History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott

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[Sidenote: Caesar's oration on his wife.]
[Sidenote: Alarm of the patricians.]

A short time after this Caesar had another opportunity for delivering a
funeral oration; it was in the case of his own wife, the daughter of
Cinna, who had been the colleague and coadjutor of Marius during the
days of his power. It was not usual to pronounce such panegyrics upon
Roman ladies unless they had attained to an advanced age. Caesar,
however, was disposed to make the case of his own wife an exception to
the ordinary rule. He saw in the occasion an opportunity to give a new
impulse to the popular cause, and to make further progress in gaining
the popular favor. The experiment was successful in this instance too.
The people were pleased at the apparent affection which his action
evinced; and as Cornelia was the daughter of Cinna, he had opportunity,
under pretext of praising the birth and parentage of the deceased, to
laud the men whom Sylla's party had outlawed and destroyed. In a word,
the patrician party saw with anxiety and dread that Caesar was rapidly
consolidating and organizing, and bringing back to its pristine strength
and vigor, a party whose restoration to power would of course involve
their own political, and perhaps personal ruin.

[Sidenote: Caesar in office.]
[Sidenote: Shows and entertainments.]

Caesar began soon to receive appointments to public office, and thus
rapidly increased his influence and power. Public officers and
candidates for office were accustomed in those days to expend great sums
of money in shows and spectacles to amuse the people. Caesar went beyond
all limits in these expenditures. He brought gladiators from distant
provinces, and trained them at great expense, to fight in the enormous
amphitheaters of the city, in the midst of vast assemblies of men. Wild
beasts were procured also from the forests of Africa, and brought over
in great numbers, under his direction, that the people might be
entertained by their combats with captives taken in war, who were
reserved for this dreadful fate. Caesar gave, also, splendid
entertainments, of the most luxurious and costly character, and he
mingled with his guests at these entertainments, and with the people at
large on other occasions, in so complaisant and courteous a manner as to
gain universal favor.

[Sidenote: Caesar's extravagances.]
[Sidenote: His embarrassments.]

He soon, by these means, not only exhausted all his own pecuniary
resources, but plunged himself enormously into debt. It was not
difficult for such a man in those days to procure an almost unlimited
credit for such purposes as these, for every one knew that, if he
finally succeeded in placing himself, by means of the popularity thus
acquired, in stations of power, he could soon indemnify himself and all
others who had aided him. The peaceful merchants, and artisans, and
husbandmen of the distant provinces over which he expected to rule,
would yield the revenues necessary to fill the treasuries thus
exhausted. Still, Caesar's expenditures were so lavish, and the debts he
incurred were so enormous, that those who had not the most unbounded
confidence in his capacity and his powers believed him irretrievably
ruined.

The particulars, however, of these difficulties, and the manner in which
Caesar contrived to extricate himself from them, will be more fully
detailed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER III.

ADVANCEMENT TO THE CONSULSHIP.

[Sidenote: Caesar's rise to power.]

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.

[Sidenote: Government of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Bribery and corruption.]
[Sidenote: Public amusements.]

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.

[Sidenote: Amusements for the people.]

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.

[Sidenote: Provided by the government.]
[Sidenote: How the people were supported.]
[Sidenote: Agrarian laws.]

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_.

[Sidenote: Government of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Its foreign policy.]

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.

[Sidenote: Caesar's policy.]

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.

[Sidenote: His success.]

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.

[Sidenote: He is made quaestor.]
[Sidenote: Caesar leaves Spain.]
[Sidenote: His project.]

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.

[Sidenote: Caesar accused of treason.]

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.

[Sidenote: He is made aedile.]
[Sidenote: Gladiatorial shows.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's increasing popularity.]

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.

[Sidenote: Caesar thwarted.]
[Sidenote: His resentment.]
[Sidenote: The statutes of Marius restored.]
[Sidenote: Rage of the patricians.]

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 down-fall, 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.

[Sidenote: The Good Goddess.]

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.

[Sidenote: Clodius.]
[Sidenote: Caesar divorces his wife.]

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.

[Sidenote: Quarrel of Clodius and Milo.]
[Sidenote: Violence of the time.]

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.

[Sidenote: Conspiracy of Catiline.]
[Sidenote: Warm debate in the Senate.]
[Sidenote: Caesar in danger of violence.]

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.

[Sidenote: Caesar's struggle for the office of pontifex maximus.]

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 hem
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.

[Sidenote: He is deposed.]
[Sidenote: Caesar's forbearance.]
[Sidenote: He is restored to office.]

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.

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