The Emperors of Rome

by David Potter

  Aside from Caesar’s fondness for fancy clothes and his vanity (by this stage he was trying to conceal his incipient baldness with a combed-over hairstyle) he was notably abstemious in his private life. One enemy even remarked that he was the only sober man who ever tried to ruin the Republic. Caesar’s studied frugality stood in marked contrast to the profligacy of the old regime. Many of Sulla’s friends had become as self-indulgent as their former general, erecting enormous villas and throwing extravagant private banquets. Caesar also appears to have treated his slaves humanely and was popular with his gladiators, perhaps owing to his unwillingness to expose them to fights to the death. Where his personal life was open to criticism was in the bedroom, and it was this Achilles’ heel that his enemies targeted. They declared his public displays of virtus through generosity a sham, pointing instead to his immodest conduct in the very heart of the domus.

  Personal indiscretions

  On one occasion Caesar even arranged for a love letter from the sister of one of his fiercest political opponents, Marcus Portius Cato the Younger (95–46 BC), to be ostentatiously delivered to him while the senate was in session. Thinking that Caesar had just received a secret message that would implicate him in a conspiracy against the state, Cato demanded that he read it aloud, only to be humiliated by the public airing of its contents.

  Caesar’s enemies claimed to have proof that, while serving as an ambassador at the court of Nicomedes IV of Bithynia in 80 BC (a kingdom bordering the former lands of Mithridates in northern Turkey), he had allowed himself to be sodomized by the king. Their objection was not so much that Caesar had had sex with another man, but that he had taken the passive role. He was not, therefore, a ‘real man’, but a cinadeus – a man who played the ‘female part’ during lovemaking. One enemy even quipped that he was ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’. Caesar was furious, and remained intensely defensive on the subject for the rest of his life. Yet he failed to prevent the rumour from spreading, and even his soldiers, who seem genuinely to have admired him, later sang lewd ballads about Caesar as the ‘Queen of Bithynia’. This scurrilous story was all the more hilarious to Caesar’s contemporaries since it was totally at odds with his carefully groomed public persona of the virtuous, cleanliving man.

  Caesar managed to weather both his financial problems and the slanders of his opponents. His one-year term as governor of Spain netted him enough money to enable him to discharge his debts and stand for the consulship of 59 BC. He easily won the election and began to consolidate his position. In this he was aided by the ineptitude of his enemies, who had managed simultaneously to alienate both Crassus and Pompey. Crassus had tried to establish a power base in Rome by representing the interests of the equestrian corporations. However, these bodies were soon embroiled in a financial scandal concerning taxation in the province of Asia (western Turkey). The senate refused to remit the money they owed the state, threatening them with bankruptcy. For his part, Pompey found himself at loggerheads with the senate when it refused to authorize retirement payments to his soldiers and blocked his administrative reforms in the eastern provinces. Spotting an opportunity for an advantageous alliance, Caesar first arranged for his only child, Julia, to marry Pompey, and then made political overtures to both Pompey and Crassus. Exploiting his position as consul (in which capacity he was allowed to put bills before the people without prior approval from the senate), he promised to introduce legislation to help the two men overcome their present difficulties if they, in return, would give their backing to a bill granting Caesar a five-year command in the province of his choice.

  This naked political skulduggery provoked scenes of uproar in the senate, during which Caesar’s consular colleague and leader of the faction opposing his legislative programme was doused with the contents of a chamber pot. It seems likely that Caesar himself engineered this furore as a diversionary tactic, testifying to the fact that he was already well versed in the black arts of politics. In any event, the manoeuvre achieved its aim, with Pompey and Crassus getting what they wanted and Caesar securing not one but three provinces. At the start of 58 BC he left Rome to govern the provinces of Transalpine Gaul (southern France), Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy, also known as Gallia Togata, or ‘Toga-wearing Gaul’) and Illyricum (present-day Croatia).

  Caesar the general

  This period – from 58 to 50 BC – laid the foundation of Caesar’s reputation as the greatest general in Roman history. His enemies hoped that his lack of experience as a military commander would prove his undoing and that he would fall victim to one of the many fierce tribes in the badlands beyond Rome’s borders. Yet Caesar soon confounded them, showing himself adept at transferring to the battlefield the skills that had brought him political success. Behind the often deceptively simple accounts that he wrote of his campaigns – ultimately collected together in his work The Gallic Wars (De Bello Gallico) – lay a boundless capacity for forward planning, a keen understanding of the psychology of his opponents, an impressive flexibility when confronted with new problems and a profound confidence in his own ability.

  Time and again in Caesar’s narrative, an apparently throwaway remark reveals that supplies were being prudently laid up in advance, detailed intelligence gathered and strategic plans altered to exploit changing circumstances or to respond to unforeseen challenges. Above all, Caesar knew that absolutely no faith should be placed in intelligence offered by people who stood to gain from supplying information, that wars are won not on the battlefield so much as at the conference table and that the enemy was watching and reacting to his every move. For this reason, he never employed the same tactics twice in battle. He also spent a great deal of time before and after the campaigning season winning hearts and minds among those Gauls who saw that their own interests were best served by supporting him.

  Yet despite his overall record of success, there were also setbacks, which proved that even Caesar had human failings. For example, he was sometimes too quick to assume that his solutions were acceptable to everyone. In the winter of 54–53 BC he divided his legions into several camps to avoid any single Gallic tribe having to shoulder the burden of tens of thousands of Roman legionaries billeted on its territory and exhausting its food and fodder supplies after the bad harvest that year. He may well have thought that this concession went far enough, since no tribe would surely be foolish enough to stage a revolt on its own. This was a fatal miscalculation: a force of up to 8000 men was wiped out when their commander was tricked into abandoning his camp. Caesar had plainly not devised any contingency plan for his officers to follow in case of trouble. Similarly, he is quick to blame a Roman defeat during the siege of a Gallic city in 52 BC on his men panicking. But an aside by Caesar on this incident paints a different picture: he concedes that the terrain made it hard for commanders to adapt his orders to events as they unfolded on the ground. Caesar spent a great deal of time trying to communicate his strategic and tactical vision to his subordinates, but seems to have felt, at times, that people ought to read his mind. In the long run, this style of leadership would prove fatal to Caesar when he applied it to the running of the Roman state.

  While Caesar was away campaigning in Gaul, several events had conspired to change the political landscape in Rome dramatically. For a start, one of Rome’s triumvirate of strong men was dead, killed ignominiously in battle in a far-off land. Jealous of both Caesar and Pompey, Crassus had embarked on a military adventure of his own by launching an illegal invasion of the Parthian empire. This realm, which included modern Iraq and Iran, was the only remaining major power on Rome’s borders. Crassus was dismissive of enemies whom Rome had never fought and made no effort to grasp their strategy or tactics. Predictably, his ill-advised campaign ended in a crushing defeat, as his large army was routed outside the city of Carrhae, the present-day Harran in Turkey, in 53 BC. Crassus himself was cut down in this bloody fiasco. The only consolation for Rome was that the Parthians, excellent though they were at holding their own gr
ound, as yet lacked the organization to pose any real threat to its eastern provinces.

  While Crassus’ death removed a major rival to the ambitions of Caesar and Pompey, it crucially also meant that there was now no longer any figure of comparable stature who could act as a mediator between them. In any event, even before Crassus’ demise, the bond between Caesar and Pompey had already been dealt a fatal blow by the death of Julia, Caesar’s daughter and Pompey’s wife, in 54 BC. Increasingly alarmed at Caesar’s inexorable rise, Pompey formally severed all links with him in 52 BC and began to prepare for the possibility of war.

  Crossing the Rubicon

  By the summer of 50 BC Caesar had united all of what is now modern France, along with parts of Germany and Belgium, under his rule. Proud of his achievements, the illustrious general felt that he was entitled to dictate the terms on which he would return to the Roman political arena. In particular, Caesar’s demand that he be allowed to stand for the consulship while remaining in Gaul put him on a direct collision course with the senate. This was a crucial sticking point; to prevent any recurrence of the kind of dictatorship imposed by Sulla, Roman law had long since required army commanders to relinquish control of their legions before entering the city – a prerequisite to running for political office there. But if Caesar obeyed, so divesting himself of his military muscle, he knew that his enemies would waste no time in arraigning him on charges of abuse of power during his first consulship. Although, as the returning hero, he was fully confident of winning an election, a trial would instantly annul his candidacy.

  Caesar resolved this dilemma by confronting his enemies in Rome head-on with an invasion of Italy. On 11 January, 49 BC, he crossed the Rubicon River, which marked the southern boundary between his province of Cisalpine Gaul and Rome’s Italian provinces. His famous reported comment on his action was ‘The die is cast’ (acta alea est). As Caesar advanced, Pompey staged a tactical withdrawal to the port of Brundisium (modern Brindisi, on the ‘heel’ of Italy). From there, he planned to embark the force of more than 20,000 men that he had mustered to Greece to join other armies he was assembling in the eastern provinces. However, Pompey’s authority was beginning to crumble by this stage. One of his subordinates ignored several urgent messages from his commander and was cut off and forced to surrender 10,000 men at Corfinium in central Italy.

  This proved to be the defining moment of the war. When the garrison at Corfinium – which included many leaders of the political opposition – surrendered, Caesar took the soldiers into his service and released the rest. This act of clemency, unheard of in previous civil wars, was a propaganda coup that rallied many people to Caesar’s cause. The war lasted until August 48 BC, when Pompey’s army was routed at the Battle of Pharsalus in northern Greece. This decisive showdown had a swift and brutal outcome, and the action reveals to us the way that the two great masters of warfare in the Roman world understood their craft. Both commanders were in no doubt that Caesar’s veteran infantry, although outnumbered, would have little trouble in overcoming Pompey’s inexperienced footsoldiers. Pompey gambled that he could win the battle by deploying his more numerous cavalry on his left flank to swiftly neutralize Caesar’s cavalry before attacking the rest of his army from the rear. It was not a bad plan, but unfortunately for Pompey Caesar also knew that this was the only way that Pompey could win and so took steps to counteract his tactic. Thus it was that he forwent the customary three-line formation of his infantry in favour of a fourth line, which he used to attack Pompey’s cavalry head-on as soon as it had, as expected, overrun his own cavalry. When Pompey saw his cavalry turn in flight, he realized that defeat was inevitable and fled the battlefield as Caesar’s troops completed their rout of his forces. Behind him, Pompey left 6000 of his men dead, while a further 24,000 were taken prisoner. This ability to see things through his enemies’ eyes was perhaps Caesar’s greatest advantage as a general.

  On the political front, even as the war raged, Caesar began to shape a new regime that would remain very much a work in progress for the rest of his life. The problem was how to reconcile his dominance with the structures of the state. The dictatorship seemed to Caesar the key to his dilemma. He briefly took the office in late 49 BC (when he also secured the consulship for a second time) and again, for a longer spell, after Pharsalus.

  The Deaths of Pompey and Caesar

  Meanwhile, Pompey fled to Egypt, where agents of King Ptolemy XIII, knowing that Caesar was already on his way there, assassinated him. Arriving in Egypt, Caesar soon became embroiled in a dynastic power struggle between Ptolemy XIII and his sister, Cleopatra. Siding with Cleopatra (whom he lost no time in making his mistress), he quickly defeated Ptolemy and installed his lover and her brother on the throne. This affair scandalized Rome, since it suggested Caesar had an unhealthy interest in royal power. However, by May of 47 BC he was on the move once more, this time to Asia Minor to quell a revolt in Pontus led by Pharnaces, a son of Mithridates (the occasion of Caesar’s famous boast veni, vidi, vici: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’).

  The civil war dragged on after Pompey’s death; his supporters raised an army in North Africa, which was only defeated in 46 BC. That same year saw further outbreaks of trouble, as Pompey’s sole surviving son Sextus rallied support in Spain. Yet while Caesar’s military skills showed little sign of waning, his political acumen now began to desert him. During a brief stay in Rome in 46 BC, he took a new approach to the dictatorship, accepting the office for ten years and then, two years later, in perpetuity. He was also made consul continuously from 46 BC. All the while, his autocratic attitude to power was alienating fellow members of the ruling class.

  Having put down all the major insurrections, Caesar finally returned to Rome in August 45 BC. The senate voted him divine honours and the month of his birth was renamed July. He pointedly refused the title of rex (‘king’) but ruled henceforth as the king of Rome in all but name.

  Caesar planned to leave Rome again on 18 March, 44 BC, to campaign against the Parthians. Just prior to his departure came the Ides of March, the 15th day of the month, which a soothsayer had warned him to beware of. Spurning her advice, he attended a meeting of the senate, where he was approached by a group of men apparently presenting a petition. As they surrounded him, they drew their daggers and stabbed him to death. More than 60 senators were involved in the conspiracy against Caesar – including men he had spared and some of his own officers. Like Suetonius after them, these men were adamant that Caesar had effectively signed his own death warrant by riding roughshod over the cherished traditions of the state. It now remained to be seen how many in the Roman world shared their view.

  A Time of Turmoil: Octavian and Antony

  (44–30 BC)

  Thirteen years separate Caesar’s murder from the Battle of Actium, the naval engagement off the coast of Greece that ushered in the final demise of the Republic and the accession of Rome’s first emperor. Many later Roman writers recognized the key significance of this battle; for example, the historian Cassius Dio (c. AD 155–after 229) asserted that it marked the point when the Roman monarchy began.

  The tale of these intervening years is dominated by two men whose fortunes changed radically as a result of the events of 15 March, 44 BC. The first was Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius; c. 83–30 BC), the scion of a distinguished family, many of whose members had entered public life. For instance, Mark Antony’s father had held the post of consul 19 years before the death of Caesar. The second was born Gaius Octavius (63 BC–AD 14). His father, an equestrian, was the first member of the family to become a senator. But far more significantly, his mother was a niece of Julius Caesar.

  Contenders for power

  Antony had long been a protégé of Caesar and in 44 BC followed in his own father’s footsteps by being chosen as Caesar’s partner for his fifth consulship. That same year, the 18-year-old Octavius was awaiting his great-uncle’s arrival in Greece to join him on his Parthian campaign. When Caesar was assassinated, Antony automa
tically became the head of the Roman state for the duration of the year he was consul, while Octavius was made Caesar’s son and heir through an adoption noted in the dictator’s will. He duly assumed the name Gaius Julius Caesar. Roman tradition suggests that he might also have had the cognomen Octavian to indicate his biological family. Political enemies continued to refer to him by this name throughout his life, by way of emphasizing his humble beginnings, while he refused absolutely to use it.

  The evolving relationship between Antony and Octavian splits roughly into three phases. The first, in which Antony was the dominant partner, spans the period from the assassination to around 37 BC. In the second phase, lasting for the next three years, the two men held equal power, while in the years immediately leading up to Actium – the final phase – Octavian’s star was in the ascendant. In many ways, the men were polar opposites, and their diametrically opposed characters played a major role in determining their career trajectories. So, while Antony was capable of displaying great virtus on the battlefield, his reputation was undermined by scandalous conduct in his private life. Octavian, by contrast, was pusillanimous in battle (tending to fall violently ill whenever danger threatened) but proved himself extremely adept in the political arena, especially in cultivating a popular public persona. The one trait that the two did share was utter ruthlessness.

  The seven years that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar saw a continuation of the internecine strife that Caesar had sparked with his civil war against Pompey. What was at stake was not a restoration of the Republic – even Caesar’s assassins, who may well have taken their drastic action with this aim in mind, seem rapidly to have realized that it was an impossible dream – but rather which faction should succeed Caesar, and what precise form this succession should take. Both sides soon abandoned the notion of one-man rule in favour of a limited collective style of leadership that was less offensive to Roman tradition. When, during his funeral oration for Caesar, Mark Antony openly condemned Caesar’s death as murder by conspiracy, public opinion turned against the party of the assassins, and its leading members Brutus and Cassius were driven into exile. After initial power struggles among the leading members of the Caesarian faction, including a mutiny inspired by Octavian (who had turned 19 on September 23), which robbed Antony of the troops he was planning to use for the occupation of Rome, a bitterly fought civil war took place in the first half of 43. During this time Octavian was appointed praetor to serve with the two Caesarian generals who had been elected for that year. When the consuls died in two (successful) engagements against Antony’s forces outside Mutina (Modena) in northern Italy, Octavian emerged as the leader of the army against Antony, who was in full retreat for Gaul. Reinforced by allies in Gaul, including Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (d. 13 BC), the former deputy of Julius Caesar in the dictatorship of 44 BC, Antony invaded Italy; but his men refused to fight Octavian’s while the assassins were still at large.