In our European States, men have wide and extensive spheres in which they can act and move. The much-decried system of centralization has indeed many disadvantages; but it has this advantage for the ruler, that he can exert an activity which shows its influence far and wide. But what could Cæsar do, in the centre of nearly the whole of the known world? He could not hope to effect any material improvements either in Italy or in the provinces. He had been accustomed from his youth, and more especially during the last fifteen years, to an enormous activity, and idleness was intolerable to him. At the close of the civil war he would have had little or nothing to do unless he had turned his attention to some foreign enterprise. He was obliged to venture upon something that would occupy his whole soul, for he could not rest. His thoughts were therefore again directed to war, and that in a quarter where the most brilliant triumphs awaited him, where the bones of the legions of Crassus lay unavenged—to a war against the Parthians. About this time the Getae also had spread in Thrace, and he intended to check their progress likewise. But his main problem was to destroy the Parthian empire and to extend the Roman dominion as far as India, a plan in which he would certainly have been successful; and he himself felt so sure of this that he was already thinking of what he should undertake afterward.
It is by no means incredible that, as we are told, he intended on his return to march through the passes of the Caucasus, and through ancient Scythia into the country of the Getae, and thence through Germany and Gaul into Italy. Besides this expedition, he entertained other plans of no less gigantic dimensions. The port of Ostia was bad, and in reality little better than a mere roadstead, so that great ships could not come up the river. Accordingly it is said that Cæsar intended to dig a canal for sea-ships, from the Tiber, above or below Rome, through the Pomptine marshes as far as Terracina. He further contemplated to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth. It is not easy to see in what manner he would have accomplished this, considering the state of hydraulic architecture in those times. The Roman canals were mere fossæ, and canals with sluices, though not unknown to the Romans, were not constructed by them.[[77]]
[!-- Note Anchor 77 --][Footnote 77: The first canals with sluices were executed by the Dutch in the fifteenth century.]
The fact of Cæsar forming such enormous plans is not very surprising; but we can scarcely comprehend how it was possible for him to accomplish so much of what he undertook in the short time of five months preceding his death. Following the unfortunate system of Sulla, Cæsar founded throughout Italy a number of colonies of veterans. The old Sullanian colonists were treated with great severity, and many of them and their children were expelled from their lands, and were thus punished for the cruelty which they or their fathers had committed against the inhabitants of the municipia. In like manner colonies were established in Southern Gaul, Italy, Africa, and other parts; I may mention in particular the colonies founded at Carthage and Corinth. The latter, however, was a colonia libertinorum, and never rose to any importance. We do not know the details of its foundation, but one would imagine that Cæsar would have preferred restoring the place as a purely Greek town. This, however, he did not do. Its population was and remained a mixed one, and Corinth never rose to a state of real prosperity.
Cæsar made various new arrangements in the State, and among others he restored the full franchise, or the jus honorum, to the sons of those who had been proscribed in the time of Sulla. He had obtained for himself the title of imperator and the dictatorship for life and the consulship for ten years. Half of the offices of the republic to which persons had before been elected by the centuries were in his gift, and for the other half he usually recommended candidates; so that the elections were merely nominal.
The tribes seem to have retained their rights of election uncurtailed, and the last tribunes must have been elected by the people. But although Cæsar did not himself confer the consulship, yet the whole republic was reduced to a mere form and appearance. Cæsar made various new laws and regulations; for example, to lighten the burdens of debtors and the like; but the changes he introduced in the form of the constitution were of little importance. He increased the number of prætors, which Sulla had raised to eight, successively to ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, and the number of quaestors was increased to forty. Hence the number of persons from whom the senate was to be filled up became greater than that of the vacancies, and Cæsar accordingly increased the number of senators, though it is uncertain what number he fixed upon, and raised a great many of his friends to the dignity of senators. In this, as in many other cases, he acted very arbitrarily; for he elected into the senate whomsoever he pleased, and conferred the franchise in a manner equally arbitrary. These things did not fail to create much discontent. It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding his mode of filling up the senate, not even the majority of senators were attached to his cause after his death.
If we consider the changes and regulations which Cæsar introduced, it must strike us as a singular circumstance that among all his measures there is no trace of any indicating that he thought of modifying the constitution for the purpose of putting an end to the anarchy, for all his changes are in reality not essential or of great importance. Sulla felt the necessity of remodelling the constitution, but he did not attain his end; and the manner, too, in which he set about it was that of a short-sighted man; but he was at least intelligent enough to see that the constitution as it then was could not continue to exist. In the regulations of Cæsar we see no trace of such a conviction; and I think that he despaired of the possibility of effecting any real good by constitutional reforms. Hence, among all his laws there is not one that had any relation to the constitution. The fact of his increasing the number of patrician families had no reference to the constitution; so far in fact were the patricians from having any advantages over the plebeians that the office of the two oediles Cereales, which Cæsar instituted, was confined to the plebeians—a regulation which was opposed to the very nature of the patriciate.
His raising persons to the rank of patricians was neither more nor less than the modern practice of raising a family to the rank of nobility; he picked out an individual and gave him the rank of patrician for himself and his descendants, but did not elevate a whole gens. The distinction itself was merely a nominal one and conferred no privilege upon a person except that of holding certain priestly offices, which could be filled by none but patricians, and for which their number was scarcely sufficient. If Cæsar had died quietly the republic would have been in the same, nay, in a much worse, state of dissolution than if he had not existed at all. I consider it a proof of the wisdom and good sense of Cæsar that he did not, like Sulla, think an improvement in the state of public affairs so near at hand or a matter of so little difficulty. The cure of the disease lay yet at a very great distance, and the first condition on which it could be undertaken was the sovereignty of Cæsar, a condition which would have been quite unbearable even to many of his followers, who as rebels did not scruple to go along with him. But Rome could no longer exist as a republic.
It is curious to see in Cicero's work, de Republica, the consciousness running through it that Rome, as it then stood, required the strong hand of a king. Cicero had surely often owned this to himself; but he saw no one who would have entered into such an idea. The title of king had a great fascination for Cæsar, as it had for Cromwell—a surprising phenomenon in a practical mind like that of Cæsar. Everyone knows the fact that while Cæsar was sitting on the suggestum, during the celebration of the Lupercalia, Antony presented to him the diadem, to try how the people would take it. Cæsar saw the great alarm which the act created and declined the diadem for the sake of appearance; but had the people been silent, Cæsar would unquestionably have accepted it. His refusal was accompanied by loud shouts of acclamation, which for the present rendered all further attempts impossible. Antony then had a statue of Cæsar adorned with the diadem; but two tribunes of the people, L. Caesetius Flavus and Epidius Marullus, took it away: and here Cæsar showed the real state of his feelings, for he treated the conduct of the tribunes as a personal insult toward himself. He had lost his self-possession and his fate carried him irresistibly onward. He wished to have the tribunes imprisoned, but was prevailed upon to be satisfied with their being stripped of their office and sent into exile.
This created a great sensation at Rome. Cæsar had also been guilty of an act of thoughtlessness, or perhaps merely of distraction, as might happen very easily to a man in his circumstances. When the senate had made its last decrees, conferring upon Cæsar unlimited powers, the senators, consuls, and prætors, or the whole senate, in festal attire, presented the decrees to him, and Cæsar at the moment forgot to show his respect for the senators; he did not rise from his sella curulis, but received the decrees in an unceremonious manner. This want of politeness was never forgiven by the persons who had not scrupled to make him their master; for it had been expected that he would at least behave politely and be grateful for such decrees.[[78]] Cæsar himself had no design in the act, which was merely the consequence of distraction or thoughtlessness; but it made the senate his irreconcilable enemies. The affair with the tribunes, moreover, had made a deep impression upon the people. We must, however, remember that the people under such circumstances are most sensible to anything affecting their honor, as we have seen at the beginning of the French Revolution.