Caesar (45 page)

from JANUARY until DECEMBER of 51 B.C.

When news of the defeat and capture of Vercingetorix reached Rome, the Senate decreed a thanksgiving of twenty days—which could not undo the damage Pompey and his new allies the boni had engineered for Caesar during that year of total war, knowing full well that Caesar did not have the time or the energy to oppose their measures personally. Though he was kept informed, the immediate urgencies of finding food for his legions, making sure his men's lives were not risked needlessly and dealing with Vercingetorix had to take first place in Caesar's priorities. And while agents like Balbus, Oppius and Rabirius Postumus the bankers strove mightily to avert disaster, they had neither Caesar's consummate grasp of politics nor his unassailable authority; precious days were wasted couriering letters and waiting for replies. Not long after he had become consul without a colleague, Pompey had married Cornelia Metella and moved completely into the camp of the boni. The first evidence of his new ideological commitment came late in March, when he took a senatorial decree of the previous year and passed it into law. A harmless enough law on the surface, but Caesar saw its possibilities the moment he read Balbus's letter. From now on, a man who was in office as praetor or consul would have to wait five years before he was allowed to govern a province. A nuisance made serious because it created a pool of possible governors who could go to govern at a moment's notice: those men who, after being praetor or consul, had refused to take a province. They were now legally obliged to become governors if the Senate so directed them. Worse than that law was one Pompey proceeded to pass which stipulated that all candidates for praetor or consul must register their candidacy personally inside the city of Rome. Every member of Caesar's extremely powerful faction protested vehemently—what about Caesar, what about the Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs allowing Caesar to stand for his second consulship in absentia? Oops, oops! cried Pompey. Sorry about that, I clean forgot! Whereupon he tacked a codicil onto his lex Pompeia de iure magistratuum, exempting Caesar from its provisions. The only trouble was that he didn't have the codicil inscribed on the bronze tablet bearing his law, which gave the codicil no power in law whatsoever. Caesar got the news that he was now barred from standing in absentia while he was building his siege terrace at Avaricum; after that came Gergovia, after that the revolt of the Aedui, after that the pursuit which led eventually to Alesia. As he dealt with the Aedui at Decetia he learned that the Senate had met to discuss the allocation of next year's provinces, now unavailable to the men who were currently in office as praetors or consuls. They had to wait five years. The Senate scratched its head as it asked itself where next year's governors were to come from, but the consul without a colleague laughed. Easy, Pompey said. The men who had declined to govern a province after their year in office would have to govern whether they liked it or not. Cicero was therefore ordered to govern Cilicia and Bibulus to govern Syria, a prospect which filled both of these stay-at-homes with horror. Inside his protective ring at Alesia, Caesar got a letter from Rome informing him that Pompey had succeeded in having his new father-in-law, Metellus Scipio, elected his consular colleague for the rest of the year. And—more cheering news by far—that Cato, running for next year's consulship, had been ignominiously defeated. For all his admired incorruptibility, Cato couldn't impress the electors. Probably because the members of the First Class of centuriate voters liked to think there was some sort of chance that the consuls (for a trifling financial consideration) would do a few favors when nicely asked.

So when the New Year came in, Caesar was still in Gaul of the Long-hairs. He couldn't possibly cross the Alps to monitor events in Rome from Ravenna. Two inimical consuls in Servius Sulpicius Rufus and Marcus Claudius Marcellus were just entering office, a vexatious prospect for Caesar. Though it was something of a consolation that no less than four of the new tribunes of the plebs belonged to Caesar, bought and paid for. Marcus Marcellus the junior consul was already saying that he intended to strip Caesar's imperium, provinces and army from him, though the law Gaius Trebonius had passed to give him his second five years specifically forbade the matter's so much as being discussed before March of next year, fifteen months away. Constitutionality was for lesser beings. The boni cared not a fig about it if their target was Caesar. Who, through the haze of misery which greyed his life at this time, found it impossible to settle and do what he ought to do: send for people like Balbus and his dominant tribune of the plebs, Gaius Vibius Pansa, sit down with them in Bibracte and personally instruct them how to proceed. There were probably a few tactics his people could try, but only if they met with him in the flesh. Pompey was basking in boni approval and rejoicing in the possession of a hugely aristocratic wife, but at least he was no longer in office, and Servius Sulpicius, the new senior consul, was an approachable and deliberate member of the boni rather than an intemperate hothead like Marcus Marcellus. Instead of settling to deal with Rome, Caesar went on the road to subdue the Bituriges and contented himself with dictating a letter to the Senate on the march. In view of his stunning successes in the Gauls, he said, it seemed only fair and proper that he should be treated exactly as Pompey had been treated in the matter of Pompey's governorship of the Spains. His “election” as consul without a colleague had been in absentia because he was governing the Spains. He was still governing the Spains, had done so throughout his term as consul. Therefore, would the Conscript Fathers of the Senate please extend Caesar's tenure of the Gauls and Illyricum until he assumed the consulship in three years' time? What was accorded to Pompey should also be accorded to Caesar. The letter did not deign to mention Pompey's law that consular candidates must register for election inside Rome; Caesar's silence on this point was a way of saying that he knew Pompey's law did not apply to him. Three nundinae would elapse between the sending of this missive and any possibility of a reply; like several more nundinae, they were spent reducing the Bituriges to abject petitioners for mercy. His campaign was a series of forced marches of fifty miles a day; he would be in one place burning, sacking, killing and enslaving, then turn up fifty miles away even before the shouting could warn anyone. By now he knew that Gaul of the Long-hairs did not consider itself beaten. The new strategy consisted of small insurrections timed to flare up all over the country simultaneously, forcing Caesar to behave like a man obliged to stamp out ten different fires in ten different places at one and the same moment. But these insurrections presumed that there would be Roman citizens to slaughter, and there were not. Food purchasing for the legions, all scattered, was done by the legions themselves marching in force. Caesar countered by reducing several of the most powerful tribes in turn, commencing with the Bituriges, who were angry that Biturgo had been sent to Rome to walk in Caesar's triumphal parade. He took two legions only, the Thirteenth and the new Fifteenth: the Thirteenth because it bore that unlucky number, and the Fifteenth because it consisted of raw recruits. This highest numbered legion was his “oddments box,” its men seasoned and then slipped into other legions when they fell in number. The present Fifteenth was the result of Pompey's law early in the previous year stating that all Roman citizen men between seventeen and forty years of age must do military service—a law handy for Caesar, who never had trouble obtaining volunteers, but was often in trouble with the Senate for recruiting more men than he had been authorized to enlist. On the ninth day of February he returned to Bibracte. The lands of the Bituriges were in ruins; most of the Biturigan warriors were dead and the women and children taken captive. Awaiting him in Bibracte was the Senate's answer to his request for an extended term as governor. An answer he had perhaps expected, yet in his heart had truly believed would not be so, if only because to reject his petition was the height of folly. The answer was no: the Senate was not prepared to treat Caesar as it had treated Pompey. If he wanted to be consul in three years' time, he would have to behave like any other Roman governor: lay down his imperium, his provinces and his army, and register his candidacy in person inside Rome. What the answer didn't argue about was Caesar's calm assumption that he would be elected senior consul. Everyone knew it would happen thus. Caesar had never contested an election in which he did not come in at the top of the poll. Nor did he bribe. He didn't dare to bribe. Too many enemies were looking for an excuse to prosecute.

It was then, looking down at that coldly curt letter, that Caesar made up his mind to plan for all eventualities. They will not let me be all that I should be. That I am entitled to be. Yet they will accommodate a quasi-Roman like Pompeius. Bow and scrape to him. Exalt him. Fill him with ideas of his own importance, all the while sniggering at him behind their hands. Well, that's his burden. One day he'll discover what they really think of him. When the circumstances are right their masks will drop, and Pompeius will be genuinely devastated. He's exactly like Cicero when Catilina seemed certain to be consul. The boni espoused the despised bumpkin from Arpinum to keep out a man who had the blood. Now they espouse Pompeius to keep me out. But I will not let that happen. I am no Catilina! They want my hide, for no better reason than that my excellence forces them to see the extent of their own inadequacies. They think they can compel me to cross the pomerium into Rome to declare my candidacy, and, in crossing the pomerium, abandon the imperium which protects me from prosecution. They'll all be there at the electoral booth ready to pounce with a dozen trumped-up suits for treason, for extortion, for bribery, for peculation— for murder, if they can find someone to swear I was seen sneaking into the Lautumiae to throttle Vettius. I'll be like Gabinius, like Milo. Condemned in so many different courts for so many different crimes that I will never be able to show my face in Italia again. I will be stripped of my citizenship, my deeds will be erased from the history books, and men like Ahenobarbus and Metellus Scipio will be popped into my provinces to lake the credit, just as Pompeius took the credit for what Lucullus did. That will not happen. I will not let it happen, no matter what I have to do to avert it. In the meantime I will continue to work to be allowed to run in absentia, my imperium intact until I assume the imperium of the senior consul. I do not want to be known as a man who acted unconstitutionally. Never in my life have I acted unconstitutionally. Everything has been done as the mos maiorum says it should be done. That is my greatest ambition: to attain my second consulship within the bounds of the law. Once I become consul, I can deal with all their trumped-up charges by using the law legally. They know that. They fear that. But they cannot bear to lose. For if they lose, they admit that I am better than they are in every conceivable way, from brilliance to blood. For I am one man, and they are many. If I defeat them within the law, they will be as chagrined as the sphinx and have no other recourse than to jump over the nearest cliff. However, I will also plan for the worst. I will begin to do those things which will ensure that I succeed outside the law. Oh, the fools! They always underestimate me. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, if that be the name you would like to hear; Jupiter Optimus Maximus, of whatever sex you prefer; Jupiter Optimus Maximus, who is all the Gods and forces of Rome fused into one; Jupiter Optimus Maximus, contract with me to win! Should you do this, I hereby swear that I will accord you those sacrifices which do you the greatest honor and give you the most satisfaction....

The campaign to reduce the Bituriges had taken forty days. As soon as Caesar had arrived back in the camp just below the mount of Aeduan Bibracte, he assembled the Thirteenth and the Fifteenth and donated to every man in both legions one female Biturigan prisoner whom he could keep as a servant, or sell to the slavers. After which he gave every ranker a cash bonus of two hundred sesterces, and every centurion a cash bonus of two thousand sesterces. Out of his own purse.“ This is my thanks for your wonderful support,” he said to his soldiers. “What Rome pays you is one thing, but it is time that I, Gaius Julius Caesar, gave you something out of my own private purse as a special thank-you. The past forty days have seen little booty, yet I've taken you out of your well-earned winter rest and asked you to march fifty miles a day for almost every one of those forty days. After a terrible winter, spring and summer in the field against Vercingetorix, you deserved to sit back and do nothing for six months at least. But did you grumble when I said you'd be marching? No! Did you complain when I asked you for Herculean efforts? No! Did you slacken pace, did you ask for more to eat, did you for one moment give me less than your best? No! No, no, no! You're the men of Caesar's legions, and Rome has never seen your like! You're my boys! As long as my life shall last, you're my beloved boys!”

They cheered him hysterically, as much for his calling them his beloved boys as for the money and the slave, who also came out of his private purse; the profits from the sale of slaves belonged exclusively to the General. Trebonius looked sideways at Decimus Brutus. “What's he up to, Decimus? It's a wonderful gesture, but they didn't expect it and I can't work out what possessed him to make it.”

“I had a letter from Curio in the same bag which brought Caesar a letter from the Senate,” said Decimus Brutus, speaking too softly for Mark Antony or the tribunes to hear. “They won't let him stand in absentia, and the mood in the House is to strip him of his imperium as soon as possible. They want him disgraced and sent into permanent exile. So does Pompeius Magnus.” Trebonius grunted scornfully. “That last doesn't surprise me! Pompeius isn't worth one of Caesar's bootlaces.”

“Nor are any of the others.”

“That goes without saying.” He turned and left the parade ground, Decimus walking with him. “Do you think he'd do it?” Decimus Brutus didn't blink. “I think ... I think they're insane to provoke him, Gaius. Because yes, if they leave him no alternative he'll march on Rome.”