Cæsar settled the affairs of Africa with his usual despatch, and sailed from Utica on the fourteenth day of April, 46 B.C. On his way to Italy, he stopped at Caralis, in Sardinia. The aid which the island had afforded to his adversaries furnished him with a decent pretext for extorting from the inhabitants large sums of money. At the end of the same month he again weighed anchor; but the prevalence of easterly winds drove him repeatedly to shore, and he at last reached Rome on the twenty-eighth day after his departure from the Sardinian capital. The reports he received at this time of the revival of the republican cause in Spain did not give him much uneasiness. Cneius had been detained by sickness in the Baleares, and the fugitives from the field of Thapsus had been almost all cut off in their attempts to reach the point to which their last hopes were directed. The legionaries who had mutinied against Cassius Longinus were still either unsatisfied with their treatment under the commander who had superseded him, or fearful of their general’s vengeance when a fitting opportunity should arrive. It was from Cæsar’s own soldiers that the invitation had gone forth to the republican chiefs to renew the struggle on the soil of Spain. The spirit of the old commonwealth still survived in many of the towns of Bætica; promises of support were freely given; but the remnant of the African armament was contemptible both in numbers and ability. Of all the haughty nobles who had thronged the tent of Pompey at Luceria or Thessalonica, not one with a name known to history remained in arms, except Labienus alone. He indeed had succeeded in making his escape from Africa, in company with Varus; but the insurgents had already placed themselves under the command of Scapula and Aponius, officers of their own, nor would they suffer themselves to be transferred from them to any other except the son of the great Pompey. The extent to which the flame of insurrection had spread was probably unknown at this time to Cæsar. He was impatient to reap at last the fruit of so much bloodshed, to assume the post of honour he had won, and to work out the principles and objects of so many years of anticipation. A distant and contemptible outbreak might be subdued without meeting it in person. Accordingly, C. Didius, an officer of no eminent reputation, was sent with a naval and military force to the succour of Trebonius, whom, however, he found already expelled from his government by the growing force of the new movement.
Meanwhile Rome had sunk, during the conqueror’s absence, into a state of torpid tranquillity. The universal conviction that the dictator’s power was irresistible had quelled all further heavings of the spirit of discontent. Dolabella had been gratified with a command in the late campaign; while others, in whose fidelity and military skill he could rely, had been left behind to overawe disaffection. The most illustrious of the nobility having now no occasion to remain at Rome for the sake of paying court to a jealous ruler, had retired generally to their country seats; but Cicero seems to have feared giving occasion for distrust if he withdrew himself from the broad eye of public observation. He occupied himself, however, in his philosophical studies, and could rejoice that he had never, like so many of his contemporaries when plunging into the excitements of political life, abandoned the literary pursuits common to them in youth. While he still regarded the contest in Africa with the sentiments of a true republican, he confessed with a sigh that though the one cause was assuredly the more just, yet the victory of either would be equally disastrous. He probably held aloof from the proceedings of the servile senate, which occupied itself during the months of Cæsar’s absence in devising new honours for his acceptance. First of all it decreed the religious ceremony of a thanksgiving of forty days, being twice the term to which the compliance of popular gratitude had ever previously extended, and it was by the length of the observance that the honour was estimated. Next it appointed that the victor’s triumphal car should be drawn by horses of white, the sacred colour, and that the number of his attendant lictors should be doubled. He was to be requested to undertake the office of censor for three years, under a new title, which should not remind the citizens too closely of the times of republican liberty, that of præfectus morum, or regulator of manners. The changes which the revolutionary storm had effected in the condition of so many of the citizens justified a resort to the old constitutional resource for purging the senate of scandalous or impoverished members, and infusing new blood into its veins.
The most substantial of all these tributes to Cæsar’s ascendency was the decree by which he was appointed dictator for a period of ten years; for thus the initiative of legal measures was united in his hands with the command of the legions both at home and abroad. Other specious honours, in the taste of the times, were accumulated upon him. His chair was to be placed between those of the consuls in the assembly of the senate; he was to preside and give the signal in the games of the circus; and his figure in ivory was to be borne in procession among the images of the gods, and laid up in the Capitol, opposite the seat of Jupiter himself. A statue was to be erected to him in bronze, standing upon a globe, with the inscription, “Cæsar the demi-god.” His name was to be engraved on the entablature of the Capitol, in the place of that of Catulus, its true restorer. The historian who recounts these honours assures us that many others besides these were offered; he has only omitted to specify them because Cæsar did not think fit to accept them. It is difficult to imagine to what lower depth of obsequiousness the senate could have descended, or what higher dignities the conqueror would have rejected.
CÆSAR’S TRIUMPHS
The time had now arrived for the celebration of the Gallic triumph, which had been so long postponed. In the interval, the imperator’s victories had been multiplied, and the ranks of his veterans had been recruited by fresh enlistments; so that every soldier who had shared in his later perils and successes demanded the reward of participating in his honours. Cæsar claimed not one, but four triumphs: the first, for his conquest of the Gauls; the second for his defeat of Ptolemy; another, for his victory over Pharnaces; and the last, for the overthrow of Juba. But he carefully avoided all reference to what were in reality the most brilliant of his achievements. In Spain and Thessaly he had routed the disciplined legions of his own countrymen; but their defeat brought no accession of honour or territory to the republic. The glory it reflected on the victor was dubious and barren. The four triumphs were celebrated, with intervals of a few days between each, that the interests of the public might not pall with satiety. The first procession formed in the Campus Martius, outside the walls of the city. It defiled through the triumphal gate at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, and crossed the deep hollow of the Velabrum and Forum Boarium, on its way to the Circus Maximus, which occupied the valley between the Palatine and Aventine. In passing through the Velabrum, the chariot in which the imperator stood, happened to break down; a mischance which so affected him that he never afterwards, it is said, ascended a vehicle without repeating a charm.
The long procession wound round the base of the Palatine, skirting the Aventine and Cælian hills, to the point where the arch of Constantine now stands. There it began the ascent of the gentle slope which separates the basin of the Colosseum from that of the Roman Forum. It followed the same track which now leads under the arch of Titus, paved at this day with solid masses of hewn stone, which may possibly have re-echoed to the tramp of Cæsar’s legions. Inclining a little to the right at the point where it gained the summit of the ridge and looked down upon the comitium and rostra, in the direction of the Capitol, it passed before the spot where the temple of Julius was afterwards built; thence it skirted the right side of the Forum, under the arch of Fabius, till it reached a point just beyond the existing arch of Severus, where the two roads branched off, the one to the Capitoline temple, the other to the Mamertine prison. Here it was that Cæsar took the route of triumph to the left, while Vercingetorix was led away to the right, and strangled in the subterranean dungeon. The Gallic hero doubtless met with firmness and dignity the fate to which he had so long been doomed, while his conqueror was exhibiting a melancholy spectacle of human infirmity, crawling up the steps of the Capitol on his knees, to avert, by an act of childish humiliation, the wrath of the avenging Nemesis. The next instance of similar degradation recorded is that of the emperor Claudius, who being corpulent and clumsy performed the ungraceful feat with the support of an arm on either side. The practice was probably of no unusual occurrence, and was deeply rooted, we may believe, in ancient and popular prejudices. A remnant of it still exists, and may be witnessed by the curious, even at the present day, on the steps of the Ara Cœli and at the Santa Scala of the Lateran.
A Sacrificator
The days of triumph which succeeded passed over with uninterrupted good fortune. The populace were gratified with the sight of the Egyptian princess Arsinoe led as a captive at the conqueror’s wheels; but she was spared the fate of the Gallic chieftain out of favour to her sister, or perhaps out of pity to her sex. The son of the king of Numidia who followed the triumphal car was also spared, and lived to receive back his father’s crown from Augustus. Though Cæsar abstained from claiming the title of a triumph over his countrymen, he did not scruple to parade their effigies among the shows of the procession. The figures or pictures of the vanquished chiefs were carried on litters, and represented the manner of their deaths. Scipio was seen leaping desperately into the sea; Cato plunging the sword into his own bowels; Juba and Petreius engaged in mortal duel; Lentulus stabbed by the Egyptian assassin; Domitius pierced perhaps in the back, in token of his flight. The figure of Pompey alone was withheld for fear of the commiseration it might excite among the people whose favourite he had so lately been. Nor, as it was, were the spectators unmoved. Upon the unfeeling display of Roman defeat and disaster they reflected with becoming sensibility. But the pictures of Achillas and Pothinus were received with unmingled acclamations, and loud was the cry of scorn at the exhibition of Pharnaces flying in confusion from the field. After all, the most impressive part of the ceremony must have been the appearance of the rude veterans whose long files closed the procession. With what ignorant wonder must the children of Gaul and Iberia, of Epirus and Africa, have gazed at the splendour of the city, of which the fame resounded in their native cabins! What contempt must they have felt for the unarmed multitudes grinning around them! How reckless must they have been of the dignity of the consuls and senators, they who claimed the license of shouting derisive songs in the ears of their own commander! Little did they think that grave historians would sum up their coarse camp jokes in evidence against the fame of their illustrious leader; still less did they dream of the new power which the military class was thenceforth to constitute in the state. Rome in fact was their own; but it was a secret they were not yet to discover.
The satisfaction of his armed supporters, however, was the first condition on which the supreme power of the dictator must henceforth be maintained in the city. It was a matter, indeed, of hardly less importance to secure the good humour of the urban population. While the soldiers receive each a donative of twenty thousand sesterces, the claims of the much larger multitude of the free citizens were not undervalued severally at four hundred; especially as they received the additional gratification of one year’s remission of house rent. It does not appear how this indulgence differed from that for which Cælius and Dolabella had raised their commotions; but the dictator had so strenuously resisted every attempt to set aside the just claims of creditors on all previous occasions, that it can hardly be doubted that in this case he gave the landlords compensation from the public treasury. The mass of the citizens was feasted at a magnificent banquet, at which the Chian and Falernian wines, the choicest produce of Greece and Italy, flowed freely from the hogshead, and towards which six thousand lampreys, the most exquisite delicacy of the Roman epicure, were furnished by a single breeder. The mighty multitude reclined before twenty-two thousand tables; each table having its three couches, and each couch, we may suppose, its three guests; so that the whole number feasted may have amounted to nearly two hundred thousand. When Cæsar undertook the functions of his censorship, the number of recipients of the public distributions of corn was estimated at 320,000. Upon a scrutiny into their claims as genuine and resident citizens, he was enabled to strike off as many as 150,000 from this list. Adding to the remainder the senators and knights, and the few wealthy individuals who might have scorned to partake of a state provision, the sum will correspond pretty accurately with the number of the imperial guests as above computed.