Henry Stuart Jones and Margaret Bryant

“ Not only was this a contradiction in terms, since the dictatorship was by tradition a makeshift justified only when the state had to be carried through a serious crisis, but it involved military rule in Italy and the permanent suspension of the constitutional guarantees, such as intercessio and provocatio, by which the liberties of Romans were protected. That Caesar held the imperium which he enjoyed as dictator to be distinct in kind from that of the republican magistrates he indicated by placing the term imperator at the head of his titles. ”

“ As to his public character, however, no agreement is possible between those who regard Caesarism as a great political creation, and those who hold that Caesar by destroying liberty lost a great opportunity and crushed the sense of dignity in mankind. The latter view is unfortunately confirmed by the undoubted fact that Caesar treated with scant respect the historical institutions of Rome, which with their magnificent traditions might still have been the organs of true political life. ”

“ Caesar must have seen that the Germans were preparing to dispute with Rome the mastery of Gaul; but it was necessary to gain time, and in 59 B.C. Ariovistus was inscribed on the roll of the friends of the Roman people. In 58 B.C. the Helvetii, a Celtic people inhabiting Switzerland, determined to migrate for the shores of the Atlantic and demanded a passage through Roman territory. According to Caesar’s statement they numbered 368,000, and it was necessary at all hazards to save the Roman province from the invasion. Caesar had but one legion beyond the Alps. ”

“ He was not, however, destined to compass the downfall of the Sullan régime; the crisis of the Slave War placed the Senate at the mercy of Pompey and Crassus, who in 70 B.C. swept away the safeguards of senatorial ascendancy, restored the initiative in legislation to the tribunes, and replaced the Equestrian order, i.e. the capitalists, in partial possession of the jury-courts. This judicial reform (or rather compromise) was the work of Caesar’s uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta. Caesar himself, however, gained no accession of influence. ”

“ These successes roused natural alarm in the minds of the Belgae—a confederacy of tribes in the north-west of Gaul, whose civilization was less advanced than that of the Celtae of the centre—and in the spring of 57 B.C. Caesar determined to anticipate the offensive movement which they were understood to be preparing and marched northwards into the territory of the Remī (about Reims) , who alone amongst their neighbours were friendly to Rome. ”

“ In 69 B.C. he served as quaestor under Antistius Vetus, governor of Hither Spain, and on his way back to Rome (according to Suetonius) promoted a revolutionary agitation amongst the Transpadanes for the acquisition of full political rights, which had been denied them by Sulla’s settlement.
Caesar was now best known as a man of pleasure, celebrated for his debts and his intrigues; in politics he had no force behind him save that of the discredited party of the populares, reduced to lending a passive support to Pompey and Crassus. ”

“ After some delay, said to have been caused by the exigencies of his creditors, which were met by a loan of £200,000 from Crassus, Caesar left Rome for his province of Further Spain, where he was able to retrieve his financial position, and to lay the foundations of a military reputation. He returned to Rome in 60 B.C. to find that the senate had sacrificed the support of the capitalists (which Cicero had worked so hard to secure) , and had finally alienated Pompey by refusing to ratify his acts and grant lands to his soldiers. ”

“ It was now all-important for Caesar to secure practical irresponsibility by obtaining a military command. The senate, in virtue of its constitutional prerogative, had assigned as the provincia of the consuls of 59 B.C. the supervision of roads and forests in Italy. Caesar secured the Gallic wars.passing of a legislative enactment conferring upon himself the government of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria for five years, and exacted from the terrorized senate the addition of Transalpine Gaul, where, as he well knew, a storm was brewing which threatened to sweep away Roman civilization beyond the Alps. ”

“ Few men, indeed, have partaken as freely of the inspiration of genius as Julius Caesar; few have suffered more disastrously from its illusions. See further Rome: History, ii. “The Republic,” Period C ad fin.
Authorities.—The principal ancient authorities for the life of Caesar are his own Commentaries, the biographies of Plutarch and Suetonius, letters and speeches of Cicero, the Catiline of Sallust, the Pharsalia of Lucan, and the histories of Appian, Dio Cassius and Velleius Paterculus (that of Livy exists only in the Epitome) . ”

“ At the close of the campaign Caesar distributed his legions over a somewhat wide extent of territory. Two of their camps were treacherously attacked. At Aduatuca (near Aix-la-Chapelle) a newly-raised legion was cut to pieces by the Eburones under Ambiorix, while Quintus Cicero was besieged in the neighbourhood of Namur and only just relieved in time by Caesar, who was obliged to winter in Gaul in order to check the spread of the rebellion. ”

“ Returning to Italy, he quelled a mutiny of the legions (including the faithful Tenth) in Campania, and crossed to Africa, where a republican army of fourteen legions under Scipio was cut to pieces at Thapsus (6th of April 46 B.C.) . Here most of the republican leaders were killed and Cato committed suicide. On the 26th to 29th July Caesar celebrated a fourfold triumph and received the dictatorship for ten years. In November, however, he was obliged to sail for Spain, where the sons of Pompey still held out. ”

“ Caesar first besieged and took Avaricum, whose occupants were massacred, and then invested Gergovia (near the Puy-de-Dôme) , the capital of the Arverni, but suffered a severe repulse and was forced to raise the siege. Hearing that the Roman province was threatened, he marched westward, defeated Vercingetorix near Dijon and shut him up in Alesia (Mont-Auxois) , which he surrounded with lines of circumvallation. An attempt at relief by Vercassivellaunus was defeated after a desperate struggle and Vercingetorix surrendered. ”

“ As a punishment for their treachery, Caesar put to death the senate of the Veneti and sold their people into slavery. Meanwhile Sabinus was victorious on the northern coasts, and Crassus subdued the Aquitani. At the close of the season Caesar raided the territories of the Morini and Menapii in the extreme north-west.
In 55 B.C. certain German tribes, the Usipetes and Tencteri, crossed the lower Rhine, and invaded the modern Flanders. ”

“ But Caesar was not content with framing a uniform system of local government for Italy. He was the first to carry out on a large scale those plans of transmarine colonization whose inception was due to the Gracchi. As consul in 59 B.C. Caesar had established colonies of veterans in Campania under the Colonies.Lex Julia Agraria, and had even then laid down rules for the foundation of such communities. As dictator he planted numerous colonies both in the eastern and western provinces, notably at Corinth and Carthage. ”

“ Already in 68 B.C. he had paraded the bust of Marius at his aunt’s funeral; in 65 B.C., as curule aedile, he restored the trophies of Marius to their place on the Capitol; in 64 B.C., as president of the murder commission, he brought three of Sulla’s executioners to trial, and in 63 B.C. he caused the ancient procedure of trial by popular assembly to be revived against the murderer of Saturninus. ”

“ Mommsen in his History of Rome (Eng. trans., vol. iv., esp. p. 450 ff.) . J. A. Froude’s Caesar; a Sketch (2nd ed., 1896) is equally biased and much less critical. W. Warde Fowler’s Julius Caesar (1892) gives a favourable account (see also his Social Life at Rome, 1909) . On the other side see especially A. Holm, History of Greece (Eng. trans., vol. iv. p. 582 ff.) , J. L. Strachan Davidson, Cicero (1894) , p. 345 ff., and the introductory Lections in Prof. Tyrrell’s edition of the Correspondence of Cicero, particularly “Cicero’s case against Caesar,” vol. ”