History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 2 of 2

by Emperor of the French Napoleon III

V. It is here the place to examine at what period the power of Cæsar expired, and what was the pretext of the conflict which rose between him and the Senate.

Learned historians have long had this subject under consideration; they have devoted themselves to the most profound researches, and to the most ingenious suppositions, still without arriving at a completely satisfactory result,[805] which ought not to surprise us, inasmuch as Cicero himself found the question obscure.[806]

In virtue of a law of C. Sempronius Gracchus, named lex Sempronia, it had been decided that the Senate should designate, before the election of the consuls, the provinces they were to administer after quitting office. When Cæsar and Bibulus were elected, instead of provinces, the inspection of the public ways was given to them; but Cæsar, unwilling to suffer this affront, obtained, by a plebiscitum, on the motion of Vatinius, the government of Cisalpine Gaul for five years; the Senate added to it Transalpine Gaul, which then formed a separate province independent of the other.[807] In 699, the law Trebonia prolonged, for five more years, Cæsar’s command in Gaul. This command was therefore to last ten years; and, since Cæsar only entered upon his proconsular functions at the beginning of the year 696, it seems natural to infer that these ten years should reach to the 1st of January, 706. We, nevertheless, see that, at the end of 704, the Senate regarded Cæsar’s power as at an end. We then ask, on what ground that assembly supported the pretence that the ten years devolved to the proconsul were completed at that date. We consider the following to be the explanation:—

It was in the month of March that, according to custom, the retiring consuls took possession of the government of provinces.[808] It is, consequently, very probable that the law of Vatinius, published, as we have seen, in 695, was voted towards the latter days of the month of February in that same year, and that the proconsulship given to Cæsar was to begin from the day of the promulgation of that law. Nothing would have prevented him, indeed, from shortening the time of his magistracy, and seizing, before the termination of his curule functions, the military command or imperium, as Crassus did in 699, who started for Syria without waiting for the end of his consulship. Supposing, then, which is not impossible, that the whole year of Cæsar’s consulship was included in his proconsulship,[809] the five first years of his command would date from 695, and end on the 1st of January, 700. The oration on the Consular Provinces proves that it was so understood. The time when it was pronounced (July or August, 698) was that of the assignment of the provinces destined for the consuls who were to quit office eighteen months after—that is, in 700—and when the question of superseding Cæsar was agitated. The first quinquennium of his command terminated, therefore, in December, 699, and, consequently, the second in December, 704. Such was the system of the Senate, naturally much inclined to shorten the duration of the proconsulship of Gaul.[810] Accordingly, Hirtius informs us that, in 703, the Gauls knew that Cæsar had but one summer, that of 704, to pass in Gaul.[811] Dio Cassius says similarly that Cæsar’s power was to end with the year 704.[812] According to Appian, the Consul Claudius Marcellus proposed, at the beginning of 704, to name a successor to Cæsar, whose powers were on the eve of expiring.[813] On the other hand, Cicero relates in one of his letters that Pompey seemed to be of the same opinion as the Senate, to require the return of the proconsul on the Ides of the November of 704. At the end of that same year, the great orator expresses, in the following terms, his own opinion on the subject of the claim raised by Cæsar to dispensation from coming to Rome to solicit the consulship: “What, then? must we have regard for a man who will keep his army after the day fixed by the law?”[814] Some time afterwards, apostrophising Cæsar in a letter to Atticus,[815] he exclaims: “You have kept, during ten years, a province of which you have procured the continuance, not by the sovereign will of the Senate, but by your intrigues and your acts of violence. You have overpassed the term fixed, by your ambition, and not by the law.... You retain your army longer than the people has ordained and than it is the people’s will.” On another hand, a passage of Suetonius says, in a very formal manner, that Cæsar intended to offer himself as candidate in 705, to exercise the consulship in 706, when he would have completed the time of his proconsulship.[816] Lastly the Senate so evidently regards the beginning of the year 705 as the obligatory termination of Cæsar’s command, that, in the month of January, it declares him the enemy of the Republic, because he is still at the head of his soldiers, and decrees extreme measures against him.[817]

But the dispute between the Senate and Cæsar did not turn upon the term of his command. Cæsar offered himself to the consular comitia of the year 705. A law, submitted to the people by the ten tribunes, and supported by Pompey and Cicero, had permitted him to solicit this charge, although absent.[818] This law would have been without object unless it had implied the authorisation for Cæsar to keep his army until the time of the consular elections. Certain authors even think that this right must have been formally reserved in the law. The “Epitome” of Titus Livius says, in fact, that, according to the law, he was to keep his command until the time of his second consulship.[819] On the other hand, Cicero writes to Atticus that the best argument for refusing Cæsar, in his absence, the power of soliciting the second consulship, is that, by granting it to him, they acknowledge in him, by the same act, the right of keeping his province and his army.[820] This advantage Cæsar calls beneficium populi;[821] and when he complained that they were depriving him of six months of his command, he reckoned the time which had to pass between the 1st of January, 705, and the month of July, the period of the consular comitia.[822]

Nevertheless, Cæsar had a great interest in keeping his army until he was elected to the first magistracy of the Republic, for he would then keep the imperium as long as Pompey, whose powers, prolonged in 702, would end on the 1st of January, 707.[823] It was evident that he was unwilling to disarm before his rival; now if, according to the combination established by law, he remained consul till the 1st of January, 707, his command ended at the same time as that of Pompey, and after that he had nothing more to fear from the plots of his enemies.

In fact, everything was now merging into an open struggle between Cæsar and Pompey. In vain will the former seek all means of conciliation, in vain will the latter strive to escape from the exactions of his party; the force of circumstances will infallibly push them one against the other. And just as we see, in the liquid traversed by an electric current, all the elements it contains moving towards the two opposite poles, so in Roman society in a state of dissolution, air the passions, all the interests, the memories of the past, the hopes of the future, are going to separate violently and divide themselves between the two men who personify the antagonism of two opposite causes.

Intrigues to deprive Cæsar of his Command.

VI. Let us return to the relation of events. Pompey, all-powerful, though a simple proconsul, had, as we have said before, retired to Tarentum; he seemed to wish to remain foreign to the intrigues which were at work in Rome; it appears even that he had the intention of going into Spain to govern his province.[824] At the outset of revolutions, the majority of the people, and even that of the assemblies, incline always towards moderation; but soon, overruled by an excitable and enterprising minority, they are drawn by it into extreme courses. It is what happened at this time. Marcellus and his party strove first to carry Pompey, and, when he had once taken his decision, they carried the Senate. At the moment when, in the month of June, Pompey prepared to return to the troops stationed at Ariminum, he was called back to Rome; and when, on the 11th of the Calends of August, the senators assembled in the temple of Apollo to regulate the pay of the troops, he was asked why he had lent a legion to Cæsar. Obliged to give an explanation, he promised to recall it, but not immediately, as he was unwilling to have the appearance of yielding to threats. He was then pressed to give his opinion on the recall of Cæsar; upon which, by one of those evasive phrases which were habitual with him, and which revealed his hesitation, he replied that “everybody ought equally to obey the Senate.”[825] Nothing was enacted in regard to the consular powers.

The question of the government of Gaul was to be resumed on the Ides of August; then again, in the month of September; but the Senate never found itself in sufficient numbers to deliberate, so much did it fear to come to a decision. They did not determine on entering upon the question frankly until they were convinced of Pompey’s consent to the recall of Cæsar.[826] beforehand the consuls nominated for the following year, and imposed upon them a rule of conduct: their hostility to Cæsar had determined their election. On the 11th of the Calends of October, M. Marcellus, who made himself the organ of the passions of the moment, exacted such numerous and unusual guarantees, that we may judge to what point his party had at heart to carry the day. Thus, the consuls recently elected were required to enter into the engagement to put the question on the orders of the day for the Calends of March; until it was settled, the Senate was bound to assemble to deliberate upon it every day, even on those which were called comitiales, when any meeting of that body was forbidden, and, to this effect, the senators who should fill the offices of judges were to be sent for into the curia. The Senate was also to declare beforehand that those who had the power of interceding should abstain from exercising it, and that, if they interceded or demanded an adjournment, they should be considered as enemies of the Republic; a report of their conduct should be made, at the same time, to the Senate and to the people.[827] This motion was adopted and inscribed in the minutes as a decision or an opinion of the Senate (senatus auctoritas). Four tribunes of the people interceded: C. Cœlius, L. Vinucius, P. Cornelius, and C. Vibius Pansa.