Julius Caesar (35 page)

The routed Pompeians fled first within the walls of Munda, and then into Corduba—but there was no quarter; 30,000 are said to have fallen on the battlefield itself, among them many of those young aristocrats who had escaped from Pharsalus, as well as survivors from Thapsus. Labienus, one-time friend and fellow-general and later most bitter enemy, was among the slain, together with Attius Varus, former governor of Africa and friend of King Juba. The eagles of the thirteen legions that had fought for Pompey’s son were all taken, but he himself and his younger brother both managed to escape. Gnaeus survived only to meet his death while trying to flee to North Africa, and his head was brought to Caesar in Hispalis. There were no tears this time for a Pompey. Sextus Pompeius, the younger son, outlived the war, outlived Caesar, and was finally killed in the reign of Augustus, having first made himself master of Sicily and emulated his father as Sea King of the Mediterranean. But the Pompeian cause, militarily, was ended on the bloodstained field of Munda.

Before leaving Spain Caesar spent many weeks reorganizing the province, founding new citizen colonies and designing the administration in such a way that inland towns and important harbors on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts (including Lisbon) became new centers for Roman emigrants. Matthias Gelzer in
Caesar: Politician and Statesman
has pointed out the importance of the measures that he took in Spain after his victory at Munda:

This radical transplanting of communities of Roman citizens to territories with no geographical connection with Rome dealt a death blow to the character of the Roman republic as a city state and symbolises the monarchic imperial policy beside which the assemblies of the sovereign people were merely decorative formalities.

This victory in Spain signaled the final defeat of the old senatorial system and the beginning of the imperial.

While still in Spain Caesar, as usual, did not spare the cities and communities that had fought against him. Most of the towns in the rich province of Baetica found themselves compelled to pay fines and to hand over the treasures from their temples and the houses of the rich who had been rash enough to embrace the Pompeian cause. Greece and Asia Minor had yielded little (for political reasons) to the conqueror and his soldiers, but Egypt had paid highly for the privilege of being saved from the family struggle of the Ptolemies and Africa for being the base for Scipio, King Juba, and the other Pompeians. Now those districts of Spain which had been the last stronghold of the sons of Pompey must pay for that doubtful privilege. The unknown author of the
Spanish War
details the reprisals inflicted by Caesar upon the Spanish cities, noting that not even Gades was spared. Yet it was here, in a city always favored by Caesar and in the time-hallowed temple of Hercules that, as a young man on his first major overseas appointment as quaestor, he is said to have wept before the statue of Alexander and envied him his glory. The temple was plundered of its treasures none the less. He was now master of an empire eclipsing that which the great Macedonian had carved out of the East. Only Parthia, where Crassus had met his fate, Parthia and the lands beyond that led to India, still eluded him. If he redeemed the ineptitude and incompetence of Crassus and made himself master of that kingdom and the road to India and the Far East, his empire would be greater by far than that of Alexander.

34

Dictator Perpetual

ON his return journey to Italy Caesar stopped for a while in Narbonese Gaul, that province with which he was so familiar from earlier years and which had helped him greatly during the Gallic war. He strengthened the colony by settling a number of his veterans in it, thus paying off debts to his soldiers and at the same time founding Arelate (Aries) and Forum Julii (Frejus). During this period, while he was applying the same principles to Narbonese Gaul as he had just done to Spain, young Octavius was with him throughout, a spectator of the tasks of administration—something at which he was to later prove himself a master. They were joined by Mark Antony, to whom Caesar promised the consulship for the following year, regarding his earlier quarrel with him as over and done with. Caesar, from his lonely height of power, was always willing to forgive previous lapses by his appointees or even the downright hostility of his opponents, but he was perhaps unable to realize that those to whom this almost regal pardon was extended sometimes felt, like Cato, that he had no right to bestow it. Such was certainly the case with Gaius Trebonius who, among other petitioners, had come to see Caesar while he was in the province. Trebonius, who had been the governor of Farther Spain, was in considerable disgrace for his conduct of that province and, an embittered man, seems to have been plotting Caesar’s assassination. This perhaps is not so surprising, but what does seem almost incredible is that he even tried to involve Antony in the conspiracy. That Caesar’s supposedly most devoted lieutenant should have been party to a murder plot at this moment in Caesar’s career and not have revealed it, doing no more than turn down the offer, requires some explanation. If Cicero is to be believed Antony had, in fact, been privy to a previous conspiracy against his friend, and his behavior now goes some way toward explaining his curious inaction immediately after Caesar’s death. In the pursuit of power, loyalty is almost as rare as the phoenix. In the event, Trebonius abandoned his design, finding the moment inopportune, but he was later to play a most curious and sinister part in the final and successful conspiracy. Antony’s behavior, both now and later on the Ides of March, must be seen in the context of a man who was not above involvement in the assassination of Caesar.

Another trusted friend who traveled back with Caesar to Rome was Decimus Brutus, governor of Transalpine Gaul, while among those who had come to visit him was Marcus Brutus, Servilia’s son. Men like these were quite prepared to work with Caesar so long as it served their political ends, but they would not brook subservience to autocratic power. If such were the feelings of men who had risen to power because of him, those of his opponents can well be imagined.

Marcus Brutus had recently married Porcia, the daughter of Cato and the widow of Caesar’s great enemy Bibulus. At his request Cicero had dedicated his encomium of the republican virtues to Brutus’ dead father-in-law. Cicero’s
Cato,
which Caesar will have read toward the end of 46, provoked him to such anger that he even—rashly—wrote an
Anti-Cato
in refutation. Cato, “the hero of Utica,” as he was seen by old republicans, was extolled by Cicero as a model of all the ancient Roman virtues, representing that dream of an
Optimate
republic which Cicero had never discarded. Caesar’s angry and intemperate response to Cicero’s work, portraying Cato as a drunkard and a miser, did no damage to this republican image. If anything, the bitter nature of the
Anti-Cato
increased the circulation of Cicero’s encomium, for something that so annoyed the great dictator must be presumed to contain more than an element of truth. Cato dead became a far greater force than Cato alive.

As soon as the news of the battle of Munda reached Rome the obsequious senate and the pleasure-loving people vied with one another to overwhelm Caesar with fresh honors. Nothing less than fifty days of thanksgiving for his victory would suffice for the dictator, also named “Liberator,” and to whom the title of Imperator was now given as a hereditary name. The triumphal dress, normally reserved for the occasion of a triumph only, might be worn by Caesar on every occasion, while he was also granted the honor of always wearing a laurel wreath (something designed to gratify the vanity of a balding man). A temple was to be built to the new Concord that Caesar had restored to the people, as well as a palace for him on the Quirinal and another temple to Liberty. In the temple of Quirinus (Romulus after his elevation to a deity) a statue of Caesar was to be erected, with the inscription:
To the Invincible God.
The latter provoked Cicero to the witticism that he would rather see Caesar sharing the temple of Quirinus (Romulus had allegedly been assassinated before his deification as Quirinus) than that of Salus (goddess of Health and Prosperity). But Rome was to be inundated with statues to Caesar, one in the Capitol next to those of the ancient kings, and two more in the Forum, until finally it was decreed that a statue of Caesar should stand in every temple of Rome and of the republic. Thus the cult of the ruler and of the divine monarch, so familiar to all those in the East, was brought to the capital and was ultimately to spread throughout the whole of the Roman empire. After the personal outward signs and symbols of his glory, and after the statues and the temples, came the celebrations. All the anniversaries of his victories were to be celebrated every year, and every five years a special celebration was to be held in his honor as hero and demigod. But even full divinity did not long elude him, for all the ceremonial trappings which the Romans bestowed upon their deities were soon accorded to him. His statue carved in ivory was to be carried on its special carriage, along with those of the other gods, during the formal processions that heralded the opening of the games at the Circus.

It must certainly be suspected that his enemies, quite as much as his friends, were eager to inundate him with honors to an excessive degree, and in this connection Plutarch has a revealing passage:

…his countrymen, conceding all to his fortune, and accepting the bit, in the hope that the government of a single person would give them time to breathe after so many civil wars and calamities, made him dictator for life. This was indeed a tyranny avowed, since his power now was not only absolute, but perpetual too.
Cicero made the first proposals
[my italics] to the senate for conferring honors upon him, which might in some sort be said not to exceed the limits of ordinary human moderation. But others, striving which should deserve most, carried them so excessively high, that they made Caesar odious to the most indifferent and moderate sort of men, by the pretension and the extravagance of the titles which they decreed him. His enemies, too, are thought to have had some share in this, as well as his flatterers. It gave them advantage against him, and would be their justification for any attempt they should make upon him; for since the civil wars were ended, he had nothing else that he could be charged with.

Caesar’s triumph for his victory in Spain was not celebrated until October and, although he was in Italy by July, he does not seem to have spent much if any time in Rome. At first this seems surprising, but not so perhaps if one considers his age and his state of health, and that he had just fought a major campaign, won a decisive victory and completed an arduous round of lawgiving and administration. He was fifty-five years old; intellectually and physically he had subjected himself constantly to almost superhuman strains; his health was failing; he was subject to epileptic fits, and (according to Suetonius) “sudden comas and a tendency to nightmares.” Coins depicting him at this time in his life show an elderly man with a lean and wrinkled neck, furrows around the eyes and a deeply-lined face. He badly needed a rest, and it was hardly surprising that not long after his arrival back in Italy he made his way to his estate at Lavicum, southeast of Rome. It is clear that his thoughts were turning toward the future, when he would no longer be present to direct the destiny of Rome—had he not already said to the senate in a tired and bitter mood: “I have lived long enough”?

In September 45, there in the country far from the endless petitioners, the confusions and complexities of Rome, he wrote his will. Three-quarters of the inheritance went to Octavius, the remaining quarter to two other grand-nephews. The formal adoption of Octavius into the Caesar family was confirmed, but a clause provided for the possibility of a son being born to himself—and in this event several of those who were to be his assassins were appointed as the boy’s guardians. Decimus Brutus even figured among his potential heirs, in the case of any of the three heirs in the first degree dying or refusing to accept the legacy. His gardens on the banks of the Tiber were to be left to the commons, as well as three gold pieces a man. Provision for the future having been made, his health presumably somewhat restored, he left for Rome where the celebration of his Spanish triumph was due to take place in October.

If it had been difficult to justify the African triumph, and the reason for it had been masked under the defeat of King Juba and the exhibition of his small son among the captives, it was impossible to find any pretense of a foreign enemy for the celebration of the victory in Spain. The battle of Munda had been fought by Romans against Romans, both the generals and the legionaries, and if Pharsalus had been tacitly omitted from Caesar’s triumphs so should Munda have been. It was evidence of blindness on his part, and perhaps some deliberate blindness on the part of advisers, that the Spanish campaign and victory was celebrated. It was not popular. A single incident which occurred during the procession of the conqueror is indicative of much of the suppressed bitterness and impotent rage of many of the people. As Caesar in his triumphal chariot was passing the bench reserved for the tribunes of the people, one of them, Pontius Aquila, ostentatiously failed to rise to his feet. Caesar was so incensed at this deliberate discourtesy that he called out to him: “Hey there, Aquila the tribune! Do you want me then to restore the republic!” The incident clearly rankled and, for several days afterward, he is reported as having added to every undertaking that he gave: “Provided that Pontius Aquila gives me permission.” Perhaps it was because he felt the growing resentment, and wished to placate the people in the simple manner that had served so often in the past, that he declared the entertainment provided for them after the procession had not been up to standard and ordered another public banquet to take place a few days later.