Cæsar, informed of this, addressed the single legion which was with him at Ravenna, urging it to support the violated tribunes. Satisfied with the response to his appeal, he took the final step of passing the Rubicon and marching to Ariminum, outside his province.
Both sides were now in the wrong, the Senate by forcibly interfering with the action of the tribunes, Cæsar by entering Italy. An attempt, therefore, was made to effect a compromise. Lucius Cæsar—a distant connection of Iulius—visited him at Ariminum, bringing some general professions of moderation from Pompey, though it seems without any definite suggestion. Cæsar, however, so far modified his former offer as to propose a conference, with the understanding that the levy of troops in Italy was to be stopped and Pompey was to go to his Spanish province. On receiving this communication at Capua Pompey and the consuls declined all terms until Cæsar had withdrawn from Ariminum into Gaul; though they intimated, without mentioning any date, that Pompey would in that case go to Spain. But the levy of troops was not interrupted; and Cæsar’s answer to this was the triumphant march through Picenum and to Brundisium. Town after town surrendered, and the garrisons placed in them by Pompey generally joined the advancing army, till finally a large force, embracing many men of high rank, surrendered at Corfinium. Cæsar had entered Italy with only one legion, but others were summoned from winter quarters in Cisalpine Gaul, and by the time he reached Brundisium Pompey had given up all idea of resisting him in Italy, and within the walls of that town was preparing to cross to Epirus, whither the consuls with the main body of his troops had already gone. Cæsar had no ships with which to follow him. He was content to hasten his flight by threatening to block up the harbour. Pompey safely out of Italy, he went to Rome to arrange for his regular election into the consulship. Meeting with opposition there[11]—one of the tribunes, L. Cæcilius Metellus, vetoing all proposals in the Senate—he hastened to Spain to attack the legates of Pompey, stopping on his way to arrange the siege of Marseilles (which had admitted Ahenobarbus, named successor of Cæsar in Gaul), and sending legati to secure Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa. Of these the only failure was in Africa, where Curio was defeated and killed. This province therefore remained in the hands of the Pompeians; but Cæsar’s own successes in Spain, the fall of Marseilles, and the hold gained upon the corn supplies of Sicily and Sardinia placed him in a strong position. The constitutional difficulty was surmounted; he was named Dictator to hold the elections, returned himself as consul, and, after eleven days in Rome for the Latin games, embarked at Brundisium on January 3, B.C. 48, to attack Pompey in Epirus.
Iulius Cæsar master of the Roman world, B.C. 47.
It is not necessary to follow the events of the next six months. Cæsar had to struggle with great difficulties, for Pompey as master of the sea had a secure base of supplies; and therefore, though Cæsar drew vast lines round his camp, he could not starve him out. Pompey, in fact, actually pierced Cæsar’s lines and defeated him in more than one engagement. Eventually, however, Cæsar drew him into Thessaly; and the great victory of Pharsalia (August 9th) made up for everything. Pompey fled to Egypt, to meet his death on the beach by order of the treacherous young king; and though Cæsar still had weary work to do before Egypt was reduced to obedience, and then had to traverse Asia Minor to crush Pharnaces of Pontus at Zela, when he set foot once more in Italy in September, B.C. 47, he had already been created Dictator, and was practically master of the Roman world.
Octavius takes the toga virilis and is made a pontifex, B.C. 48.
In these momentous events the young Octavius had taken no part. At the beginning of B.C. 49 he had been sent away to one of his ancestral estates in the country. But we cannot suppose him incapable of understanding their importance or being an uninterested spectator. His stepfather Philippus was Pompeian in sympathy, but his close connection with Cæsar kept him from taking an active part in the war, and he was allowed to remain in Italy, probably for the most part in his Campanian villa. From time to time, however, he came to Rome; and Octavius, who now lived entirely with him, began to be treated with a distinction natural to the near relative of the victorious dictator. Soon after the news of Pharsalia he took the toga virilis, and about the same time was elected into the college of pontifices in the place of L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had fallen in the battle. This was an office desired by the highest in the land, and the election of so young a boy, just entering upon his sixteenth year, put him in a position something like that of a prince of the blood; just as afterwards Augustus caused his two grandsons to be designated to the consulship, and declared capable of official employment as soon as they had taken the toga virilis.[12]
Octavius’s relations with his parents and his great-uncle.
The boy, who three years before had made a great impression by his delivery of the laudatio at his grandmother Iulia’s funeral, again attracted much attention by his good looks and modesty. He became the fashion; and when (as was customary for the pontifices) he presided in a prætorian court during the feriæ Latinæ, it was observed to be more crowded by suitors and their friends than any of the others. It seems that the rarity of his appearance at Rome added to the interest roused by his great-uncle’s successes. For his mother did not relax her watchfulness. Though legally a man he was still carefully guarded. He was required to sleep in the same simple chamber, to visit the same houses, and to follow the same way of life as before. Even his religious duties were performed before daylight, to escape the languishing looks of intriguing beauties. These precautions were seconded by his own cool and cautious temperament, and the result seems to have been that he passed through the dangerous stage of adolescence—doubly dangerous to one now practically a prince—uncontaminated by the grosser vices of Rome. Stories to the contrary, afterwards spread abroad by his enemies, are of the most unsubstantial and untrustworthy kind.
The young Octavius.