Withdrawal into a private world of cultivated friendships was the last thing on the minds of Pompey and Crassus. They both needed to use their consulships of 55 bc as stepping-stones to further commands. Pompey secured one in Spain, for five years. So as not to lose his position in Rome he sent legates to govern Spain on his behalf, something that had never been done before by a governor. He then began raising troops but retained them in Italy on the pretext that they were being trained there for Spain. Meanwhile he kept his name before the public by building a massive theatre, the first stone one to be erected in Rome, in the Campus Martius. Such was the breach in convention involved (no permanent stone theatre had ever been allowed before) that the auditorium had to be built as if it were a glorified annexe to a temple that stood in the centre at the top of the steps. (The site can still be recognized today by the curved row of houses that stand on its foundations.)
In 54 Pompey’s wife Julia died in childbirth. It was a shocking blow to Pompey but the death also symbolized the growing distance between Caesar and himself. They were now actively competing against each other for popular support. Alongside Pompey’s new theatre in the Campus Martius Caesar began to build a massive voting enclosure in marble while also planning to make a huge extension of the Forum on the north side. He continued to relay reports of his successes to Rome. The year 56 had been spent campaigning through Brittany and along the Atlantic seaboard and Gaul was now quiet enough for him to take the dramatic step in 55 of crossing to Britain, an exploit he repeated in 54. It was a foolhardy adventure that, in 55 in particular, almost ended in disaster when his fleets were destroyed in storms. These setbacks were glossed over in Caesar’s deliberately dramatized accounts of his crossing of a distant ocean. They aroused enormous enthusiasm in Rome.
Crassus, unable to compete with these two showmen, now set out on his own quest for military glory. Although nearly 60 and with little experience of command he determined to lead an army to Parthia. There was no immediate reason for war although relations with Parthia had been strained since Pompey had failed to hand over territory he had promised the Parthian king. Crassus led seven legions into the interior. He had some success in 54 in Mesopotamia but in 53, heading east beyond the Euphrates, he allowed his forces to be surrounded by the expert Parthian
Archers. Both his cavalry and legionaries were overwhelmed. Plutarch chronicles the horrifying last days of the army as, forced to abandon 4,000 wounded men in the town of Carrhae, it was cut down by the Parthians. Crassus’ head was carried off in triumph to be thrown at the feet of the Parthian king. Only a quarter of the original force of 40,000 managed to struggle back to Roman territory.
Carrhae was one of the most humiliating of all Roman defeats and news of the disaster filtered back to Rome at a time of escalating disorder. The political system was in such disarray that in 53 no consuls were elected before July. The elections for 52 were also delayed. In January 52 Clodius and Milo’s gangs clashed out on the Appian way. Clodius was wounded, taken to an inn, and there murdered on the orders of Milo. His body was taken to the Forum for the customary speeches and the incensed crowds began raging against Milo. The fire consuming the body got out of hand and the senate house and an adjoining basilica were burnt down.
In the chaos the crowds began calling for Pompey’s appointment as dictator. The senate was trapped. If they gave in they would be giving absolute power to one they still feared and distrusted. As a face-saver they devised a formula by which Pompey would become sole consul and he remained so from February 52 until a fellow consul was elected in August. This astonishing breach of convention showed once again how dependent the senate had become on Pompey. Pompey immediately set in hand measures to restore order. Corrupt practices were outlawed and violence curbed. Milo, deserted now by Pompey, was put on trial in 52 for his murder of Clodius. The court was so overawed by Pompey’s troops and supporters of Clodius that Cicero, who had agreed to defend Milo, lost his nerve for the first time in his life and only spoke briefly. Milo was forced into exile. (He later wrote to thank Cicero for not using his rhetoric effectively on his behalf. If he had been acquitted he would have missed the chance to enjoy the excellent seafood of Massilia.) Many of Clodius’ supporters were also convicted. In 51 elections were resumed according to the normal schedule.
It is possible Pompey might have restored control but there was still Caesar to contend with. Caesar, in fact, had been in trouble. After the first shock of defeat the Gauls had regrouped and recovered their confidence. In 54 an entire Roman legion had been lured from their camp by the Eburones, a northern tribe, and massacred. Caesar had had to borrow a legion from Pompey’s forces to replace it as well as recruit two more from Cisalpine Gaul. Unrest among tribes in the north of Gaul had continued into 53 and then in 52 there had been a far more formidable revolt which had covered much of central and south-western Gaul. It had been led by Vercinge-torix of the Arverni, the first leader able to transcend tribal loyalties and unite the Gauls in defence of their freedom. Even tribes such as the Aedui who had been allies of the Romans had been drawn in as well as others who had not yet faced Roman forces. Vercingetorix had concentrated on depriving the Romans of food supplies, hoping to isolate them within Gaul so that they could be dealt with more easily. Caesar’s leadership skills and the discipline of his legions had been tested to the full before Vercingetorix was brought to bay on a high plateau at Alesia in eastern Gaul. The Romans surrounded the stronghold with several kilometres of ditches
Dotted with forts and then fought off a large relieving army. Vercingetorix finally surrendered and was carried off as captive to Rome. (He eventually graced a triumph of Caesar’s in 46 and was then strangled.) The year 51 was spent successfully mopping up the remnants of opposition. For the first time the Roman empire had moved beyond the Mediterranean. The new border of the empire in the north was the Rhine and here, despite occasional attempts at further expansion, it was to remain for over 400 years.
It was in 51 that Caesar also published his masterly account of his campaigns, his Commentaries on the Gallic War. Told in the third person, they give a vivid picture of the Roman legions in operation and the tribes of Gaul in their final moments before defeat. Caesar, as general, is at the forefront and the account highlights his skills, his calmness, determination, and the speed with which he acted at moments of crisis. There is no doubt that the work was focused on a public audience, but at the same time the simple and lucid prose in which the Commentaries are written convince that this is a fairly reliable account of what actually happened on the campaign.
Despite popular acclaim, Caesar remained vulnerable to counter-attack by the optimates. It is not clear, and does not seem to have been even to contemporaries, when his command should have come to an end (the law giving him the command may not have specified a date) but when it eventually did so he would be vulnerable to prosecution unless he could secure another imperium, either a command overseas or a consulship. In 50 a political struggle broke out between the optimates who were trying to bring Caesar’s command to an end without any renewal and a tribune, Gaius Scribonius Curio, a heavily indebted optimate probably bribed into the support of Caesar, who vetoed any law that threatened him.
Pompey’s third consulship had come to an end at the close of 52 although he continued to hold his command in Spain. He seems to have hoped that he could hold the balance between the optimates and Caesar by, in some way, making Caesar dependent on him. However, the time when Caesar would submit to the influence of Pompey was by now long past. After his successes in Gaul it would be below his dignity to accept any relationship with Pompey that was less than one of equality. Pompey seems to have become aware of this during 50 but was confident that in a showdown he would win. In May 50 he had fallen dangerously ill and his recovery was greeted with such apparent enthusiasm that he assumed support from the towns of Italy would not be hard to find. He also received misleading reports that Caesar’s armies were on the point of mutiny. His military position was improved when it was decreed that two legions, one from each of Pompey’s and Caesar’s armies, be sent as a precaution to the Parthian border. Pompey asked Caesar to surrender the legion that he had lent to him in 54 in addition to surrendering one of his own. When news came that the Parthian threat had receded both were retained in Italy and Pompey treated them as his own.
All these moves fuelled the increasing sense of crisis. It was clear that a power struggle was under way—‘the greatest struggle that history has ever known’, as Cicero put it as he agonized over which side he should take. ‘Victory will bring many
Map 11 The City of Rome, 52 BC. The centre of popular politics was in the Forum and on the neighbouring Capitoline Hill. In this relatively small area the senate and the concilium plebis met and major law trials were held. One can understand why politics became so volatile in the late republic and why there was such a premium on effective speaking. The Comitia Centuriata held its meetings and elections on the Campus Martius, outside the walls of the city.
Evils in its train including the certainty of a despot.’ Towards the end of the year Curio, fearfUl of what would happen to him when he stopped being tribune, proposed that both Caesar and Pompey should surrender their commands. The motion was passed by the concilium with an overwhelming majority but no date for the surrender was set. By the end of the year rumours were circulating that Caesar was about to march on Rome, and in December 50, the consuls, on their own initiative, approached Pompey to ask whether he would save the city against Caesar. He accepted in what was now an alliance with the optimates in defence of the republic. On 1 January 49 Caesar suggested in a letter to the senate that both he and Pompey should lay down their commands. The optimates, now in league with Pompey, would not agree and tried, against opposition from tribunes friendly to Caesar, to get his armies (and his alone) disbanded. On the 7th the senate passed a senatus consultum ultimum, the emergency decree calling all magistrates to defend the city. If he was to preserve his dignity Caesar was now left with little choice but to take the initiative. On 10 January 49 he crossed a small river, the Rubicon, which marked the boundary of Cisalpine Gaul within which he could exercise imperium and the rest of Italy where he could not. He had, in effect, declared war on the republic. (Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, London, 2003; New York, 2004, provides a fast-paced popular account of these tumultuous years. A more sober approach, emphasizing the durability of republican institutions, is Erich Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, Berkeley and London, 1974.)
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