Cicero and his friends

by Gaston Boissier

III.

In his treatise, De Amicitia, Cicero affirms that a tyrant cannot have friends.[^[221]] In speaking thus he was thinking of Caesar, and it must be admitted that this example seems to justify him. Courtiers are not wanting when a man is master, and Caesar, who paid them well, had more than any other, but we know of scarcely any sincere and devoted friends. Perhaps he had some among those obscure servants whose memory history has not preserved,[^[222]] but none of those whom he placed in the first rank, and whom he invited to share in his good fortune, remained faithful to him. His liberalities only brought him ingratitude, his clemency disarmed no one, and he was betrayed by those on whom he had lavished most favours. His soldiers alone can really be called his friends, those veterans who remained from the great Gallic wars; his centurions, all of whom he knew by name, and who let themselves bravely be killed for him under his eyes: that Scaeva, who at Dyrrhachium had his shield pierced with two hundred and thirty arrows;[^[223]] that Crastinus, who said to him on the morning of Pharsalia, “This evening you shall thank me dead or alive.”[^[224]] These men served him faithfully, he knew them and relied upon them; but he well knew that he could not trust his generals. Although he had heaped money and honours upon them after his victories, they were discontented. A few, and those the most honourable, were grieved to think that they had destroyed the republic and shed their blood to establish absolute power. The greater number had not these scruples, but all thought their services ill rewarded. Caesar’s liberality, great as it was, had not sufficed to satisfy them. The republic was delivered up to them, they were praetors and consuls, they governed the richest provinces, and yet they ceased not to complain. Everything served them as a pretext for murmuring. Antony had got Pompey’s house awarded to him at a low price; when they came for the money he got in a passion and only paid with insults. No doubt he thought that day that they were wanting in respect for him, and called Caesar ungrateful. It is not uncommon to see those warriors, so brave before the enemy, and so admirable on the day of battle, become again in private life vulgarly ambitious, full of base jealousy and insatiable greed. They began by murmuring and complaining; they almost all ended by betraying him. Among those who killed Caesar were found perhaps his best generals, Sulpicius Galba, the conqueror of the Nantuates, Basilus, one of his most brilliant cavalry officers, Decimus Brutus and Trebonius, the heroes of the siege of Marseilles. Those who were not in the plot did not conduct themselves any better that day. When we read in Plutarch the narrative of the death of Caesar, our heart bleeds at seeing that no one tried to defend him. The conspirators were only about sixty in number, and there were more than eight hundred senators. The greater number among them had served in his army; all owed to him the honour of sitting in the curia, of which they were not worthy, and these wretches, who held their fortune and their dignity from him, who begged for his protection and lived on his favours, saw him killed without saying a word. All the time this horrible struggle lasted, while, “like a beast attacked by the hunters, he strove among the swords drawn against him,” they remained motionless on their seats, and all their courage consisted in flying when Brutus, beside the bleeding corpse, essayed to speak. Cicero recalled this scene, of which he had been a witness, when he said later, “It is on the day when the oppressors of their country fall that we see clearly that they have no friends.”[^[225]]

When Caesar’s generals, who had so many motives for remaining faithful to him, betrayed him, could he reckon more on those doubtful allies that he had recruited on the Forum, and who before serving him had served all parties? To accomplish his designs he had need of politicians; in order that the new government should not appear to be a wholly military rule he had need of the greatest number possible. Therefore he was not squeamish, he took them without selection. It was the dishonest men of all parties that came to him by preference. He received them well, although he esteemed them little, and carried them everywhere in his train. Cicero had been very much afraid of them when Caesar came with them to see him at Formiae: “There is not a rascal in all Italy,” said he, “who is not with him,”[^[226]] and Atticus, usually so reserved, could not help calling this retinue an infernal troop.[^[227]] However habituated we may be to see the initiative in such revolutions taken by men who have not much to lose, there is reason, nevertheless, to be surprised that Caesar did not find a few more honourable allies. Even those who are most opposed to him are compelled to recognize that much which he wished to destroy did not deserve preservation. The revolution that he contemplated had profound causes, it was natural that it should have also sincere partisans. How does it happen then that, among those who aided him to change a government of which many complained, and from which every one had suffered, there are so few who seem to act from conviction, and that almost all, on the contrary, are only paid conspirators working without sincerity for a man whom they do not love, and for a purpose that they consider bad?

Perhaps we must explain the composition of Caesar’s party by the means that he usually took to recruit it. We do not see that when he wished to gain any one over to his cause he lost his time in demonstrating to him the defects of the old government and the merits of that by which he wished to replace it. He employed more simple and sure arguments: he paid. This showed that he knew well the men of his time, and he was not deceived in thinking that, in a society altogether given up to luxury and pleasure, weakened beliefs only left room for self-interest. He organized then without scruple a vast system of corruption. Gaul furnished the means. He pillaged it as vigorously as he had conquered it, “seizing,” says Suetonius, “all that he found in the temples of the gods, and taking towns by assault, less to punish them than to have a pretext for plundering them.”[^[228]] With this money he made himself partisans. Those who came to see him never went away empty-handed. He did not even neglect to make presents to the slaves and freedmen who had any influence over their masters. While he was absent from Rome, the clever Spaniard Balbus and the banker Oppius, who were his agents, distributed bounties in his name; they discreetly helped embarrassed senators; they became the treasurers of young men of high family who had exhausted the paternal resources. They lent money without interest, but the services by which they would have to repay the loans were well known to every one. It was thus they bought Curio, who set a high price on himself; he was in debt for more than 60,000,000 sesterces (£480,000). Caelius and Dolabella, whose affairs were in a not much better state, were probably gained by the same means. Never was corruption practised on a greater scale and displayed with more impudence. Almost every year, during the winter, Caesar returned to Cisalpine Gaul with the treasures of the Gauls. Then the market was opened, and the great personages arrived one after another. One day, at Lucca, so many came at once that two hundred senators were counted in the apartments, and one hundred and twenty lictors at the door.

In general, the fidelity of people who are bought does not last much longer than the money they receive; now, in their hands, money does not last long, and the day one tires of providing for their prodigality, one is obliged to begin to distrust them. There was besides, in the case of all these political friends of Caesar, a special reason why, one day or other, they should become discontented. They had grown up amidst the storms of the republic; they had thrown themselves early into that active and bustling life, and they had acquired the taste for it. No men more than they, had used and abused liberty of speech; to it they owed their influence, their power, and their renown. By a strange inconsistency, these men, who worked with all their might to establish an absolute government, were those who could least do without the struggles of public life, the turmoil of business, and the excitement of the rostrum, that is to say just those things which exist only under free governments. There were no men who would sooner find despotic power burdensome than those who had not been able to support even the light and equitable yoke of the law. Accordingly they were not long in perceiving the error they had committed. They soon found out that in aiding a master to destroy the liberty of others, they had delivered up their own. At the same time it was easy for them to see that the new government that they had established with their own hands could not give them what the old one had given them. What, in fact, were those dignities and those honours with which it was pretended to reward them, when one man alone possessed real power? There were, no doubt, still praetors and consuls; but what comparison could be made between these magistrates, dependent on one man, subject to his caprices, dominated by his authority, overshadowed, and, as it were, obliterated by his glory, and those of the old republic? So then must inevitably arise mistakes, regrets, and often also treasons. This is why those allies whom Caesar had recruited in the different political parties, after having been very useful to him, all finished by causing him great trouble. None of those restless and intractable minds, undisciplined by nature and habit, had willingly consented to submit to discipline, or heartily resigned himself to obey. As soon as they were no longer under the eye of the master and restrained by his powerful hand, the old instincts in them gained the upper hand; they became again, on the first opportunity, seditious as before, and though Rome had been pacified by absolute power, troubles recommenced every time Caesar was absent. It is thus that Caelius, Dolabella, and Antony compromised the public tranquillity they had been charged to maintain. Curio, the head of that youth that rallied round the new government, died too soon to have had the time to be discontented; but we may conjecture, from the light and flippant manner in which he already spoke of Caesar in his private conversation, from the small degree of illusion he seemed to have about him, that he would have acted like the rest.[^[229]]

It is easy now to understand what reasons Caelius had to complain, and how that ambition which the dignities of the old republic had not satisfied at last found itself ill at ease under the new government. The strange letter that he wrote to Cicero, and that declaration of war which he made to Caesar and his party are now explained. He had early become discontented. From the very beginning of the civil war, when he was congratulated on the success of his party, he answered gloomily: “What do I care about that glory which never reaches to me?”[^[230]] The truth is that he was beginning to understand that there was only room for one man in the new government, and that he alone for the future would have glory as well as power. Caesar took him on his expedition to Spain without giving him, it appears, an opportunity of distinguishing himself. On his return to Rome he was appointed praetor, but he did not have the urban praetorship which was the most honourable, and Trebonius was preferred to him. This preference, which he regarded as an insult, caused him great vexation. He resolved to revenge himself, and only waited for an opportunity. He thought it had come when he saw Caesar set out with all his troops for Thessaly, in pursuit of Pompey. He thought that in the absence of the dictator and his soldiers, in the midst of the excitement of Italy, where a thousand contradictory rumours on the result of the struggle were circulating, he might attempt a decisive stroke. The moment was well chosen; but what was still better chosen was the question on which Caelius resolved to begin the fight. Nothing does more credit to his political ability than to have so clearly discerned the weak sides of the victorious party, and to have seen at a glance the best position he could take up for a successful attack upon it.

Although Caesar was master of Rome and of Italy, and it was seen that the republican army would not check him, he still had great difficulties to surmount. Caelius knew this well; he knew well that in political struggles success is often an ordeal full of danger. After the enemy has been vanquished one’s own friends have to be provided for, a task which is often troublesome. That greed must be resisted which has hitherto been tolerated, or even encouraged, when the time to satisfy it seemed distant; it is necessary above all to defend oneself against the exaggerated hopes that victory produces in those who have gained it, and which yet cannot be realized. Usually, when one belongs to the weaker party and wishes to gain adherents, promises are not spared; but when one reaches power it is very difficult to keep all the engagements that have been made, and those fine programmes that have been accepted and scattered abroad become then a source of great embarrassment. Caesar was the recognized chief of the democratic party; thence came his strength. We remember that he had said, on entering Italy, that he came to restore liberty to the republic which was enslaved by a handful of aristocrats. Now, the democratic party of which he thus proclaimed himself the representative had its programme ready prepared. It was not exactly that of the Gracchi. After a century of often bloody struggles, hatred had become envenomed, and the senseless resistance of the aristocracy had made the people more exacting. Each of the chiefs who, since Caius Gracchus, had come forward to lead them, had formulated for them some fresh demand the more surely to draw them after him. Clodius had aimed at establishing the unlimited right of association and of governing the republic by secret societies. Catiline promised confiscation and pillage; accordingly his memory had remained very popular. Cicero speaks of the funeral banquets which were celebrated in his honour, and of the flowers that his tomb was covered with.[^[231]] Caesar, who presented himself as their successor, could not altogether repudiate their heritage; he must promise that he would finish their work and satisfy the wishes of the democracy. At this moment the democracy did not appear to care much about political reforms; what it wanted was a social revolution. To be fed in idleness at the expense of the state, by means of gratuitous distributions very frequently repeated; to appropriate the best lands of the allies by sending colonies into the richest Italian cities; to arrive at a sort of division of property, under pretext of recovering from the aristocracy the public domain which it had appropriated, such was the ordinary idea of the plebeians; but what they most urgently demanded, what had become the watchword of all this party, was the abolition of debts, or, as they said, the destruction of the registers of the creditors (tabulae novae), that is to say, the authorized violation of public faith, and a general bankruptcy decreed by the law. This programme, violent as it was, Caesar had prepared to accept in proclaiming himself the head of the democracy. As long as the struggle was doubtful, he took care to make no reservations, for fear of weakening his party by divisions. Therefore it was thought that as soon as he was victorious he would set himself to work to realize it.

But Caesar had not only come to destroy a government, he wished to found another, and he knew very well that nothing solid can be established on spoliation and bankruptcy. After having used, without compunction, the programme of the democracy to overturn the republic, he understood that he would have to take up a new part. On the day that he became master of Rome, his statesman’s instinct, and his interest as a sovereign made him a conservative. While he extended his hand to the moderate men of the old parties, he had no scruple in often returning to the traditions of the old government.

It is certain that the work of Caesar, taking it altogether, is far from being that of a revolutionary; some of his laws were praised by Cicero after the Ides of March; which is as much as to say that they were not conformable to the wishes and hopes of the democracy. He sent eighty thousand poor citizens into the colonies, but over sea, to Africa and to Greece. He could not think of altogether abolishing the donations made by the State to the citizens of Rome, but he diminished them. In the place of the three hundred and twenty thousand citizens who shared in these under the republic, he only admitted a hundred and fifty thousand; he ordered that this number should not be exceeded, and that every year the praetor should fill up the place of those persons, thus privileged by poverty, who had died within the year. Far from changing anything in the prohibitive regulations that were in force under the republic, he established import duties on foreign merchandise. He promulgated a sumptuary law, much more severe than the preceding, which regulated in detail the manner in which people should dress and live, and had it executed with tyrannical rigour. The markets were guarded by soldiers lest anything should be sold that the law forbade, and the soldiers were authorized to enter houses and seize prohibited food even on the tables. Caesar had taken these measures, which hampered commerce and industry, and consequently were hurtful to the interests of the people, from the traditions of the aristocratic governments. They could not therefore be popular; but the restriction he put upon the right of meeting was still less so. This right, to which the democracy clung more than to any other, had been respected even to the last days of the republic, and the tribune Clodius had skilfully used it to frighten the senate and to terrorize the Forum. Under pretext of honouring the tutelar deities of each cross-way, associations of the districts (collegia compitalicia), comprising the poor citizens and the slaves, had been formed. Beginning by being religious, these societies soon became political. In the time of Clodius they formed a sort of regular army of the democracy, and played the same part in the riots of Rome as the “sections” in ’93 did among us. By the side of these permanent associations, and on the same model, temporary associations were formed, every time a great election took place. The people were enrolled by districts, they were divided into decuries and centuries; chiefs, who led them to vote in military order, were appointed; and as in general the people did not give their votes for nothing, an important person named sequester was appointed beforehand, in whose hands the sum promised by the candidate was deposited, and distributors (divisores) charged, after the voting, to divide it among each tribe. This is how universal suffrage was exercised in Rome towards the close of the republic, and thus this race, naturally inclined to discipline, had succeeded in giving an organization to disorder. Caesar, who had often made use of these secret associations, who by them had managed elections and dominated the deliberations of the Forum, would no longer suffer them when he had no longer need of them. He thought that a regular government would not last long if he allowed this underground government to work by its side. He did not shrink then from severe measures to rid himself of this organized disorder. To the great scandal of his friends, he suppressed, at a single stroke, all the political societies, only allowing the most ancient, which presented no danger, to continue in existence.

These were vigorous measures, and such as must have offended many people; accordingly he did not venture to take them till late, after Munda and Thapsus, when his authority was no longer disputed and he felt himself strong enough to resist the democracy, his ancient ally. When he set out for Pharsalia he had still to observe much caution; prudence commanded him not to displease his friends, while so many enemies remained. Moreover, there were certain questions which could not be deferred, so important were they in the eyes of the democracy which demanded their immediate settlement. One of the chief of these was the abolition of debts. Caesar turned his attention to it immediately on his return from Spain; but here again, notwithstanding the difficulties of his position, he was not so radical as he was expected to be. Placed between his conservative instincts and the demands of his friends, he adopted a middle course: instead of abolishing the debts completely, he contented himself with reducing them. Firstly, he ordered that all sums paid up to that time as interest should be deducted from the capital sums; then, to make payment of the amount thus reduced easier, he ruled that the property of the debtors should be valued by arbitrators; that they should assess it, not at its present value, but at that which it had before the civil war, and that the creditors should be obliged to take it at that rate. Suetonius says that, in this manner, debts were reduced by more than one-fourth. These measures certainly still appear to us sufficiently revolutionary. We cannot approve this intervention of authority, to despoil without reason private persons of a part of their wealth, and nothing can seem to us more unjust than that the law itself should annul contracts which have been placed under its protection; but at that time the effect produced on men’s minds was very different. The creditors, who had feared that nothing would be left them, thought themselves very fortunate not to lose all, and the debtors, who had reckoned upon being altogether freed, bitterly complained because they were still required to pay part. Hence disappointment and murmuring. “At this moment,” wrote Caelius, “with the exception of a few usurers, everybody herd is Pompeian.”[^[232]]