A glimpse into what was driving Caesar in Gaul is revealed in his own account of the Gallic Wars. He built a bridge because he considered crossing the river by boat beneath ‘his dignity’.15Dignitas was the pre-eminent quality of a patrician Roman politician, and it was rooted in an historic sense of worth, rank and prestige. The more ancient and aristocratic the Roman family, the greater the dignity accumulated and the higher the point at which that sense of worth was pegged. Caesar’s own acute sense of his dignity had been at the heart of his pursuit of office in Rome, had motivated his actions as consul, and was now driving him on to ever greater feats of glory in Gaul. To cap his achievements abroad, in 55 and 54 BC Caesar prepared a fleet, crossed the English Channel and launched an invasion of Britain, a country that many Romans did not believe even existed. On his second attempt, Caesar stayed in Britain for the summer, getting as far as the river Thames and securing tribute from several British tribes. Although no permanent Roman base was established, Caesar had succeeded in making another dramatic statement of his ambition.
The effect of that ambition was to build for Caesar an unprecedented power base both abroad and at home. In Rome the news of his exploits thrilled and delighted the people of Rome: they were the stuff of fairy tales, adventure stories, the kind of fable with which Roman parents would excite and inspire their children. While Cato and his allies were carping on about the deformity and sickness of Caesar’s dignity, the people saw that very same thing bringing honour in abundance to the Roman republic. To them, Caesar was putting on the greatest show on earth and the stage was Gauclass="underline" ancient, barbaric enemies were being defeated, and not even rivers or oceans could restrain the unfurling arm of Roman power. By the end of 53 BC, Caesar was able to announce that the whole of Gaul was ‘pacified’. Accordingly, his glory was not just being restored – it was rocketing.16
But Caesar did not rest on the laurels of his foreign exploits to wow the people; he played an active part too. Every winter he set up camp as close to the border of Italy as his province would allow. From there would flow news of extraordinary gifts and benefactions for the Roman people. The centrepiece was Caesar’s announcement that in the heart of Rome a glorious new forum was to be built, paid for with the spoils of Gaul.17 Gifts of a more personal nature also streamed freely into Rome. A rich seam of bribes, as well as letters of recommendation, ensured that Caesar could influence the election of like-minded magistrates prepared to help him and defend his name. Traffic also flowed in the opposite direction. Ambitious young Romans seeking opportunities for wealth and military success thronged in ever-increasing numbers to the one place where the real action was: with Caesar, in Gaul, on campaign. But although Caesar was highly successful in wooing the fast set of Roman politics, Cato and his constitutionalist allies could reassure themselves that at least they had the measure of such opponents. They had been fighting the populist faction in the Forum and the Senate for decades now. What they weren’t prepared for, however, and what was new and far more threatening to their interests, was Caesar’s power base abroad: the army.
For all the struggle of populist politics, the issue of Rome’s citizen-militia fighting long campaigns, only then to discover they had no farms to return to, had never been solved successfully through land reform. Pompey’s demobilized veterans may have been settled on plots of land during Caesar’s consulship, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, reforms of the army had only made the problem of rootless soldiers worse: the general Marius may have bolstered the number of army recruits by abolishing any property qualification in 107 BC, but the result of this was to fill the legions with men who had no stake at all in the republic. Their only hope for wealth was an army salary and the chance of winning booty on campaign. In Gaul, Caesar was able to provide both in spades. As a result, a new and very dangerous codependent relationship developed between the general and his men. The soldiers were no longer loyal to the republic and its ancient ideology of freedom. Their only loyalty was to the benefactor who was now responsible for their interests: the general. The historian Sallust put it succinctly:
When anyone seeks power his greatest help is the man in direst poverty, because he is restrained by no attachment to his property, having none, and considers anything honourable for which he receives pay.18
The same, of course, was even truer of the Germans and Gauls whom Caesar was levying into his army. These new recruits had never set foot in a Roman province, let alone Rome itself. As the years passed, Caesar’s legions grew from the three authorized by his proconsulship to a staggering ten. This put into his hand a weapon more dangerous than any the republic had yet seen: the fierce might of no fewer than 50,000 battle-hardened soldiers, each and every one devoted to his name. It was no wonder, then, that Cato and his allies among the nobles tried to put an end to his power. However, on their first attempt, Caesar, even from his distant outpost of Gaul, knew how to swat it away.
In 56 BC a senator by the name of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus announced that he was preparing to stand for the consulship with a view to depriving Caesar of his command in Gaul. With his finger on the pulse of Roman politics, Caesar quickly neutralized this threat by renewing his alliance with Pompey. At a meeting in Lucca in northern Italy, he encouraged him and their ally Crassus to stand in elections and beat Ahenobarbus to the consulship. They would then be in a position to help Caesar: through laws proposed by them in the popular assembly, they could make sure that Caesar would be granted an extension of his command for another five years. In return, Pompey and Crassus would be able to consolidate their power and independence from the Senate with lucrative proconsular commands abroad. They would all get what they wanted.
In Rome Cato spotted the rearguard action of Caesar and Pompey a mile off. He now urged Ahenobarbus not to give in, but to contest the election tooth and nail. ‘We are not fighting,’ said Cato, ‘merely for office, but for liberty against our oppressors!’19 On the day of voting, Pompey’s armed gangs of veterans once again beat up Ahenobarbus and Cato, barred them from entering the Campus Martius and routed their supporters. Pompey and Crassus were duly elected consuls for 55 BC, and Caesar was safe once more. Caesar’s friendship and alliance with Pompey had saved the day. However, the next time Cato and his allies launched a strike against Caesar, the general would not be so lucky.
Three years later 52 BC saw a turning point in the relationship between Caesar and Pompey. In this year the fatal flaw in Pompey’s character was revealed. The decline in their alliance had begun two years earlier. Pompey’s wife and Caesar’s daughter, Julia, had died in childbirth, the baby surviving the mother for only a few days. In their grief, both men knew that the one key bond that set their alliance beyond politics was now broken. While Caesar grieved over the news in Gaul, in Rome the depth of what was considered to be Pompey the Great’s unbecoming love for Julia was so widely known that even his conservative enemies in the Senate briefly took pity on him.20
However, it would take a more cataclysmic event before the conservatives actively wooed the man whom they had long feared and suspected. That event began with the murder of Publius Clodius Pulcher, an ally of Caesar’s. As a populist tribune of the people, Clodius had successfully established himself as the chief agitator and benefactor of the urban plebs in Rome. In this bid for power his timing had been perfect: in the mid-50s BC the senators, swamped in a mire of allegations of bribery and corruption, were increasingly discredited. Clodius’s sparkling, controversial career suggested that perhaps the people did not want freedom after all, but simply fair, generous masters.21When he was stabbed on a street in a brawl with a rival gang, his death triggered widespread fury. His devout supporters – a motley crew of shopkeepers, street urchins, traders, and the needy and poor of the city’s slums – united in grief on the streets of Rome in their thousands. They descended on the Forum and proceeded to make a funeral pyre for their champion. The place? The Senate House. The fuel? The wooden benches of the senators. No one could stop them. As the Senate House burnt to the ground, a riot quickly swept across the city.