A century of revolution had broken down a selfish and narrow aristocracy, but had put no other government in its place. Unemployment, bribery, bread and circuses had corrupted the Assembly into an ill-informed and passion-ridden mob obviously incapable of ruling itself, much less an empire. Democracy had fallen by Plato’s formula: liberty had become license, and chaos begged an end to liberty.24 Caesar agreed with Pompey that the Republic was dead; it was now, he said, “a mere name, without body or form”;25 dictatorship was unavoidable. But he had hoped to establish a leadership that would be progressive, that would not freeze the status quo, but would lessen the abuses, inequities, and destitution which had degraded democracy. He was now fifty-four, and surely weakened by his long campaigns in Gaul; he did not relish a war against his fellow citizens and his former friends. But he saw the snares that had been prepared for him, and resented them as an ill-reward for one who had saved Italy. His term as governor of Gaul would end on March 1, 49; he could not run for the consulship until the fall of that year; in the interval he would lose the immunity of an officeholder, and could not enter Rome without subjecting himself to those proscriptions which were among the favorite weapons of party warfare in Rome. Already Marcus Marcellus had proposed to the Senate that Caesar should be deposed from his governorship before its expiration—which meant self-exile or trial. The tribunes of the plebs had saved him by their veto, but the Senate clearly favored the motion. Cato frankly expressed the hope that Caesar would be accused, tried, and banished from Italy.
Caesar made every effort at conciliation. When, at Pompey’s suggestion, the Senate asked both generals to release to it a legion for use against Parthia, Caesar at once complied, though his force was small; and when Pompey asked Caesar for the return of the legion sent him a year before, Caesar dispatched it to him without delay. His friends informed him, however, that instead of being sent to Parthia these legions were being kept at Capua. Through his supporters in the Senate Caesar requested a renewal of the Assembly’s earlier decree permitting him to stand for the consulship in absence. The Senate refused to submit the motion and demanded that Caesar dismiss his troops. Caesar felt that his legions were his only protection; perhaps he had nourished their personal loyalty with a view to just such a crisis as this. Nevertheless, he proposed to the Senate that both he and Pompey should lay down their commissions—an offer which seemed to the people of Rome so reasonable that they garlanded his messenger with flowers. The Senate favored the plan, 370 to 22, but Pompey balked at it. In the last days of the year 50 the Senate declared Caesar a public enemy unless he should abandon his command by July 1. On the first day of 49 Curio read to the Senate a letter in which Caesar agreed to disband all but two of his ten legions if he might retain the governorship till 48; but he spoiled the offer by adding that he would look upon its rejection as a declaration of war. Cicero spoke for the proposal, and Pompey agreed to it; but the consul Lentulus intervened and drove Caesar’s lieutenants, Curio and Antony, from the senate house.26 After a long debate the reluctant Senate, persuaded by Lentulus, Cato, and Marcellus, gave Pompey orders and powers to “see that no harm should come to the state”—the Roman phrase for dictatorship and martial law.
Caesar hesitated more than was his wont. Legally the Senate was right, he had no authority to name the conditions under which he would resign his command. He knew that civil war might bring Gaul to revolt and Italy to ruin. But to yield was to surrender the Empire to incompetence and reaction. Amid his deliberations he learned that one of his nearest friends and ablest lieutenants, Titus Labienus, had gone over to Pompey. He summoned the soldiers of his favorite Thirteenth Legion and laid the situation before them. His first word won them: Commilitones!—“fellow soldiers.” They who had seen him share their hardships and perils, who had had to complain that he risked himself too readily, recognized his right to use this word; he had always addressed them so rather than with the curt Milites! of less gracious commanders. Most of his men came from Cisalpine Gaul, to which he had extended Roman citizenship; they knew that the Senate had refused to recognize this grant and that one senator had flogged a Cisalpine Gaul just to show his contempt for Caesar’s enfranchisement; it was illegal to flog a Roman citizen. They had learned to respect Caesar—even, in their rough mute way, to love him—during their many campaigns. He had been severe with cowardice and indiscipline, but he had been lenient with their human faults, had winked at their sexual escapades, had spared them unnecessary dangers, had saved them by skillful generalship, had doubled their pay, and had spread his spoils among them handsomely. He told them of his proposals to the Senate and how these had been received; he reminded them that an idle and corrupt aristocracy was unfit to give Rome order, justice, and prosperity. Would they follow him? Not one refused. When he told them that he had no money with which to pay them they emptied their savings into his treasury.
On January 10, 49, he led one legion across the Rubicon, a small stream, near Ariminum, that marked the southern boundary of Cisalpine Gaul. lacta est alea, he is reported to have said—“the die is cast.”27 It seemed an act of folly, for the remaining nine legions of his army were still distant in Gaul and could not reach him for weeks to come; while Pompey had ten legions, or 60,000 troops, authority to levy as many more as he pleased, and funds to arm and feed them. Caesar’s Twelfth Legion joined him at Picenum, the Eighth at Corfinium; he formed three legions more from prisoners, volunteers, and levies upon the population. He had little difficulty in getting recruits; Italy had not forgotten the Social War (88), and saw in Caesar a champion of Italian rights; one by one its cities opened their gates to him, some turned out en masse to welcome him; 28 “the towns,” wrote Cicero, “salute him as a god.”29 Corfinium resisted briefly, then surrendered; Caesar protected it from sack by his soldiers, freed all captured officers, and sent to Pompey’s camp the money and baggage that Labienus had left behind. Though almost penniless, he refrained from confiscating those estates of his opponents that fell into his hands—a characteristically wise measure, which won to neutrality most of the middle class. It would be his policy, he announced, to consider all neutrals his friends. At every new advance he tried again for reconciliation. He sent a message to Lentulus begging him to use his consular influence for peace. In a letter to Cicero he offered to retire to private life and leave the field to Pompey, provided he should be allowed to live in security.30 Cicero labored to effect a compromise, but found his logic helpless before the rival dogmatisms of revolution.31
Though his forces still far outnumbered Caesar’s, Pompey withdrew with them from the capital, and a disorderly stream of aristocrats followed him, leaving their wives and children to Caesar’s mercy. Rejecting every overture of peace, Pompey declared that he would consider as an enemy any senator who did not abandon Rome and join his camp. The majority of the Senate remained in Rome, and vacillating Cicero, despising Pompey’s vacillations, divided himself among his rural estates. Pompey marched to Brundisium and ferried his troops across the Adriatic. He knew that his undisciplined army needed further training before it could stand up to Caesar’s legions; meanwhile, he hoped, the Roman fleet under his control would starve Italy into destroying his rival.
Caesar entered Rome (March 16) unresisted and unarmed, having left his troops in near-by towns. He proclaimed a general amnesty and restored municipal administration and social order. The tribunes convoked the Senate; Caesar asked it to name him dictator, but it refused; he asked it to send envoys to Pompey to negotiate peace, but it refused. He sought funds from the national Treasury; the tribune Lucius Metellus barred his way, but yielded when Caesar remarked that it was harder for him to utter threats than to execute them. Henceforth he made free use of the state’s money; but with unscrupulous impartiality he deposited in the Treasury the booty from his later campaigns. Then he returned to his soldiers, and prepared to meet the three armies that the Pompeians were organizing in Greece, Africa, and Spain.
To secure the grain supply upon which Italy’s life depended, he sent the impetuous Curio with two legions to take Sicily. Cato surrendered the island and withdrew to Africa; Curio pursued him with the recklessness of Regulus, gave battle prematurely, was defeated, and died in action, mourning not his own death, but the injury he had done to Caesar. Meanwhile Caesar had led an army to Spain, partly to ensure the renewal of its grain exports to Italy, partly to forestall a rear attack when he marched to meet Pompey. In Spain, as in Gaul, he made serious blunders in strategy.32 For a time his outnumbered army faced starvation and defeat; but, as usual, he redeemed himself by brilliant improvisation and personal bravery.33 By altering the course of a river he turned blockade into counterblockade; he waited patiently for the entrapped army to surrender, though his troops fretted for action; at last the Pompeians gave in, and all Spain came over to Caesar (August, 49). Returning toward Italy by land, he found his way blocked at Marseilles by an army under Lucius Domitius, whom he had captured and released at Corfinium. Caesar took the town after a hard siege, reorganized the administration of Gaul, and by December was back in Rome.
His political position had been strengthened by this campaign, which had reassured the worried bellies of the capital. The Senate now named him dictator, but he surrendered that title after being elected one of the two consuls for 48. Finding Italy in a credit crisis due to the fact that the hoarding of currency had depressed prices, and debtors were refusing to pay in dear money what they had borrowed in cheap money, he decreed that debts might be paid in goods valued by state arbitrators at prewar prices; this, he thought, was “the most suitable way both of maintaining the honor of the debtors and of removing or diminishing the fear of that general repudiation of debts which is apt to follow war.”34 It is a revelation of how slowly reform had moved in Rome that he was compelled again to forbid enslavement for debt. He permitted the interest already paid on debts to be deducted from the principal, and limited interest to one per cent per month. These measures satisfied most creditors, who had feared confiscation; correspondingly they disappointed the radicals, who had hoped that Caesar would continue Catiline by abolishing all debts and redividing the land. He distributed corn to the needy, canceled all sentences of banishment except Milo’s, and pardoned all returning aristocrats. No one thanked him for his moderation. The forgiven conservatives resumed their plotting against his life; and while he was facing Pompey in Thessaly the radicals abandoned him for Caelius, who promised them a complete abolition of debts, the confiscation of large properties, and the reallotment of all land.
Near the end of 49 Caesar joined the troops and fleet that his aides had collected at Brundisium. A winter crossing of the Adriatic by an army was in those days unheard of; the twelve vessels at his disposal could carry over only a third of his 60,000 men at one time; and Pompey’s superior squadrons patrolled all islands and harbors along the opposite coast. Nevertheless, Caesar set sail and crossed to Epirus with 20,000 men. On their way back to Italy his ships were wrecked. Wondering what delayed the remainder of his army, Caesar tried to recross in a small skiff. The sailors rowed out against the surf and were nearly drowned. Caesar, dauntless amid their terror, encouraged them with the possibly legendary exhortation: “Fear not; you carry Caesar and his fortune.”35 But wind and wave tossed the boat back upon the shore, and Caesar had to abandon the attempt. Meanwhile Pompey, with 40,000 men, seized Dyrrhachium and its rich stores; then, with the indecision that marked his obese years, he failed to attack Caesar’s depleted and starving force. During this delay Mark Antony gathered another fleet and brought over the rest of Caesar’s army.
Ready now to join battle, but still loath to turn Roman against Roman, Caesar sent an envoy to Pompey proposing that both leaders should lay down their commands. Pompey gave no reply.IV Caesar attacked and was repulsed; but Pompey failed to follow his victory with pursuit. Against Pompey’s advice his officers put all captives to death, while Caesar spared his37—a contrast that raised the morale of Caesar’s troops and lowered that of Pompey’s. Caesar’s men begged him to punish them for the cowardice they had shown in this their first fight against Roman legions. When he refused, they besought him to lead them back to battle; but he thought it wiser to retreat into Thessaly and let them rest.
Pompey now made the decision that cost him his life. Afranius advised him to return and recapture undefended Italy; but the majority of his counselors urged him to pursue and destroy Caesar. The aristocrats in Pompey’s camp exaggerated the victory at Dyrrhachium and supposed that the great issue had there been decided. Cicero, who had finally joined them, was shocked to hear them dispute as to their respective shares in the coming restoration, and to see with what luxury they lived in the midst of war—their meals served on silver plate, their tents comfortable with carpets, brilliant with hangings, garlanded with flowers.
Excepting Pompey himself [Cicero wrote], the Pompeians carried on the war with such rapacity, and breathed such principles of cruelty in their conversation, that I could not contemplate even their success without horror. . . . There was nothing good among them but their cause. … A proscription was proposed not only individually but collectively. . . . Lentulus had promised himself Hortensius’ house, Caesar’s gardens, and Baiae.38
Pompey would have preferred a more Fabian strategy, but taunts of cowardice prevailed upon him, and he gave orders to march.
At Pharsalus, August 9, 48, the decisive battle was fought to the bitter end. Pompey had 48,000 infantry, 7000 horse; Caesar had 22,000 and 1000.39 “Some few of the noblest Romans,” says Plutarch, “standing as spectators outside the battle . . . could not but reflect to what a pass private ambition had brought the Empire. . . . The whole flower and strength of the same city, meeting here in collision with itself, offered plain proof how blind and mad a thing human nature is when passion is aroused.”40 Near relatives, even brothers, fought in the opposed armies. Caesar bade his men spare all Romans who should surrender; as to the young aristocrat Marcus Brutus, he said, they were to capture him without injuring him, or, if this proved impossible, they were to let him escape.41 The Pompeians were overwhelmed by superior leadership, training, and morale; 15,000 of them were killed or wounded, 20,000 surrendered, the remainder fled. Pompey tore the insignia of command from his clothing and took flight like the rest. Caesar tells us that he lost but 200 men 42—which casts doubt upon all his books. His army was amused to see the tents of the defeated so elegantly adorned, and their tables laden with the feast that was to celebrate their victory. Caesar ate Pompey’s supper in Pompey’s tent.
Pompey rode all night to Larissa, thence to the sea, and took ship to Alexandria. At Mytilene, where his wife joined him, the citizens wished him to stay; he refused courteously, and advised them to submit to the conqueror without fear, for, he said, “Caesar was a man of great goodness and clemency.”43 Brutus also escaped to Larissa, but there he dallied and wrote to Caesar. The victor expressed great joy on hearing that he was safe, readily forgave him, and at his request forgave Cassius. To the nations of the East, which—controlled by the upper classes—had supported Pompey, he was likewise lenient. He distributed Pompey’s hoards of grain among the starving population of Greece, and to the Athenians asking pardon he replied with a smile of reproof: “How often will the glory of your ancestors save you from self-destruction?”44
Probably he had been warned that Pompey hoped to resume the contest with the army and resources of Egypt, and the forces that Cato, Labienus, and Metellus Scipio were organizing at Utica. But when Pompey reached Alexandria, Pothinus, eunuch vizier of young Ptolemy XII, ordered his servants to kill Pompey, presumably in expectation of reward from Caesar. The general was stabbed to death as he stepped upon the shore, while his wife looked on in helpless terror from the ship in which they had come. When Caesar arrived, Pothinus’ men presented him with the severed head. Caesar turned away in horror and wept at this new proof that by diverse means men come to the same end. He established his quarters in the royal palace of the Ptolemies and set himself to regulate the affairs of the ancient kingdom.