XLVII
During this period, that which followed, and the one which we have already mentioned, above four hundred thousand of the enemy were slain by Caius Cæsar, and a greater number taken. He fought often in pitched battles, often on his march, often made sudden attacks; twice he penetrated into Britain; and of nine campaigns, scarcely one passed without his justly deserving a triumph. But near Alesia such achievements were effected as it was scarcely for man to attempt, and for little less than a deity to accomplish. It was in the seventh year of Cæsar’s stay in Gaul that Julia, the wife of Pompey the Great, died, the connecting link of concord between Pompey and Cæsar; which, through their mutual jealousy of power, had been some time in danger of disruption; and, as if fortune would dissolve every tie between leaders destined to so great a contest, the little son of Pompey and Julia died a short time after. Then, while ambition extended its rage to the sword and civil slaughter, of which neither end nor control could be found, his third consulship was conferred on Cnæus Pompey, he being made sole consul, with the approbation even of those who had formerly opposed his pretensions. In consequence of the distinction conferred on him by this election, by which it appeared that the party of the nobles were reconciled to him, the breach was greatly widened between him and Caius Cæsar. But he employed the whole power of that consulship in laying restraints on bribery. In this year, Publius Clodius was killed by Milo, then a candidate for the consulship, in a quarrel that arose on their meeting near Bovillæ; an act of bad precedent, but beneficial to the public. It was not more the feeling excited against this deed, than the will of Pompey, that caused Milo to be condemned on his trial; though Marcus Cato publicly gave his opinion in favour of his acquittal. Had he given it sooner, several would, doubtless, have followed his example, and have approved of the sacrifice of such a member of the community, than whom there never lived one more pernicious to the state, or a greater enemy to all good men.
XLVIII
In a short time after, the flames of civil war began to blaze, while every man who regarded justice wished both Cæsar and Pompey to disband their armies. For Pompey, in his second consulship, had desired that the province of Spain might be assigned to him; and during three years, while he was absent from the country, and directing affairs in Rome, he administered the government there by his deputies, Afranius of consular, and Petreius of prætorian rank; and while he assented to the judgment of those who insisted on Cæsar’s disbanding of his army, he opposed those who required the same for himself. Had this man died two years before recourse was had to arms, after he had finished the structures erected at his own expense, his theatre, and the buildings around it, and when he was attacked by a violent disorder in Campania, (at which time all Italy offered prayers for his recovery, an honour never before paid to any citizen,) fortune would not have had opportunity to work his overthrow, and he would have carried undiminished to the shades below the greatness that he enjoyed in this upper world.
For producing the civil war, and all the calamities that ensued from it, through a space of twenty successive years, there was no one that supplied more flame and excitement than Caius Curio, a tribune of the people. He was of noble birth, eloquent, intrepid, prodigal alike of his own fortune and reputation, and those of others; a man ably wicked, and eloquent to the injury of the public, and whose passions and desires no degree of wealth or gratification could satisfy. At first he took the side of Pompey, that is, as it was then deemed, the side of the Commonwealth; soon after, he pretended to oppose both Cæsar and Pompey, but, in reality, was attached to Cæsar. Whether this attachment was the result of his own choice, or the consequence of a bribe of ten thousand sestertia47, as has been said, we shall leave undetermined. At last, when salutary conditions, tending to unite all parties in peace, had been very fairly proposed by Cæsar, and were patiently considered by Pompey, this man interrupted and broke off the treaty, while Cicero laboured, with singular zeal, to preserve concord in the state. Of these and the preceding transactions, the detail is given in the larger volumes of others, and will, I trust, be sufficiently set forth in mine.
XLIX
Let my work now resume its intended character; though I would first congratulate Quintus Catulus, the two Luculli, Metellus, and Hortensius, that after having flourished in the state without envy, and enjoyed great eminence without danger, they died in the course of nature before the commencement of the civil broils, and while the state was still quiet, or at least not tending to its fall. In the consulship of Lentulus and Marcellus, seven hundred and three years after the foundation of the city, and seventy-eight before the commencement of your consulate, Marcus Vinicius, the civil war blazed forth. The cause of one of the leaders appeared to be the better, that of the other was the stronger. On one side everything was specious, on the other was greater power. The support of the senate armed Pompey with confidence, that of the soldiery, Cæsar. The consuls and senate conferred supreme authority, not on Pompey, but on his cause. Nothing was omitted by Cæsar that could be tried for the promotion of peace; to nothing would the party of Pompey listen. Of the consuls, Marcellus was more violent than was reasonable; Lentulus saw that his own security48 was incompatible with that of the state. Marcus Cato insisted that it were better for them to die, than for the state to listen to offers from a private citizen. A man of probity and sound judgment would approve Pompey’s party; a man of prudence would rather follow Cæsar’s; deeming the former more honourable, the latter more formidable. At length, after rejecting every proposal of Cæsar’s, the opposite party decreed that, retaining the mere title of a province, and a single legion, he should come to Rome as a private person, and, in standing for the consulship, should submit himself to the votes of the Roman people; Cæsar then resolved on war, and passed the Rubicon with his army. Cnæus Pompey, the consuls, and the greater part of the senate, withdrawing from the city, and then from Italy, sailed over to Dyrrachium.
L
Cæsar, having got into his power Domitius, and the legions with him at Corfinium, dismissed that general without delay, and every one else who chose to go to Pompey, whom he then followed to Brundisium; thus making it apparent, that he desired to put an end to war while the powers of the state were unimpaired, and negotiation open, rather than to overpower his opponents in their flight. Finding that the consuls had sailed, he returned to the city, and having represented in the senate, and in a general assembly of the people, the motives of his proceedings, and the cruel necessity under which he lay, in being compelled to take arms by the hostility of others, he resolved to go into Spain. His progress, rapid as it was, was for some time retarded by the conduct of Marseilles, which, with more honesty than good policy, unseasonably assumed the arbitration between those great men in arms; a case in which such only ought to interpose as have power to enforce submission to their award. The army, which was commanded by Afranius, who had been consul, and Petreius, who had been prætor, amazed at the energy and brilliancy of his progress, immediately surrendered itself to his pleasure. Both the commanders, and all men of every description who wished to follow them, were permitted to go to Pompey.
LI
In the year following, when Dyrrachium, and the whole country round it, were occupied by Pompey’s camp, (who, by collecting about him legions from all the foreign provinces, auxiliary troops of horse and foot, and forces from kings, tetrarchs, and petty princes49, had formed a vast army, and had, as he thought, guarded the sea with such a line of ships as would prevent Cæsar from transporting his legions,) Cæsar, proceeding with his usual despatch and success, suffered nothing to hinder him and his army from making good their passage by sea, whithersoever and whensoever he pleased. At first he pitched his camp almost close to Pompey’s, and soon after shut him up within a line of circumvallation and forts. Scarcity of provisions, however, began to be felt, and more severely by the besiegers than the besieged. In this state of things, Cornelius Balbus, with a spirit of enterprise almost incredible, went into the enemy’s c
amp, and held frequent conferences with the consul Lentulus, (who was undetermined at what price he would sell himself,) and thus opened the way for himself to those preferments, by which he (not a mere sojourner in Spain, but a native Spaniard,) rose to a triumph and pontificate, and, from a private station, became a consul. Several battles followed with various success; but one of them proved very favourable to Pompey’s party, Cæsar’s troops meeting a severe repulse.
LII
Cæsar then led his army into Thessaly, the destined scene of his future victory. Pompey, though his friends advised a very different course, (most of them recommending him to transfer the war into Italy; and indeed no movement could have been more beneficial to his party; others persuading him to protract the contest, a plan which, from the increasing popularity of his cause, would daily be more and more productive of good,) yet, yielding to his natural impetuosity, marched in pursuit of the enemy. The day of battle at Pharsalia, so fatal to the name of Rome, the vast effusion of blood on both sides, the two heads of the state meeting in deadly conflict, the extinction of one of the luminaries of the Commonwealth, and the slaughter of so many and so eminent men on the side of Pompey, the limits of this work do not allow me to describe at large. One thing must be observed, that as soon as Cæsar saw Pompey’s line give way, he made it his first and principal care (if I may use a military expression to which I have been accustomed) to disband50 from his breast all considerations of party. O immortal gods! what requital did this merciful man afterwards receive for his kindness then shown to Brutus? Nothing would have been more admirable, more noble, more illustrious, than this victory, (for the nation did not miss one citizen, except those who fell in battle,) had not obstinacy defeated the exertions of compassion, as the conqueror granted life more freely than the vanquished received it.
LIII
Pompey, having fled with the two Lentuli, who had been consuls, his son Sextus, and Favonius, formerly a prætor, all of whom chance had assembled in his company, (some advising him to retreat to Parthia, others to Africa, where he would find king Juba a most faithful supporter of his party,) determined at last to repair to Egypt; a course to which he was prompted by his recollection of the services which he had rendered to the father of Ptolemy, who, rather a boy than a man, was now seated on the throne of Alexandria. But who, when his benefactor is in adversity, remembers his benefits? Who thinks that any gratitude is due to the unfortunate? Or when does a change of fortune not produce a change in attachments? Men were despatched by the king, at the instigation of Theodotus and Achillas, to meet Pompey on his arrival, (who was now accompanied in his flight by his wife Cornelia, having taken her on board at Mitylene,) and to desire him to remove from the transportation into a vessel which was come to receive him. No sooner had he done so, than he, chief of all that bore the name of Roman, was murdered by the order and direction of an Egyptian slave; an event which took place in the consulship of Caius Cæsar and Publius Servilius. Such was the end of a most upright and excellent man, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and on the day before his birthday, after three consulships and as many triumphs, after subduing the whole world, and after reaching a degree of exaltation beyond which it is impossible to ascend; fortune having made such a revolution in his condition, that he who lately wanted earth to conquer, could now scarcely find sufficient for a grave.
Of those who have made a mistake of five years in the age of this great man, who lived almost in our own times, what can I say but that they have not given due attention to the matter, especially as the succession of years, from the consulship of Atilius and Servilius, was so easy to settle? This I mention, not to censure others, but to escape censure myself.
LIV
Yet the king, and those by whose influence he was governed, showed no more attachment to Cæsar than they had shown to Pompey; for, at his coming, they made a treacherous attempt on his life, and afterwards were daring enough to make open war on him; but they soon atoned for their conduct to both these great commanders, the living and the deceased, by suffering well-merited deaths.
Pompey was no longer on earth, but his name still had influence everywhere. A strong devotion to his cause excited a formidable war in Africa, conducted by king Juba, and by Scipio, who had been consul, and whom Pompey, two years before his death, had chosen for a father-in-law; their strength being augmented by Marcus Cato, who brought some legions to them, though with the utmost difficulty, by reason of the badness of the roads, and the scarcity of provisions, and who, when the soldiers offered him the supreme command, chose rather to act under a person of superior dignity.
LV
My promise to be brief reminds me with what haste I must pursue my narrative. Cæsar, pushing his good fortune, and sailing to Africa, of which the army of Pompey’s party, after killing Curio, the leader of Cæsar’s adherents, had taken possession, fought there at first with various success, but afterwards with such as usually attended him, and the enemy’s forces were obliged to yield. His clemency to the vanquished, on this occasion, was such as he had shown to those whom he had previously defeated. But when he had finished the war in Africa, another still more formidable demanded his attention in Spain, (as to his conquest of Pharnaces, it scarcely added anything to his renown,) for Cnæus Pompey, son of Pompey the Great, a young man of great energy in war, had formed there a powerful and formidable opposition; as multitudes, still revering the great fame of his father, flocked to his aid from every quarter of the earth. His usual fortune accompanied Cæsar to Spain; but no field of battle, more perilous or desperate, had he ever entered; for, on one occasion, when his prospect of success seemed worse than doubtful, he dismounted from his horse, placed himself before the line of his retreating troops, and, after reproaching fortune for having preserved him for such an end, declared to his soldiers that he would not retire a step; bidding then therefore consider the character and circumstances of the general whom they were going to desert. The battle was restored by the effect of shame rather than of courage; and greater efforts were made by the leader than by his men. Cnæus Pompey, who was found grievously wounded in a desert place, was slain. Labienus and Varius fell in the engagement.
LVI
Cæsar, victorious over all opposition, came home to Rome, and, what is almost incredible, granted pardon to all who had borne arms against him, and delighted the city with most magnificent exhibitions of gladiators and representations of sea-fights, and of battles with cavalry, infantry, and even with elephants; celebrating a feast, too, at which he entertained the people, and which lasted several days. He had five triumphs; the figures displayed in that for Gaul were made of citron wood; in that for Pontus, of acanthus wood51; in that for Alexandria, of tortoise-shell52; in that for Africa, of ivory; and in that for Spain, of polished silver. The money arising from the spoils was somewhat more than six hundred thousand sestertia53. But this great man, who had used all his victories with so much mercy, was not allowed peaceable possession of supreme power more than five months; for after returning to Rome in the month of October, he was killed on the ides of March by a band of conspirators under Brutus and Cassius; the former of whom, though he had promised him a second consulship, he had not by that means secured to his interest, and the latter he had offended by putting him off to another time. They had even drawn into their murderous plot Decimus Brutus and Caius Trebonius, the most intimate of all his adherents, men who had been raised to the highest dignity by the success of his party, with several others of great note.
Mark Antony, however, his colleague in the consulship, a man always ready for any daring deed, had excited a strong feeling against him, by placing on his head, as he was sitting in the Rostrum at the festival of Pan, a royal diadem, which Cæsar indeed pushed away, but in such a manner that he did not seem offended.
LVII
By this event was shown the excellence of the advice of Hirtius and Pansa, who had always warned Cæsar to preserve by arms the sovereignty which by arms he had to preserve by arms the s
overeignty which by arms he had acquired; but he constantly declared, that he would rather die than live in constant fear of death; and thus, while he expected to meet the same good feeling that he had shown to others, he was cut off by the ungrateful men around him. The immortal gods had given him many presages and signs of his approaching danger; for the aruspices had forewarned him carefully to beware of the ides of March; his wife Calpurnia, terrified by a vision in the night, besought him to stay at home that day; and he received a paper from one that met him, containing an account of the conspiracy, but which he did not read. Surely the resistless power of fate, when it determines to reverse a man’s fortune, confounds his understanding!
LVIII
The year that they perpetrated this deed, Brutus and Cassius were prætors, and Decimus Brutus consul elect. These, with the body of the conspirators, attended by a band of gladiators belonging to Decimus Brutus, seized on the Capitol. On this Mark Antony the consul convened the senate. Cassius had proposed that Antony should be killed at the same time with Cæsar, and that Cæsar’s will should be annulled; but this was overruled by Brutus, who insisted that the citizens ought to seek no more than the blood of the tyrant; for so, to palliate his own conduct, he thought proper to call Cæsar. In the mean time, Dolabella, whom Cæsar had destined for his successor in the consulship, laid hold on the fasces and badges of that office; and Antony, as wishing to preserve peace, sent his own sons into the Capitol as hostages, and pledged his faith to the murderers of Cæsar, that they might come down with safety. Then was proposed by Cicero, and approved by a resolution of the senate, the imitation of that famous decree of the Athenians, enacting a general oblivion of the past.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 8