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$Title{Julius Caesar
Chapter III: Advancement To The Consulship}
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$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
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$Date{1900}
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Title:       Julius Caesar
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

Chapter III: Advancement To The Consulship

     From this time, which was about sixty seven years before the birth of
Christ, Caesar remained for nine years generally at Rome, engaged there in a
constant struggle for power.  He was successful in these efforts, rising all
the time from one position of influence and honor to another, until he became
altogether the most prominent and powerful man in the city.  A great many
incidents are recorded, as attending these contests, which illustrate in a
very striking manner the strange mixture of rude violence and legal formality
by which Rome was in those days governed.

     Many of the most important offices of the state depended upon the votes
of the people; and as the people had very little opportunity to become
acquainted with the real merits of the case in respect to questions of
government, they gave their votes very much according to the personal
popularity of the candidate.  Public men had very little moral principle in
those days, and they would accordingly resort to any means whatever to procure
this personal popularity.  They who wanted office were accustomed to bribe
influential men among the people to support them, sometimes by promising them
subordinate offices, and sometimes by the direct donation of sums of money;
and they would try to please the mass of the people, who were too numerous to
be paid with offices or with gold, by shows and spectacles, and entertainments
of every kind which they would provide for their amusement.

     This practice seems to us very absurd; and we wonder that the Roman
people should tolerate it, since it is evident that the means for defraying
these expenses must come, ultimately, in some way or other, from them.  And
yet, absurd as it seems, this sort of policy is not wholly disused even in our
day.  The operas and the theaters, and other similar establishments in France,
are sustained, in part, by the government; and the liberality and efficiency
with which this is done, forms, in some degree, the basis of the popularity of
each succeeding administration.  The plan is better systematized and regulated
in our day, but it is, in its nature, substantially the same.

     In fact, furnishing amusements for the people and also providing supplies
for their wants, as well as affording them protection, were considered the
legitimate objects of government in those days.  It is very different at the
present time, and especially in this country.  The whole community are now
united in the desire to confine the functions of government within the
narrowest possible limits, such as to include only the preservation of public
order and public safety.  The people prefer to supply their own wants and to
provide their own enjoyments, rather than to invest government with the power
to do it for them, knowing very well that, on the latter plan, the burdens
they will have to bear, though concealed for a time, must be doubled in the
end.

     It must not be forgotten, however, that there were some reasons in the
days of the Romans for providing public amusements for the people on an
extended scale which do not exist now.  They had very few facilities then for
the private and separate enjoyments of home, so that they were much more
inclined than the people of this country are now to seek pleasure abroad and
in public.  The climate, too, mild and genial nearly all the year, favored
this.  Then they were not interested, as men are now, in the pursuits and
avocations of private industry.  The people of Rome were not a community of
merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching themselves, and adding to
the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of mankind by the products of their
labor.  They were supported, in a great measure, by the proceeds of the
tribute of foreign provinces, and by the plunder taken by the generals in the
name of the state in foreign wars.  From the same source, too - foreign
conquest - captives were brought home, to be trained as gladiators to amuse
them with their combats, and statues and paintings to ornament the public
buildings of the city.  In the same manner, large quantities of corn, which
had been taken in the provinces, were often distributed at Rome.  And
sometimes even land itself, in large tracts, which had been confiscated by the
state, or otherwise taken from the original possessors, was divided among the
people.  The laws enacted from time to time for this purpose were called
Agrarian laws; and the phrase afterward passed into a sort of proverb,
inasmuch as plans proposed in modern times for conciliating the favor of the
populace by sharing among them property belonging to the state or to the rich,
are designated by the name of Agrarianism.

     Thus Rome was a city supported, in a great measure, by the fruits of its
conquests, that is, in a certain sense, by plunder.  It was a vast community
most efficiently and admirably organized for this purpose; and yet it would
not be perfectly just to designate the people simply as a band of robbers.
They rendered, in some sense, an equivalent for what they took, in
establishing and enforcing a certain organization of society throughout the
world, and in preserving a sort of public order and peace.  They built cities,
they constructed aqueducts and roads; they formed harbors, and protected them
by piers and by castles; they protected commerce, and cultivated the arts, and
encouraged literature, and enforced a general quiet and peace among mankind,
allowing of no violence or war except what they themselves created.  Thus they
governed the world, and they felt, as all governors of mankind always do,
fully entitled to supply themselves with the comforts and conveniences of
life, in consideration of the service which they thus rendered.

     Of course, it was to be expected that they would sometimes quarrel among
themselves about the spoils.  Ambitious men were always arising, eager to
obtain opportunities to make fresh conquests, and to bring home new supplies,
and those who were most successful in making the results of their conquests
available in adding to the wealth and to the public enjoyments of the city,
would, of course, be most popular with the voters.  Hence extortion in the
provinces, and the most profuse and lavish expenditure in the city, became the
policy which every great man must pursue to rise to power.

     Caesar entered into this policy with his whole soul, founding all his
hopes of success upon the favor of the populace.  Of course, he had many
rivals and opponents among the patrician ranks, and in the Senate, and they
often impeded and thwarted his plans and measures for a time, though he always
triumphed in the end.

     One of the first offices of importance to which he attained was that of
quaestor, as it was called, which office called him away from Rome into the
province of Spain, making him the second in command there.  The officer first
in command in the province was, in this instance, a praetor.  During his
absence in Spain, Caesar replenished in some degree his exhausted finances,
but he soon became very much discontented with so subordinate a position. His
discontent was greatly increased by his coming unexpectedly, one day, at a
city then called Hades - the present Cadiz - upon a statue of Alexander, which
adorned one of the public edifices there.  Alexander died when he was only
about thirty years of age, having before that period made himself master of
the world.  Caesar was himself now about thirty-five years of age, and it made
him very sad to reflect that, though he had lived five years longer than
Alexander, he had yet accomplished so little.  He was thus far only the second
in a province, while he burned with an insatiable ambition to be the first in
Rome.  The reflection made him so uneasy that he left his post before his time
expired and went back to Rome, forming, on the way, desperate projects for
getting power there.

     His rivals and enemies accused him of various schemes, more or less
violent and treasonable in their nature, but how justly it is not now possible
to ascertain.  They alleged that one of his plans was to join some of the
neighboring colonies, whose inhabitants wished to be admitted to the freedom
of the city, and, making common cause with them, to raise an armed force and
take possession of Rome.  It was said that, to prevent the accomplishment of
this design, an army which they had raised for the purpose of an expedition
against the Cilician pirates was detained from its march, and that Caesar,
seeing that the government were on their guard against him, abandoned the
plan.

     They also charged him with having formed, after this, a plan within the
city for assassinating the senators in the senate house, and then usurping,
with his fellow-conspirators, the supreme power.  Crassus, who was a man of
vast wealth and a great friend of Caesar's was associated with him in this
plot, and was to have been made dictator if it had succeeded.  But,
notwithstanding the brilliant prize with which Caesar attempted to allure
Crassus to the enterprise, his courage failed him when the time for action
arrived.  Courage and enterprise, in fact, ought not to be expected of the
rich; they are the virtues of poverty.

     Though the Senate were thus jealous and suspicious of Caesar, and were
charging him continually with these criminal designs, the people were on his
side; and the more he was hated by the great, the more strongly he became
intrenched in the popular favor.  They chose him aedile.  The aedile had the
charge of the public edifices of the city, and of the games spectacles, and
shows which were exhibited in them.  Caesar entered with great zeal into the
discharge of the duties of this office.  He made arrangements for the
entertainment of the people on the most magnificent scale; and made great
additions and improvements to the public buildings, constructing porticoes and
piazzas around the areas where his gladiatorial shows and the combats with
wild beasts were to be exhibited.  He provided gladiators in such numbers, and
organized and arranged them in such a manner, ostensibly for their training,
that his enemies among the nobility pretended to believe that he was intending
to use them as an armed force against the government of the city.  They
accordingly made laws limiting and restricting the number of the gladiators to
be employed.  Caesar then exhibited his shows on the reduced scale which the
new laws required, taking care that the people should understand to whom the
responsibility for this reduction in the scale of their pleasures belonged.
They, of course, murmured against the Senate, and Caesar stood higher in their
favor than ever.

     He was getting, however, by these means, very deeply involved in debt;
and in order partly to retrieve his fortunes in this respect, he made an
attempt to have Egypt assigned to him as a province.  Egypt was then an
immensely rich and fertile country.  It had, however, never been a Roman
province.  It was an independent kingdom, in alliance with the Romans, and
Caesar's proposal that it should be assigned to him as a province appeared
very extraordinary.  His pretext was, that the people of Egypt had recently
deposed and expelled their king, and that, consequently, the Romans might
properly take possession of it.  The Senate, however, resisted this plan,
either from jealousy of Caesar or from a sense of justice to Egypt; and, after
a violent contest, Caesar found himself compelled to give up the design.  He
felt, however, a strong degree of resentment against the patrician party who
had thus thwarted his designs.  Accordingly, in order to avenge himself upon
them, he one night replaced certain statues and trophies of Marius in the
Capitol, which had been taken down by order of Sylla when he returned to
power.  Marius, as will be recollected, had been the great champion of the
popular party, and the enemy of the patricians; and, at the time of his
downfall, all the memorials of his power and greatness had been every where
removed from Rome, and among them these statues and trophies, which had been
erected in the Capitol in commemoration of some former victories, and had
remained there until Sylla's triumph, when they were taken down and destroyed.
Caesar now ordered new ones to be made, far more magnificent than before.
They were made secretly, and put up in the night. His office as aedile gave
him the necessary authority.  The next morning, when the people saw these
splendid monuments of their great favorite restored, the whole city was
animated with excitement and joy.  The patricians, on the other hand, were
filled with vexation and rage.  "Here is a single officer," said they, "who is
attempting to restore, by his individual authority, what has been formally
abolished by a decree of the Senate.  He is trying to see how much we will
bear.  If he finds that we will submit to this, he will attempt bolder
measures still." They accordingly commenced a movement to have the statues and
trophies taken down again, but the people rallied in vast numbers in defense
of them.  They made the Capitol ring with their shouts of applause; and the
Senate, finding their power insufficient to cope with so great a force, gave
up the point, and Caesar gained the day.

     Caesar had married another wife after the death of Cornelia.  Her name
was Pompeia.  He divorced Pompeia about this time, under very extraordinary
circumstances.  Among the other strange religious ceremonies and celebrations
which were observed in those days, was one called the celebration of the
mysteries of the Good Goddess.  This celebration was held by females alone,
every thing masculine being most carefully excluded.  Even the pictures of
men, if there were any upon the walls of the house where the assembly was
held, were covered.  The persons engaged spent the night together in music and
dancing and various secret ceremonies, half pleasure, half worship, according
to the ideas and customs of the time.

     The mysteries of the Good Goddess were to be celebrated one night at
Caesar's house, he himself having, of course, withdrawn.  In the middle of the
night, the whole company in one of the apartments were thrown into
consternation at finding that one of their number was a man.  He had a smooth
and youthful-looking face, and was very perfectly disguised in the dress of a
female.  He proved to be a certain Clodius, a very base and dissolute young
man, though of great wealth and high connections.  He had been admitted by a
female slave of Pompeia's whom he had succeeded in bribing.  It was suspected
that it was with Pompeia's concurrence.  At any rate, Caesar immediately
divorced his wife.  The Senate ordered an inquiry into the affair, and, after
the other members of the household had given their testimony, Caesar himself
was called upon, but he had nothing to say.  He knew nothing about it.  They
asked him, then, why he had divorced Pompeia, unless he had some evidence for
believing her guilty.  He replied, that a wife of Caesar must not only be
without crime, but without suspicion.

     Clodius was a very desperate and lawless character, and his subsequent
history shows, in a striking point of view, the degree of violence and
disorder which reigned in those times.  He became involved in a bitter
contention with another citizen whose name was Milo, and each, gaining as many
adherents as he could, at length drew almost the whole city into their
quarrel.  Whenever they went out, they were attended with armed bands, which
were continually in danger of coming into collision.  The collision at last
came, quite a battle was fought, and Clodius was killed.  This made the
difficulty worse than it was before.  Parties were formed, and violent
disputes arose on the question of bringing Milo to trial for the alleged
murder.  He was brought to trial at last, but so great was the public
excitement, that the consuls for the time surrounded and filled the whole
Forum with armed men while the trial was proceeding, to ensure the safety of
the court.

     In fact, violence mingled itself continually, in those times, with almost
all public proceedings, whenever any special combination of circumstances
occurred to awaken unusual excitement.  At one time, when Caesar was in
office, a very dangerous conspiracy was brought to light, which was headed by
the notorious Catiline.  It was directed chiefly against the Senate and the
higher departments of the government; it contemplated, in fact, their utter
destruction, and the establishment of an entirely new government on the ruins
of the existing constitution.  Caesar was himself accused of a participation
in this plot.  When it was discovered, Catiline himself fled; some of the
other conspirators were, however, arrested, and there was a long and very
excited debate in the Senate on the question of their punishment.  Some were
for death.  Caesar, however, very earnestly opposed this plan, recommending,
instead, the confiscation of the estates of the conspirators, and their
imprisonment in some of the distant cities of Italy.  The dispute grew very
warm, Caesar urging his point with great perseverance and determination, and
with a degree of violence which threatened seriously to obstruct the
proceedings, when a body of armed men, a sort of guard of honor stationed
there, gathered around him, and threatened him with their swords.  Quite a
scene of disorder and terror ensued.  Some of the senators arose hastily and
fled from the vicinity of Caesar's seat to avoid the danger.  Others, more
courageous, or more devoted in their attachment to him, gathered around him to
protect him, as far as they could, by interposing their bodies between his
person and the weapons of his assailants.  Caesar soon left the Senate, and
for a long time would return to it no more.

     Although Caesar was all this time, on the whole, rising in influence and
power, there were still fluctuations in his fortune, and the tide sometimes,
for a short period, went strongly against him.  He was at one time, when
greatly involved in debt, and embarrassed in all his affairs, a candidate for
a very high office, that of Pontifex Maximus, or sovereign pontiff.  The
office of the pontifex was originally that of building and keeping custody of
the bridges of the city, the name being derived from the Latin word pons,
which signifies bridge.  To this, however, had afterward been added the care
of the temples, and finally the regulation and control of the ceremonies of
religion, so that it came in the end to be an office of the highest dignity
and honor.  Caesar made the most desperate efforts to secure his election,
resorting to such measures, expending such sums, and involving himself in debt
to such an extreme, that, if he failed, he would be irretrievably ruined.  His
mother, sympathizing with him in his anxiety, kissed him when he went away
from the house on the morning of the election, and bade him farewell with
tears.  He told her that he should come home that night the pontiff, or he
should never come home at all.  He succeeded in gaining the election.

     At one time Caesar was actually deposed from a high office which he held,
by a decree of the Senate.  He determined to disregard this decree, and go on
in the discharge of his office as usual.  But the Senate, whose ascendency was
now, for some reason, once more established, prepared to prevent him by force
of arms Caesar, finding that he was not sustained, gave up the contest, put
off his robes of office, and went home.  Two days afterward a reaction
occurred.  A mass of the populace came together to his house, and offered
their assistance to restore his rights and vindicate his honor.  Caesar,
however, contrary to what every one would have expected of him, exerted his
influence to calm and quiet the mob, and then sent them away, remaining
himself in private as before.  The Senate had been alarmed at the first
outbreak of the tumult, and a meeting had been suddenly convened to consider
what measures to adopt in such a crisis.  When, however, they found that
Caesar had himself interposed, and by his own personal influence had saved the
city from the danger which threatened it, they were so strongly impressed with
a sense of his forbearance and generosity, that they sent for him to come to
the senate house, and, after formally expressing their thanks, they canceled
their former vote, and restored him to his office again.  This change in the
action of the Senate does not, however, necessarily indicate so great a change
of individual sentiment as one might at first imagine.  There was,
undoubtedly, a large minority who were averse to his being deposed in the
first instance but, being outvoted, the decree of deposition was passed.
Others were, perhaps, more or less doubtful.  Caesar's generous forbearance in
refusing the offered aid of the populace carried over a number of these
sufficient to shift the majority, and thus the action of the body was
reversed.  It is in this way that the sudden and apparently total changes in
the action of deliberative assemblies which often take place, and which would
otherwise, in some cases, be almost incredible, are to be explained.

     After this, Caesar became involved in another difficulty, in consequence
of the appearance of some definite and positive evidence that he was connected
with Catiline in his famous conspiracy.  One of the senators said that
Catiline himself had informed him that Caesar was one of the accomplices of
the plot.  Another witness, named Vettius, laid an information against Caesar
before a Roman magistrate, and offered to produce Caesar's handwriting in
proof of his participation in the conspirator's designs Caesar was very much
incensed, and his manner of vindicating himself from these serious charges was
as singular as many of his other deeds.  He arrested Vettius, and sentenced
him to pay a heavy fine, and to be imprisoned; and he contrived also to expose
him, in the course of the proceedings, to the mob in the Forum, who were
always ready to espouse Caesar's cause, and who, on this occasion, beat
Vettius so unmercifully, that he barely escaped with his life.  The
magistrate, too, was thrown into prison for having dared to take an
information against a superior officer.

     At last Caesar became so much involved in debt, through the boundless
extravagance of his expenditures, that something must be done to replenish his
exhausted finances.  He had, however, by this time, risen so high in official
influence and power, that he succeeded in having Spain assigned to him as his
province, and he began to make preparations to proceed to it.  His creditors,
however, interposed, unwilling to let him go without giving them security.  In
this dilemma, Caesar succeeded in making an arrangement with Crassus, who has
already been spoken of as a man of unbounded wealth and great ambition, but
not possessed of any considerable degree of intellectual power.  Crassus
consented to give the necessary security, with an understanding that Caesar
was to repay him by exerting his political influence in his favor.  So soon as
this arrangement was made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private manner, as
if he expected that otherwise some new difficulty would intervene.

     He went to Spain by land, passing through Switzerland on the way.  He
stopped with his attendants one night at a very insignificant village of
shepherds' huts among the mountains.  Struck with the poverty and
worthlessness of all they saw in this wretched hamlet, Caesar's friends were
wondering whether the jealousy, rivalry, and ambition which reigned among men
every where else in the world could find any footing there, when Caesar told
them that, for his part, he should rather choose to be first in such a village
as that than the second at Rome.  The story has been repeated a thousand
times, and told to every successive generation now for nearly twenty
centuries, as an illustration of the peculiar type and character of the
ambition which controls such a soul as that of Caesar.

     Caesar was very successful in the administration of his province; that is
to say, he returned in a short time with considerable military glory, and with
money enough to pay all his debts, and furnish him with means for fresh
electioneering.

     He now felt strong enough to aspire to the office of consul, which was
the highest office of the Roman state.  When the line of kings had been
deposed, the Romans had vested the supreme magistracy in the hands of two
consuls, who were chosen annually in a general election, the formalities of
which were all very carefully arranged.  The current of popular opinion was,
of course, in Caesar's favor, but he had many powerful rivals and enemies
among the great, who, however, hated and opposed each other as well as him.
There was at that time a very bitter feud between Pompey and Crassus, each of
them struggling for power against the efforts of the other.  Pompey possessed
great influence through his splendid abilities and his military renown.
Crassus, as has already been stated, was powerful through his wealth. Caesar,
who had some influence with them both, now conceived the bold design of
reconciling them, and then of availing himself of their united aid in
accomplishing his own particular ends.

     He succeeded perfectly well in this management.  He represented to them
that, by contending against each other, they only exhausted their own powers,
and strengthened the arms of their common enemies.  He proposed to them to
unite with one another and with him, and thus make common cause to promote
their common interest and advancement.  They willingly acceded to this plan,
and a triple league was accordingly formed, in which they each bound
themselves to promote, by every means in his power, the political elevation of
the others, and not to take any public step or adopt any measures without the
concurrence of the three.  Caesar faithfully observed the obligations of this
league so long as he could use his two associates to promote his own ends, and
then he abandoned it.

     Having, however, completed this arrangement, he was now prepared to push
vigorously his claims to be elected consul.  He associated with his own name
that of Lucceius, who was a man of great wealth, and who agreed to defray the
expenses of the election for the sake of the honor of being consul with
Caesar.  Caesar's enemies, however, knowing that they probably could not
prevent his election, determined to concentrate their strength in the effort
to prevent his having the colleague he desired.  They made choice, therefore,
of a certain Bibulus as their candidate.  Bibulus had always been a political
opponent of Caesar's, and they thought that, by associating him with Caesar in
the supreme magistracy, the pride and ambition of their great adversary might
be held somewhat in check.  They accordingly made a contribution among
themselves to enable Bibulus to expend as much money in bribery as Lucceius,
and the canvass went on.

     It resulted in the election of Caesar and Bibulus.  They entered upon the
duties of their office; but Caesar, almost entirely disregarding his
colleague, began to assume the whole power, and proposed and carried measure
after measure of the most extraordinary character, all aiming at the
gratification of the populace.  He was at first opposed violently both by
Bibulus and by many leading members of the Senate, especially by Cato, a stern
and inflexible patriot, whom neither fear of danger nor hope of reward could
move from what he regarded his duty.  But Caesar was now getting strong enough
to put down the opposition which he encountered without much scruple as to the
means.  He ordered Cato on one occasion to be arrested in the Senate and sent
to prison.  Another influential member of the Senate rose and was going out
with him.  Caesar asked him where he was going.  He said he was going with
Cato.  He would rather, he said, be with Cato in prison, than in the Senate
with Caesar.

     Caesar treated Bibulus also with so much neglect, and assumed so entirely
the whole control of the consular power, to the utter exclusion of his
colleague, that Bibulus at last, completely discouraged and chagrined,
abandoned all pretension to official authority, retired to his house, and shut
himself up in perfect seclusion, leaving Caesar to his own way.  It was
customary among the Romans, in their historical and narrative writings, to
designate the successive years, not by a numerical date as with us, but by the
names of the consuls who held office in them.  Thus, in the time of Caesar's
consulship, the phrase would have been, "In the year of Caesar and Bibulus,
consuls," according to the ordinary usage; but the wags of the city, in order
to make sport of the assumptions of Caesar and the insignificance of Bibulus,
used to say, "In the year of Julius and Caesar, consuls," rejecting the name
of Bibulus altogether, and taking the two names of Caesar to make out the
necessary duality.