8. Julius Caesar

In the epoch of the decline of the republic and the rise of powerful generals appeared the figure of Julius Caesar, who was destined to play a key role. Caesar (102-44 BC) was a member of the great Julian family – one of the old patrician gentes of Rome, which traced its ancestry back to Iulus, son of Aeneas. His name was taken over after his death by the first Roman emperor, Augustus (Octavian), and later used by the emperors as a title. It is the origin of Kaiser in Germany and Tsar in Russia. That is to say, it is synonymous with absolute power.

Despite his impeccable patrician origins, Caesar’s start was inauspicious. His father had died when he was fifteen years old and he became head of the family. His family was noble, but short of cash. And to make a political career in Rome, one needed a lot of cash.

From the start he was an adventurer. This ambitious young man was preparing for better things. He is reported to have said: “I would rather be the first man in a barbarian village than the second man in Rome.”

He was prematurely balding and seems to have suffered from epileptic attacks, but his ambition was accompanied with colossal vanity. We are told he was inordinately preoccupied with his appearance. According to Suetonius he removed body hair with tweezers. Some cast doubt on his sexuality. The story circulated that he was “every wife’s husband and every husband’s wife”, although this was probably propaganda inspired by his enemies to discredit him. He went to Rhodes to study oratory with the best Greek teachers. But despite his smooth skin, impeccable appearance and his acquaintance with rhetoric and Greek literature, Caesar was an utterly ruthless man.

The historian Plutarch informs us that on the way to Rhodes he was captured by pirates who demanded a ransom of twenty talents. The smallness of the sum struck Caesar as amusing. He actually got on very well with these ruffians – probably they reminded him of himself. When he had handed over the money, he promised them he would have them crucified. They may have thought it a joke, but he hunted them down remorselessly, and he kept his word. However, he showed his appreciation of his ‘friends’: in a gesture of magnanimity, he had their throats cut first.

He married into money – his first smart career move. His choice of partner was not accidental. He married Cornelia, the daughter of the radical leader, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. His aunt Julia was Marius’ wife. He therefore had close links with the popular party, which he no doubt hoped would help his advance. Then, as outlined in a previous chapter, came the civil war between the populares led by Cinna and the optimates led by Sulla. Caesar, however, was on the wrong side. Sulla won and proclaimed himself dictator, not for the traditional six months but for life.

The reign of terror that followed Sulla’s victory was more frightful than anything that had gone before. Caesar escaped with his life, but along with many others, had all his wealth confiscated. His first political gamble thus proved to be a failure. But when a gambler loses, he just shrugs his shoulders and gives the dice another throw.

Sulla offered to further Caesar’s career, but on the condition that he divorced his wife. This he refused to do, either because he was really in love, or, more likely, because he was already looking beyond Sulla. To cross the man who had murdered thousands was a risky thing to do. His family decided it would be best to get him out of Rome and send him as far away from Sulla as possible. He took up a post in the army and was sent to Asia Minor, where he served with distinction. It was there that he learned of the death of Sulla, and he immediately went back to Rome.

The Senate proved to be too weak to use the power that Sulla had placed in their hands. The popular party was reviving. It was at this time that Italy was convulsed by the great uprising of the slaves led by Spartacus. But when Crassus crushed the revolt, the defeat of the slaves condemned the movement of the masses in the cities to impotence. It led to a kind of stalemate between the classes, in which neither side could inflict a decisive defeat on the other.

As we have seen, this explains the rise of ambitious generals like Pompey, who rose to prominence at this time. The rapid rise of Pompey was both unprecedented and highly irregular. During the civil war, when he was only twenty-three years of age, he had raised three legions to fight for Sulla.

He defeated the Marians in Sicily and Africa, for which he was awarded a triumph. Later he fought against Sertorius in Spain for four years, and was awarded another triumph. By such means, he was preparing his road to power. But he was destined to meet with a formidable obstacle in a man who was every bit as greedy for power and far more cunning and audacious than he was.

The politics of the slums

There was plenty of combustible material in Rome for unscrupulous adventurers to take advantage of. The lower classes were filled with seething resentment after the bloody proscriptions, murders and confiscations by which Sulla had destroyed the popular party. Caesar saw his chance.

His first wife had died, and his second wife, like the first one, was rich (he was always after money). But money alone was insufficient to obtain an admission ticket to the world of Roman high society. Rome’s wealthy aristocratic elite regarded him as an upstart. Rejected by the establishment, he looked for a base among the poor of the slum districts.

Many years later, according to the Roman historian, Suetonius, when the Emperor Vespasian’s fastidious son, Titus, expressed his feelings of revulsion about a tax that had been levied on the collection of urine (used for laundering clothes and even whitening teeth), his father held up a gold coin and said simply, “Non olet!” (“This doesn’t stink!”).

This celebrated phrase could well serve as an epitaph to the political career of Julius Caesar. He was quite prepared to wade up to his knees in blood and excrement in order to secure his aims.

The slum districts where Caesar looked for a political base were appalling places where people threw shit from the windows of multi-story tenements that were always falling down. But the declassed lumpenproletarians who inhabited these dangerous and unsanitary districts had the vote, and, while Caesar doubtless held his nose when canvassing their support, he needed them as a battering ram to shatter the political power of his enemies.

When his aunt Julia died, Caesar took a bold initiative. Julia’s husband, Marius, had been the darling of the populists in his lifetime. But ever since Sulla came to power, his name was utterly prohibited. At Julia’s funeral, Julius Caesar not only delivered her obituary speech, in which he praised her and her husband, but had portraits and statues of Marius paraded through the streets. Shortly after, his own wife Cornelia died, and he did exactly the same, publicly praising her late father, Cinna. By these means he attached himself firmly to the populists.

In order to obtain this support, he did not mind currying favour with the urban poor and flattering them, as Dio Cassius informs us. In order to get support, he financed big games for the enjoyment of the populace. He brought in vast numbers of wild beasts and 320 pairs of gladiators who fought to the death, dressed in silver, for the crowd’s amusement.

He even had the arena flooded to create a mock naval battle. According to Plutarch, “He was unsparing in his outlays of money, and was thought to be purchasing a transient and short-lived fame at a great price, though in reality he was buying things of the highest value at a small price.”^[1] In other words, he bought votes. However, his extravagance got him into trouble. He was soon in debt again and was forced to go into exile or face death. But then he had a brilliant idea.

At thirty-seven years of age this man, who is not known for his piety, suddenly developed an urgent interest in religion. He stood for the post of pontifex maximus – the supreme priest of Rome. This post would give him not only prestige but a huge patronage and therefore lots of money.

In order to secure his election, he probably prayed to the Gods. More importantly, he borrowed huge sums of money to bribe his electors. If he won, he could repay all his creditors with interest. If he failed, he would be in deep trouble. In the event, he won.

The Catiline conspiracy

Events now took a dramatic and unexpected turn. It seems that about this time a plot was hatched by desperate men from many different classes: bankrupt aristocrats, destitute unemployed, speculators in search of extra profits and political adventurers of all kinds.

At the centre of the conspiracy was Lucius Sergius Catilina (108-62 BC), better known as Catiline. He was a man similar to Caesar in many ways. He was yet another of that breed of impoverished upper-class adventurers that were common at that time. He is one of the most enigmatic figures of Roman history.

His memory has been obscured by the insults of Roman historians, particularly his arch-enemy, Cicero. It is practically impossible to disentangle the truth from the calumnies. What we do know is that, like Caesar, he came from an aristocratic but impoverished family and had a distinguished military career, serving in the Social Wars under Pompey’s father.

We know that he served under Sulla in the civil war against the Marians, but later took up the interests of the poor and dispossessed, which earned him the hatred of the Roman aristocracy. Whatever else he was, he was certainly not a coward, as he proved in the end.

He was put on trial several times, but was acquitted repeatedly, some said through the influence of Caesar, who was suspected of having connections with him. This is quite possible, since Caesar was always prepared to fish in troubled waters, to see what he could catch.

Catiline stood as a candidate in the consular election in 64 BC, when he seems to have had the backing of Crassus. He must therefore have had a lot of money for his campaign, but was not elected. One of the successful candidates was Cicero, a ‘new man’.

Catiline stood again the following year, but by this time he had probably lost the backing of Crassus, as he was already making vague threats against the establishment and he had announced a policy of the general cancellation of debts. This would have been popular with Sulla’s veterans, but it provoked the hostility of the rich. Predictably, he was defeated once more. Seeing that the road to power by legitimate means was blocked, he decided to adopt other methods.

The ranks of the conspirators included a variety of other patricians and plebeians whose advance had been blocked for different reasons. They were all desperate and displaced people, individuals who had a grudge against the establishment.

But Catiline’s main base of support was among the poor, who flocked to his banner as a result of his policy of debt relief. The problem of debt had existed from early times, but had never been greater than in 63 BC. Decades of war had led to a severe economic depression in the Italian countryside.

As we have seen, many poor farmers had lost their farms and were forced to move to the city, where they swelled the numbers of the lumpenproletariat. Prominent among Catiline’s supporters were a large number of veterans from Sulla’s armies, hungry for land.

They were prepared to march to war under the banner of the ‘new Sulla’. One of these, Gaius Manlius, a centurion from Sulla’s army, was sent to Etruria where he assembled an army ready for revolt, as Sallust reports:

Meanwhile, in Etruria, Manlius was agitating among a populace whose poverty, added to the resentment which they felt at their wrongs, made them eager for revolution; for during Sulla’s tyranny they had lost their lands and all the rest of their possessions. He also approached some of the many types of brigands who infested that part of the country, as well as some veteran soldiers from Sulla’s colonies, whose lavish indulgence of their appetites had exhausted the enormous booty they had brought home.^[2]

Other men were sent to different locations throughout Italy. The mood of society was explosive. There was even a small slave revolt in Capua, the same place where Spartacus had begun his uprising. Manlius made an appeal that begins with the words:

We call gods and men to witness, sir, that our object in taking up arms was not to attack our country, or to endanger others, but to protect ourselves from wrong. We are poor needy wretches; the cruel harshness of moneylenders has robbed most of us of our homes, and all of us have lost reputation and fortune. Not one was allowed the benefit of the law established by our ancestors, which should have enabled us, by sacrificing our possessions, to save our persons from bondage; such was the inhumanity of the moneylenders and the praetor.^[3]

While civil unrest spread throughout the countryside, Catiline was making the preparations for the conspiracy in Rome, where, as Sallust confirms, he enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the poor:

Yet there were Roman citizens obstinately determined to destroy both themselves and their country. In spite of two senatorial decrees, not one man among the conspirators was induced by the promise of reward to betray their plans, and not one deserted from Catiline’s camp. A deadly moral contagion had infected all their minds. And this madness was not confined to those actually implicated in the plot. The whole of the lower orders, impatient for a new regime, looked with favour on Catiline’s enterprise. In this they only did what might have been expected of them. In every country paupers envy respectable citizens and make heroes of unprincipled characters, hating the established order of things and hankering after innovation; discontented with their own lot, they are bent on general upheaval. Turmoil and rebellion bring them carefree profit, since poverty has nothing to lose.

The city populace were especially eager to fling themselves into a revolutionary adventure.^[4]

Here is the authentic voice of the frightened ruling class, faced with the rebellion of the masses in all historical periods. The signal for the commencement would be the assassination of Cicero. It seems Catiline’s plans included arson and the murder of a large number of senators. He would then link up with Manlius’ army in Etruria, and return to Rome and take control of the government.

But the conspirators were betrayed when Quintus Curius, a senator they had approached, turned informant, warning Cicero of the plot. Cicero escaped death that morning by placing guards at the entrance of his house.

The next day, Cicero convened the Senate and surrounded it with armed guards. To his astonishment, Catiline was present, which shows remarkable coolness of mind. Cicero denounced him before the Senate in his celebrated Catiline Orations. But Catiline did not retreat. He took the floor, recalling to the Senate the history of his family, reminding it how it had served the Republic, and advised them not to believe false rumours and to trust the name of his family.

Finally, he played his ace card, rebuking them for taking the word of a ‘new man’ (homo novus), Cicero, in preference to a ‘nobilis’ like himself. This might have had some effect, but then he began to threaten the senators, saying that he would “check the fire that threatens to consume me by pulling everything down about your ears”.^[5]

Before they could react, he dashed out of the Senate, and left Rome under the pretext that he was going into voluntary exile. Instead, however, he joined Manlius’ camp in Etruria to continue the fight. But meanwhile, events at Rome took a fatal turn.

The conspirators discovered that a delegation from the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe, were in Rome to complain about debt and the oppressive conduct of their governor. The conspirators established contact with them and told them of their plans. It seems that the Allobroges wanted nothing to do with the conspirators and informed Cicero. This was the kiss of death to the conspiracy.

The Romans could not bear the thought of foreigners interfering in their political life, and least of all their traditional enemies, the Gauls. Cicero got hold of incriminating letters, which he read before the Senate the following day, and the death sentence was demanded for those implicated.

Caesar made an eloquent protest against such a step, which initially got an echo. But a savage speech by Cato, the thirty-two-year-old great grandson of Cato the Elder, cut across this. He was an implacable defender of the aristocracy. He hated Caesar and Caesar hated him. The fate of the five named conspirators was sealed.

They were condemned to death without even the pretence of a trial and Cicero had them strangled immediately. He even personally escorted some of the condemned men to their execution. Afterwards, he announced to a crowd gathering in the Forum what had occurred. The conspiracy in Rome had collapsed.

When the news reached the rebels in Etruria, many men deserted, reducing the size of the rebel force from about 10,000 to a mere 3,000. In the end, Catiline was forced to fight the legions of Antonius Hybrida’s army near Pistoria (now Pistoia).

Despite overwhelming odds, Catiline fought bravely in the front line of battle. Seeing that there was no hope of victory, he threw himself into the thick of the fight. When it was all over, the victors found that all Catiline’s soldiers had frontal wounds as none had turned their back to the enemy, and the lifeless corpse of their leader was found far in front of his own lines.

The First Triumvirate

The Catiline conspiracy must have come as a shock to the wealthy classes in Rome. Living in close contact with a mass of impoverished people must at times have felt like living on the side of a volcano. There was no police force to keep order in such circumstances, and so the army was the only resort.

Among the army officers the idea was growing that Rome now needed a monarchy, although nobody was bold enough to pronounce that dreaded word. Rather they spoke in terms of a strong government, stability and order. This meant the rule of a ‘strongman’ – a general. The only question was which one.

Pompey, who had made his name crushing the revolt in Spain and massacring the last remnants of Spartacus’ forces, was in a strong position as the supreme arbiter of Rome’s destiny. He had recently returned from a victorious campaign in the East with an army of 40,000 veterans at his back. Cicero’s rash conduct in the Catiline affair was probably due more to his fear of Pompey than his fear of Catiline, whose conspiracy seems to have been badly planned and executed.

Cicero wanted to avoid giving Pompey any excuse to intervene. He needed to act quickly to suffocate the conspiracy before Pompey arrived at the gates of Rome with his soldiers, ready to make himself master of the city.

For the Senate, Cicero was, at least for a time, the hero of the hour, considered as “the saviour of the Fatherland.” This was not going to last. Later on, Cicero was made to pay a heavy price for his part in the execution of the rebel senators. On the other hand, the Catiline affair had damaged Caesar’s position.

Caesar’s enemies had triumphed, and he now found himself compromised by his past links with Catiline and his opposition to the executions. He needed to consolidate alliances with powerful men who could protect him. This determined his line of action.

Pompey had returned from the wars not only with a greatly enhanced prestige but also with a considerable fortune. Some said he was now even richer than Crassus, who was considered the richest man in Rome. His campaign in the East had been successful, and had finally crushed Rome’s most dangerous enemy, Mithridates.

Before he left for Rome, Pompey made the whole of the Near East secure, with a number of new client kingdoms. Fifty cities were founded or restored, and Rome’s revenues from Asia were increased by 70 per cent.

Caesar drew the conclusion that the quickest way to make money was by fighting wars. In addition, the suspicions that he was somehow involved in the Catiline affair made it sensible to make himself absent from the capital for a while. He therefore got appointed governor of Spain, where he once more distinguished himself by his abilities as a military commander.

Like almost every other Roman governor, he plundered the natives (this was regarded as quite acceptable). But as governors went, he was by no means the worst. Like everybody else, the Spaniards were subject to the ruthless laws on debt, by which creditors were allowed to take all the possessions from a debtor. Caesar amended the law to restrict the amount of possessions that a creditor could seize to two-thirds. This may still seem quite a lot to us, but in those days it was a very generous concession indeed.

Caesar returned to Rome, where he resumed his intrigues, an art at which he was extremely skilful. In the streets of Rome rival gangs loyal to one politician or other fought it out, while their masters manoeuvred to strengthen their positions. Bribery and intimidation were the normal tools of the trade.

Chief of the city lumpenproletariat was another aristocrat turned tribune, Publius Clodius. This demagogue, now in his mid-thirties, made a profitable political career out of his influence with the city mob and the gangsters whose headquarters were the slum districts. Caesar had already established his popularity with the plebs at the same time as he made use of the existing machinery to get possession of one office after another. He had close connections with Clodius and the populists. But in his present delicate situation, Caesar needed more – he needed to reach agreement with elements from the establishment.

While posing as the people’s champion, Caesar also attempted to get contacts with the rich and build an alliance with the ‘respectable classes’. Therefore, after the death of Cornelia he married Pompeia, who was the granddaughter of Sulla, the former dictator and leader of the aristocratic party.

During Pompey’s absence, Crassus was trying to increase his own political power and influence in Rome. He was aided in this by Caesar, who in return borrowed large amounts of money to advance his own career.

Crassus was a firm defender of the rights of the equites, of which he was one. He proposed the annexation of Egypt, probably with the idea of sending Caesar there to organise the plunder of that wealthy province on his behalf.

But this was defeated by Cicero, with Pompey and the aristocracy behind him. One of the main sources of wealth for the equites was the plunder of the provinces by the practice of tax-farming. Most governors did not interfere with the activities of the tax-farmers as they usually got a share of the loot.

However, Pompey, in search of popularity, annoyed the equites by relieving the debts of people in Asia. All this did nothing to improve Crassus’ opinion of Pompey. But Pompey had his own differences with the Senate, which had refused his request for a grant of land for his veterans.

Although Pompey was supposed to be on their side, the senators obviously were afraid that he might be tempted to use his military muscle to take power. Now Crassus had another clash with the Senate on the issue of tax-farming. Sometimes the tax-farmers would overestimate their profits and lose money. He had asked the Senate to grant a rebate to those who had done this. This was clearly unreasonable and the Senate refused. Crassus was furious at what he saw as this new insult from the Senate.

This was Caesar’s chance. Both Pompey and Crassus now had grievances against the Senate. This gave him the possibility of acting as a mediator between them. Cicero understood the danger and, although he knew Crassus’ demand to be outrageous, he was bitterly critical of the Senate’s decision. He now began to see in Caesar an even more dangerous enemy than Pompey, saying he feared him “as one might fear the smiling surface of the sea”.^[6]

Cicero’s fears were well grounded. Caesar now entered into contact with Pompey. He arranged a marriage between Pompey and his only daughter Julia, which was one of the usual ways of establishing a political alliance. Caesar also wanted to include Crassus in the alliance. But there was a problem. The relations between Pompey and Crassus were chilly.

Crassus had not forgotten that Pompey had stolen the credit for defeating Spartacus, which was really his work. Nor had he forgotten the fact that the Senate had awarded his rival a triumph, but refused one to him. In addition, Pompey had stepped on the toes of the tax-farmers, Crassus’ friends.

In order to win Pompey’s support, it appears that Caesar used his agents to spread rumours that prominent members of the ruling faction were planning to assassinate Pompey. Cicero for one was in no doubt that Caesar was behind this intrigue, the purpose of which was to frighten Pompey and push him into the arms of Caesar in 59 BC.

These were preliminary steps towards a definite goal. Although Caesar did not have the money or influence of his two colleagues, he was able to play a pivotal role in bringing Pompey and Crassus together in an alliance, which is known as the first Triumvirate – Caesar, Pompey and Crassus – as a rival power centre to the Senate. The formation of this formidable alliance was a warning sign that the end of the Republic was in sight.

The consulship of ‘Julius and Caesar’

Caesar planned his rise to power with typical single-mindedness and ruthlessness. In 59 BC he became consul, along with the conservative, Bibulus.

There always had to be two consuls at Rome. This was an irritation for Caesar, but he soon hit on an effective solution. With the help of Clodius, he paid ruffians from the slum districts to insult and assault the unfortunate Bibulus every time he appeared in public. A clash with the conservatives was inevitable, and it soon came.

One of the first acts of Caesar as consul was to introduce legislation to distribute to Pompey’s veterans whatever public lands remained in Italy. This was obviously part of a deal that Caesar had struck with Pompey as a condition for his support for his election.

But Caesar was also following his own interests when he added a clause giving part of the land to the poor people of Rome. This action provoked the hostility of the conservatives, for whom it recalled unpleasant memories of the Gracchi.

Cato, Caesar’s bitter enemy, opposed the measure violently, and Caesar had him arrested. He was later released, but the two sides were now on a collision course. The conservatives prepared to block the law in the Senate, whereupon Caesar decided to bypass the Senate and take the law directly to the popular assembly, the comitia centuriata.

This again brought back frightening memories of the times of the Gracchi. The assembly met in chaotic conditions. To general surprise both Pompey and Crassus spoke in favour of the reform, thus revealing the existence of their alliance with Caesar.

Bibulus, the conservative, opposed the law, but when he spoke against it, he got a very rough reception, during which a bucket of excrement was poured over his head. After this, Bibulus decided to withdraw from public life, alleging that he had read unfavourable omens in the sky (although it seems nobody else saw them).

As a result, he spent most of his time indoors, avoiding both the unfavourable omens and the buckets of foul-smelling organic matter. The local comedians joked that this was the “consulship of Julius and Caesar”.

All the time the heightened tension between the classes was becoming ever more violent. In January 52 BC Clodius was murdered on the Appian Way by the supporters of his conservative rival Milon.

Clodius had been a popular figure, who had passed a law authorising the distribution of grain to the people of Rome free of charge. The body of the murdered tribune was put on public display – a sight that, together with the lamentations of his widow, excited the passions of the populace.

This led to a riot that turned into a virtual insurrection. The Curia was set ablaze and mobs of enraged citizens rampaged through the streets smashing property and assaulting anyone who looked wealthy. This reaction was not surprising when one considers the abysm that separated the conditions of the masses from those of the rich.

The Gallic campaign

Caesar approached politics (and everything else) as a kind of shady business deal. As we know, in order to continue his upwards progress he needed to secure a constant flow of cash. He had spent colossal amounts on buying votes and bribing high officials – and the money was constantly running out.

Now Caesar had a problem. In order to succeed in his political intrigues, he needed more money. The only way he could get this was by borrowing and incurring huge debts. The problem with debts is that they have to be repaid, and the only way to pay these debts off was by securing an appointment to a profitable position in the provinces or by a military command that would enable him to obtain a large amount of booty.

Caesar’s enemies in the Senate were well aware of his predicament and therefore offered him a minor position in rural Italy – a position that held out no prospects of enrichment whatsoever. By means of intrigues and bribery he succeeded in getting this decision overturned and instead was given control of the northern part of Italy, then known as Cisalpine Gaul, and Illyria, now Albania.

This was a much better proposition for enrichment. But Caesar had an even greater stroke of luck when the man who had been assigned control of Transalpine Gaul (modern-day southern France) died unexpectedly.

The rebellious state of that province caused panic in the Senate and therefore compelled them, against their wishes, to grant control of this province to Caesar. This was just what he required. What he really needed, he decided, was a nice little war.

As we have seen, Pompey made his fortune through conquests in Asia. In order to defeat his rivals, Caesar had to win even more spectacular victories. If he could kill a few thousand foreigners he would qualify for a triumph at Rome, and the money would start flowing again. Then, in 58 BC, he had another sudden stroke of luck.

A confederation of Gallic tribes, called the Helvetii, began a mass migration from their homes in what is now Switzerland to Western Gaul. In reality, the Helvetian migration posed no great threat to Rome. When their request to move through the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul was rejected, they simply changed their route in order to avoid it.

But the Romans were undoubtedly very sensitive on the issue of invading Gauls. They still shuddered at the memory of the time when, in 387 BC, a Gallic army sacked Rome. This dreadful event was deeply rooted in the collective consciousness, and any suggestion that history might be repeated was certain to provoke a powerful response. Caesar therefore got what he so ardently desired: the command of a Roman army.

Caesar’s famous account of his Gallic campaign (Commentaries on the Gallic War) has acquired the status of a literary classic and an important historical document. In reality, however, it is not a work of history at all but a brilliant example of self-promotion. The celebrated Commentaries, written in the third person singular, are documents of immense value to historians, but they are not strictly historical. Written in a clear, concise Latin style, they are not devoid of literary merits, but they are not strictly literature.

Above all they are masterpieces of political propaganda, which one might say Caesar invented. They are designed to glorify Caesar’s achievements and magnify his victories. In De Bello Gallico the word “Caesar” is repeated no fewer than 775 times.

There are many exaggerations and some downright lies in Caesar’s accounts of the war. In the campaign against the Helvetii, Caesar claims to have confronted an army of 368,000. But modern historians like Furger-Gunti consider the actual numbers to have been around 40,000 warriors out of a total of 160,000 emigrants.

Delbrück suggests an even lower number of 100,000 people, out of which only 16,000 were fighters, which would make the Celtic force about half the size of the Roman body of about 30,000 men. Many of them were old people, women and children.

The defeat of the Helvetii was just the beginning. Seizing on whatever pretext lay at his disposal, Caesar then campaigned against the Belgae and the Nervii in the East, and against the Veneti in the Northwest, while his subordinates invaded Normandy and the South West. By 55 BC, most of Gaul was under Roman occupation, although far from pacified.

Caesar claimed to have killed huge numbers of people, including women and children. There is no way of verifying the figures he gives, of course. But there can be no doubt that these wars were accompanied by slaughter on a massive scale.

According to Plutarch’s Lives, out of 3 million Gallic soldiers engaged in the wars, 1 million were killed and another million captured. It is possible that these figures are exaggerated (the Romans did not react to war casualties in the same way people do today. Their slogan was: the more deaths, the better!)

But it is clear that vast numbers were killed and enslaved. This was seen in Rome as a strong point in Caesar’s favour. This was an age when imperialist aggression saw no need to disguise its true nature under the hypocritical cloak of ‘humanitarian missions’.

Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul were characterised by extreme brutality. Caesar himself confirms Plutarch’s estimate of over a million enemy soldiers killed on the battlefields of Gaul, without including the civilian victims.

Here was the real ugly face of Roman imperialist expansionism. If a tribe in Gaul rebelled against Roman rule, every man, woman and child would be slaughtered without mercy. The intention was to terrorise the rest into submission.

The final aim was to obtain a huge number of slaves to feed the insatiable appetite of the Roman economy for slave labour. As in previous wars, in essence these were gigantic slave hunts. Caesar himself reports that after the Veneti surrendered to him in 55 BC, he executed their elders and then had the rest of the people sold into slavery.

Despite the sheer savagery of these campaigns, it cannot be denied that Caesar was a brilliant commander and diplomat. Like most adventurers, Caesar was not short of personal bravery. He had a gambler’s instincts and was prepared to risk everything on a desperate throw. We see this tendency continually throughout his life.

From Caesar’s point of view, his campaigns in Gaul were a spectacular success. In a few years he had conquered a vast expanse of territory in what is now called France, Switzerland and Belgium. Not satisfied with this, in the year 55 BC he crossed the Channel and led the first invasion of Britain, an island shrouded in mystery, and situated at the very edge of the known world.

Although the conquest of Britain did not succeed, his reputation as a successful general was now made. When the Gauls rose up under the command of Vercingetorix in 52 BC, Caesar defeated the rebellion at the famous (or notorious) siege of Alesia with the most extreme brutality and then went on to crush all further resistance. It was time to return to Rome and capitalise on his success.

Threatened by Caesar’s growing power, the upper classes once again saw Pompey as their deliverer. They fawned upon the man whose consulship Cicero called “immortal”.^[7] But while the ‘immortal’ Pompey, the darling of the upper classes, rested on his laurels in Rome, Caesar was always on the offensive, followed by a troop of loyal soldiers in search of loot and officers in search of glory, promotion and a promising political career in the future. And there were plenty of ambitious young men prepared to follow Caesar abroad to win fame and wealth in the wars. These provided the shock troops of the Caesarist party.

The formation of the Triumvirate (Caesar, Pompey and Crassus) was already a step in the direction of undermining and overthrowing the republic and replacing it with the rule of one man. But relations within the Triumvirate were now beginning to crack. The question was really very simple. Who would be the future ruler of Rome?

Endnotes

[1] Plutarch, Lives: In Eleven Volumes, Vol. 7, ‘Caesar’, p. 453.

[2] Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline, p. 196.

[3] Quoted ibid., pp. 199-200.

[4] Ibid., p. 203.

[5] Quoted ibid., p. 199.

[6] Plutarch, Lives: In Eleven Volumes, Vol. 7, ‘Caesar’, p. 449.

[7] Cicero, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 204.