Caesar - differing from his biographers - regarded the subjugation of Gaul not as an incidental enterprise useful to him for the gaining of the crown, but as one on which depended the external security and the internal reorganization, in a word the future, of his country. That he might be enabled to complete this conquest undisturbed and might not be obliged to take in hand just at once the extrication of Italian affairs, he unhesitatingly gave up his superiority over his rivals and granted to Pompeius sufficient power to settle matters with the senate and its adherents. This was a grave political blunder, if Caesar had no other object than to become as quickly as possible king of Rome; but the ambition of that rare man was not confined to the vulgar aim of a crown. He had the boldness to prosecute side by side, and to complete, two labours equally vast - the arranging of the internal affairs of Italy, and the acquisition and securing of a new and fresh soil for Italian civilization. These tasks of course interfered with each other; his Gallic conquests hindered much more than helped him on his way to the throne. It was fraught to him with bitter fruit that, instead of settling the Italian revolution in 698, he postponed it to 706. But as a statesman as well as a general Caesar was a peculiarly daring player, who, confiding in himself and despising his opponents, gave them always great and sometimes extravagant odds.
It was now therefore the turn of the aristocracy to make good their high gage, and to wage war as boldly as they had boldly declared it. But there is no more pitiable spectacle than when cowardly men have the misfortune to take a bold resolution. They had simply exercised no foresight at all. It seemed to have occurred to nobody that Caesar would possibly stand on his defence, or that Pompeius and Crassus would combine with him afresh and more closely than ever. This seems incredible; but it becomes intelligible, when we glance at the persons who then led the constitutional opposition in the senate. Cato was still absent[4]; the most influential man in the senate at this time was Marcus Bibulus, the hero of passive resistance, the most obstinate and most stupid of all consulars. They had taken up arms only to lay them down, so soon as the adversary merely put his hand to the sheath; the bare news of the conferences in Luca sufficed to suppress all thought of a serious opposition and to bring the mass of the timid - that is, the immense majority of the senate - back to their duty as subjects, which in an unhappy hour they had abandoned. There was no further talk of the appointed discussion to try the validity of the Julian laws; the legions raised by Caesar on his own behalf were charged by decree of the senate on the public chest; the attempts on occasion of regulating the next consular provinces to take away both Gauls or one of them by decree from Caesar were rejected by the majority (end of May 698).
Thus the corporation did public penance. In secret the individual lords, one after another, thoroughly frightened at their own temerity, came to make their peace and vow unconditional obedience - none more quickly than Marcus Cicero, who repented too late of his perfidy, and in respect of the most recent period of his life clothed himself with titles of honour which were altogether more appropriate than flattering[5]. Of course the regents agreed to be pacified; they refused nobody pardon, for there was nobody who was worth the trouble of making him an exception. That we may see how suddenly the tone in aristocratic circles changed after the resolutions of Luca became known, it is worth while to compare the pamphlets given forth by Cicero shortly before with the palinode which he caused to be issued to evince publicly his repentance and his good intentions[6].
The regents could thus arrange Italian affairs at their pleasure and more thoroughly than before. Italy and the capital obtained practically a garrison although not assembled in arms, and one of the regents as commandant. Of the troops levied for Syria and Spain by Crassus and Pompeius, those destined for the east no doubt took their departure; but Pompeius caused the two Spanish provinces to be administered by his lieutenants with the garrison hitherto stationed there, while he dismissed the officers and soldiers of the legions which were newly raised - nominally for despatch to Spain - on furlough, and remained himself with them in Italy. Doubtless the tacit resistance of public opinion increased, the more clearly and generally men perceived that the regents were working to put an end to the old constitution and with as much gentleness as possible to accommodate the existing condition of the government and administration to the forms of the monarchy; but they submitted, because they were obliged to submit.
First of all all the more important affairs, and particularly all that related to military matters and external relations, were disposed of without consulting the senate upon them, sometimes by decree of the people, sometimes by the mere good pleasure of the rulers. The arrangements agreed on at Luca respecting the military command of Gaul were submitted directly to the burgesses by Crassus and Pompeius, those relating to Spain and Syria by the tribune of the people Gaius Trebonius, and in other instances the more important governorships were frequently filled up by decree of the people.
That the regents did not need the consent of the authorities to increase their troops at pleasure, Caesar had already sufficiently shown: as little did they hesitate mutually to borrow troops; Caesar for instance received such collegiate support from Pompeius for the Gallic, and Crassus from Caesar for the Parthian, war. The Transpadanes, who possessed according to the existing constitution only Latin rights, were treated by Caesar during his administration practically as full burgesses of Rome[7]. While formerly the organization of newly-acquired territories had been managed by a senatorial commission, Caesar organized his extensive Gallic conquests altogether according to his own judgment, and founded, for instance, without having received any farther full powers burgess-colonies, particularly Novum-Comum (Como) with five thousand colonists. Piso conducted the Thracian, Gabinius the Egyptian, Crassus the Parthian war, without consulting the senate, and without even reporting, as was usual, to that body; in like manner triumphs and other marks of honour were accorded and carried out, without the senate being asked about them.
Obviously this did not arise from a mere neglect of forms, which would be the less intelligible, seeing that in the great majority of cases no opposition from the senate was to be expected. On the contrary, it was a well-calculated design to dislodge the senate from the domain of military arrangements and of higher politics, and to restrict its share of administration to financial questions and internal affairs; and even opponents plainly discerned this and protested, so far as they could, against this conduct of the regents by means of senatorial decrees and criminal actions. While the regents thus in the main set aside the senate, they still made some use of the less dangerous popular assemblies - care was taken that in these the lords of the street should put no farther difficulty in the way of the lords of the state; in many cases however they dispensed even with this empty shadow, and employed without disguise autocratic forms.
The humbled senate had to submit to its position whether it would or not. The leader of the compliant majority continued to be Marcus Cicero. He was useful on account of his lawyer's talent of finding reasons, or at any rate words, for everything; and there was a genuine Caesarian irony in employing the man, by means of whom mainly the aristocracy had conducted their demonstrations against the regents, as the mouthpiece of servility. Accordingly they pardoned him for his brief desire to kick against the pricks, not however without having previously assured themselves of his submissiveness in every way. His brother had been obliged to take the position of an officer in the Gallic army to answer in some measure as a hostage for him; Pompeius had compelled Cicero himself to accept a lieutenant-generalship under him, which furnished a handle for politely banishing him at any moment. Clodius had doubtless been instructed to leave him meanwhile at peace, but Caesar as little threw off Clodius on account of Cicero as he threw off Cicero on account of Clodius; and the great saviour of his country and the no less great hero of liberty entered into an antechamber-rivalry in the headquarters of Samarobriva, for the befitting illustration of which there lacked, unfortunately, a Roman Aristophanes. But not only was the same rod kept in suspense over Cicero's head, which had once already descended on him so severely; golden fetters were also laid upon him. Amidst the serious embarrassment of his finances the loans of Caesar free of interest, and the joint overseership of those buildings which occasioned the circulation of enormous sums in the capital, were in a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration for the senate was nipped in the bud by the thought of Caesar's agent, who might present a bill to him after the close of the sitting.
4. Cato was not yet in Rome when Cicero spoke on 11th March 698 in favour of Sestius (Pro Sest. 28, 60) and when the discussion took place in the senate in consequence of the resolutions of Luca respecting Caesar's legions (Plut. Caes. 21); it is not till the discussions at the beginning of 699 that we find him once more busy, and, as he travelled in winter (Plut. Cato Min. 38), he thus returned to Rome in the end of 698. He cannot therefore, as has been mistakenly inferred from Asconius (p. 35, 53), have defended Milo in Feb. 698.
5.
6. This palinode is the still extant oration on the Provinces to be assigned to the consuls of 699. It was delivered in the end of May 698. The pieces contrasting with it are the orations for Sestius and against Vatinius and that upon the opinion of the Etruscan soothsayers, dating from the months of March and April, in which the aristocratic regime is glorified to the best of his ability and Caesar in particular is treated in a very cavalier tone. It was but reasonable that Cicero should, as he himself confesses (Ad Att. iv. 5, 1), be ashamed to transmit even to intimate friends that attestation of his resumed allegiance.
7. This is not stated by our authorities. But the view that Caesar levied no soldiers at all from the Latin communities, that is to say from by far the greater part of his province, is in itself utterly incredible, and is directly refuted by the fact that the opposition-party slightingly designates the force levied by Caesar as "for the most part natives of the Transpadane colonie", (Caes. B. C. iii. 87); for here the Latin colonies of Strabo (Ascon. in Pison. p. 3; Sueton. Caes. 8) are evidently meant. Yet there is no trace of Latin cohorts in Caesar's Gallic army; on the contrary according to his express statements all the recruits levied by him in Cisalpine Gaul were added to the legions or distributed into legions. It is possible that Caesar combined with the levy the bestowal of the franchise; but more probably he adhered in this matter to the standpoint of his party, which did not so much seek to procure for the Transpadanes the Roman franchise as rather regarded it as already legally belonging to them (iv. 457). Only thus could the report spread, that Caesar had introduced of his own authority the Roman municipal constitution among the Transpadane communities (Cic. Ad Att. v. 3, 2; Ad Fam. viii. 1, 2). This hypothesis too explains why Hirtius designates the Transpadane towns as "colonies of Roman burgesse", (B. G. viii. 24), and why Caesar treated the colony of Comum founded by him as a burgess-colony (Sueton. Caes. 28; Strabo, v. 1, p. 213; Plutarch, Caes. 29), while the moderate party of the aristocracy conceded to it only the same rights as to the other Transpadane communities, viz. Latin rights, and the ultras even declared the civic rights conferred on the settlers as altogether null, and consequently did not concede to the Comenses the privileges attached to the holding of a Latin municipal magistracy (Cic. Ad Att. v. 11, 2; Appian, B. C. ii. 26). Comp. Hermes, xvi. 30.