040 - In the Consulship of Julius and Caesar

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 40, in the consulship of Julius and Caesar. Last week, we followed Julius Caesar's rise up the Cursus Honorum, which was capped by a successful election of the consulship for a term to be served in 59 BC. On his way up the political ladder, Caesar had spent lavishly, bribed when necessary, made a lot of friends, and even more enemies. More than anything else, he had established himself as a man to be reckoned with. He was an able governor and a brilliant military commander, a master orator, and a shrewd politician. For most Romans, the consulship marked the end of a long career. For Julius Caesar, it was only the beginning.

The consular elections that saw Caesar emerge triumphant was a dirty affair, one that saw rampant bribery on all sides. It was obvious that Caesar was going to win in a walk, so the important thing to the conservative senate was to elect someone who would stand as a bulwark against any radical reforms they suspected Caesar would try and push through. To this end, they threw all their support behind Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, who had served as aedile alongside Caesar years earlier, and forever bore a grudge against his former colleague for taking credit for things Bibulus himself had accomplished while in that office. That personal enmity, coupled with a naturally conservative worldview, made him the perfect foil for Caesar's charismatic populism.

In anticipation of the struggle with the senate, Caesar had been lining up support across the Roman world, men at all levels of society who would back him through thick and thin. Some because they genuinely believed in Caesar's programs, some simply out of crass self-interest. Caesar spread bribes liberally and promises of patronage constantly. It made no matter to him, a vote was a vote was a vote, whether it came unsolicited or after a massive payoff. At the top of his pyramid of support, Caesar targeted three powerful men specifically. The first of these men was an obvious choice. Marcus Crassus had been a long-time backer of Caesar, and their alliance was already well known, but it bears repeating that Crassus was exceedingly wealthy and still dreamed of becoming a great military commander. Second, Caesar targeted Pompey the Great, who had struggled upon returning from the East to have his conquests ratified and his veterans settled. It took some deft maneuvering on Caesar's part to get Crassus and Pompey in the same room, but both were well aware that their own personal projects and aspirations could be realized easier with the help of the other. Last, Caesar made overtures to Rome's greatest lawyer and orator, Cicero. He appealed to Cicero's vision, intelligence, and legal savvy. The empire as presently constituted was unsustainable, Cicero could see that as well as anyone, but the conservative Senate resisted all attempts at desperately needed reform. Caesar was offering Cicero the chance to have great influence over the course correction he planned for the empire, but Cicero rejected the mutual support pact, preferring to remain an independent, moderate voice.

Thus was born the First Triumvirate, not its name at the time, nor a particularly accurate description of the wide network of supporters Caesar had aligned, but history gives us our shorthand labels and is often easier to simply use them rather than try to reinvent the wheel. The agreement between Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey was made official when they swore a solemn oath, administered by Caesar in his role as Pontifex Maximus, to undertake no action that opposed any of the others. Pretty simple, right? Well, actually, yeah, it was pretty simple, and it worked, too.

With his support lined up, Caesar wrapped up some unfinished business in his personal life. He needed to find a new wife. I neglected the scandal that led to his divorce from his second wife, Pompeia, last week, so before we delve into the details of Caesar's eventful consulship, I want to slide back a few years, as the man who sparked the scandal will feature prominently in the coming breakdown of civility between Caesar and Cicero.

Each year, the rites of Bona Dea, the Roman goddess of fertility and healing, were performed in the home of the Pontifex Maximus. Men were excluded from the ceremony, so Caesar was out of the house, leaving his wife and mother in charge of the proceedings. Into this segregated affair slipped Publius Clodius Pulcher, a free-thinking, flamboyant loose cannon who loved thumbing his nose at stodgy Roman tradition. Clodius, dressed as a woman, lingered on the edges of the party until he was outed by Caesar's mother. It would have been bad enough for Caesar had the ceremony he sponsored simply been desecrated, but to make matters worse, it was widely rumored that Clodius was engaged in an affair with Pompeia and was taking Caesar's absence as an opportunity for a rendezvous. In response to the destructive chatter, Caesar acted quickly. He divorced Pompeia, for, whether she was guilty of the affair or not, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. The affair marked the last we will hear of Pompeia, but not the last we will hear of Clodius.

I will also take this opportunity to note that while Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, Caesar himself was under no such obligation. Caesar cheated early and often on all of his wives, carrying on affairs with some of the most prominent women in Rome, including Servilia Capianus, who was at the same time the mother and mother-in-law of Caesar's two most famous assassins, Brutus and Cassius, respectively. While the affair was on, though, she was best known as the half-sister of Cato the Younger. Caesar played politics to win and knew he was getting Cato's goat, hopefully forcing the staunch conservative in his personal rage and embarrassment to get sloppy. Caesar finally settled on marrying the daughter of the statesman, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who would coincidentally follow Caesar in the consulship the next year.

And with Calpurnia by his side, Caesar took the oath of office in 59 BC, immediately setting to work on his reform program. First up, as agreed to by the three triumvirs, was a land redistribution program aimed primarily at Pompey's veterans, but further intended to alleviate the general problem of urban poverty that had become a chronic disease in Rome. Since the closing days of the Punic War, land ownership in Italy had become more and more centralized into fewer and fewer hands. The large land-owning nobles further exacerbated the problem by importing slaves to work their estates rather than relying on a sharecropping system that would have kept locals tied to the land. These displaced ex-farmers flooded into Rome, putting enormous strain on the treasury and contributing to a general atmosphere of lawlessness in the growing slums and housing projects. And with so many of the landless being ex-soldiers, the possibility of violent uprisings was always just a few missed meals away.

Caesar entered for the Senate's consideration a carefully written bill to address the issue. State-owned land would be opened up to settlement, and state funds would be used to purchase further tracts from willing sellers at the land's assessed value. The money to do this would come from the treasure Pompey had brought back with him from the East, making the project cost-neutral. In order to mollify the change-adverse Senate, Caesar specifically exempted the rich lands of Campania, which had long been owned and operated by the nobles of Rome for their personal enrichment. But the exemption was not enough, and the Senate, though unable to voice a single constructive criticism of the bill, nonetheless stalled its passage. If they let Caesar pass such a popular bill, his influence would skyrocket off the charts, and they simply could not allow that to happen.

Cato rose in opposition, and began to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. Pretty soon, it was clear that he intended to talk until the sun fell out of the sky. The merits of the bill were no longer in question. This was a naked stall tactic, pure and simple. Caesar grew impatient, and then enraged at Cato, and in his fury made one of his few political miscalculations. He ordered that Cato be seized and hauled off to jail for obstructing senatorial business. The Senate was understandably shocked at one of their most respected members being hauled off to jail like a common criminal, and in protest walked out of the session en masse. Caesar caught a member who he knew to be at least sympathetic to his cause, and asked why he too was leaving. The Senator replied, I would rather be in jail with Cato than here with you. His harsh statement, coming from a friend no less, brought Caesar to his senses, and he ordered Cato released.

But the battle over the bill was just heating up. When the Senate reconvened, Caesar announced that because the Senate was obviously intent on blocking the bill, no matter its merits, he would take his legislation, and all future legislation, directly to the people's assemblies. Now at this point, the Senate simply knew that Caesar was a popular and charismatic politician. What they did not know about was the triumvirate alliance, and that he had the power and resources to make good on his threat to bypass them completely from here on out.

But the next day, as Caesar stood before the popular assembly, an assembly packed with Pompey's veterans, the Senate was in for a rude awakening. Standing beside Caesar were Crassus and Pompey, and when Pompey strode forward and announced his intention to back the legislation with his sword, if necessary, to the roaring approval of the crowd, the Senate realized the whole ballgame had changed behind their backs. The secret pact was now out in the open. The question was, could the Senate do anything about it? Bibulus, Caesar's co-consul, swore to do everything in his power to prevent the bill from passing despite the jeers and threats that rained down on his head by the increasingly unruly mob. Clearly this was not a time for open confrontation, so Bibulus beat a hasty retreat to plan his next move.

What he came up with was sneakily brilliant, obviously an abuse of power, but technically an insurmountable hurdle to Caesar's entire program. One of the functions of the consul is to decide which days over the course of the year will be considered holy days, on which no public business can be transacted. With the help of some conservative tribunes, Bibulus simply declared that every day left in his and Caesar's consulship was a holy day. Public business would be shuttered for the rest of the year. It was ridiculous, of course, and everyone sought for what it was, but there was little Caesar could do about it. Without a legal leg to stand on, though, Caesar refused to be deterred. He pressed on for a vote on the land bill anyway, and decided to deal with the legal implications later. The people, at least, were with him.

On the day of the vote, Caesar packed the forum with allies, and victory was never in any doubt. But Bibulus, much to the surprise of everyone, strode right into the belly of the beast and began denouncing the bill and declaring the proceedings illegal. The mob erupted in anger. Bibulus and his lectors were assaulted, a bucket of manure was dumped on the consul's head, and most importantly, his fascis, the symbol of consular authority, were broken. Bibulus fled from the scene. From that point on, he essentially retired from public life, spending the remainder of his consulship holed up in his house, refusing to come out. This was the origin of the satirical Roman quip that events of the year took place in the consulship of Julius and Caesar.

With the opposition out of the way, the bill passed, and a land commission was created to oversee the redistribution. To ensure that there would be no conflicts of interest, Caesar declared that he would not take an active role in the project. Crassus and Pompey, however, both agreed to the honor of serving the people as commissioners. Nope, no conflicts of interest there. After the law took effect, however, it was clear that there was not enough land to fill all the requests. So, possibly for practical reasons, and almost certainly for personal ones, Caesar announced that he was granting the new land commission purview over Campania, a.k.a. the Senate's backyard, just as he had promised not to do. Perhaps if the Senate had joined with me in the initial stages of the legislation and not ignored the will of the people for so long, etc., etc.

Next up on Caesar's list was the ratification of Pompey's eastern campaign. The incorporation of Syria as a province and the treaties Pompey signed with new client states needed approval by the Senate to officially go into effect. Time had been of the essence for a while now, as these territories directly bordered the Parthian Empire. If things were left in doubt for too long, it was likely the Parthians would take advantage of the uncertainty and reverse the gains Pompey had made on Rome's behalf. The Senate, cowed by Caesar and knowing full well they should have taken care of this business years ago anyway, ratified all of Pompey's actions.

But this victory left Caesar with a problem. Everything Pompey hoped to gain by joining the Triumvirate had been gained. His men had land and his conquests were legal. In anticipation of this inevitability, Caesar offered Pompey his daughter, Julia, in marriage. Pompey agreed to the arrangement, and just like that, Caesar became Pompey's father-in-law. The man who was to become Julia's husband was shocked when his prospective bride was pulled out from under him, but Pompey offered his daughter to the young man in exchange. All of this prompted Cato to spit that it was disgusting how Roman power was now based on the trading of women. By all accounts, though, the marriage between Pompey and Julia was a happy arrangement, full of genuine love. And as hard as it is to believe today, this genuine love actually raised eyebrows in the aristocracy of Rome, and Pompey was subjected to endless jokes. Get a load of Pompey. He actually loves his wife.

Caesar's final piece of legislation proved to be perhaps his greatest legacy. The Lex Julia De Repetundisi, the Julian Law of Extortion. It was a voluminous and detailed set of rules governing the do's and don'ts of provincial administration. It set the ground rules and guidelines for the acceptance of gifts, and set limits on the amount that a governor could personally benefit from his term in office. With one sweeping bill, Caesar modernized imperial administration overnight, and brought the rule of law to a corrupt and inefficient system, if it could even be called a system. The Lex Julia was a huge success, and remained in effect with few additions or subtractions long into the Byzantine Age.

Though it was obvious that Caesar was undertaking much needed reform, his term in office also showed he was willing to ignore laws, tradition, and common decency to get his way. The assault on Bibulus was particularly troubling to Cicero, who began to shift away from moderate accommodation of Caesar to a more confrontational posture. While arguing in defense of his ex-co-consul against a corruption charge backed by Caesar, Cicero took the opportunity to stray from the facts of the case into a broad indictment of Caesar and his tactics. Caesar was furious at what he perceived to be Cicero's betrayal. He had always done his best to cultivate a cordial relationship with the great lawyer, and seemed to actually respect Cicero. Now the master orator was suddenly turning his considerable skill against Caesar, and it was too much for him to let go.

In retaliation, Caesar decided to cut loose Clodius, he of the Bonadius scandal. Clodius was a rabid opponent of all things conservative, and bore a special hatred for the pompous and vain Cicero. But because of the enemies he had made over the years, the patrician Clodius found himself publicly blacklisted from pursuing high office. So he hatched a plan to throw away his patrician status, an unthinkable act, so he become Tribune of the Plebs. The fix was simple, he just needed to be formally adopted by a pleb, thus, as lineage was patriarchal, he would immediately cease to be a patrician. But he couldn't find anyone willing to make his proposed adoption legal. After Cicero's scathing indictment however, Caesar, as pontifex maximus and consul, decided to validate Clodius's adoption. The iconoclastic loose canon was adopted by a pleb half his age, and immediately announced his candidacy for the tribunate. Once he had some power at his disposal, he planned to unleash the full brunt of it on Cicero and against anything else he deemed decadent and worthless. Caesar hoped to maintain some influence over Clodius, but it would soon become clear that having attained the tribunate, Clodius considered himself beholden to no one.

With his consulship winding down, Caesar had two overarching concerns. First, he had to ensure that his reforms, now enacted, would not immediately be repealed, and second, he had to make sure that he was protected from personal prosecution. His enemies in the Senate were compiling a long list of charges that they would bring against him the minute he became a private citizen. If Caesar did not secure a nice long proconsulship, he was liable to be hauled into court and destroyed. It would have been unthinkable for Caesar to receive no proconsulship at all. So the Senate laid the groundwork for his consular imperium to extend to the fields and pastures of Italy. It would have been an embarrassing assignment, and would have denied Caesar access to both personal enrichment and military command. They intended for Caesar to command the streams of Italy for a year, and then return to Rome a private citizen, whereupon they would crucify him, perhaps literally.

Toward the first major concern, securing the continuation of his new laws, Caesar took two steps. First, he ensured that his new father-in-law would be elected consul the next year. Caesar could then rest assured, knowing he would leave office with a staunch ally standing ready to veto any attempt to alter his laws. Second, and I really love this bit, he introduced a curse clause into the oath of the consulship. Upon taking office, incoming consuls would have to swear not to undo Caesar's work, because if they did, they would, well, be cursed. This was a very big deal to the superstitious Romans, and though I doubt it would work today, I would love, love to see stuff like this get written into bills and oaths of office today. By the way, you can't mess with my highway works project, because if you do, the gods will flood your district. That kind of thing. It may not work, but it sure would make the process a whole lot more fun.

Towards the second major concern, protecting himself from prosecution, Caesar held true to form, and simply ignored the Senate and their plans for him to serve a meaningless pro-consulship. With the help of sympathetic, read, bribed, tribunes, and the tacit support of his fellow triumvirs, Caesar conspired to have the People's Assembly assign him a lucrative post that would keep him out of the clutches of his enemies, and, most importantly for his wider ambitions, offer him the chance at some good old-fashioned military conquest. Today, everyone knows Caesar primarily as the great general he proved to be. But at this point in his career, as you may have noticed over the last two episodes, Caesar was known primarily as a lawyer and politician who had had some military success in Spain, and as a soldier had been brave, but nothing to write home about. He craved the opportunity to leave civilian life behind and throw himself into a great campaign on behalf of Rome.

The question, then, was where best to geographically position himself in the empire to maximize the possibility of becoming engaged in military action. His choices were limited to the East, where he could possibly expand on Pompey's acquisitions, North Africa, where Egypt still stood ripe for the plucking, and the Gallic provinces in the north. North Africa was out because Egypt secured its continued independence by way of massive bribes and they made sure Caesar's pockets were as lined as everyone else's. The Far East was out, as any future expansion would come at the expense of the Parthians, and as great a commander as Caesar believed himself to be, there was not much upside in picking a fight with the heirs of the Persian Empire in the middle of the desert. Just ask Crassus. That left the Gallic provinces. Specifically, Caesar had his eye on Cisalpine Gaul, or, literally, Gaul on this side of the Alps. The region north of the Po Valley stood in perfect strategic position. To the northwest stood European Gaul, or, as the Romans sometimes called it, the land of the long-haired Gaul. To the north lay the warlike Germanic tribes, who were always stirring up trouble. And to the northeast lay the unconquered lands on the far side of the Danube River. Plus, by securing the pro-consulship of Cisalpine Gaul, Caesar would control the legions closest to Rome itself, allowing him to keep an eye on his enemies in the Senate.

When everything shook out, the People's Assembly granted Caesar the pro-consulship of Cisalpine Gaul for a period of five years. The Senate was furious, but the Assembly's decree went through before they could stop it. Almost as an afterthought, but of monumental importance to Roman and world history, the People's Assembly also granted Caesar the province of Transalpine Gaul, or, Gaul on the far side of the Alps. Thus situated, all he needed was an excuse.

Almost as if on cue, Caesar got his excuse. The delicate balance of power between the Gallic and Germanic tribes began to break down, and a tribe of Gauls living alongside Lake Geneva decided that they had had enough of marauding Germans. They would pack up their entire civilization and move down out of the mountains. They planned on moving into Roman territory, which may be a problem for them, but surely the Roman governor, what's his name, Caesar, would be a reasonable man. Surely he won't build a giant wall blocking our migration.

Next week, Caesar will build a giant wall blocking the migration of the Helvetii, which would prove to be the opening chapter of some of the most famous campaigns in history, collectively called the Gallic Wars.