Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (32 page)

Most of the Roman people, unsurprisingly, agreed. But while Pompey’s admirers thrilled to the gargantuan scale of their hero’s generosity, his peers in the Senate did not. There, particularly in its upper reaches, suspicion was deepening to the point of paranoia. It was noted that the foundations of the new theatre stretched almost
to the Ovile. The completed complex would tower above the voting pens. Elections would be held literally in Pompey’s shadow. The Republic itself seemed in danger. This was the cry that had always united the aristocracy against over-reachers, and so it did again now. Catulus, long the leading critic of Pompey’s unconstitutional career, had died shortly after Clodius’ trial, perhaps driven into his grave by the result, but Cato remained unbending as the champion of tradition, and he was more than ready to take on Pompey. In association with the inveterately envious Crassus he constructed an unshiftable bloc of opposition to Pompey’s interests, reducing the great general, in the midst of all his glory, to a sudden, startled impotence. The Senate refused to ratify his settlement of the East. His veterans were denied the farms they had been promised. Even his victory over Mithridates was sneered at by Cato as ‘a war against women’.
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Pompey reacted with hurt and perplexity. Had he not conquered 324 different nations? Had he not doubled the size of Rome’s empire? Why did the Senate refuse to give him his due? Illegal in his methods he may have been, but in his aims he was the very model of convention. Far from aiming at a monarchy, as his enemies darkly hinted, Pompey longed for nothing more than to be accepted into the bosom of the establishment. He had his own insecurities. His family was not an ancient one. The prestige of a man such as Cato, whose achievements were a fraction of his own, gnawed at him, and inspired in him an envious respect. Even when his own reputation had been at its highest, on his return from the East in 62
BC
, Pompey had demonstrated an almost puppyish desire to know that Cato respected him in turn. He had gone so far as to divorce his wife, despite the fact that she was the sister of his close ally, Metellus Celer, and announced that he and his son would marry Cato’s two nieces. Naturally, since he was now Rome’s most eligible bachelor, Pompey had assumed that Cato was bound to
give his permission. So too had the prospective brides, but no sooner had the two girls excitedly started making their wedding plans than their uncle had told them to save their breath. Cries of joy had turned to tears. Not a woman in the household had failed to take their side. Cato, however, was hardly the man to be swayed by tantrums. ‘Pompey should know’, he pronounced dismissively, ‘that I will not be outflanked via the bedroom of a girl.’
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The embarrassed suitor was left looking sleazy and underhand, with nothing to show for the affair save the enmity of the insulted Metellus. Once again Cato’s unerring eye for the moral high ground had enabled him to seize the tactical heights as well. Pompey, floundering ever more badly in unfamiliar terrain, began to be worn down by his enemy’s constant sniping. By the spring of 60 he seemed almost to have given up the battle. The great man did nothing all day, Cicero confided to Atticus, except sit in wistful silence, ‘and gaze at the toga which he wore in his triumph’.
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Whatever the satisfaction that Cato took in such reports, however, he remained on his guard. Even amid the wreckage of his political fortunes Pompey remained a formidable foe. It was clear to everyone that if he wanted to break the logjam that Cato and Crassus had so skilfully constructed, then he would need an ally in the consulship, and not just any ally, but a heavyweight capable of facing down Cato. There was one obvious candidate for this role, but in the spring of 60 he was far away, in Spain.

Caesar, to most people’s surprise, had been making a great success of his spell as governor. The loose-belted dandy had proved a natural general. A dashing little war in what is now northern Portugal had not only enabled him to recoup many of his debts, but had led the Senate to award him a triumph. Even these successes, however, paled in comparison to the news of Pompey’s deepening predicament. Caesar could recognise the chance of a lifetime when he saw it. To seize it, however, he would have to hurry. Candidates
for the consulship had to declare themselves in Rome by the start of July. Abandoning his province before his successor had even arrived, and travelling at his customary breakneck pace, Caesar made it to the Campus just in time. There, however, amid the clamour and dust of Pompey’s building work, he had to halt. Until he had celebrated his triumph he remained officially under arms, and therefore forbidden to enter Rome. Caesar installed himself in the Villa Publica, then hurriedly applied for the right to stand for the consulship by proxy – a request that the Senate, with a day to spare, appeared perfectly content to grant.

Cato, however, was not. Knowing that a vote would have to be taken before sunset, he rose to his feet and spoke long into the night. A furious Caesar found himself having to choose between his triumph and the consulship. He can hardly have hesitated. Unlike Pompey, he had never had any problem in distinguishing the substance from the shadow of power. He entered Rome and a race that he knew was his to win.

Cato and his allies knew it too. In their battle with Pompey this was a sudden and alarming twist. The fact that Caesar could rely not only on Pompey’s backing but on his own immense popularity served to make him doubly a threat. Having failed to block his old enemy’s entrance into the race, Cato now moved hurriedly to neutralise the effects of his anticipated victory. The most urgent requirement was to ensure the election of a sound second consul, one who could be relied upon to counteract Caesar’s measures. Money from Pompey’s limitless fortune was already flooding the electorate: it was obvious that he would be spending whatever it took to buy up both consulships. Cato’s chosen candidate was his son-in-law, an earnest and somewhat plodding senator by the name of Marcus Bibulus, who suddenly, to his delight, found himself cast as the saviour of the Republic. The full weight of Pompey’s enemies swung behind him. So grave did the situation appear to Cato that
he was even prepared to turn a blind eye when Bibulus, going head to head with Pompey’s agents, began to hand out bribes himself.

The money proved to have been well spent. In the elections Caesar came first in a landslide, but Bibulus scraped into second place. So far so good for Cato – but now that he had countered Pompey’s manoeuvrings he also had to block Caesar’s own ambitions. The military talents of the consul-elect had been widely noted. To Cato, the prospect of allowing such a glory-hunter anywhere near another province was intolerable. But how to stop him? Every consul, once he had completed his term of office, was appointed to a governorship as a matter of course. But why, Cato began pointing out, when there was so much unrest near to home, should the consuls of 59 be dispatched to the empire’s outer reaches? After all, more than a decade after Spartacus’ defeat, Italy remained infested with bandits and runaway slaves. Why not, just for one year, make the consuls responsible for their extermination? The Senate was persuaded. The proposal became law. Rather than a province, Caesar could now look forward to policing Italian sheepfolds.

Austere though he was, Cato was evidently not without a sense of humour. It was a dangerous move, of course, to make a man such as Caesar into the butt of a joke, but Cato, by doing so, was priming a trap. If Caesar refused to accept the Senate’s decision, then he would have to rely on force to reverse it; he would be branded a criminal, a second Catiline; Pompey’s name too would be besmirched by association, and his programme stymied for good. Cato’s strategy had always been to identify himself with the constitution and corner his enemies into playing the role of wreckers. Ruthless and bold as Caesar was, how far would he dare to go? Any violent extremes would be met by a formidable coalition. At Caesar’s elbow his fellow consul promised him unwearying opposition: Bibulus had spent a lifetime being overshadowed by his
glamorous rival and loathed him accordingly. In the Senate Cato’s allies formed a strong and cohesive majority. Crassus, with his powerful bloc, could surely be relied upon as well: if there was one constant in the world of Roman politics it was that Crassus would be on the opposite side of everything to Pompey. Perilous as the contest promised to be, Cato could feel grimly confident of victory. As he had to be – for he had chosen to use the Republic, and its very stability, as his stake.

From the start, then, crisis menaced the fateful year of Caesar’s consulship. The mood of the Senate as it assembled to hear the new consul for the first time was jittery, mistrustful. Caesar, surpassingly gracious, sought to charm his audience, but Cato, obdurate as ever, refused to be charmed. When Caesar presented a moderate and carefully reasoned bill for the settlement of Pompey’s veterans up he rose in kneejerk opposition. On and on he talked, repeating his favourite tactic, until Caesar cut it short by giving the nod to his lictors. As Cato was led away, the seats of the Senate House began to empty. Caesar demanded to know why the senators were leaving. ‘Because I’d rather be with Cato in prison’, one of them spat back, ‘than in the Senate House with you.’
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Caesar, hiding his fury, was forced to back down. Cato was released. Eyeball to eyeball the two men had gone – and Caesar had blinked.

Or so it appeared. In fact, it soon became clear that Caesar’s retreat had been merely tactical. Abandoning the Senate House altogether, he took the campaign for his land bill directly into the Forum. As he did so, Rome began to fill with Pompey’s veterans. Caesar’s enemies found themselves increasingly disconcerted by this menacing backdrop. So flustered did Bibulus become that he committed the supreme gaffe of telling the voters that he cared nothing for their opinion. Cato, watching, must have buried his face in his hands. All the same, he still believed that Caesar was bluffing. It was true that a bill passed by the people would have the
full force of the law, but even so, to go against the stated wishes of the Senate was the tactic of a gangster. If Caesar persisted with it, then his credit among his colleagues would be destroyed and his career would be over. Surely no one could be so criminal as to court such a fate.

Caesar’s game plan, however, was soon to become all too clear. In the run-up to the vote on the bill he paraded his celebrity supporters. Few could have been surprised when Pompey stepped forward to argue in favour of the settlement of his veterans, but the identity of the second speaker came as a thunderbolt. Throughout a career of slipperiness and opportunism, Crassus had remained constant to a single principle: opposition to Pompey’s goals. Even that, it now appeared, had been a principle too far. Crassus justified his U-turn as the action of a statesman, performed in the interests of the Republic – but everyone knew that he had never made a selfless move in his life. In his cold and calculating soul not even the pleasure of hatred, it appeared, could compete with the passion for power. The pre-eminence that he had never quite been able to obtain on his own was now within his grasp. Cato, outflanked, found all his defences being turned. It quickly began to dawn on him that, while Pompey and Caesar on their own might have been withstood, the addition of Crassus to their alliance made his enemies the effective masters of Rome. The three men would be able to carve up the Republic as they pleased, ruling as a troika, a ‘triumvirate’. No wonder that Caesar had appeared so blithely self-assured.

Cato and Bibulus threw themselves into a desperate rearguard action to halt the passage of the land bill. On the day of the public vote Bibulus appeared in the Forum to announce that he had observed unfavourable omens in the sky, and that the vote would therefore have to be suspended. The response of the
pontifex maximus
to this news was to have a bucket of dung emptied over Bibulus’
head. No sooner had the hapless consul begun wiping the excrement from his eyes than he found that a bodyguard formed of Pompey’s veterans was beating up his lictors and smashing his
fasces.
Amid a chorus of jeers, Bibulus and Cato were then bundled from the Forum, after which the vote was taken and the land bill duly passed. To perform the lucrative task of administering it, a commission was established, headed by – who else? – Pompey and Crassus. Finally, to set the seal on his victory, Caesar demanded that the Senate swear to obey the new law. Intimidated and disoriented, his opponents meekly complied. Only two men held out. One of these was Metellus Celer, by now dangerously ill, but still with sufficient strength to continue his defiance of the man who had so grievously insulted his sister. The other, inevitably, was Cato. Both were finally persuaded to give way by Cicero, who pointed out that their exile would hardly serve to help their cause: ‘You may not need Rome, but Rome will need you.’
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Yet even as Cato braced himself to carry on the fight he could not help but reflect with bitterness on his own role in the crisis. By pushing Caesar and Pompey to the extremes, and failing to anticipate the full depths of Crassus’ cynicism, he had done much to precipitate the coup. ‘The three-headed monster’
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had been smoked out into the open, and now that it no longer had to keep to the shadows it was able to scavenge unfettered. Pompey had his settlement of the East ratified, Crassus toyed profitably with the tax laws, while Caesar scouted around for a proconsular command. He settled on the governorship of two provinces, Illyricum in the Balkans and, directly on the northern frontier of Italy itself, Gallia Togata, ‘Toga-Wearing Gaul’. The only consolation for senators concerned at the thought of Caesar being awarded three legions virtually on Rome’s doorstep was the fact that neither of his two provinces offered much scope for flamboyant conquests. Then suddenly, in the spring, Metellus Celer succumbed to his illness and
Caesar was given the opportunity to lay his hands on a third province – for Metellus’ death had not only removed a thorn from Pompey’s side, but left Transalpine Gaul, on the far side of the Alps, without a governor. This was a province temptingly menaced by any number of barbarians, and Caesar snaffled it up eagerly. The term of his command, for all three provinces, was set at a stupefying five years. The new proconsul was promised a rich feast of glory indeed.