The History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen [good english books to read txt] 📗

now, since the new regulation of 702 called to the governorships not the consuls and praetors going out, but those who had gone out five years ago or more, and thus prescribed an interval between the civil magistracy and the command instead of the previous immediate sequence, there was no longer any difficulty in straightway filling up from another quarter every legally vacant governorship, and so, in the case in question, bringing about for the Gallic provinces the change of command on the 1st March 705, instead of the 1st Jan. 706. The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompeius are after a remarkable manner mixed up, in these arrangements, with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition of the republican party. Years before these weapons of state-law could be employed, they had them duly prepared, and put themselves in a condition on the one hand to compel Caesar to the resignation of his command from the day when the term secured to him by Pompeius' own law expired, that is from the 1st March 705, by sending successors to him, and on the other hand to be able to treat as null and void the votes tendered for him at the elections for 706. Caesar, not in a position to hinder these moves in the game, kept silence and left things to their own course.

Debates as to Caesar's Recall

Gradually therefore the slow course of constitutional procedure developed itself. According to custom the senate had to deliberate on the governorships of the year 705, so far as they went to former consuls, at the beginning of 703, so far as they went to former praetors, at the beginning of 704; that earlier deliberation gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors for the two Gauls in the senate, and thereby the first occasion for open collision between the constitutional party pushed forward by Pompeius and the senatorial supporters of Caesar. The consul Marcus Marcellus introduced a proposal to give the two provinces hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided with governorships for that year. The long-repressed indignation burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened; everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar was brought forward in these discussions. For them it was a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law to the proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people, and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid. The senate should in their opinion cause this magistrate, now that the subjugation of Gaul was ended, to discharge immediately the soldiers who had served out their time. The cases in which Caesar had bestowed burgess-rights and established colonies in Upper Italy were described by them as unconstitutional and null; in further illustration of which Marcellus ordained that a respected senator of the Caesarian colony of Comum, who, even if that place had not burgess but only Latin rights, was entitled to lay claim to Roman citizenship,(17) should receive the punishment of scourging, which was admissible only in the case of non-burgesses.

The supporters of Caesar at this time—among whom Gaius Vibius Pansa, who was the son of a man proscribed by Sulla but yet had entered on a political career, formerly an officer in Caesar's army and in this year tribune of the people, was the most notable— affirmed in the senate that both the state of things in Gaul and equity demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled before the time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command along with the consulship; and they pointed beyond doubt to the facts, that a few years previously Pompeius had just in the same way combined the Spanish governorships with the consulate, that even at the present time, besides the important office of superintending the supply of food to the capital, he held the supreme command in Italy in addition to the Spanish, and that in fact the whole men capable of arms had been sworn in by him and had not yet been released from their oath.

The process began to take shape, but its course was not on that account more rapid. The majority of the senate, seeing the breach approaching, allowed no sitting capable of issuing a decree to take place for months; and other months in their turn were lost over the solemn procrastination of Pompeius. At length the latter broke the silence and ranged himself, in a reserved and vacillating fashion as usual but yet plainly enough, on the side of the constitutional party against his former ally. He summarily and abruptly rejected the demand of the Caesarians that their master should be allowed to conjoin the consulship and the proconsulship; this demand, he added with blunt coarseness, seemed to him no better than if a son should offer to flog his father. He approved in principle the proposal of Marcellus, in so far as he too declared that he would not allow Caesar directly to attach the consulship to the pro-consulship. He hinted, however, although without making any binding declaration on the point, that they would perhaps grant to Caesar admission to the elections for 706 without requiring his personal announcement, as well as the continuance of his governorship at the utmost to the 13th Nov. 705. But in the meantime the incorrigible procrastinator consented to the postponement of the nomination of successors to the last day of Feb. 704, which was asked by the representatives of Caesar, probably on the ground of a clause of the Pompeio-Licinian law forbidding any discussion in the senate as to the nomination of successors before the beginning of Caesar's last year of office.

In this sense accordingly the decrees of the senate were issued (29 Sept. 703). The filling up of the Gallic governorships was placed in the order of the day for the 1st March 704; but even now it was attempted to break up the army of Caesar—just as had formerly been done by decree of the people with the army of Lucullus(18)— by inducing his veterans to apply to the senate for their discharge. Caesar's supporters effected, indeed, as far as they constitutionally could, the cancelling of these decrees by their tribunician veto; but Pompeius very distinctly declared that the magistrates were bound unconditionally to obey the senate, and that intercessions and similar antiquated formalities would produce no change. The oligarchical party, whose organ Pompeius now made himself, betrayed not obscurely the design, in the event of a victory, of revising the constitution in their sense and removing everything which had even the semblance of popular freedom; as indeed, doubtless for this reason, it omitted to avail itself of the comitia at all in its attacks directed against Caesar. The coalition between Pompeius and the constitutional party was thus formally declared; sentence too was already evidently passed on Caesar, and the term of its promulgation was simply postponed. The elections for the following year proved thoroughly adverse to him.

Counter-Arrangements of Caesar

During these party manoeuvres of his antagonists preparatory to war, Caesar had succeeded in getting rid of the Gallic insurrection and restoring the state of peace in the whole subject territory. As early as the summer of 703, under the convenient pretext of defending the frontier(19) but evidently in token of the fact that the legions in Gaul were now beginning to be no longer needed there, he moved one of them to North Italy. He could not avoid perceiving now at any rate, if not earlier, that he would not be spared the necessity of drawing the sword against his fellow- citizens; nevertheless, as it was highly desirable to leave the legions still for a time in the barely pacified Gaul, he sought even yet to procrastinate, and, well acquainted with the extreme love of peace in the majority of the senate, did not abandon the hope of still restraining them from the declaration of war in spite of the pressure exercised over them by Pompeius. He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might avoid for the present open variance with the supreme governing board. When the senate (in the spring of 704) at the suggestion of Pompeius requested both him and Caesar to furnish each a legion for the impending Parthian war(20) and when agreeably to this resolution Pompeius demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him some years before, so as to send it to Syria, Caesar complied with the double demand, because neither the opportuneness of this decree of the senate nor the justice of the demand of Pompeius could in themselves be disputed, and the keeping within the bounds of the law and of formal loyalty was of more consequence to Caesar than a few thousand soldiers. The two legions came without delay and placed themselves at the disposal of the government, but instead of sending them to the Euphrates, the latter kept them at Capua in readiness for Pompeius; and the public had once more the opportunity of comparing the manifest endeavours of Caesar to avoid a rupture with the perfidious preparation for war by his opponents.

Curio

For the discussions with the senate Caesar had succeeded in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many profligate men of parts in this epoch;(21) unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but also unsurpassed in his dissolute life, in his talent for borrowing— his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces (600,000 pounds)— and in his moral and political want of principle. He had previously offered himself to be bought by Caesar and had been rejected; the talent, which he thenceforward displayed in his attacks on Caesar, induced the latter subsequently to buy him up—the price was high, but the commodity was worth the money.

Debates as to the Recall of Caesar and Pompeius

Curio had in the first months of his tribunate of the people played the independent republican, and had as such thundered both against Caesar and against Pompeius. He availed himself with rare skill of the apparently impartial position which this gave him, when in March 704 the proposal as to the filling up of the Gallic governorships for the next year came up afresh for discussion in the senate; he completely approved the decree, but asked that it should be at the same time extended to Pompeius and his extraordinary commands. His arguments—that a constitutional state of things could only be brought about by the removal of all exceptional positions, that Pompeius as merely entrusted by the senate with the proconsulship could still less than Caesar refuse obedience to it, that the one-sided removal of one of the two generals would only increase the danger to the constitution— carried complete conviction to superficial politicians and to the public at large; and the declaration of Curio, that he intended to prevent any onesided proceedings against Caesar by the veto constitutionally belonging to him, met with much approval in and out of the senate. Caesar declared his consent at once to Curio's proposal and offered to resign his governorship and command at any moment on the summons of the senate, provided Pompeius would do the same; he might safely do so, for Pompeius without his Italo-Spanish command was no longer formidable. Pompeius again for that very reason could not avoid refusing; his reply—that Caesar must first resign, and that he meant speedily to follow the example thus set— was the less satisfactory, that he did not even specify a definite term for his retirement. Again the decision was delayed for months; Pompeius and the Catonians, perceiving the dubious humour of the majority of the senate, did not venture to bring Curio's proposal to a vote. Caesar employed the summer in establishing the state of peace in the regions which he had conquered, in holding a great review of his troops on the Scheldt, and in making a triumphal march through the province of North Italy, which was entirely devoted to him; autumn found him in Ravenna, the southern frontier-town of his province.

Caesar and Pompeius Both Recalled

The vote which could no longer be delayed on Curio's proposal at length took place, and exhibited the defeat of the party of Pompeius and Cato in all its extent. By 370 votes against 20 the senate resolved that the proconsuls of Spain and Gaul should both be called upon to resign their offices; and with boundless joy the good burgesses of Rome heard the glad