Roman Life in the Days of Cicero (eBook)

CHAPTER VIII.CAESAR.

At eight-and-twenty, Caesar, who not thirty years later was to die master of Rome, was chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. “In all his schemes and all his policy,” said Cicero, “I discern the temper of a tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the liberties of Rome.” As for his debts they were enormous. He had contrived to spend his own fortune and the fortune of his wife; and he was more than three hundred thousand pounds in debt. This was before he had held any public office; and office, when he came to hold it, certainly did not improve his position. He was appointed one of the guardians of the Appian Way (the great road that led southward from Rome, and was the route for travelers to Greece and the East). He spent a great sum of money in repairs. His next office of aedile was still more expensive. Expensive it always was, for the aedile, besides keeping the temples and other public buildings in repair (the special business signified by his name), had the management of the public games. An allowance was made to him for his expenses from the treasury, but he was expected, just as the Lord Mayor of London is expected, to spend a good deal of his own money. Caesar far outdid all his predecessors. At one of the shows which he exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators fought in the arena; and a gladiator, with his armor and weapons, and the long training which he had to undergo before he could fight in public, was a very expensive slave. The six hundred and forty would cost, first and last, not less than a hundred pounds apiece, and many of them, perhaps a third of the whole number, would be killed in the course of the day. Nor was he content with the expenses which were more or less necessary. He exhibited a great show of wild beasts in memory of his father, who had died nearly twenty years before. The whole furniture of the theater, down to the very stage, was made on this occasion of solid silver.

For all this seeming folly, there were those who discerned thoughts and designs of no common kind. Extravagant expenditure was of course an usual way of winning popular favors. A Roman noble bought office after office till he reached one that entitled him to be sent to govern a province. In the plunder of the province he expected to find what would repay him all that he had spent and leave a handsome sum remaining. Caesar looked to this end, but he looked also to something more. He would be the champion of the people, and the people would make him the greatest man at Rome. This had been the part played by Marius before him; and he determined to play it again. The name of Marius had been in ill repute since the victory of his great rival, Sulla, and Caesar determined to restore it to honor. He caused statues of this great man to be secretly made, on which were inscribed the names of the victories by which he had delivered Rome from the barbarians. On the morning of the show these were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the height of the Capitol. The first feeling was a general astonishment at the young magistrate’s audacity. Then the populace broke out into expressions of enthusiastic delight; many even wept for joy to see again the likeness of their old favorite; all declared that Caesar was his worthy successor. The nobles were filled with anger and fear. Catulus, who was their leader, accused Caesar in the Senate. “This man,” he said, “is no longer digging mines against his country, he is bringing battering-rams against it.” The Senate, however, was afraid or unwilling to act. As for the people, it soon gave the young man a remarkable proof of its favor. What may be called the High Priesthood became vacant. It was an honor commonly given to some aged man who had won victories abroad and borne high honors at home. Such competitors there were on this occasion, Catulus being one of them. But Caesar, though far below the age at which such offices were commonly held, determined to enter the lists. He refused the heavy bribe by which Catulus sought to induce him to withdraw from the contest, saying that he would raise a greater sum to bring it to a successful end. Indeed, he staked all on the struggle. When on the day of election he was leaving his house, his mother followed him to the door with tears in her eyes. He turned and kissed her, “Mother,” he said, “to-day you will see your son either High Priest or an exile.”

The fact was that Caesar had always shown signs of courage and ambition, and had always been confident of his future greatness. Now that his position in the country was assured men began to remember these stories of his youth. In the days when Sulla was master of Rome, Caesar had been one of the very few who had ventured to resist the great man’s will. Marius, the leader of the party, was his uncle, and he had himself married the daughter of Cunia, another of the popular leaders. This wife Sulla ordered him to divorce, but he flatly refused. For some time his life was in danger; but Sulla was induced to spare it, remarking, however, to friends who interceded for him, on the ground that he was still but a boy, “You have not a grain of sense, if you do not see that in this boy there is the material for many Mariuses.” The young Caesar found it safer to leave Italy for a time. While traveling in the neighborhood of Asia Minor he fell into the hands of the pirates, who were at that time the terror of all the Eastern Mediterranean. His first proceeding was to ask them how much they wanted for his ransom. “Twenty talents,” (about five thousand pounds) was their answer. “What folly!” he said, “you don’t know whom you have got hold of. You shall have fifty.” Messengers were sent to fetch the money, and Caesar, who was left with a friend and a couple of slaves, made the best of the situation. If he wanted to go to sleep he would send a message commanding his captors to be silent. He joined their sports, read poems and speeches to them, and roundly abused them as ignorant barbarians if they failed to applaud. But his most telling joke was threatening to hang them. The men laughed at the free-spoken lad, but were not long in finding that he was in most serious earnest. In about five weeks’ time the money arrived and Caesar was released. He immediately went to Miletus, equipped a squadron, and returning to the scene of his captivity, found and captured the greater part of the band. Leaving his prisoners in safe custody at Pergamus, he made his way to the governor of the province, who had in his hands the power of life and death. But the governor, after the manner of his kind, had views of his own. The pirates were rich and could afford to pay handsomely for their lives. He would consider the case, he said. This was not at all to Caesar’s mind. He hastened back to Pergamus, and, taking the law into his own hands, crucified all the prisoners.

This was the cool and resolute man in whom the people saw their best friend and the nobles their worst enemy. These last seemed to see a chance of ruining him when the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered and crushed. He was accused, especially by Cato, of having been an accomplice; and when he left the Senate after the debate in which he had argued against putting the arrested conspirators to death, he was mobbed by the gentlemen who formed Cicero’s body-guard, and was even in danger of his life. But the formal charge was never pressed; indeed it was manifestly false, for Caesar was too sure of the favor of the people to have need of conspiring to win it. The next year he was made praetor, and after his term of office was ended, governor of Further Spain. The old trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he could not leave Rome till he had satisfied the most pressing of his creditors. This he did by help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who stood security for nearly two hundred thousand pounds. To this time belong two anecdotes which, whether true or no, are curiously characteristic of his character. He was passing, on the way to his province, a town that had a particularly mean and poverty-stricken look. One of his companions remarked, “I dare say there are struggles for office even here, and jealousies and parties.” “Yes,” said Caesar; “and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be the first man here than the second in Rome.” Arrived at his journey’s end, he took the opportunity of a leisure hour to read the life of Alexander. He sat awhile lost in thought, then burst into tears. His friends inquired the cause. “The cause?” he replied. “Is it not cause enough that at my age Alexander had conquered half the world, while I have done nothing?” Something, however, he contrived to do in Spain. He extended the dominion of Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the affairs of the provincials to their satisfaction, and contrived at the same time to make money enough to pay his debts. Returning to Rome when his year of command was ended, he found himself in a difficulty. He wished to have the honor of a triumph (a triumph was a procession in which a victorious general rode in a chariot to the Capitol, preceded and followed by the spoils and prisoners taken in his campaigns), and he also wished to become a candidate for the consulship. But a general who desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates of the city till it was voted to him, while a candidate for the consulship must lose no time in beginning to canvass the people. Caesar, having to make his choice between the two,...