Such lavish events required money – and lots of it. To recoup his massive debts, Caesar next set his sights on being elected to administer a province, plundering it for booty and repaying his debtors on his return. After his praetorship, he did just this – in the province of Further Spain in 61 BC. Straying from his ordinary duties of governor, he set about warring with the independent tribes of northern Portugal, and proved himself to be as much a fighter and general abroad as he was a suave and debonair populist politician at home. So successful was he that he focussed his ambitions on requesting a triumph – the perfect launch pad, the young general thought, for his election campaign to the highest office of the republic: the consulship. However, on his return to Rome, all did not go according to plan.
The man who was determined to scupper Caesar’s smooth path to the consulship was the arch-constitutionalist of the day, Marcus Porcius Cato. Inflexible, humourless and much older in character than his thirty-five years, Cato wanted his life to embody an ideal of austere and ancient republican virtue. His hair was dishevelled in the manner of a peasant, his beard hoary and unkempt, and in protest at the fad among the élite for wearing a light, luxurious purple, Cato insisted on wearing black. His contemporary Cicero said of him that he walked around Rome as if he were living ‘in the ideal republic of Plato, not the cesspit of Romulus’.7 Dinner chez Cato was no self-respecting senator’s idea of a fun night out. Indeed, as Caesar returned to Rome, Cato showed how he lived and breathed the constitutional laws of the republic, how determined he was to use them to stop the populists from gaining power.
Outside the city walls Caesar sent in his formal request to the Senate for a triumph to mark his conquests in Spain. He also stated that he wished to stand for the consulship in the imminent July elections. Cato’s reply came back: according to law, he could not have both. Caesar was caught in a dilemma. To receive a triumph he had to wait outside Rome until the day of celebration. To stand for the consulship, however, he had to enter the city immediately and offer his candidacy in person. Caesar, said Cato, had to decide between the two: the glory of a grand popular procession through Rome, or a bid for a top job in the republic.8
Caesar chose to stand for the consulship. As we shall see, it was a decision that would change the course of Roman history for ever. However, the outcome of the election was not guaranteed. In order to secure the office of consul and also recoup the popular favour he had lost in forgoing his triumph, Caesar now urgently needed both money and influence. The only man in the republic who was willing and able to provide these things was none other than the sulking Pompey the Great. The two great populists of the day now made a pact. Pompey would give Caesar financial and popular support to win election to the consulship; and Caesar, once elected consul, would give Pompey what he most wanted. On Pompey’s behalf, he would propose the very laws that the fearful conservative senators had long refused – the settlement of Pompey’s veterans and the ratification of his treaties in the east.
The alliance of the two men was potentially so powerful and threatening that, at the election for the consulship in the summer of 60 BC, the conservatives led by Cato would stop at nothing to prevent Caesar and Pompey getting their way. The two sides, constitutionalists and reformers, conservatives and populists joined battle once more. In the build-up to the election in July 60 BC the deep pockets of Pompey and his wealthy ally Marcus Licinius Crassus ensured that bribes flooded into the Campus Martius, the place where the people voted in the elections for consul. Even Cato, the priggish adherer to the letter of law, resorted to bribery to promote a conservative candidate, his son-in-law Marcus Bibulus.9 Cato and his conservative allies were so desperate to ensure that at least one of the consuls could be relied upon to restrain Caesar that they were prepared to play as dirty as the populist bloc fronted by Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. In the event, Caesar won a massive majority, but Cato could claim success too. By a whisker, Bibulus was elected as Caesar’s fellow consul. But the battle had only just begun.
The year of Caesar’s consulship represents the logical conclusion of the long struggle between the populists and the constitutionalists. Above all, it shows how the populists had now gained the upper hand. For the striking innovation of 59 BC was that the leading populist of the day, the man who was prepared to buck tradition and defy the wishes of the Senate, was no longer a tribune of the people. He was a man in possession of one of the greatest sources of power in the republic – the consulship. The radical tactics of the tribunes were now applied to that post. When, for example, Caesar proposed Pompey’s land bill to settle his troops, he met with a wall of resolute opposition rallied by Cato. So instead of backing down to the collective will of his fellow senators, as was customary for a consul to do, he simply walked out of the Senate House, took the bill direct to the popular assembly and had it passed there. But Caesar was prepared to go to even greater extremes. When, on other days of voting on Caesar and Pompey’s programme, his fellow consul Bibulus repeatedly tried to obstruct the public business by declaring that the omens were not good, Caesar simply ignored him and pressed ahead anyway. Was Caesar breaking the law? Cato certainly thought so.
In the feverish tension of 59 BC Caesar and Pompey compounded their ‘illegalities’. They introduced once again an ominous element used by both sides in the war of popular politics: brute force. When Cato obstructed any discussion of the land bill in the Senate, Caesar had his lictors seize the braying senator and throw him into prison. It was a small taste of things to come. The menacing threat of Pompey’s veterans, of thousands of former soldiers loyal to one man, now descended on Rome. In order to make sure that the vote on the land bill went their way, gangs of Pompey’s thugs simply entered the Forum on the day of voting and cleared it of all opponents to the bill. In one encounter Cato and Bibulus were carried off, their entourage of officials beaten up and the magistrate’s rods of office smashed. As a final humiliating insult, a bucket of excrement was thrown over the consul’s head.
The next day Bibulus called a meeting of the Senate and complained about how he had been so violently and illegally treated. The sympathetic senators were at a loss how to respond. For the rest of the year Bibulus stayed indoors in constant fear of his life. The energetic Caesar, meanwhile, simply boycotted the Senate House and the normal procedures of politics, and brought all his populist legislation without hindrance direct to the people’s assembly. It was an extraordinary year. And it was not over yet.
It was the custom of every consul, once his year in office had come to an end, to govern a Roman province, chosen by the Senate, as proconsul. In one last-ditch attempt at restraining the ambitious, calculating Caesar, Cato and the conservatives decided to send him to the quiet pastures of Italy. Here there were no wars to fight, no mass of booty to plunder and no opportunity to win the loyalty of an army. In short, it spelt the premature end of Caesar’s brilliant, show-stealing career. But Caesar had other ideas. He instigated a loyal tribune of the people to bring a new law to the assembly, granting him the more promising provinces of Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul on the eastern side of the Alps, see map, page 119) and Illyricum (the Dalmatian coast) for a period of five years. By an extraordinary stroke of luck, however, the governor of Transalpine Gaul (on the western side of the Alps) died in the spring of 59 BC, leaving that province too in urgent need of a commander. This region of Gaul was the gateway to lands untouched by Roman rule. It offered an appetizing prospect for war, conquest and riches.