The open rupture between Cæsar on the one side and Pompey and the Senate on the other came in the year 49 B.C. Cæsar had been promised the consulship for the year 48 B.C., but fear of the powerful position in which Cæsar would be placed if put in possession of the highest civil office of the state, while still holding his influence over his veteran army, together with distrust of Cæsar's motives and ambitions, caused great opposition to this plan to develop at Rome.
Cæsar, however, had his active partisans at Rome, among the most energetic being the tribunes Gaius Curio, Mark Antony, and Gaius Cassius. The former of these, a man of dissolute character and great abilities as a politician, proposed to the Senate a resolution calling upon both Cæsar and Pompey to resign their provinces.
Upon the passage of this resolution by the Senate, by a vote of three hundred to seventy, Pompey began to raise troops without the proper legal authority, and Cæsar refused to surrender his province, or to appear before the Senate without the protection of his army. Cæsar, however, sent to the Senate an offer to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul and to reduce the size of his army from ten legions to two, if the Senate would agree that he should retain the government of Cisalpine Gaul and the two remaining legions until after the consular election of 48 B.C. This offer was rejected by the Senate, who then adopted a motion ordering Cæsar to disband his army and resign his province within a fixed time under penalty of being declared guilty of high treason. This measure was vetoed by the tribunes, who, however, abandoned their posts and fled to Cæsar's camp upon Pompey bringing two legions of his soldiers into Rome.
Cæsar, relying upon the support of his veteran army and of the Transalpian Gauls, to whom, on his own authority and without any color of legal right, he had granted the full civic rights of Roman citizens, now decided on a resort to force.
The war was begun by Cæsar crossing the Rubicon. Pompey and his friends fled to Greece, where the war was largely fought out. The really decisive battle of the war was that of Pharsalus, fought on August 4, 48 B.C. The result of this encounter was the complete overthrow of Pompey, who fled to Egypt, where he was murdered by those who hoped in this manner to earn the gratitude of Cæsar. Pompey's followers in Africa and Spain were soon afterwards put down. The last battle of the war, on March 17, 45 B.C., was that of Munda, where the army of Pompey's son was defeated and thirty thousand of his soldiers killed.
Cæsar entered Rome, to receive his last triumph in September, 45 B.C. The Roman republic was now overthrown; and the mere puerile expedient of giving a new name to the monarch, in place of the hated name of king, did not in any degree alter the truth of the matter. The new title of imperator, or emperor, in fact, soon came to be used to designate a ruler of a higher rank, and possessed of a greater degree of arbitrary power, than that of the monarch who ruled under the name of rex or king. The forms of government of the republic were still retained; but the officers who were once the chosen representatives of a free people were now only the ministerial officers through whom a despot administered the affairs of his empire. Greatest degradation of all, the tribunes, once the embodiment of the rights of manhood, now became the especial tools of tyranical control.
Few people are unaffected by the glamour of success. It is this criterion alone which, as Thomas Moore writes, generally marks the distinction between the patriot and the traitor.
"Rebellion! foul, dishonoring word, Whose wrongful blight so oft has stained The holiest cause that tongue or sword Of mortal ever lost or gained. How many a spirit, born to bless, Hath sunk beneath that withering name, Whom but a day's, an hour's success Had wafted to eternal fame! As exhalations, when they burst From the warm earth, if chilled at first, If checked in soaring from the plain, Darken to fogs and sink again;— But if they once triumphant spread Their wings above the mountain-head, Become enthroned in upper air,
And turn to sun-bright glories there!"
This success, so necessary to earn for the patriot or reformer the fame to which he is so justly entitled, is too often able to win admiration and respect also for the successful enemies of mankind.
Few members of the human race ever deserved less praise from posterity (unless indeed, as a tribute to great but misdirected abilities) than Julius Cæsar; but, nevertheless, many tributes have been laid before the tomb of this destroyer of his country's liberties. For example, the historian Mommsen, thus eulogizes Cæsar: