The hostile attitude of the last of the Pompeians in Spain was not the only exception to the tranquillity which prevailed generally throughout the empire. In Gaul the Bellovaci had risen in arms; but this movement was expeditiously repressed by Decimus Brutus, the proconsul of the newly conquered province. In the extreme East, however, the republican party still continued to make head, under the leadership of Cæcilius Bassus. Their champion was an obscure knight, and their forces were insignificant, consisting principally of two legions which Bassus had seduced from their allegiance to Sextus Cæsar, the commander to whose care Syria had been entrusted by his kinsman. But the proximity of the Parthians, ever on the watch for an opportunity to wound the sides of their great rivals, rendered any movement in this quarter formidable. Sextus Cæsar was murdered by his soldiers, and Bassus took possession of the city of Apamea, which, with the assistance of the national enemies, he continued to keep against the petty attempts which were made to dislodge him. The dictator kept his eye upon him, and already meditated his destruction; but for the present he was content to leave his temerity unpunished, while he applied himself to the consolidation of his power by bold and comprehensive legislation at home.[b]
THE LAST TRIUMPH
[45 B.C.]
On the 13th of September, 45, the dictator appeared once more at the gates of Rome, but he did not triumph till the commencement of October. His victory was represented as gained over the Iberians; the miserable outcasts whom Cneius had banded together were all confounded together under the common title of strangers and enemies. Two of the dictator’s lieutenants, Fabius, and Pedius who was also his kinsman, were allowed the honour of separate triumphs. These ceremonies were followed as usual with games and festivals, which kept the populace in a fever of delight and admiration. They had complained that among the numerous spectacles offered to their view each citizen could witness only a portion, while to the foreigners who flocked to this great feast of nations, the dramatic entertainments had been unintelligible. The games were now multiplied in various quarters of the city, while plays were represented in different languages for the benefit of every people. The subjects of the empire had entered Rome as conquerors in Cæsar’s train, and thus he inaugurated the union of the capital with the provinces. Kings and commonwealths sent their ambassadors to this mighty congress of nations. Among them were the Moors and the Numidians, the Gauls and the Iberians, the Britons and the Armenians, the Germans and the Syrians. The Jews, insulted by Pompey and rifled by Crassus, offered their willing homage to the champion who alone of all the Romans had spoken to them in the language of kindliness and respect. Cleopatra the queen of Egypt came, her crown in her hand, offering her treasures and her favours to her admirer and preserver. All in turn had trembled at the official caprices of the Roman knights, and Cæsar could afford them perhaps no sweeter revenge, nor represent to them more vividly the extent of his power, than in degrading before their faces these petty tyrants of the provinces. He compelled one of them, named Laberius, who was also a dramatic composer, to enact one of his own comic pieces, that is, to dance and sing upon the stage before the concourse of citizens and strangers. “Alas!” said the wretched man in his prologue, “after sixty years of honour I have left my house a knight, to return to it a mime. I have lived one day too long.” Cæsar restored to him the golden ring of knighthood, forfeited by this base but compulsory compliance. He presented him also with a large sum of money, to show perhaps more completely the prostration of his order.
Such trifling persecutions, whether personal or political in their objects, are undoubtedly pitiable enough. But it is Cæsar’s glory that his arm fell heavily upon none of his fellow-citizens. The nephew of Marius forgot the banishment of his uncle, the ruins of Carthage, and the marshes of Minturnæ; the avenger of the Sullan revolution scorned to retaliate the proscriptions; the advocate of Cethegus and Lentulus refrained from demanding blood for blood. It is worth remarking that Cicero, the most humane perhaps of his own party, the most moderate in sentiments, the fairest estimater of men and measures, could hardly persuade himself of the possibility of Cæsar abstaining from massacre. Such was the wise man’s reading of the history of his countrymen; and when at last he found that the conqueror meditated no such use of his victory, his heart, we fear, still remained untouched, and he never, perhaps, renounced the secret hope that Cæsar’s opponents would prove less merciful than himself.
Nor was the conqueror’s clemency confined to sparing the lives of his opponents. He refrained from confiscation which had been wont to accompany the edicts of his predecessors. The wealth indeed which was poured into Rome from the tribute of so many new subjects, and the plunder of so many temples, rendered it more easy to practise this unusual liberality. It was ungenerous perhaps to make the estates of his great rival the chief exception to this rule of moderation. But Cæsar intended to brand as rebels to constituted authority the men who renewed the strife after Thapsus, and this confiscation was meant, not as an insult to the dead, but as a punishment of the living opponent. The name of the Great Pompey had already passed into the shrine of history, and the victor was proud of closing the fasti of the republic with so illustrious a title. Far from approving the precipitation of his flatterers in removing the statues of Pompey and Sulla, he caused them to be restored to their places in front of the rostra, among the effigies of the noblest champions of the free state. Towards the institutions of the commonwealth he evinced a similar spirit of deference. He sought no new forms under which to develop his new policy. Sulla had attempted to revive the aristocratic spirit of the ancient constitution by overthrowing the existing framework of the laws; but the popular dictator, in laying the foundation of a more extensive revolution, studied to preserve it intact. While making himself an autocrat in every essential exercise of power, he maintained, at least in outward seeming, all the institutions most opposed to autocracy, the senate, the comitia, and the magistracies. But he had long before said that the republic was no more than a shadow, and these very institutions had long been merely the instruments by which tyrants had worked out the ends of their selfish ambition.
Cæsar now was fully aware that he could sway the Roman world unchecked by the interference of a senate, two-thirds of which perhaps were nominees of his own. Under the sanction of an organic law he had raised the number of the assembly to nine hundred, thus degrading the honour by making it cheap; and he still more degraded it in the eyes of the proudest of the citizens by pouring into it his allies from the provinces, his soldiers, and even, if we may believe their bitter sarcasms, the captives who had just followed his car of triumph. The Romans exercised their wits on these upstart strangers losing themselves amidst the forests of columns which thronged the public places, and placards were posted recommending no good citizen to guide them to the senate house. This servile council, with less respect for appearances than its chief, would have given him the right of nominating to all curule and plebeian offices, to the entire abrogation of the electoral prerogatives of the people. But Cæsar declined to destroy the last shadow of liberty, assured that no man would venture to sue for a magistracy without his consent. He contented himself with recommending certain candidates to the suffrages of the people, and these recommendations were equivalent to commands. Moreover the senate had imposed upon the elected the obligation to swear before entering on their office, that they would undertake nothing against the acts of the dictator, for every act of his was invested with the force of law. The consuls, prætors, and other officers thus continued to exercise their ordinary functions under the dictator’s superintendence; the prætors were increased in number, while the consuls, though never exceeding two at the same time, were rapidly supplanted, sometimes month by month, by fresh aspirants whom it was expedient to gratify. As the avowed champion of the people Cæsar retained the appropriate distinction of the tribunitian power, which also rendered his person inviolable;[124] while both the senators and the knights offered to surround him with a guard of honour of their own members to secure this inviolability by a stronger instrument than the law. To the reality of power he added its outward signs. In the senate, the theatre, the circus, and the hall of justice he might seat himself on his golden chair in a robe of regal magnificence, while his effigy was impressed upon the public coinage.[125] Apart from the title of king there is no outward symbol of royalty more appropriate than that of the hereditary transmission of offices and distinctions. The imperium, or military supremacy, which had been granted to Cæsar for his life, was rendered transmissible to his children, and with it the august distinction of the sovereign pontificate.
In fine, the dictatorship for life and the consulship for five years, with the right of drawing at pleasure upon the public treasury, secured to Cæsar the executive power of the state; the imperium gave him the command of its forces; the tribunate invested him with a veto upon its legislation. As prince, or first man of the senate, he guided the debates of that assembly; as controller of manners even its personal composition depended upon his will. As chief pontiff he interpreted the religion of the state, and made omens and auguries declare themselves at his bidding. Thus the finances, the army, the religious system, the executive with a portion of the judicial power, and indirectly almost the whole functions of the legislature were combined in the hands of the autocrat of the Roman commonwealth. Nevertheless he had assumed no title inconsistent with the principles of the republic, and the precedents of constitutional history.