The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
being a man of less interest but greater affluence, should promise money
to the electors, in their joint names. Upon which the party of the
nobles, dreading how far he might carry matters in that high office, with
a colleague disposed to concur in and second his measures, advised
Bibulus to promise the voters as much as the other; and most of them
contributed towards the expense, Cato himself admitting that bribery;
under such circumstances, was for the public good [42]. He was
accordingly elected consul jointly with Bibulus. Actuated still by the
same motives, the prevailing party took care to assign provinces of small
importance to the new consuls, such as the care of the woods and roads.
Caesar, incensed at this indignity, endeavoured by the most assiduous and
flattering attentions to gain to his side Cneius Pompey, at that time
dissatisfied with the senate for the backwardness they shewed to confirm
his acts, after his victories over Mithridates. He likewise brought
about a reconciliation between Pompey and Marcus Crassus, who had been at
variance from (13) the time of their joint consulship, in which office
they were continually clashing; and he entered into an agreement with
both, that nothing should be transacted in the government, which was
displeasing to any of the three.
XX. Having entered upon his office [43], he introduced a new regulation,
that the daily acts both of the senate and people should be committed to
writing, and published [44]. He also revived an old custom, that an
officer [45] should precede him, and his lictors follow him, on the
alternate months when the fasces were not carried before him. Upon
preferring a bill to the people for the division of some public lands, he
was opposed by his colleague, whom he violently drove out of the forum.
Next day the insulted consul made a complaint in the senate of this
treatment; but such was the consternation, that no one having the courage
to bring the matter forward or move a censure, which had been often done
under outrages of less importance, he was so much dispirited, that until
the expiration of his office he never stirred from home, and did nothing
but issue edicts to obstruct his colleague’s proceedings. From that
time, therefore, Caesar had the sole management of public affairs;
insomuch that some wags, when they signed any instrument as witnesses,
did not add “in the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus,” but, “of Julius
and Caesar;” putting the same person down twice, under his name and
surname. The following verses likewise were currently repeated on this
occasion:
Non Bibulo quidquam nuper, sed Caesare factum est;
Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.
Nothing was done in Bibulus’s year:
No; Caesar only then was consul here.
(14) The land of Stellas, consecrated by our ancestors to the gods, with
some other lands in Campania left subject to tribute, for the support of
the expenses of the government, he divided, but not by lot, among upwards
of twenty thousand freemen, who had each of them three or more children.
He eased the publicans, upon their petition, of a third part of the sum
which they had engaged to pay into the public treasury; and openly
admonished them not to bid so extravagantly upon the next occasion. He
made various profuse grants to meet the wishes of others, no one opposing
him; or if any such attempt was made, it was soon suppressed. Marcus
Cato, who interrupted him in his proceedings, he ordered to be dragged
out of the senate-house by a lictor, and carried to prison. Lucius
Lucullus, likewise, for opposing him with some warmth, he so terrified
with the apprehension of being criminated, that, to deprecate the
consul’s resentment, he fell on his knees. And upon Cicero’s lamenting
in some trial the miserable condition of the times, he the very same day,
by nine o’clock, transferred his enemy, Publius Clodius, from a patrician
to a plebeian family; a change which he had long solicited in vain [46].
At last, effectually to intimidate all those of the opposite party, he by
great rewards prevailed upon Vettius to declare, that he had been
solicited by certain persons to assassinate Pompey; and when he was
brought before the rostra to name those who had been concerted between
them, after naming one or two to no purpose, not without great suspicion
of subornation, Caesar, despairing of success in this rash stratagem, is
supposed to have taken off his informer by poison.
XXI. About the same time he married Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius
Piso, who was to succeed him in the consulship, and gave his own daughter
Julia to Cneius Pompey; rejecting Servilius Caepio, to whom she had been
contracted, and by whose means chiefly he had but a little before baffled
Bibulus. After this new alliance, he began, upon any debates in the
senate, to ask Pompey’s opinion first, whereas he used before to give
that distinction to Marcus Crassus; and it was (15) the usual practice
for the consul to observe throughout the year the method of consulting
the senate which he had adopted on the calends (the first) of January.
XXII. Being, therefore, now supported by the interest of his
father-in-law and son-in-law, of all the provinces he made choice of Gaul,
as most likely to furnish him with matter and occasion for triumphs. At
first indeed he received only Cisalpine-Gaul, with the addition of
Illyricum, by a decree proposed by Vatinius to the people; but soon
afterwards obtained from the senate Gallia-Comata [47] also, the senators
being apprehensive, that if they should refuse it him, that province,
also, would be granted him by the people. Elated now with his success, he
could not refrain from boasting, a few days afterwards, in a full
senate-house, that he had, in spite of his enemies, and to their great
mortification, obtained all he desired, and that for the future he would
make them, to their shame, submissive to his pleasure. One of the
senators observing, sarcastically: “That will not be very easy for a woman
[48] to do,” he jocosely replied, “Semiramis formerly reigned in Assyria,
and the Amazons possessed great part of Asia.”
XXIII. When the term of his consulship had expired, upon a motion being
made in the senate by Caius Memmius and Lucius Domitius, the praetors,
respecting the transactions of the year past, he offered to refer himself
to the house; but (16) they declining the business, after three days
spent in vain altercation, he set out for his province. Immediately,
however, his quaestor was charged with several misdemeanors, for the
purpose of implicating Caesar himself. Indeed, an accusation was soon
after preferred against him by Lucius Antistius, tribune of the people;
but by making an appeal to the tribune’s colleagues, he succeeded in
having the prosecution suspended during his absence in the service of the
state. To secure himself, therefore, for the time to come, he was
particularly careful to secure the good-will of the magistrates at the
annual elections, assisting none of the candidates with his interest, nor
suffering any persons to be advanced to any office, who would not
positively undertake to defend him in his absence for which purpose he
made no scruple to require of some of them an oath, and even a written
obligation.
XXIV. But when Lucius Domitius became a candidate for the consulship,
and openly threatened that, upon his being elected consul, he would
effect that which he could not accomplish when he was praetor, and divest
him of the command of the armies, he sent for Crassus and Pompey to
Lucca, a city in his province, and pressed them, for the purpose of
disappointing Domitius, to sue again for the consulship, and to continue
him in his command for five years longer; with both which requisitions
they complied. Presumptuous now from his success, he added, at his own
private charge, more legions to those which he had received from the
republic; among the former of which was one levied in Transalpine Gaul,
and called by a Gallic name, Alauda [49], which he trained and armed in
the Roman fashion, and afterwards conferred on it the freedom of the
city. From this period he declined no occasion of war, however unjust
and dangerous; attacking, without any provocation, as well the allies of
Rome as the barbarous nations which were its enemies: insomuch, that the
senate passed a decree for sending commissioners to examine into the
condition of Gaul; and some members even proposed that he should be
delivered up to the enemy. But so great had been the success of his
enterprises, that he had the honour of obtaining more days [50] (17) of
supplication, and those more frequently, than had ever before been
decreed to any commander.
XXV. During nine years in which he held the government of the province,
his achievements were as follows: he reduced all Gaul, bounded by the
Pyrenean forest, the Alps, mount Gebenna, and the two rivers, the Rhine
and the Rhone, and being about three thousand two hundred miles in
compass, into the form of a province, excepting only the nations in
alliance with the republic, and such as had merited his favour; imposing
upon this new acquisition an annual tribute of forty millions of
sesterces. He was the first of the Romans who, crossing the Rhine by a
bridge, attacked the Germanic tribes inhabiting the country beyond that
river, whom he defeated in several engagements. He also invaded the
Britons, a people formerly unknown, and having vanquished them, exacted
from them contributions and hostages. Amidst such a series of successes,
he experienced thrice only any signal disaster; once in Britain, when his
fleet was nearly wrecked in a storm; in Gaul, at Gergovia, where one of
his legions was put to the rout; and in the territory of the Germans, his
lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were cut off by an ambuscade.
XXVI. During this period [51] he lost his mother [52], whose death was
followed by that of his daughter [53], and, not long afterwards, of his
granddaughter. Meanwhile, the republic being in consternation at the
murder of Publius Clodius, and the senate passing a vote that only one
consul, namely, Cneius Pompeius, should be chosen for the ensuing year,
he prevailed with the tribunes of the people, who intended joining him in
nomination with Pompey, to propose to the people a bill, enabling him,
though absent, to become a candidate for his second consulship, when the
term of his command should be near expiring, that he might not be obliged
on that account to quit his province too soon, and before the conclusion
of the war. Having attained this object, carrying his views still
higher, and animated with the hopes of success, he omitted no (18)
opportunity of gaining universal favour, by acts of liberality and
kindness to individuals, both in public and private. With money raised
from the spoils of the war, he began to construct a new forum, the
ground-plot of which cost him above a hundred millions of sesterces [54].
He promised the people a public entertainment of gladiators, and a feast
in memory of his daughter, such as no one before him had ever given. The
more to raise their expectations on this occasion, although he had agreed
with victuallers of all denominations for his feast, he made yet farther
preparations in private houses. He issued an order, that the most
celebrated gladiators, if at any time during the combat they incurred the
displeasure of the public, should be immediately carried off by force,
and reserved for some future occasion. Young gladiators he trained up,
not in the school, and by the masters, of defence, but in the houses of
Roman knights, and even senators, skilled in the use of arms, earnestly
requesting them, as appears from his letters, to undertake the discipline