Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus

by Velleius Paterculus

  [42] (1) It would take too long to tell of his many bold plans for the punishment of the pirates, or how obstinately the timid governor of Asia refused to second them. The following story, however, may be told as a presage of his future greatness. (2) On the night following the day on which his ransom was paid by the cities of Asia — he had, however, compelled the pirates before payment to give hostages to these cities — although he was but a private citizen without authority, and his fleet had been collected on the spur of the moment, he directed his course to the rendezvous of the pirates, put to flight part of their fleet, sank part, and captured several ships and many men. (3) Well satisfied with the success of his night expedition he returned to his friends and, after handing his prisoners into custody, went straight to Bithynia to Juncus, the proconsul — for the same man was governor of Bithynia as well as of Asia — and demanded his sanction for the execution of his captives. When Juncus, whose former inactivity had now given way to jealousy, refused, and said that he would sell the captives as slaves, Caesar returned to the coast with incredible speed and crucified all his prisoners before anyone had had time to receive a dispatch from the consul in regard to the matter.

  [43] (1) Not long afterwards he was hastening to Italy to enter upon the priestly office of pontifex to which he had been elected in his absence in place of the ex-consul Cotta. Indeed, while still little more than a boy he had already been made priest of Jupiter by Marius and Cinna, but all their acts had been annulled in consequence of Sulla’s victory, and Caesar had thus lost this priesthood. On the journey just mentioned, wishing to escape the notice of the pirates who then infested all the seas and by this time had good reasons for being hostile to him, he took two friends and ten slaves and embarked in a four-oared boat, and in this way crossed the broad expanse of the Adriatic Sea. (2) During the voyage, sighting, as he thought, some pirate vessels, he removed his outer garments, bound a dagger to his thigh, and prepared himself for any event; but soon he saw that his eyes had deceived him and that the illusion had been caused by a row of trees in the distance (3) which looked like masts and yards.

  As for the rest of his acts after his return to the city, they stand in less need of description, since they are better known. I refer to his famous prosecution of Gnaeus Dolabella, to whom the people showed more favour than is usually exhibited to men under impeachment; to the well-known political contests with Quintus Catulus and other eminent men; to his defeat of Quintus Catulus, the acknowledged leader of the Senate, for the office of pontifex maximus, before he himself had even been praetor; (4) to the restoration in his aedileship of the monuments of Gaius Marius in the teeth of the opposition of the nobles; to the reinstatement of the children of proscribed persons in the rights pertaining to their rank; and to his praetorship and quaestorship passed in Spain, in which he showed wonderful energy and valour. He was quaestor under Vetus Antistius, the grandfather of our own Vetus, the consular and pontiff, himself the father of two sons who have held the consulship and the priesthood and a man whose excellence reaches our highest conception of human integrity.

  [44] (1) But to resume. It was in Caesar’s consulship that there was formed between himself, Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Crassus the partnership in political power which proved so baleful to the city, to the world, and, subsequently at different periods to each of the triumvirs themselves. (2) Pompey’s motive in the adoption of this policy had been to secure through Caesar as consul the long delayed ratification of his acts in the provinces across the seas, to which, as I have already said, many still raised objections; Caesar agreed to it because he realized that in making this concession to the prestige of Pompey he would increase his own, and that by throwing on Pompey the odium for their joint control he would add to his own power; while Crassus hoped by the influence of Pompey and the power of Caesar he might achieve a place of pre-eminence in the state which he had not been able to reach single-handed. (3) Furthermore, a tie of marriage was cemented between Caesar and Pompey, in that Pompey now wedded Julia, Caesar’s daughter.

  (4) In this consulship, Caesar, with Pompey’s backing, passed a law authorizing a distribution to the plebs of the public domain in Campania. And so about twenty thousand citizens were established there, and its rights as a city were restored to Capua one hundred and fifty-two years after she had been reduced to a prefecture in the Second Punic War. Bibulus, Caesar’s colleague, with the intent rather than the power of hindering Caesar’s acts, confined himself to his house for the greater part of the year. By this conduct, whereby he hoped to increase his colleague’s unpopularity, he only increased his power. At this time the Gallic provinces were assigned to Caesar for a period of five years.

  [45] (1) About the same time Publius Clodius, a man of noble birth, eloquent and reckless, who recognized no limits either in speech or in act except his own caprice, of ill-repute as the debaucher of his own sister, and accused of adulterous profanation of the most sacred rites of the Roman people, having conceived a violent hatred against Marcus Cicero — for what friendship could there be between men so unlike? — caused himself to be transferred from a patrician into a plebeian family and, as tribune, proposed a law that whoever put to death a Roman citizen without trial should be condemned to exile. Although Cicero was not expressly named in the wording of the bill, it was aimed at him alone. (2) And so this man, who had earned by his great services the gratitude of his country, gained exile as his reward for saving the state. Caesar and Pompey were not free from the suspicion of having had a share in the fall of Cicero. Cicero seemed to have brought upon himself their resentment by refusing to be a member of the commission of twenty charged with the distribution of lands in Campania. (3) Within two years Cicero was restored to his country and to his former status, thanks to the interest of Gnaeus Pompeius — somewhat belated, it is true, but effective when once exerted — and thanks to the prayers of Italy, the decrees of the senate, and the zealous activity of Annius Milo, tribune of the people. Since the exile and return of Numidicus no one had been banished amid greater popular disapproval or welcomed back with greater enthusiasm. As for Cicero’s house, the maliciousness of its destruction by Clodius was now compensated for by the magnificence of its restoration by the senate.

  (4) Publius Clodius in his tribunate also removed Marcus Cato from the state, under the pretence of an honourable mission. For he proposed a law that Cato should be sent to the island of Cyprus in the capacity of quaestor, but with the authority of a praetor and with a quaestor as his subordinate, with instructions to dethrone Ptolemaeus, who by reason of his unmitigated viciousness of character well deserved this humiliation. (5) However, just before the arrival of Cato, Ptolemy took his own life. Cato brought home from Cyprus a sum of money which greatly exceeded all expectations. To praise Cato’s integrity would be sacrilege, but he can almost be charged with eccentricity in the display of it; for, in spite of the fact that all the citizens, headed by the consuls and the senate, poured out of the city to meet him as he ascended the Tiber, he did not disembark and greet them until he arrived at the place where the money was to be put ashore.

  [46] (1) Meanwhile, in Gaul, Gaius Caesar was carrying on his gigantic task, which could scarcely be covered in many volumes. Not content with his many fortunate victories, and with slaying or taking as prisoners countless thousands of the enemy, he even crossed into Britain, as though seeking to add another world to our empire and to that which he had himself won. Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Crassus, who had once been consuls together, now entered upon their second consulship, which office they not only won by unfair means, but also administered without popular approval. (2) In a law which Pompey proposed in the assembly of the people, Caesar’s tenure of office in his provinces was continued for another five years, and Syria was decreed to Crassus, who was now planning to make war upon Parthia. Although Crassus was, in his general character, entirely upright and free from base desires, in his lust for money and his ambition for glory he knew no limits, and accepted no boun
ds. On his departure for Asia the tribunes of the people made ineffectual efforts to detain him by the announcement of baleful omens. (3) If the curses which they called down upon him had affected Crassus alone, the loss of the commander would not have been without advantage to the state, had but the army been saved. (4) He had crossed the Euphrates and was now marching toward Seleucia when he was surrounded by King Orodes with his innumerable bands of cavalry and perished together with the greater part of his army. Remnants of the legions were saved by Gaius Cassius — (he was later the perpetrator of a most atrocious crime, but was at that time quaestor) — who not only retained Syria in its allegiance to the Roman people, but succeeded, by a fortunate issue of events, in defeating and putting to rout the Parthians when they crossed its borders.

  [47] (1) During this period, including the years which immediately followed and those of which mention has already been made, more than four hundred thousand of the enemy were slain by Gaius Caesar and a greater number were taken prisoners. Many times had he fought in pitched battles, many times on the march, many times as besieger or besieged. Twice he penetrated into Britain, and in all his nine campaigns there was scarcely one which was not fully deserving of a triumph. His feats about Alesia were of a kind that a mere man would scarcely venture to undertake, and scarcely anyone but a god could carry through.

  (2) About the fourth year of Caesar’s stay in Gaul occurred the death of Julia, the wife of Pompey, the one tie which bound together Pompey and Caesar in a coalition which, because of each one’s jealousy of the other’s power, held together with difficulty even during her lifetime; and, as though fortune were bent upon breaking all the bonds between the two men destined for so great a conflict, Pompey’s little son by Julia also died a short time afterwards. Then, inasmuch as agitation over the elections found vent in armed conflicts and civil bloodshed, (3) which continued indefinitely and without check, Pompey was made consul for the third time, now without a colleague, with the assent even of those who up to that time had opposed him for that office. The tribute paid him by this honour, which seemed to indicate his reconciliation with the optimates, served more than anything else to alienate him from Caesar. Pompey, however, employed his whole power during this consulship in curbing election abuses.

  (4) It was at this time that Publius Clodius was slain by Milo, who was a candidate for the consulship, in a quarrel which arose in a chance meeting at Bovillae; a bad precedent, but in itself a service to the state. Milo was brought to trial and convicted quite as much through the influence of Pompey as on account of the odium aroused by the deed. (5) Cato, it is true, declared for his acquittal in an opinion openly expressed. Had his vote been cast earlier, men would not have been lacking to follow his example and approve the slaying of a citizen as pernicious to the republic and as hostile to all good citizens as any man who had ever lived.

  [48] (1) It was not long after this that the first sparks of civil war were kindled. All fair-minded men desired that both Caesar and Pompey should disband their armies. Now Pompey in his second consulship had caused the provinces of Spain to be assigned to him, and though he was actually absent from them, administering the affairs of the city, he continued to govern them for three years through his lieutenants, Afranius and Petreius, the former of consular and the latter of praetorian rank; and while he agreed with those who insisted that Caesar should dismiss his army, he was opposed to those who urged that he should also dismiss his own. (2) Had Pompey only died two years before the outbreak of hostilities, after the completion of his theatre and the other public buildings with which he had surrounded it, at the time when he was attacked by a serious illness in Campania and all Italy prayed for his safety as her foremost citizen, fortune would have lost the opportunity of overthrowing him and he would have borne to the grave unimpaired all the qualities of greatness that had been his in life. (3) It was Gaius Curio, however, a tribune of the people, who, more than anyone else, applied the flaming torch which kindled the civil war and all the evils which followed for twenty consecutive years. Curio was a man of noble birth, eloquent, reckless, prodigal alike of his own fortune and chastity and of those of other people, a man of the utmost cleverness in perversity, who used his gifted tongue for the subversion of the state. (4) No wealth and no pleasures sufficed to satiate his appetites. He was at first on the side of Pompey, that is to say, as it was then regarded, on the side of the republic. Then he pretended to be opposed both to Pompey and Caesar, but in his heart he was for Caesar. Whether his conversion was spontaneous or due to a bribe of ten million sesterces, as is reported, we shall leave undetermined. (5) Finally, when a truce was on the point of being concluded on terms of the most salutary character, terms which were demanded in a spirit of the utmost fair-mindedness by Caesar and accepted by Pompey without protest, it was in the end broken and shattered by Curio in spite of Cicero’s extraordinary efforts to preserve harmony in the state.

  As to the order of these events, and of those which have been mentioned before, the reader is referred to the special works of other historians, and I myself hope some day to give them in full. (6) But at the present time it will be consistent with the general plan of this briefer narrative if I merely stop to congratulate Quintus Catulus, the two Luculli, Metellus, and Hortensius, who, after flourishing in public life without envy and rising to pre-eminence without danger to themselves, in the course of nature died a peaceful or at least a not untimely death before the outbreak of the civil wars.

  [49] (1) In the consulship Lentulus and Marcellus, seven hundred and three years after the founding of the city and seventy-eight before your consulship, Marcus Vinicius, the civil war burst into flame. The one leader seemed to have the better cause, the other the stronger; (2) on the one was the appearance, on the other the reality of power; Pompey was armed with the authority of the senate, Caesar with the devotion of the soldiers. The consuls and the senate conferred the supreme authority not on Pompey but on his cause. (3) No effort was omitted by Caesar that could be tried in the interest of peace, but no offer of his was accepted by the Pompeians. Of the two consuls, one showed more bitterness than was fair, the other, Lentulus, could not save himself from ruin without bringing ruin upon the state, while Marcus Cato insisted that they should fight to the death rather than allow the republic to accept a single dictate from a mere citizen. The stern Roman of the old-fashioned type would praise the cause of Pompey, the politic would follow the lead of Caesar, recognizing that while there was on the one side greater prestige, the other was the more formidable.

  (4) When at last, rejecting all the demands of Caesar, who was content to retain the title to the province, with but a single legion, the senate decreed that he should enter the city as a private citizen and should as such, submit himself to the votes of the Roman people in his candidacy for the consulship, Caesar concluded that war was inevitable and crossed the Rubicon with his army. Gnaeus Pompeius, the consuls, and the majority of the senate abandoned first the city, then Italy, and crossed the sea to Dyrrachium.

  [50] (1) Caesar, on his side, having got into his power Domitius and the legions that were with him at Corfinium, immediately released this commander and all others who so wished, and allowed them to join Pompey, whom he now followed to Brundisium, making it clear that he preferred to put an end to the war while the state was uninjured and negotiation still possible, rather than to crush his fleeing enemy. (2) Finding that the consuls had crossed the sea he returned to the city, and after rendering to the senate and also to the assembly of the people an account of his motives and of the deplorable necessity of his position, in that he had been driven to arms by others who had themselves resorted to arms, he resolved to march on Spain.

  (3) The rapidity of his march was delayed for some time by the city of Massilia, which with more honesty of intention than with wise discretion assumed the unseasonable rôle of arbiter between the two armed leaders, an intervention suited only to those who are in a position to coerce the combatant refusing obedience.
(4) Next, the army, commanded by Afranius, an ex-consul, and Petreius, an ex-praetor, taken off its guard by Caesar’s energy and the lightning speed of his arrival, surrendered to him. Both the commanders and all others, of whatever rank, who wished to follow them were allowed to return to Pompey.