fortune in the “Commentaries” are probably a literary device intended to impress a popular audience who, though they had lost belief in the gods of polytheism, were ready to recognize an incalculable and mysterious element in human life.
But there was in his strategy more than a spontaneous brilliancy adequate to rescue him from the difficulties of a position he had not anticipated. In his campaigns we see evidence enough of caution and calculation. Especially in the matter of numerical superiority he was careful not to allow himself any hazards in a decisive engagement. The battle of Pharsalus is the only one in which it is certain that he won a victory with an army inferior in numbers to his opponent. In this case nothing else could have been done, for Pompeius, who was in control of the sea, would have removed his army from Greece if he had been outnumbered. There was but one way of forcing a pitched battle under these circumstances, and it was part of superior strategy to induce an enemy relying on superior numbers to confront troops superior in quality. But such chances Cæsar only took when obliged. There was little of the bravado element in his wars. The situation was outlined beforehand. The almost mathematical result bears witness to the presence of that same type of cool reflection which in the political side of his career makes the founder of the Roman Empire something of an enigma. It is hard to believe that a man can be just as unfeeling and unethical in statesmanship as when he is directing the movements of masses of troops. Cæsar’s genius stands for an abnormal development of intellectual power disciplined to serve the ambitious purposes of a man bent on enjoying personal rule, who, to a unique degree, had measured the capacity of other men and himself.