Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus

by Velleius Paterculus

  [51] (1) The next year found Dyrrachium and its vicinity occupied by the camp of Pompey, who by summoning legions from all the provinces beyond the sea, together with auxiliary troops of foot and horse, and the forces of kings, tetrarchs, and other subject rulers, had in this way collected a formidable army, and had with his fleets established, as he thought, a successful blockade upon the sea to prevent Caesar from transporting his legions across the Adriatic. (2) But Caesar, relying upon his usual rapidity of action and his famous luck, allowed nothing to prevent him or his army from crossing and landing at any port he pleased, and at first pitched his camp almost touching that of Pompey, and then proceeded to surround the latter by entrenchments and siege works. But lack of provisions was a more serious matter to the besiegers than to the besieged. (3) It was at this time that Balbus Cornelius, at incredible risk, entered the camp of the enemy and held several conferences with the consul Lentulus, whose only doubt was what price to put upon himself. It was by stages such as this that Balbus, who was not even the son of a Roman citizen born in Spain but actually a Spaniard, paved the way for his later rise to the pontificate and to a triumph, and from the rank of private citizen to that of a consul. Conflicts followed, with shifting fortunes. One of these battles was much more favourable to the Pompeians, and Caesar’s troops were severely repulsed.

  [52] (1) Then Caesar marched with his army into Thessaly, destined to be the scene of his victory. Pompey, in spite of the contrary advice of others, followed his own impulse and set out after the enemy. (2) Most of his advisers urged him to cross into Italy — nor indeed was there any course more expedient for his party — others advised him to prolong the war, which, by reason of the esteem in which the party was held, was daily becoming more favourable to them.

  (3) The limits set to a work of this kind will not permit me to describe in detail the battle of Pharsalia, that day of carnage so fatal to the Roman name, when so much blood was shed on either side, the clash of arms between the two heads of the state, the extinction of one of the two luminaries of the Roman world, and the slaughter of so many noble men on Pompey’s side. (4) One detail, however, I cannot refrain from noting. When Gaius Caesar saw that Pompey’s army was defeated he made it his first and foremost concern to send out orders to grant quarter — if I may use the habitual military expression. (5) Ye immortal gods! What a reward did this merciful man afterwards receive for his kindness to Brutus! (6) There is nothing more marvellous about that victory, nothing more magnificent, nothing more glorious, than that our country did not mourn the loss of any citizen save those who had fallen in battle. But his offer of clemency was set at nought by the stubbornness of his opponents, since the victor was more ready to grant life than the vanquished to accept it.

  [53] (1) Pompey fled with the two Lentuli, both ex-consuls, his own son Sextus, and Favonius, a former praetor, friends whom chance had gathered about him as his companions. Some advised him to take refuge with the Parthians, others in Africa, where he had in King Juba a most loyal partisan; but, remembering the favours which he had conferred upon the father of Ptolemy, who, though still between boyhood and manhood, was now reigning at Alexandria, he decided to repair to Egypt. (2) But, in adversity who remembers past services? Who considers that any gratitude is due to those who have met disaster? When does change of fortune fail to shift allegiance? Envoys were sent by the king at the instance of Theodotus and Achillas to receive Pompey at his arrival — he was now accompanied in his flight by his wife Cornelia, who had been taken on board at Mytilene — and to urge him to change from the merchant ship to the vessel which had come out to meet him. Having accepted the invitation, the first of the citizens of Rome was stabbed to death by the order and dictation of an Egyptian vassal, the year of his death being the consulship of Gaius Caesar and Publius Servilius. (3) So died in his fifty-eighth year, on the very eve of his birthday, that upright and illustrious man, after holding three consulships, celebrating three triumphs, conquering the whole world, and attaining to a pinnacle of fame beyond which it is impossible to rise. Such was the inconsistency of fortune in his case, that he who but a short time before had found no more lands to conquer now found none for his burial.

  (4) As regards Pompey’s age, what excuse, other than that of excessive preoccupation, shall I make for those who have made an error of five years in the age of one who was not only a great man but who almost belongs to our century, especially as it is so easy to reckon from the consulship of Caius Atilius and Quintus Servilius? I have added this remark not for the sake of criticizing others, but to avoid criticism of myself.

  [54] (1) The loyalty of the king, and of those by whose influence he was controlled, was no greater towards Caesar than it had been toward Pompey. For, upon Caesar’s arrival in Egypt, they assailed him with plots and subsequently dared to challenge him in open warfare. By suffering death they paid to both of these great commanders, the living and the dead, a well-deserved atonement.

  (2) Pompey the man was no more, but his name still lived everywhere. For the strong support his party had in Africa had stirred up in that country a war in which the moving spirits were King Juba and Scipio, a man of consular rank, (3) whom Pompey had chosen for his father-in‑law two years before his death. Their forces were augmented by Marcus Cato, who, in spite of the great difficulty of the march, and the lack of supplies in the regions traversed, succeeded in conducting his legions to them. Cato, although offered the supreme command by the soldiers, preferred to take orders from Scipio, his superior in rank.

  [55] (1) Fidelity to my promise of brevity reminds me how rapidly I must pass over the details of my narrative. Caesar, following up his success, passed over to Africa, of which the Pompeian armies now held possession since the death of Gaius Curio, the leader there of the Caesarian party. At first his armies were attended by a varying fortune, but later by his usual luck the forces of the enemy were routed. (2) Here again he showed no less clemency toward the vanquished than to those whom he had defeated in the previous war.

  Caesar, victorious in Africa, was now confronted by a more serious war in Spain (for the defeat of Pharnaces may be passed over, since it added but little to his renown). This great and formidable war had been stirred up by Gnaeus Pompeius, the son of Pompeius Magnus, a young man of great energy in war, and reinforcements flowed in from all parts of the world from among those who still followed his father’s great name. (3) Caesar’s usual fortune followed him to Spain; but no battle in which he ever engaged was more bitterly fought or more dangerous to his cause. Once, indeed, when the fight was now more than doubtful, he leapt from his horse, placed himself before his lines, now beginning to give way, and, after upbraiding fortune for saving him for such an end, announced to his soldiers that he would not retreat a step. He asked them to consider who their commander was and in what a pass they were about to desert him. (4) It was shame rather than valour that restored their wavering line, and the commander showed more courage than his men. Gnaeus Pompeius, badly wounded, was discovered on a pathless waste and put to death. Labienus and Varus met their death in battle.

  [56] (1) Caesar, victorious over all his enemies, returned to the city, and pardoned all who had borne arms against him, an act of generosity almost passing belief. He entertained the city to repletion with the magnificent spectacle of a gladiatorial show, a sham battle of ships, mock battles of cavalry, infantry, and even mounted elephants, and the celebration of a public banquet which was continued through several days. (2) He celebrated five triumphs. The emblems in his Gallic triumph were of citrus wood; in his Pontic of acanthus; in his Alexandrian triumph of tortoise-shell, in his African of ivory, and in his Spanish of polished silver. The money borne in his triumphs, realized from the sale of spoils, amounted to a little more than six hundred million sesterces.

  (3) But it was the lot of this great man, who behaved with such clemency in all his victories, that his peaceful enjoyment of supreme power should last but five months. For, returning to the city in Octo
ber, he was slain on the ides of March. Brutus and Cassius were the leaders of the conspiracy. He had failed to win the former by the promise of the consulship, and had offended the latter by the postponement of his candidacy. There were also in the plot to compass his death some of the most intimate of all his friends, who owed their elevation to the success of his party, namely Decimus Brutus, Gaius Trebonius, and others of illustrious name. (4) Marcus Antonius, his colleague in the consulship, ever ready for acts of daring, had brought great odium upon Caesar by placing a royal crown upon his head as he sat on the •rostra at the •Lupercalia. Caesar put the crown from him, but in such a way that he did not seem to be displeased.

  [57] (1) In the light of experience due credit should be given to the counsel of Pansa and Hirtius, who had always warned Caesar that he must hold by arms the position which he had won by arms. But Caesar kept reiterating that he would rather die than live in fear, and while he looked for a return for the clemency he had shown, he was taken off his guard by men devoid of gratitude, (2) although the gods gave many signs and presages of the threatened danger. For the soothsayers had warned him beforehand carefully to beware the Ides of March; his wife Calpurnia, terrified by a dream, kept begging him to remain at home on that day; and notes warning him of the conspiracy were handed him, but he neglected to read them at the time. But verily the power of destiny is inevitable; (3) it confounds the judgement of him whose fortune it has determined to reverse.

  [58] (1) Brutus and Cassius were praetors, and Decimus Brutus was consul designate in the year in which they perpetrated this deed. (2) These three, with the remainder of the group of conspirators, escorted by a band of gladiators belonging to Decimus Brutus, seized the capitol. Thereupon Antonius, as consul, summoned the senate. Cassius had been in favour of slaying Antony as well as Caesar, and of destroying Caesar’s will, but Brutus had opposed him, insisting that citizens ought not to seek the blood of any but the “tyrant” — for to call Caesar “tyrant” placed his deed in a better light. (3) Dolabella, whom Caesar had named for the consulship, with the intention of putting him in his own place, had already seized the fasces and the insignia of that office. Having summoned the senate, Antonius, acting as the guarantor of peace, sent his own sons to the capitol as hostages and thus gave his assurance to the slayers of Caesar that they might come down in safety. (4) On the motion of Cicero the famous precedent of the Athenians granting amnesty for past acts was approved by decree of the senate.

  [59] (1) Caesar’s will was then opened, by which he adopted Gaius Octavius, the grandson of his sister Julia. Of the origin of Octavius I must now say a few words, even if the account comes before its proper place. Gaius Octavius, his father, though not of patrician birth, (2) was descended from a very prominent equestrian family, and was himself a man of dignity, of upright and blameless life, and of great wealth. Chosen praetor at the head of the poll among a list of candidates of noble birth, this distinction won for him a marriage alliance with Atia, a daughter of Julia. After he had filled the office of praetor, the province of Macedonia fell to his lot, where he was honoured with the title of imperator. He was returning thence to sue for the consulship when he died on the way, leaving a son still in his early teens. (3) Though he had been reared in the house of his stepfather, Philippus, Gaius Caesar, his great-uncle, loved this boy as his own son. At the age of eighteen Octavius followed Caesar to Spain in his campaign there, and Caesar kept him with him thereafter as his companion, allowing him to share the same roof and ride in the same carriage, and though he was still a boy, honoured him with the pontificate. (4) When the civil war was over, with a view to training his remarkable talents by liberal studies, he sent him to Apollonia to study, with the intention of taking him with him as his companion in his contemplated wars with the Getae and the Parthians. (5) At the first announcement of his uncle’s death, although the centurions of the neighbouring legions at once proffered their own services and those of their men, and Salvidienus and Agrippa advised him to accept the offer, he made such haste to arrive in the city that he was already at Brundisium when he learned the details of the assassination and the terms of his uncle’s will. (6) As he approached Rome an enormous crowd of his friends went out to meet him, and at the moment of his entering the city, men saw above his head the orb of the sun with a circle about it, coloured like the rainbow, seeming thereby to place a crown upon the head of one destined soon to greatness.

  [60] (1) His mother Atia and Philippus his stepfather disliked the thought of his assuming the name of Caesar, whose fortune had aroused such jealousy, but the fates that preside over the welfare of the commonwealth and of the world took into their own keeping the second founder and preserver of the Roman name. (2) His divine soul therefore spurned the counsels of human wisdom, and he determined to pursue the highest goal with danger rather than a lowly estate and safety. He preferred to trust the judgement concerning himself of a great-uncle who was Caesar, rather than that of a stepfather, saying that he had no right to think himself unworthy of the name of which Caesar had thought him worthy. (3) On his arrival, Antony, the consul, received him haughtily — out of fear, however, rather than contempt — and grudgingly gave him, after he had secured admission to Pompey’s gardens, a few moments’ conversation with himself; and it was not long before Antony began wickedly to insinuate that an attempt had been made upon his life through plots fostered by Octavius. In this matter, however, the untrustworthiness of the character of Antony was disclosed, to his discredit. (4) Later the mad ambition of Antony and Dolabella, the consuls, for the attainment of an unholy despotism, burst into view. The seven hundred thousand sestertia deposited by Gaius Caesar in the temple of Ops were seized by Antony; the records of his acts were tampered with by the insertion of forged grants of citizenship and immunity; and all his documents were garbled for money considerations, the consul bartering away the public interests. (5) Antony resolved to seize the province of Gaul, which had been assigned by decree to Decimus Brutus, the consul designate, while Dolabella had the provinces beyond the sea assigned to himself. Between men by nature so unlike and with such different aims there grew up a feeling of hatred, and in consequence, the young Gaius Caesar was the object of daily plots on the part of Antony.

  [61] (1) The state languished, oppressed by the tyranny of Antony. All felt resentment and indignation, but no one had the power to resist, until Gaius Caesar, who had just entered his nineteenth year, with marvellous daring and supreme success, showed by his individual sagacity a courage in the state’s behalf which exceeded that of the senate. (2) He summoned his father’s veterans first from Calatia then from Casilinum; other veterans followed their example, and in a short time they united to form a regular army. Not long afterwards, when Antony had met the army which he had ordered to assemble at Brundisium from the provinces beyond the sea, two legions, the Martian and the fourth, learning of the feeling of the senate and the spirit shown by this courageous youth, took up their standards and went over to Caesar. (3) The senate honoured him with an equestrian statue, which is still standing upon the rostra and testifies to his years by its inscription. This is an honour which in three hundred years had fallen to the lot of Lucius Sulla, Gnaeus Pompeius, and Gaius Caesar, and to these alone. The senate commissioned him, with the rank of propraetor, to carry on the war against Antony in conjunction with Hirtius and Pansa, the consuls designate. (4) Now in his twentieth year, he conducted the war at Mutina with great bravery, and the siege of Decimus Brutus there was raised. Antony was compelled to abandon Italy in undisguised and disgraceful flight. Of the two consuls, the one died upon the field of battle, and the other of his wound a few days afterwards.

  [62] (1) Before the defeat of Antony the senate, chiefly on the motion of Cicero, passed all manner of resolutions complimentary to Caesar and his army. But, now that their fears had vanished, their real feelings broke through their disguise, and the Pompeian party once more took heart. (2) By vote of the senate, Brutus and Cassius were now confirmed i
n possession of the provinces which they had seized upon their own authority without any decree of the senate; the armies which had gone over to them were formally commended; (3) and Brutus and Cassius were given all authority and jurisdiction beyond the sea. It is true that these two men had issued manifestoes — at first in real fear of armed violence at the hands of Antony, and later to increase Antony’s unpopularity, with the pretence of fear — manifestos in which they declared that for the sake of ensuring harmony in the republic they were even ready to live in perpetual exile, that they would furnish no grounds for civil war, and that the consciousness of the service they had rendered by their act was ample reward. But, when they had once left Rome and Italy behind them, by deliberate agreement and without government sanction they had taken possession of provinces and armies, and under the pretence that the republic existed wherever they were, they had gone so far as to receive from the quaestors, with their own consent, it is true, the moneys which these men were conveying to Rome from the provinces across the sea. (4) All these acts were now included in the decrees of the senate and formally ratified. Decimus Brutus was voted a triumph, presumably because, thanks to another’s services, he had escaped with his life. Hirtius and Pansa were honoured with a public funeral. (5) Of Caesar not a word was said. The senate even went so far as to instruct its envoys, who had been sent to Caesar’s army, to confer with the soldiers alone, without the presence of their general. But the ingratitude of the senate was not shared by the army; for, though Caesar himself pretended not to see the slight, the soldiers refused to listen to any orders without the presence of their commander. (6) It was at this time that Cicero, with his deep-seated attachment for the Pompeian party, expressed the opinion, which said one thing and meant another, to the effect that Caesar “should be commended and then — elevated.”