The great abuse of slave labour was difficult to correct. It was attempted to apply remedies familiar to despotic governments. An ordinance was issued that no citizens between twenty and forty years of age should be absent from Italy for more than three years. An ancient enactment was revived that on all estates at least one-third of the labourers should be free men. No doubt these measures were of little effect.[d]
Viewing the dominions over which he presided as a whole, endowed, or speedily to be endowed with a general equality of rights, and Rome herself no longer as an isolated municipium and a mistress-city, but the centre and capital of the Roman world, he proceeded to lay the groundwork of a comprehensive scheme of universal legislation. His first care was to develop the material unity of the vast regions before him, by an elaborate survey of their local features. A commission of geographers and mathematicians was appointed, as we have just said, to construct the map of the Roman Empire, a work so novel and so full of detail, as to require the labour, as it afterwards proved, of no less than thirty-two years. Another effort, not less gigantic, was required to impress a moral unity upon this vast machine. Cæsar prepared to collect and combine in a single code the fragments of Roman law, dispersed in thousands of precedents, the edicts of the prætors, the replies of the learned, the decisions of pontiffs, and the traditions of patrician houses. Such a mighty work had already been contemplated by Cicero, as the hopeless vision of the philanthropist and philosopher; but Cæsar’s practical sagacity saw that it not only ought to be done, but could be done, and doubtless had he but lived ten or twenty years longer, he would have anticipated by six centuries the glory of the imperial legislator Justinian.
Another work of equal utility but fortunately of much smaller compass was the reformation of the calendar, and this it was given to the great Julius to effect, and to call after his own name. The Roman year, even before the time of Cæsar, ought to have equalled on the average 365 days and six hours; so near had the astronomers of the period of Numa already arrived to the real length of the earth’s revolution round the sun. This year had been calculated on a basis of 354 days, with the intercalation every second year of a month of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately; but another day had been added to the 354 to make an odd or fortunate number, and to compensate for this superfluous insertion the number of intercalations was proportionally diminished by a very intricate process. The simplicity of the original arrangement being thus violated, great carelessness had soon prevailed in making the requisite corrections. In course of time the pontiffs, to whose superior skill the guardianship of the calendar had been entrusted, had shrouded their science in a veil of religious mystery, and turned it to political or private ends. They commanded the intercalation of a month arbitrarily, when it suited them to favour a partisan who desired the extension of his year of office, or the postponement of the day on which his debts should become due. They abstained from the requisite insertion at the instance of some provincial governor, who was anxious to hasten his return to the enjoyments of the capital. This control over the length of the civil year, as well as the power of proclaiming the days on which business might or might not be transacted, had become an engine of state in the hands of the oligarchical government, with which the pontiffs were for the most part politically connected. The grievance had lately become intolerable. In the distracted state of public affairs and amidst conflicting personal interests, the pontiffs had abstained from intercalating since the year 52, and had even then left the civil calendar some weeks in advance of the real time. Since then each year had reckoned only 355 days, and the civil equinox had got eighty days in advance of the astronomical. The consuls accordingly, who entered on their office the 1st of January, 47, really commenced their functions on the 13th of October. The confusion hence resulting may be easily imagined. The Roman seasons were marked by appropriate festivals assigned to certain fixed days, and associated with the religious worship of the people. At the period of harvest and of vintage, for instance, seasonable offerings were to be made, which it was no longer possible to offer on the days specifically assigned for them. The husbandman rejected the use of the calendar altogether, and depended on his own rude observations of the rising and setting of the constellations.
Cæsar had acquired a competent knowledge of astronomy, in which his duties as chief of the pontiffs gave him a particular interest. He composed himself a treatise on the subject, which had long retained its value as a technical exposition. With the help of the astronomer Sosigenes, he recurred again to the simple calculations of Numa, and was content to disregard the discrepancy, which he conceived perhaps with Hipparchus to be more trifling than it really is, between the length thus assigned to the year and the true period of the earth’s revolution. In the course of centuries this error has grown into importance, and in the year A.D. 1582, when the Julian calendar was corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, the civil year had got forward no less than ten days. The requisite correction was not made, as is well known, in England till the middle of the eighteenth century. The basis of Cæsar’s reform was that the commencement of the new era should coincide with the first new moon after the shortest day. In order to make the year 46 thus begin, ninety days required to be added to the current year. In the first place an intercalary month of twenty-three days was inserted between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of February, and at the end of November two new months were added comprehending sixty days, together with a supplemental addition of seven more. The period which was marked by this series of alterations received vulgarly the appellation of “the year of confusion”; but “the last year of confusion,” it has been justly remarked, would be its more appropriate title.
Besides these noble efforts of social organisation, Cæsar, like almost every other great man of his nation, had an intense passion for material construction. He had already distinguished himself by the Forum, which he called by his own name in the heart of the city; a work which was loudly demanded on account of the inconvenient narrowness of the spot on which the public business of the republic had been transacted from the period of its infancy. But among the honours now showered upon him was one which had been granted only once or twice before to conquerors who had furthest enlarged the limits of the empire, and which, it has been remarked, was alone wanting to complete the “good fortune” of Sulla. This was the permission to extend the pomœrium, the space left open about the walls of the city, partly within and partly without them, originally perhaps for the convenience of defence; but which was consecrated by solemn ceremonies, and traversed by religious processions. Cæsar proposed, it is said, to remove this line, and with it probably the walls themselves, so as to embrace the Campus Martius, which he would have enlarged by turning the Tiber westward with a bold sweep from the Milvian to the Vatican bridge. This grand project was never destined to be accomplished, and though in later times the emperor Augustus and others were allowed to extend the pomœrium, the walls of Rome were not removed beyond the lines traced by Servius till the time of Aurelian, three centuries after Cæsar. Nor was the dictator more fortunate in completing the many other works of public interest and utility which he was already meditating. He planned, it is said, the emptying of the lake Fucinus, the draining of the Pomptine marshes, the construction of a canal from Rome to Tarracina, of a new road across the Apennines, and of a magnificent harbour at Ostia, the erection of a superb temple to Mars, and the cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth. Of all these designs the temple and the harbour were alone accomplished by his successor; it is probable that Cæsar himself had commenced them. [Under his patronage the first public library was opened at Rome, and for the transaction of public business he erected the magnificent building called the Basilica Julia.]
CÆSAR’S LIFE IN ROME
Such were the subjects of meditation which engrossed Cæsar’s mind during the days and nights he devoted to public affairs. But he had also his hours of recreation, and he shone in private life among the most cultivated men of his time, the most refined in habits, the most fascinating in manners.
There is no feature of Roman life perhaps which we can regard with so much satisfaction as the tone of habitual intercourse among public men at this period. The daily conflicts at the bar or in the Forum to which they were trained, would have only embittered their feelings towards one another, had they not been accompanied by the humanising influence of social discussion on topics of literature and philosophy. The combination of these two habits seems indeed to form the best discipline of society, imparting to it earnestness without violence, and a masculine courtesy far removed from servility and adulation. The records of Roman debate present us with hardly a single scene of personal altercation, while the private reunions of the most eminent statesmen are described to us as full of modest dignity and kindly forbearance. To this pleasing result every school of philosophy contributed; but none of them perhaps studied so well as the Epicurean the science of making society agreeable. To this school both Cæsar himself and most of his personal friends professed their adherence. The circle of his intimates comprised: Cornelius Balbus, an acute man of business; Asinius Pollio, a devoted student; A. Hirtius, who like his master both fought, wrote, and talked well; C. Oppius, full of gentleness and affection; C. Matius, thoughtful, generous, and disinterested. To these may be added Vibius Pansa, a lounger and a good liver, yet neither incapable of office, nor inexperienced in action. Antony, the gayest of boon companions, has already been mentioned; but under the garb of good fellowship, he hardly concealed the most intense selfishness, and of all Cæsar’s friends he alone stands open to the suspicion of intriguing against the life of his patron. Among these men and others of similar stamp Cæsar unbent from the cares of empire, and often abandoned himself without restraint to the enjoyments of festive mirth. With little wit of his own he was amused by the witticisms of others, even when directed against himself, and treasured up every caustic remark which fell from the lips of Cicero, whose patriotism, relieved from the fear of impending proscription, now exhaled itself in malicious pleasantries against the policy of the dictator. At table indeed, surrounded by companions addicted to the grossest self-indulgence, Cæsar was distinguished for his moderation. Cato had said of him long before, that of all the revolutionists of the day he alone had come sober to the task of destruction. But his amours were numerous, and their character peculiarly scandalous; for his countrymen still professed to regard the corruption of a Roman matron as a public wrong, while his attachment to a foreigner, such as Cleopatra, was denounced as a flagrant violation of religious and social principles.
In religion the Epicureans were sceptics, and Cæsar went farther and openly professed his unbelief. The supreme pontiff of the commonwealth, the head of the college whence issued the decrees which declared the will of the gods, as inferred from the signs of the heavens, the flight of birds, and the entrails of victims, he made no scruple in asserting before the assembled fathers that the dogma of a future state, the foundation of all religion, was a vain chimera. Nor did he hesitate to defy the omens which the priests were especially appointed to observe. He gave battle at Munda in despite of the most adverse auspices, when the sacrifices assured him that no heart was found in the victim. “I will have better omens,” he said, “when I choose.” Yet Cæsar, freethinker as he was, could not escape the general thraldom of superstition. We have seen him crawling on his knees up the steps of the temple to appease an indignant Nemesis. Before the battle of Pharsalia he addressed a prayer to the gods whom he denied in the senate, and derided among his associates. He appealed to the omens before passing the Rubicon. He carried about with him in Africa a certain Cornelius, a man of no personal distinction, but whose name might be deemed auspicious on the battlefields of Scipio and Sulla.