Pompeius fled to Egypt for refuge, and was murdered there by treacherous Alexandrians and renegade Romans. Cæsar, who had received the submission of the whole provincial world with the exception of King Juba’s African realm, followed Pompeius to Egypt, and on landing was presented with his rival’s head. In Alexandria itself Cæsar had to face one of the most serious crises of his life. For six months he held the royal palace against a host of infuriated Orientals. In the palace was Cleopatra, the wife and sister of the reigning Ptolemy, and then a brilliant and fascinating young woman of twenty. Let us believe that she was beautiful, and that the portrait-painters and coin-engravers of her day were incompetent or disloyal.[18] But if rumour spoke truly, Cæsar was by no means exclusive in his devotion to female charms. Her son was named Cæsarion.
When at length Julius Cæsar escaped from the twofold entanglements of love and battle at Alexandria, he had more fighting still before he could make the earth his footstool. He spent a few days in Syria to arrange the affairs of the East, and among other things gave orders to build up the wall of Jerusalem, which had been thrown down by the orders of Pompeius. Then he passed over to Asia Minor, and at Zela crushed the rebellion of a Pontic successor of Mithradates. So back to Italy for a few weeks, and there he found all in disorder, and his legions, including the faithful Tenth, mutinying for their pay. He settled the disorder at Rome by his mere presence, enacted laws to relieve the economic distress there, and, having no money to pay his soldiers, quelled their mutiny by sheer sleight of speech. Meanwhile the broken Pompeians had gathered in thousands at the court of King Juba, who himself had a formidable host. As soon as he could find time, the restless conqueror crossed straight to Africa with as many soldiers as he could muster, leaving the main force to follow. That was always Cæsar’s way—to dart straight upon the scene of danger was his first instinct. At his coming the marrow oozed out of the very bones of his foe. He had a Scipio and a Cato, and a host of notable Romans arrayed against him. At Thapsus, in April of the year 46, he smote them, and slew (it is said) fifty thousand men—fourteen legions of Romans. There at Utica, Cato died his famous Stoic death, far the noblest scene of his mistaken life, and so became a theme for the glorification of Stoic Republicanism for all time. Afranius, Scipio, King Juba, Faustus Sulla, and many others, died also. A few stragglers found their way to Spain, to continue the fight there under the two sons of Pompeius. Thither in the next year, so soon as he had leisure, Cæsar followed them, and in a last great battle at Munda he finished the resistance. Only Sextus Pompeius was left of the Pompeian party, and he escaped for a time to begin an interesting career as a gentleman-pirate.
In this manner the amazing Cæsar conquered the world. Now it was unquestionably his. What was he to make of it? This story has been told in vain unless it has shown that the city of Rome was rotten to the core, with no sound elements left in it. Cæsar himself was a solitary prodigy; he had no supporters worthy of his confidence. Labienus had deserted him, Quintus Cicero, another of his legates in Gaul, had also fought against him. Mark Antony was perhaps his right-hand man, but Antony was nothing but a brilliant orator and a fair soldier; of character or reputation he had not a shred. Brutus, to whom Cæsar was personally devoted, had fought against him, and was—in spite of Shakespeare and republican tradition—a vain and shallow egoist. Cæsar had no brother and no legitimate son. Across in Apollonia his little great-nephew Octavius was still at school. Julius Cæsar had to reorganise a broken world alone. For a hundred years there had been no peace in Rome, and no proper government in the empire. Every year of its lingering agony, the Republic had drawn closer to the inevitable issue in Monarchy. Even Cicero, when he tried to console himself for the horrible disorders of Roman life by depicting an ideal commonwealth, had been compelled to build it round a princeps who should maintain order, and thus allow liberty to exist. In practice also the last century had seen a succession of “princes”—Gracchus, Marius, Cinna, Sulla, Pompeius—all from the necessity of the case forced into unconstitutional positions. And now Cæsar had succeeded without a rival. Sulla had resigned power, and his work had almost immediately fallen to pieces. There was now, even more than then, no chance of building up a senatorial party, and indeed Cæsar had been the lifelong victim of senatorial arrogance and folly. It was equally impossible to build up a Roman democracy out of the demoralised loungers in the forum.
Obviously monarchy was the only solution. Cæsar was fifty-five years old, spent with war and labour, and, as I have said, quite alone. He was a man without beliefs or illusions or scruples. Not a bad man: for he preferred justice and mercy to tyranny and cruelty, and he had a passion for logic and order. He was not the sort of man to make compromises. His sudden successes had taught him to despise his enemies. He was not, of course, ignorant that the Romans (if there were any true Romans left) had it in their blood to hate the title of Rex. Every Roman schoolboy was brought up to declaim in praise of regicides. But possibly in time they could be accustomed to the hideous idea. For the present, old-fashioned titles like Dictator, Consul, and Tribune would suffice. But the office must be made hereditary, and the boy Octavius was already marked for adoption and succession. The title of Rex could wait. Cæsar would feel his way gently.
But patience was not one of his virtues. Actually fortune only left him less than two years, and those broken by tedious campaigns in the Spanish provinces, for the regeneration of Roman society. In that time he restored the finances, rearranged the provincial system, abolished the political clubs which had been centres of disorder at Rome, reformed the Calendar, dedicated a new forum and new temples, restored and revised the senate, founded a system of municipal government for Italy, settled his veterans on the land, and was preparing a great expedition to chastise the Parthians.
Most of these acts were wisely done, but in one thing Cæsar miscalculated. His brilliant successes and the adulation with which he was surrounded led him to despise his enemies. He would not stoop to flatter antiquarian prejudices or to cast a decent veil over his monarchical position. You may treat people as slaves and they will admire you for it, but when you call them slaves they will begin to resent it. Cæsar failed to rise from his chair to receive the senators. In his reformed senate he included representatives of the equestrian class, provincials and even distinguished soldiers of quite humble birth. He allowed his statue to be set up beside the Seven Kings of Rome. He accepted a gilt chair, he permanently retained the triumphant general’s laurel-crown, partly because he was bald and keenly sensitive about it; and then either through his orders or by their own officiousness his friends began to throw up ballons d’essai in the direction of kingship. At the Lupercalia Antony offered him a crown of gold. It was spread abroad that an ancient Sibylline prophecy had foretold that the Parthians could only be conquered by a king and that Cæsar was to adopt the title for the purpose of his Eastern expedition. It was trifles like these, and trivial jealousies, trivial requests declined in the name of justice, that led to the great conspiracy. No doubt the influence of rhetorical patriotism had its effect upon many of the conspirators. An unknown hand wrote “O that thou wert living!” upon the statue of old Brutus the Liberator. But neither Brutus nor Cassius deserves our admiration. It was pique not patriotism that sharpened their daggers. Sixty senators conspired together, and on the eve of setting out for Parthia—the Ides of March, 44 B.C.—Julius Cæsar was slain.
And then, having slain the tyrant and liberated the republic, the patriots were helpless. A doctrinaire like Cicero might still dream of restoring the commonwealth; but the only real question was who should succeed. The people only cried for peace. It was not so much the speech of Mark Antony as the funeral of Cæsar, cleverly stage-managed by Calpurnia, and the genuine sorrow of his veterans, which gradually turned the popular feeling against the conspirators. The senate did not venture to declare Cæsar a tyrant, they confirmed his acts, but there was no proposal to punish the murderers. The whole conclusion was a feeble compromise.
The man who should have grasped the helm was Mark Antony. He was left sole consul, there was a legion and the prætorian cohort under arms only waiting the word. The conspirators had only a few gladiators in their pay. Antony had every right to arrest them. But Antony was not the man for the part. With all his talents his character was feeble. He was always dependent on his surroundings and generally under feminine influence. Once it had been the dancer Cytheris, at present it was the aggressive Fulvia; for a time Octavia almost reformed him, but Cleopatra easily ensnared him. He was a rake and a spendthrift, always in debt. He was timid of public opinion: just now the aristocratic society in which he moved was prating of tyrannicide. Antony wanted to be in the fashion. There were dramatic embracements between Antony and Brutus.
Now the testament of Cæsar, which had just been confirmed by the senate, named young Gneius Octavius as heir to three-quarters of his estate. At the end of the will was a codicil adopting him. Henceforth until he gets the title of Augustus this young Cæsar must be called Octavianus, though he never accepted that name for himself. The “second heirs” named in case the first should fail or decline to succeed included D. Brutus, one of the murderers, and Mark Antony himself. Whosoever should accept the heirship would be bound by all Roman ideas of honour to undertake the chastisement of the murderers. Antony seems to have assumed that the obscure young man would not be likely to accept the inheritance. He therefore got together all Cæsar’s papers, and began to spend Cæsar’s immense fortune as only Antony could. He began also to manipulate Cæsar’s papers, inserting anything he liked among Cæsar’s “acts,” selling honours, raising taxes, recalling exiles to please Fulvia. For some time no one ventured to complain. Leading senators like Cicero retired to the country remarking that the tyrant was dead but the tyranny still alive. Then, of course, Antony had to provide himself with a province to ensure his future safety. Moreover, the cry of the veterans for revenge began to move him to play the Cæsarian. Thus Antony was virtually master of the Roman world and the sky was dark with menace.
Into this dangerous arena steps the nineteen-year-old Octavian. His guardian advised him to have nothing to do with his perilous inheritance. Historians have often dubbed him a coward. But alone and unfriended this youth left his tutors at Apollonia and came to Rome to take up his trust. It meant, first, revenge upon the conspirators; and secondly, a quarrel with Antony. It meant, in fact, two more civil wars, and Octavian had seen nothing of warfare. He set to work coolly and warily. There was still a magic in the name of Cæsar, and the veterans rallied to him and besought him to march against Brutus and Cassius. Part of his duties as executor was to pay a million sterling in donations to the Roman people. He sold his property and began to distribute the largess, man by man, tribe by tribe, until the sum was paid. He gave magnificent games in his “father’s” honour, with the lucky star of Julius publicly exhibited. He bought an army of 10,000 men with borrowed money. Two of Antony’s legions deserted to him bodily, and the very veterans of Antony’s bodyguard offered to murder their general if young Cæsar would give the signal.