Caesar decided to target Cassivellaunus’ own homeland and marched towards the Thames. It is not clear where he crossed-probably somewhere in what is now central London – but his men forded the river and brushed aside the warriors defending the far bank. The British commander decided not to risk another open battle and resolved instead to harass the enemy, relying mainly on his chariot force. Caesar claims that there were 4,000 of these, but this seems likely to be an inflated figure – for instance it would mean 8,000 ponies. Herds were driven from the fields along the Romans’ route of march and food supplies destroyed or hidden. The chariots were there to ambush the Roman foragers. Caesar’s men began to suffer a steady trickle of losses in these skirmishes, until he was forced to keep men close to the main column at all times. Fortunately, as he had so often done in Gaul, Caesar was able to make use of a local ally. With the army was Mandubracius, a prince of the Trinovantes – a people living north of the Thames in East Anglia – who had been driven into exile after Cassivellaunus had killed his father. This tribe surrendered, asking Caesar to restore Mandubracius to the throne, and willingly handed over both hostages and food. Their example was soon followed by five other small tribes, whose names are not otherwise known to history. The fragile alliance between the British tribes was crumbling under the pressure of long-standing animosities. From these new allies Caesar discovered the location of Cassivellaunus’ own stronghold, hidden amidst woods and marshes. Straightaway he marched the legions there and stormed the place, capturing considerable quantities of cattle. It was a major blow to the war-leader’s prestige. At around the same time Cassivellaunus had arranged for the tribes of Kent to mount an attack on Atrius and the cohorts guarding the ships, but this was repulsed with heavy losses.33
Following these twin blows Cassivellaunus decided to seek peace. It was now nearly the end of September and the proconsul was eager to resolve matters and get back to Gaul. Negotiations were facilitated by Commius, who had once again accompanied Caesar. The British war-leader promised hostages and an annual tribute, and pledged not to attack Mandubracius and the Trinovantes. Waiting only for the hostages to be delivered, Caesar began to embark his army. However, even with all the repaired vessels he doubted that there was enough capacity to carry both the soldiers and the large numbers of hostages and slaves they had taken. The proconsul decided to make two crossings. The first went smoothly, but it proved impossible for the empty ships to return from the Gaulish side of the Channel. Similarly, none of the vessels built or found by Labienus were able to get to the army in Britain. After waiting for several days, Caesar decided that it was too risky to stay where he was. It was already September and the weather was likely to get worse, raising the prospect that he might be stranded in Britain with only part of his army Cramming the troops into those vessels he had, they sailed overnight to reach Gaul by dawn. Caesar left Britain never to return. It would be almost a century before another Roman army would invade the island and turn it into a province.34
On both British expeditions Caesar avoided disaster, if only narrowly It is normally assumed that the annual tribute promised by the British tribes was never paid or at least quickly lapsed. Trade between Britain and the Roman world steadily increased in the years after Caesar, shifting away from the old routes to the south-west and moving instead to the south-eastern corner that he had visited. The destruction of the Veneti probably contributed much to this shift, but it does also seem that more Roman merchants were able to reach Britain as the century progressed. Yet even the tribes who had submitted to Caesar could not in any meaningful way be described as now being part of Rome’s empire-despite the occasional claims of Roman propagandists. Cicero noted the quick realisation in Rome that campaigns in Britain were not going to yield the eagerly anticipated profits. There was no silver, nor any hope of ‘booty except for slaves; but I doubt we’ll find any scribes or musicians amongst them’ – in other words those likely to fetch a high price. Yet he remained excited by the whole business and wrote with enthusiasm about his brother’s account of the expedition, for Quintus Cicero was now serving as one of Caesar’s legates. Although influenced by this family involvement, his mood seems to have been fairly typical of many Romans. The expeditions to Britain brought Caesar huge and highly favourable public attention, excited by the novelty and tales of chariots and barbarians who painted their bodies blue with woad. The landings were undoubted propaganda successes, even if the actual results were negligible and the risks taken very high. Cato’s attacks on him in 55 BC had shown the difficulty of dealing with opponents when he could not confront them face to face in the Senate or Forum. Yet no one could doubt that Caesar was making the most of his opportunity to win glory and make himself fabulously rich in the process. Even if the profits of the British expeditions were a little disappointing, the cumulative result of five years of successful campaigning had raised him from a debtor on the brink of ruin to one of the Republic’s wealthiest men.35
XIV
REBELLION, DISASTER AND VENGEANCE
‘And then, since he had not anticipated anything, Sabinus panicked, and rushed here and there deploying the cohorts, but even this he did timidly and in confusion – as is usually the case when a man is forced to decide everything in the heat of the action. In contrast Cotta, who had guessed that this might happen on the march and because of this had spoken against setting out, did everything to ensure the safety of the force – and in challenging and inspiring the legionaries he did the duty of a general, while in the fighting he played the part of a soldier.’ – Caesar.1
While Caesar was in Britain in August 54 BC, his daughter Julia died in childbirth. The infant – a girl in some accounts and a boy in others-survived her by just a few days. For the Roman aristocracy, as indeed for most of humanity until the modern age, such deaths were all too common. Julia had become pregnant at least once before during her marriage, but had miscarried, shocked, it was said, by the sight of her husband coming back from the elections spattered in blood-someone else’s blood as it turned out. Since we do not know her date of birth we cannot calculate Julia’s age when she died, but at most she was in her mid twenties. Caesar’s mother Aurelia also died in 54 BC. The cause is unknown, but she was by this time in her sixties, and had been a widow for three decades. In one year Caesar lost the two members of his family who were closest to him. It was his mother to whom he had declared that he would come home as Pontifex Maximus or not at all, and who had presided over the Bona Dea celebrations in his house. She was a formidable woman who had had a great influence on her only son, and had lived long enough to see some of his great successes. Now she was gone. The news of both deaths reached Caesar by letter. There is no evidence that he had seen either his mother or daughter in the four years since he had left Rome. These were bitter personal blows, most especially the loss of his child. Cicero wrote an earnest letter of condolence to Caesar – he was devoted, perhaps excessively so, to his own daughter Tullia and heartbroken when she also died some years later. There was genuine grief and emotion and not mere political bonding on such occasions. Pompey, too, was deeply sorrowful at the death of his young wife. The couple had been very much in love in spite of the great difference in age and the political inspiration of their union. In recent years Pompey had often been criticised for spending too much time with his wife on his grand estates, enjoying himself when he ought to have been attending to the Republic’s affairs. Plutarch claims that he had not even had any affairs while married to Julia.2
For all the real emotion of father and son-in-law at Julia’s death, the concerns of public life were never far away for a senator. Pompey arranged to have her ashes interred in a tomb on one of his Alban estates near Rome, but after her public funeral in the city the great crowd of onlookers carried her remains onto the Campus Martius and buried her there. They were said to have been moved more by sympathy for Julia than particular fondness for either Caesar or Pompey, but as ever it is difficult to know whether this was genuinely spontane
ous or orchestrated. A monument was subsequently erected and remained visible for centuries. Caesar announced that he would stage funeral games for her, although it would be a decade before these actually took place. Julia’s death removed the closest bond between Pompey and Caesar. Over subsequent months Caesar searched around for another female relative to renew the marriage alliance. He proposed that Pompey should marry his great niece Octavia, while he should in turn marry Pompey’s daughter Pompeia. This would have required Caesar, Octavia and Pompeia all to divorce their current spouses – Pompey’s daughter was married to Sulla’s son Faustus. Pompey turned the idea down, and showed no inclination to marry again for some time, perhaps because he wished to wait for a more advantageous situation. Political concerns were never wholly absent from the mind of a Roman senator, but it is quite possible that emotion also played a part in his decision. His love for Julia had been deep, and Pompey’s grief was real and powerful.
Although the bond between Pompey and Caesar was weakened it was certainly not broken, and both men for the moment realised that it was to their advantage to remain in alliance. By 54 BC all three triumvirs were proconsuls and so unable to enter Rome itself without laying down their office. During their consulship in 55 BC Pompey and Crassus had arranged for the tribune Trebonius to pass a bill granting them each a five-year command in enlarged provinces much like the one Caesar had received in 59 BC.Pompey was given charge of the two Spanish provinces. There was the prospect for a campaign there, taking Roman rule right up to the north and the Atlantic coasts, but the fifty-one-year-old Pompey had no desire for a return to campaigning, especially while Julia was alive. He had already triumphed three times and believed that no other commander could hope to match his glory. Therefore he sent legates to govern the provinces and lead the legions there, while he himself remained in Italy, usually hovering just outside Rome in one of his comfortable villas. Pompey was still in charge of the grain supply, and this provided an excuse for his unorthodox conduct, for no Roman governor had ever acted in this way before.3
Crassus was in a different position. He had fought well for Sulla, but believed that he had not received full credit for his deeds. The defeat of Spartacus had been a major operation, during which he had shown his competence as a commander after a string of humiliating Roman defeats. Yet once it was over it was all too easy to forget the danger and dismiss the campaign as just fought against slaves. By 55 BC Crassus had decided that he wanted a major command in a foreign war and was allocated Syria. The current governor of that province completed a campaign in Egypt before Crassus could replace him, robbing him of one obvious chance for glory and profit. Instead he planned to conquer Parthia, the great kingdom lying beyond Armenia. Even by Roman standards, there was no good pretext for attacking the Parthians. Pompey in his eastern campaigns and Caesar in Gaul had pushed to the very limit their interpretation of what was in Rome’s interests, but they had never quite gone beyond that to fight wars from purely personal motives. With Crassus it was blatantly obvious that his own ambition had little to do with the needs of the Republic. As word spread of his plans there were public protests from two of the tribunes. One went so far as to shadow Crassus’ entourage as he left the city in November 55 BC, calling down terrible curses on his name for involving the Republic in a needless and unjust war. As Cicero dryly remarked, it was not an impressive beginning, and there was much that was incongruous about the expedition.
Crassus was in his late fifties, which was very elderly for a Roman field commander, and had not been on active service for sixteen years. In the past elderly men had been recalled to serve the Republic as generals, but normally only at times of crisis. This time there was no dire threat to Rome, and Crassus’ conduct of the war seemed slow and uninspired. He spent most of 54 BC in Syria, levying taxes ostensibly to fund the planned invasion, but malicious tongues suggested that he was also lining his own pockets. The prospect of a lucrative campaign was clearly one of the main reasons why Crassus had wanted a command. There was also an element of balance, since if both Pompey and Caesar had provinces and legions to control then the third triumvir needed a command to match them if he was not to be placed at a severe disadvantage. Yet in most respects Crassus had already achieved his main objectives in life-prominence, two consulships, a huge fortune, massive influence and, as the Catilinarian debates had shown, virtual freedom from political attacks or prosecution – and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that rivalry with his political allies was his main reason for craving a military command. He and Pompey had been jealous of each other since they had both served Sulla, and Crassus had always resented the fame the other man had won. Now Caesar too was proving himself to be a great general, and Crassus, the oldest of the three triumvirs, does not seem to have wanted to be overshadowed.4
With all three triumvirs away from Rome from 54 BC onwards, they were all reliant to a great extent on agents acting on their behalf. They remained dominant, but as in the past could not control everything. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus made it to the consulship for 54 BC, and had Clodius’ eldest brother Appius Claudius Pulcher as his colleague. At the same time Cato was one of the praetors. Both consuls complained that they were unable to make appointments even to such junior ranks as that of military tribune. Between them the triumvirs commanded over twenty legions, the overwhelming majority of the Roman army in existence at that time. Appius even travelled north to visit Caesar in Cisalpine Gaul in order to secure a tribune’s commission for one of his clients. Pompey hovered close to Rome, and probably had little cause to miss regularly attending the Senate for he had never been a particularly gifted speaker. Crassus was less of a force when he was away from the city, since he was no longer able to keep himself in the public eye and do favours by appearing as an advocate. Caesar was already used to the problems of maintaining his interests in Rome while he was away from Italy. His agents, particularly Balbus, were active, and we get some glimpse of the flood of correspondence that went back and forth between Caesar’s headquarters and the leading men of Rome from Cicero’s letters. His brother Quintus had served as one of Pompey’s legates supervising the grain supply to Rome, and then went to Gaul as one of Caesar’s legates in 54 BC. This was a mark of the goodwill that his brother owed to both men for his recall. Cicero himself was reluctant to leave Rome, and was anyway more useful to the triumvirs there, and so Quintus was obliged to undertake this service for the good of the family. In his letters to his brother Cicero makes constant inquiries about Caesar’s mood, and signs of favour towards them. He mentions sending poetry and other literary compositions to Caesar for his opinion. Much of this communication was not overtly political, but informally cemented the bonds between them. We know that Caesar wrote at least three letters to Cicero in Rome during the course of the second expedition to Britain.5
Several letters have also survived written by Cicero to one of his clients, Caius Trebatius Testa, who had been given a post on Caesar’s staff at the orator’s request. The young man would later become a famous jurist and was already committed to pursuing a career in law. We have the original letter of recommendation sent to Caesar, which brought the appointment about. The orator later told Quintus how Caesar ‘expressed his thanks to me very politely and wittily. He says that in all his huge staff there was no one able to put together properly even a form of recognizance’. Trebatius was not given a military post-although Cicero did secure a commission as military tribune for another client – and was employed on administrative and legal duties. Even so, Trebatius was for a long time unenthusiastic about his new post and missed Rome intensely. By August 54 BC Cicero was writing to tell him that he had just heard from Caesar, who had written to him ‘very politely’ to say that he had not yet had much chance to get to know Trebatius, but assuring him that he would do so. Cicero informed his young client that he had spoken to the proconsul on his behalf asking for further favours. In this and other letters he expresses more than a little exasperation at the impatience and lack of
initiative he perceived in his client. A man’s own prestige was weakened if his recommendations proved inadequate, and although Caesar was probably willing to accept anyone so long as it strengthened the obligation that Cicero felt towards him, the orator was keen to play his part in the relationship. What is most striking is that both men were in contact and discussing the normal preoccupations of Roman senators even while Caesar was engaged in active campaigning. Most of the letters between Cicero and Caesar have failed to survive even though they were published. We can safely assume that Caesar was engaged in equally copious correspondence with many other senators.6
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