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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER VIAntony's Military Service in Syria and Egypt,and his Appointment to the Staff of Caesar in Gaul.50 - 54 BC
History has little to say as to how Antony passed his time in Greece during
the remainder of the year 58 BC and
the early part of 57, while waiting for the coming of Gabinius; but Plutarch
tells us that he made some use of this opportunity to study the art of oratory
at one of the celebrated Greek schools. He had a natural talent in that
direction, inherited from his grandfather, the famous orator, which, no doubt,
he was anxious to develop; and, in fact, in later years, according to the same
author, he proved to be unequalled in the art of addressing a crowd and
carrying them with him by the power of his words. The style of speaking which
he cultivated was that known as the Asiatic, then very popular—a rather poetic,
careless, flowery style, full of heroics, but greatly differing from the
sonorous, pompous, carefully worded bombast of Cicero. Cicero always spoke from
the head, Antony from the heart. Cicero prepared what he called his “thunders”
and studied the form in which they were delivered, using pure and beautiful
Latin and giving close attention to “period” and “turn”, “antithesis and trope”;
but Antony, on the other hand, seems to have poured out his words with native
eloquence, relying upon that and the few tricks which he was now learning to
create the effects so diligently rehearsed by Cicero.
Plutarch says that he also occupied himself in Greece with military
exercises, that is to say swordcraft, horsemanship,
and so forth; but one may guess that the bulk of his time was spent in enjoying
himself as thoroughly as his small means would permit. He had grown into a
fine-looking, muscular, young man of strikingly noble carriage, moderately tall, exceptionally well developed,
and having the shoulders and arms of a pugilist. It was the Roman custom at
this time to allow the youthful hair upon the chin and jaws to grow untouched
by a razor until somewhere about the twenty-fifth year of a man's age; and
Antony, who had not yet decided upon his first shave, was now possessed of
quite a handsome beard, which, with the thick, curly hair of his head, his
powerful frame, and what Plutarch calls his bold, masculine look, made people
say that he reminded them of a young Hercules.
As has already been mentioned, the Antonii traced their genealogy back
to Hercules, Anton, the founder of the family, having been the reputed son of
that fabulous hero; and Antony, being ingenuously proud of the fact, and
glorying now as much in his brawn as once he had gloried in his lack of it,
began to dress for the part, often wearing his tunic girt low about his hips, a
heavy sword hanging at his side, and a cloak of coarse material tossed magnificently
over his great shoulders. His expression, however, was boyish, kindly and
slightly humorous, his eyes were thoughtful and frank, his forehead was broad
and intelligent, and his mouth a good deal more sensitive than his rather heavy
chin would have led one to expect. His nose was somewhat hooked, and his upper
lip short; and these features, considered together with his thick eyebrows,
added a certain aquiline strength to his otherwise jovial and good-natured
face.
His nature was very loveable. His generous ways, writes Plutarch, “his
open and lavish hand in gifts and kindnesses to his friends, did a great deal
for him in his first advance to power, and, after he had become great, long
maintained his fortunes when a thousand follies were hastening their overthrow.
In love affairs, also, he was very agreeable, gaining many friends by the
assistance he gave them in theirs, and taking other people's jokes about his
own with good-humor. What might seem to some very insupportable, his showing
on, his fun, his drinking in public, his sitting down with common soldiers
while they were having their meals, or eating, as he stood, off their tables
made him, later, the delight and pleasure of the army”. There was no
snobbishness about him, and he was as much at his ease with people of no social
standing as with the high and mighty. He enjoyed the luxuries and refinements
of life, but, like Catiline and Caesar, could endure hardships and privations
without complaint; and, as Plutarch says, “in necessity and adversity he came
nearest to perfection”. He was a tender-hearted, sentimental, and sometimes
chivalrous young man; and, as the following pages will reveal, he stands out as
one of the few notable vehicles of occasional humane dealing in a savage and
intensely cruel age.
His simplicity, however, is the feature of his character which most
fully wins him our sympathy; for, from this time onwards, he is never
unintelligible, nor ever functions in a mental atmosphere which is not
transparent to the critical eye. To his biographer, indeed, the only phase of
his life difficult to understand is that which links his effeminate adolescence
to his masculine maturity; and, for my own part, I find it hard to visualize the
transformation of the beautiful youth whom Curio loved into the giant who was
adored by women. But perhaps the explanation is to be found in a certain
aptitude for play-acting which was undoubtedly a marked feature of his
character. As a boy, he played at being an elegant young fop because it was the
fashion to do so; and as an adult he played at being a caveman because it was a
part for which nature had outwardly built him. Actually, however, he was at
heart unsuited to either role; for he was too rough for the one and too gentle
for the other. In after years he became famous for his hard-living and his
clumsy disregard of other people’s feelings; yet apart from one or two notable
falls from grace, he was the type of burly ruffian of whom one says that he
would not hurt a fly.
Sometime in 57 BC he took up
his commission as the commanding officer of a troop of rough Gallic cavalry,
and went with Gabinius to Judea, where affairs were in an uproar. On the death
of Alexander Jannaeus in 78 BC, the
Jewish royal authority had passed to his widow, Alexandra, who gave the office
of High-Priest of Jehovah to their son, Hyrcanus; and this personage received
also the Jewish sovereignty at his mother’s death in 70 or 69 BC. But in 68 BC his younger brother, Aristobulus, drove him from the throne, and
forced him into exile. In 63 BC,
however, Pompey captured Jerusalem, as has already been mentioned, reinstated Hyrcanus,
and carried Aristobulus and his son to Rome as his captives. But shortly before
Gabinius entered upon his governorship of Syria, the two prisoners escaped,
and, returning to Judea, headed a revolt against Hyrcanus, this civil war being
at its height when the new governor arrived.
Gabinius sent Antony ahead with his picturesque Gallic cavalry to attack
Aristobulus, who shut himself up in the fortress of Alexandrium in Samaria, not far from the north end of the Dead Sea. The Romans assaulted
this place, and Antony covered himself with glory by being the first man to
scale the walls. The Jewish leaders, however, escaped, and made for Machaerus, a day’s march to the south; but Antony followed
them, fought a pitched battle with the reserves they had there mustered, annihilated them, and captured Aristobulus and his son, who, at the
beginning of 56 BC found themselves
back in their prison in Rome, while Hyrcanus ruled once more in Judaea.
Antony’s dashing leadership and reckless bravery in this his first
campaign won him the devotion of his men and the warm regard of his commanding
officer, Gabinius, who in future thought that whatever the young man did was
right. The army, too—Romans as well as Gauls—made a hero of him, and were ready
to follow him upon whatever adventure he should wish to take them. Nor was such
an adventure long in presenting itself.
South of Judea lay the Idumean desert, the
Biblical land of Edom, which separated Palestine from the wealthy and powerful
kingdom of Egypt, which was one of the few remaining countries of the civilized
world still independent of Rome. A dynasty of Greek sovereigns, or Pharaohs as
they were called by their native Egyptian subjects, had now ruled the land of
the Nile for nearly three centuries, each being named Ptolemy after the founder
of the line, who had been one of the generals of Alexander the Great; but upon the
death of King Ptolemy Alexander in 80 BC,
it was found in his will that he had bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman Republic,
just as King Attalus of Pergamus had done in the time of the Gracchi. His
nephew, Polemy Neos Dionysus,
nicknamed Auletes, “the Flute-player”, seized the throne notwithstanding, and
very soon began to negotiate with Rome for his recognition by that paramount Power,
having heard that the Senate was not at all inclined to accept the inheritance
owing to the disturbances which were certain to ensue if they did. For twenty
years and more Auletes reigned on sufferance in Alexandria, the Egyptian
capital, always expecting to be deposed by Rome; but in 59 BC, during the Consulship of Caesar, who was ever in need of money,
he managed at last to buy at enormous cost his right to the throne, the will of
his uncle being declared invalid.
In the following year, 58 BC,
however, his own subjects deposed him, mainly because he was so seldom sober;
whereupon he went to Rome to attempt to effect his restoration, while his
daughter, Berenice, his deadly enemy, reigned in his stead. The negotiations
were protracted throughout 57 and part of 56 BC; but at last, having uselessly spent a vast fortune on bribes to
the senators, Auletes left Rome in disgust, and retired to Ephesus, in Asia Minor,
while, at just about the same time, Queen Berenice married Archelaus, the High
Priest of Komana in Cappadocia, who thus became King
of Egypt.
Auletes then decided to make a last, desperate bid for his crown. Having
obtained letters of recommendation from Pompey, he approached Gabinius, and
offered to pay him ten thousand talents if he would lead his Roman legions and
Gallic cavalry across the Idumean desert to Egypt and replace him upon the
throne, the suggested, pretext for the campaign being that Archelaus and
Berenice were encouraging piracy along the North African coast, and, moreover,
were building a fleet which was likely to be a menace to Rome. Gabinius, deeply
in debt like so many others, was greatly tempted by the money, but was afraid
of the dangers of the desert march, and, in spite of the support which Pompey
had given to the undertaking, was pretty sure that it would not have the full
approval of the Roman public owing to the curious fact that any meddling with
Egyptian affairs was regarded as ill-omened. While Auletes was in Rome trying
to obtain military aid, the statue of Jupiter on the Alban Hill had been struck
by lightning, and when the Sibylline Books were consulted as to the meaning of
this sign from heaven, attention was called by the meddlesome Cato to a passage
which read thus: “If the King of Egypt come requesting aid, neither deny him
friendship nor assist him with any great force”. Gabinius did not regard the
small army at his disposal as constituting a great force; but, at the same
time, he was not easy in his mind as to the project.
Antony, however, was all for the campaign; and the exceptional trust
imposed in his judgment at headquarters enabled him to carry the day. Perhaps
he had met Auletes in Rome and had taken a fancy to the drunken little man, for
Plutarch says that he was anxious to do him a service; and, at any rate, Caesar
had once befriended him, which was enough for Antony, who was prepared to
follow wherever Caesar led. Moreover, there was his share of the ten thousand
talents to be considered; and, above all, there was the excitement of the
adventure, and, when the job was done, the possibility of some pleasant weeks
or months in Alexandria, a purely Greek city, reputed to be the gayest and most
luxurious in the world.
Thus, to the unbounded delight of Auletes, Gabinius agreed to help him;
and in the autumn of 56 BC, when the
heat of summer was over, the legions were concentrated at Gaza or some such
point in the south of Judea, while Antony was sent ahead with his cavalry to
cross the desert and to capture the fortress of Pelusium (the Sin of the Bible) at the Egyptian end of
the caravan-road, so as to make safe the route which the legions would have to
traverse. Antony performed this task with great credit. Passing through Rhaphia on the sea-coast, the last outpost of Palestine, he
probably accomplished in one day the ride to Rhinokolura,
the modern El Arish, where water was to be obtained from a well which is still
in use. Thence, two days hard riding across the most dangerous and waterless
part of the route brought him, probably at nightfall, to Pelusium. Fortunately
for him this fortress surrendered after a brief resistance—fortunately,
because, had it held out for long, his men would have soon become the prey of
thirst. By his orders the garrison was treated honorably as prisoners-of-war;
and here he settled down to await the coming of the main army.
But when Gabinius, accompanied by Auletes, had arrived with the legions,
Antony was hard put to it to prevent the dethroned monarch from regarding the
Egyptian prisoners as traitors for not having opened their gates at once.
Auletes wanted Gabinius to put them all to death; but Antony, with
great kindness of heart, pleaded for their pardon and finally obtained it. The whole army
then advanced into Egypt, Antony’s cavalry leading the way; and in various
skirmishes he revealed his personal contempt for danger. In the first pitched battle
with the Egyptians the Romans could make no headway until Antony outflanked the
enemy with his cavalry, attacked them in the rear, and thus brought about their
complete defeat. The advance was then continued towards Alexandria; and on the
banks of one of the branches of the Nile, not far from the sea, the main
Egyptian army was encountered and routed, Archelaus himself being killed. Here
again Antony displayed his humanity; for, after the fight, he sought out the
body of Archelaus, and, in spite of the protests of the revengeful Auletes,
gave it a funeral with royal honors.
Having entered Alexandria in triumph, Gabinius replaced Auletes upon the
throne, whereupon the Egyptian monarch at once put his daughter, Queen
Berenice, and her chief supporters to death. By a second marriage, however,
Auletes had four other children, two sons and two daughters, of whom the eldest
was the famous Cleopatra, at this time a girl of some fourteen years of age;
and, according to the matriarchal system of the Egyptians, this young lady now
became the all-important heiress of the kingdom. As such, there can be little
doubt that Antony made her acquaintance during his stay in Alexandria; but no
importance is to be attached to the meeting. It is probable that she was then
quite a plain little girl with rather a large nose; and her celebrated
charms—of which her actual beauty was never a conspicuous feature—had probably
not yet begun to reveal themselves in any very noticeable degree. Antony,
however, was such an exceptionally fine-looking young man, and, though only
twenty-seven years of age, held such an important position in the estimation of
Gabinius and the army, that one may imagine him coming, at any rate, under the
interested scrutiny of this child of destiny. Girls in her family, after all,
were often married at fourteen, with children of their own to remind them of
their already fading romances.
The outbreak of another revolt in Palestine early in 55 BC called Gabinius back to his Syrian
province, and with him Antony, who is said by Plutarch to have left behind him
a very great name amongst the Alexandrians. In Rome, however, both he and his
chief came in for considerable adverse comment on the part of the
conservatives, who regarded the Egyptian adventure almost as a sacrilege in
view of the Sibylline oracle, and who were egged on by Cato to record their at
present impotent protest against it. But Pompey was still powerful, and for the
moment Gabinius escaped official censure for his hardihood in accepting Auletes
money and risking a Roman army in the perilous march to and from Egypt across
the desert.
The situation in Rome had undergone considerable change since Antony
left the capital in 58 BC; and it is
necessary now to go back a while to see what had happened. In the spring of
that year Cicero, it will be recalled, had gone into a voluntary exile which, so soon as he had departed, was extended into an official
banishment. It was his wish to retire to Athens, and, in his great despair, he
tried to console himself with the baseless thought that his wide reading in
philosophy had made a philosopher of him, and that in Athens he would find his
heart’s comfort in the society of the famous Greek thinkers. But, as Plutarch
remarks, the love of glory has great power in washing the tinctures of philosophy
out of the souls of men; and the memory of all he had lost rendered him
incapable of deriving consolation from this source. He had sunned himself too
long in the warmth of Rom's flattery to be able to endure the coldness of
exile: he could not forget the days of his glory.
His vanity, “always clinging to him like a disease”, caused him to think
of his case as history's prime example of man’s ingratitude. Never since the
world began had there been such a fall as his, he declared; and the tears ran
down his cheeks as he pictured to himself the sorrow of his family and his
friends at the misfortunes of so great, so good a man as himself. Even so, however,
his letters to his wife, Terentia, at this time cannot fail to arouse our pity
for the exile, whose collapse into the Slough of Despond was as astonishing as
had been his flights into the clouds of self-glorification. “Night and day you
are always before my eyes”, he wrote to her; “but, as you love me, do not let
your anxiety injure your health, which is so delicate”. As a matter of fact,
Terentia was as strong as a horse, and lived to be a centenarian; but Cicero
could hardly have been speaking in sarcasm. “I cannot write to you without
shedding many tears”, he told her, “when I picture you
to myself as plunged in me deepest affliction you whom my dearest wish has been
to see perfectly happy. Alas, my light, my love!—that you
should be in such misery, and all through my fault!”
He abandoned the thought of going to Athens, at length, because he had
heard that some of the men whose banishment he had caused on account of their
sympathy with Catiline and Antony’s stepfather, were living there, and he did
not dare to face them; and in the end he took up his residence at Thessalonica (Salonika)
in Macedonia, where the chief Roman official was a conservative and was likely
to treat him with respect. For the best part of a year he lived there, pouring
out his lamentations in letters to his friends; but in the spring of 57 BC hope dawned again in his heart as the
answering letters from Rome began to tell him of the development of the
political situation at home.
It will be remembered that Antony’s friend Clodius, who was Cicero’s
bitterest enemy, was the protégé of Caesar, the little affair with Caesar’s
wife having been forgiven and forgotten; but now that his patron was away in
Gaul, Clodius had come to blows with Pompey, who, as a very gentlemanly and
moderate democrat, had aroused his impatience, and matters reached such a pass
that Pompey believed himself to be in danger of his life, and even went so far
as to shut himself up in his house for some time, while gangs of men in the
employ of Clodius paraded the streets. As a result of this split in the
democratic ranks, which left Clodius with no more than the rabble behind him,
Pompey was not unwilling to consider the recall of Cicero, whose exile had been
brought about by this reckless mob-leader.
One of the Consuls for the year 57 BC was that same Metellus Nepos, Pompey’s former agent, who had led the first attack
on Cicero five years previously; and this man, at his patron’s instigation, now
declared that he was ready to forget his feud with the fallen orator and to allow
him to come back. The Tribunes of the People for this year, and in particular,
one named Titus Annius Milo, also signalized their
disapproval of Clodius by stating that they would not stand in the way of
Cicero’s recall; and at last Caesar himself was induced to turn upon his former
agent and to send from Gaul his written approval of the exile’s pardon. All the
more sober leaders of the democracy, in fact, were dissociating themselves from
Clodius, and could think of no better way of demonstrating their attitude than
by allowing the decree of banishment to be rescinded, even though to do so were
to play into the hands of the conservatives.
The news of these events, it may be mentioned in passing, must have been
received at the time by Antony in Syria with very mixed feelings. Clodius had
been his friend: Cicero was his enemy. But when Caesar, his hero, also broke
with Clodius, he, too, repudiated him, and swallowed the bitter pill of Cicero’s
coming pardon with as good a grace as possible.
When the bill for the exile’s recall was at last brought forward,
Clodius filled the streets with his roughs, and so fierce a battle was fought
in the Forum that the ground was soaked with blood and many lives were lost,
Cicero’s own brother, Quintus, being amongst the wounded. The Tribune Milo,
whose sympathies were with the conservatives, then organized a private fighting-force
of his own to counter that of Clodius, and soon the whole city was in a state
of daily uproar, the question of Cicero's recall thus receiving a prominence
which it would not otherwise have obtained. Cicero, of course, attributed the
intensity of the struggle to his own importance; but this was by no means the
case. Like his colleague in the Consulship, Antony’s uncle, he might have
remained for many a year a more or less forgotten exile, had not the resentment
against Clodius raised him, as that man’s victim, to the status of a martyr.
At length, in August, 57 BC after somewhat less than seventeen months of exile, Cicero was recalled; and
when he set foot once more on his native shores he declared, with tears of
pride in his eyes, that Italy herself had brought him on her shoulders home. On
all sides he was warmly congratulated, and Pompey made a nice little speech in
his praise, while even Crassus, the financier, who used to quarrel with him
continuously, patted him on the back. Crassus had once made the remark that no
member of his family lived beyond sixty, and to this Cicero had replied that in
saying so Crassus was evidently trying to gain popularity, knowing how pleased
people would be to hear it—a jest which, with other rude remarks, had led to
the complete estrangement now happily ended.
One of the returned exile’s first acts was that of inducing the Tribunes
to expunge the records of the tribunate of Clodius in the previous year, on the
grounds that his adoption into a plebeian family, by which stratagem he had
satisfied the public that he was eligible for the office, had not legally
qualified him for the post; but here that Jack-in-the-box, Cato, jumped, up to
protest that this deletion of a whole year’s doings in the Comitia was much too
high-handed. Cicero next attempted to revenge himself upon Clodius in another
way: he pleaded that his beautiful house on the Palatine, which Clodius, with
Antony's aid, had razed to the ground, should be rebuilt at public expense; and
so bitter was the feeling against Clodius that this measure was agreed to. The
temple of Liberty, which had been erected on the site, was pulled down; and the
figure of the presiding goddess, which, as a matter of fact, was a Tanagran sculptor’s portrait of a certain well-known
prostitute, was removed elsewhere, the wrath of Clodius notwithstanding. But
the re-erection of the former mansion was not carried out without interruption,
for Clodius and his mob attacked the workers on one occasion, and destroyed the
walls they were building. They also pelted Cicero himself more than once with
brick bats, but, as luck would have it, without hurting him; and they set fire
to the house of his unfortunate brother, Quintus, who but lately had been
knocked senseless in the Forum.
After the first excitement of the return of Cicero had died down, public
opinion began to be more divided about him. He was so ludicrously pompous and
vain. “He offended so many people”, writes Plutarch, “by continually praising
and magnifying himself; for neither Senate, nor Comitia, nor court of law could
meet without him being heard to boast of his action against Catiline and Lentulus;
and he filled his speeches and writings with his own praise to such an extent
as to render a style, in itself most pleasant and delightful, tiresome and
sickening”. Many of the democrats who had been sorry for him now found him
rather impossible; and, as a consequence, Clodius began to receive more
sympathy, even Crassus giving him some support. The relationship between Cicero
and Pompey at this time was very friendly, and it looked as though Pompey were
inclining towards the aristocratic party, particularly since he was known to be
on rather bad terms just now both with Crassus and the absent Caesar.
Caesar’s position had undergone a complete change since he had been
away. He had left Rome for Cisalpine Gaul, after his Consulship, with no very
nice reputation: his effeminate youth, his later affairs with other men’s
wives, his immense debts, his implication in various plots and intrigues, his
patronage of the fire-eating Clodius, his fights with his consular colleague, Bibulus,
and so forth, had caused a good deal of adverse comment. He had set out under a
decided cloud; and people had smiled, too, to think of him as the commander of
the Roman armies in Gaul—this elegant, unscrupulous spendthrift, who knew nothing
about Gaul and hardly anything about military tactics except what he had learnt
in Spain, and was, moreover, a man of delicate health, subject to occasional
fits of some sort. Within a few months news had come that he had recklessly
attacked a huge horde of Swiss barbarians, the Helvetii—who
were peacefully migrating towards the Rhine, and, after being very nearly
defeated by them, had concluded a by no means triumphant peace with them.
People shook their heads, and wondered what disasters were in store for him.
Then came the change. The German King,
Ariovistus, who had crossed the Rhine and was moving into Gaul, was attacked and
completely defeated by Caesar, who killed eighty thousand of his men and drove
him back into his own country from which he never dared again to venture. Next
he dispersed a general gathering of the Belge, and
then the Nervii were routed, with a loss of fifty
thousand men and nearly four hundred chieftains. For centuries the so-called barbarians
who lived in the almost unknown lands north and northwest of Italy had been a
menace to the safety of the Republic; and stones of their gigantic stature and
their appalling bravery were still told in Rome by old soldiers who had fought
against them under Caesar’s uncle, the great Marius, forty-five years ago. But
now the exploits of Marius were being excelled by those of his nephew; and Rome
was amazed to hear that he was showing not only entirely unexpected skill as a
military commander but also the most wonderful energy and endurance. “There was
no peril”, says Plutarch, “to which he did not willingly expose himself, no
labor from which he pleaded exemption. His contempt of danger was not so much
wondered at, but his enduring so much hardship very much surprised his
soldiers, for he was a slightly-built man, with a skin which was soft and white”.
Stories about him and his adventures began to circulate in Rome. It was
said that he made incredibly long and rapid journeys on horseback or in his
four-wheeled carriage, slept in the open, and ate the roughest food. One story
related how, during a storm, he had given the only available shelter to an
officer of his who was in bad health, and had himself spent the night outside
in the rain; another anecdote told how, from motives of politeness, he had
eaten without complaint some asparagus which the man on whom he had billeted
himself had, in his excitement, dipped in scented ointment instead of
olive-oil; and yet another tale affirmed that he had covered a distance of some
seven hundred miles in eight days, sleeping by night in his carriage, and
spending part of the day in dictating correspondence, as they trundled along,
to two secretaries at once. It was said that he went bare-headed in sunshine or
storm; galloped his horse along the roads, sometimes, with his hands clasped
behind his back; dived into the rivers which impeded his progress and swam
across them; had arrested with his own hands the flight of some of his men in
battle, taking them by the scruff of the neck and turning them round; and had
again and again performed prodigies of valor.
These tales aroused a variety of emotions in the leading men of the
time. Pompey was too much of a gentleman to reveal the professional jealousy
which he undoubtedly felt; but it was mortifying to him to find his own famous
victories eclipsed by these exploits of a younger man, and to feel that, at the
age of fifty, he was not able to free himself from the ties of home to seek adventure
abroad. He knew in his heart that his former daredevilry, his initiative, his
self-assurance, had left him; he could not even be sure of his own political
views; and the only certainty in his life was his inability to tear himself
away from his adored young wife, Julia, the daughter of this new idol of the
people whose stature was daily increasing as his own diminished.
Crassus was chiefly stirred by the reports of the enormous wealth which
Caesar was collecting from the conquered nations of the north: he had looted
the temples and treasuries of the barbarians, and had stripped the living and
dead of their jewelry and ornaments, until his coffers were full of gold, and
he was selling it in Italy by the pound at a price far below its value. The
financier’s mouth watered to hear of it; and he told himself that if the
delicate Caesar could accomplish these lucrative victories, so could he. His
commercial interests had brought him frequently into contact with the merchants
from Asia, and having thus heard tales of the fabulous wealth of Parthia, Persia,
and India, he began to dream of leading a Roman army into those far-off lands
and of plundering the east as Caesar was plundering the north. After all, in
his youth he had won a splendid victory at the Colline Gate, and had only been
turned from a brilliant military career by the obstruction of the late Sulla:
perhaps it was not too late to become the Caesar of the Orient.
By Cicero the news of Caesar’s victories was received with a surprise
which soon gave place to a determination to make a friend of him as already he
had done in the case of Pompey; and presently he wrote a letter to him asking
him to find an appointment on his staff for his brother, Quintus, his pleasure
being extreme when Caesar replied that he would be delighted to do so. Cato,
too, was stirred by the tidings, and, in his own begrudging way, gave the new
conqueror some meed of praise by saying that Caesar,
at any rate, was the only man amongst all those who were engaged in ruining the
State who was not addicted to drink, Caesar always being notorious for his
abstemiousness.
Antony’s enthusiasm over the victories seems to have been intense; and
now that he had made a name for himself as a cavalry leader in the war in Palestine
and Egypt his dearest wish was to serve under Caesar in Gaul. It would appear
that he wrote to him to this effect, but for the time being he was obliged to
remain with Gabinius, who was by no means a brilliant general and was much more
interested in making a fortune for himself than in fighting
or governing.
The news of Caesar’s successes was followed by the breathtaking
announcement that he had formally annexed the whole of Gaul to the Roman Empire.
It is true that this step was ridiculously premature, for there were several
small nations in that vast country which were unconquered, and others which had
made peace with him on terms not affecting their independence. But Caesar was
now confident that he could make the so-called annexation practical without
much more fighting, and, even if further campaigns were called for, he could
always describe them as being necessitated by subsequent revolts. He did not
hesitate, therefore, to proclaim that Gaul was henceforth a Roman province; and
the consequent rejoicings and celebrations in Rome included a Thanksgiving-festival
of fifteen days duration—the longest ever decreed. The whole city went mad with
excitement; and in that storm of popular enthusiasm the new Caesar was born—the
national leader, the master-statesman, the unwearying autocrat, in whom the dandified and rather disreputable politician was lost to
sight. When he had left Italy in the spring of 58 BC he had declared that he would rather be the leading man anywhere
in Gaul than the second man in Rome; but now, suddenly, he had forged ahead of
Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, and everybody else, and was unquestionably the first
citizen of the Republic.
As such, in the spring of 56 BC,
he summoned a meeting at Luca (Lucca), the southernmost city of Cisalpine Gaul,
to which not only Pompey and Crassus came, but also some two-hundred senators,
these latter tumbling over one another to be the first to congratulate him,
democrat though he was. In the secret talks between the three Triumvirs it was
agreed that Pompey and Crassus should compose their private differences and
should get themselves elected as the two Consuls for the coming year, 55 BC, and that at the end of their term of
office, Crassus should succeed Gabinius as governor of Syria, and should have
his heart's desire, namely, to lead an army against Parthia and on into India
if the fates were willing, while Pompey should be assigned the governorship of
Spam for five years, with the right to reside in Rome and to administer his
province through the agency of his lieutenants. Caesar, meanwhile, was to
retain his Gallic command also for five years, so as to consolidate his labors
in the new province, this being really the piece of work which most interested
him at the moment—he was enthusiastic about it and had no fears that either
Pompey or Crassus would ever be able to supplant him now as the hero of Rome.
In due course these proposals were put into execution, though not
without opposition from what remained of the Republican Party. When the
consular elections were due to take place in the summer of this year 56 BC, Cato persuaded his little party of irreconcilable
conservatives to put forward his aristocratic brother-in-law, Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus, as a candidate in opposition to one or other of the Triumvirs; but
the only result was that riots broke out in which this personage was nearly
killed, and Cato, with a broken arm, was thrown bodily out of the
election-meeting—a contretemps to
which he was by now quite accustomed. Pompey and Crassus were then duly
elected, but when they entered office at the beginning of 55 BC there could have been little hope
that their Consulship would be fruitful in reforms or in any sort of
administrative work, for Crassus was now obsessed with his Parthian schemes,
and Pompey could think of nothing else but his wife, Julia, and her happiness.
He was violently in love with her and she with, him; and as her health was
delicate at this time, owing to the fact that she was going to have a baby, he was devoting himself to her more entirely than ever
before. In one of these riots, however, he was splashed with the blood of a man
whose head was broken close to him, and having sent his stained clothes back to
his house, he was horrified to hear shortly afterwards that Julia had seen
them, and, thinking he was murdered, had fainted dead away. As a result of the
accident she had a miscarriage and nearly died.
In the spring of 55 BC Caesar
went north across the Alps again, to fight out this matter of the annexation of
Gaul with those tribes which declined to be annexed; and having been thoroughly
scared by the invasion of two German tribes—the Usipetes and the Tencteri—he attacked them when they were off
their guard and believed themselves to be under the protection of an armistice.
It was afterwards reported in Rome that he had slaughtered no less than four
hundred thousand of their men, women, and children; and at this news Cato,
believing that the law of nations had been broken, proposed in the Senate that
Caesar should be arrested and handed over in chains to the Germans—a not
altogether improper suggestion which, however, was laughed out of court. Caesar,
indifferent to criticism, followed up this massacre by making a raid across the
Rhine into the territory of other Germans, whom he thoroughly defeated once
more near Bonn on the Rhine—that is to say, in their own country. In the summer
of 55 BC he made a raid on the coast
of Britain to find out what chance there was of conquering the island; and
though the expedition was something of a fiasco he was able to report it to
Rome as a triumph. These new successes made Crassus so impatient to be off on
his own plundering adventure that he could not be prevailed upon to wait even
until the end of his term of office as Consul, but set out in November 55 BC, at the head of the army which he had
collected, in spite of the desperate opposition of the conservatives, who
declared that Rome had no quarrel with Parthia. This opposition was chiefly
voiced by a certain Tribune of aristocratic sympathies, named Ateius Capito, who, when he could
do no more, followed Crassus out of Rome, solemnly cursing him and the
expedition in general, and, at the gate of the city, “took a chafing-dish with
red-hot charcoal in it”, as Plutarch relates, and, burning incense and pouring
libations upon it, cursed him with dreadful imprecations, calling upon several
strange and horrible deities. It was a shocking send-off for the great
financier, and the subsequent disaster to the expedition was by many blamed
upon the hysterical Tribune.
In the meantime Cicero was engaging himself in courting the friendship
of Caesar, who, on his part, responded with warmth to these overtures, realizing
that the great orator might become the link between the party of the People and
the aristocracy in that coalition which was already his dream. It must be
admitted that Caesar was rather wicked in the brazen way in which he played
upon Cicero’s vanity, flattering him in the most audacious manner, and
evidently smiling sardonically as he heard how the orator was now wont to speak
of “my dear old friend Caesar”. “I have taken Caesar to my bosom and will never
let him slip”, wrote Cicero to his brother, Quintus, in a letter which he
expected Caesar to see. “He comes next to you and my children in my affection,
and not far behind”. To his friend Atticus he said: “I have full evidence of Caesar's
love for me”; and to another he boastfully wrote: “I have the benefit of Caesar’s
influence, overwhelming as it is, and the enormous wealth he now possesses, as
though they were my own”.
When Cicero recommended any friend to Caesar’s notice the latter would
take pains to do him honor. “As for Mescinius Rufus,
about whom you have written to me”, said Caesar in a letter which Cicero
proudly quotes, “I will make him king of Gaul, if you like”. And when the
orator found himself deep in debt owing to the money he was spending like water
upon the beautifying of his rebuilt mansion on the Palatine, and the erection
of grand houses for himself at Pompeii and elsewhere, Caesar at once lent him a
large sum.
The result of all this was that Cicero began to show less anxiety to
maintain his friendship with Pompey—a breach which was just what Caesar was
aiming at, for he wished all eyes to be turned upon himself, and did not want
any sort of rapprochement between Pompey and the aristocratic party: if ever
the democrats and conservatives were to come together it must be under his
leadership, not Pompey’s. But though Caesar was thus scheming to keep Pompey's
position subordinate to his own, Pompey was never inclined to assert himself at
the expense of Caesar, for he could not for one moment forget that his adored
Julia was Caesar's daughter, and her delight in her father’s pre-eminence was
something which the fond lover was not willing to jeopardize. He was not as
great a man as his father-in-law, and he knew it, but he was very much more
honorable.
In August, 54 BC, Caesar made
a second invasion of Britain, and penetrated as far inland as Verulam (St. Albans), north of London; but on his return to
Gaul in the middle of September, he received letters from Rome which struck him
a double blow. In the first place he heard that his mother, Aurelia, had died;
and hard on the heels of these sad tidings came the terrible news of the death
of his daughter Julia, who had presented Pompey with a baby girl and had died
as a consequence, the child following her to the grave shortly afterwards.
Caesar’s grief was only exceeded by that of Pompey, who, of course was
distracted; but to the Romans in general the disaster was tragic chiefly
because it severed a family tie between Pompey and Caesar, and seemed to
presage a mutual movement away from one another which might have the most
perilous consequences for the State. Caesar, himself, however, had little time
for tears. Revolts broke out in Gaul which required his full attention, and
soon he was once more in the thick of battle.
Crassus, meanwhile, had replaced Gabinius in Syria, and was making his
preparations for the invasion of Parthia from that base early in the new year. Gabinius himself was making a leisurely progress
towards Rome, being unwilling to hurry himself since he had heard that the
conservatives, headed by Cato, were likely to give him a warm reception and to
try to bring him to trial for his Egyptian adventure. It was reported to him,
moreover, that in consequence of a serious flood in Rome, and the vulgar belief
that it was heaven's punishment for the disregarding of the sibylline oracle,
the mob was liable to demand his death or to lynch him itself. He was a
brave man, however, and he duly
presented himself in the capital in September, though, it is true, he
entered it by night, and shut himself up in his house thereafter for some days.
Caesar, meanwhile, had sent an urgent request to his friends in Rome to defend
the unfortunate man, and to this end Pompey also lent his aid; and when the
trial took place he was acquitted, in spite of the fact that the speech for the
prosecution was delivered by Cicero, who had not then realized that Caesar was
on the other side, and who was urged to heights of oratory by a yelling rabble
outside the courthouse, eager for the sacrifice of Gabinius to the wrath of the
gods.
Having failed to convict him on this charge the conservatives, aided for
once by the superstitious mob, pressed another charge—that of bribery,
corruption, and extortion against him; but on hearing of this, Caesar seems to
have written to Cicero asking him to use his wonderful eloquence this time in
the defence of Gabinius, and Pompey at the same time urged him to do so. Cicero
was not the man to resist such pressure. True, Gabinius was an old political
and personal enemy whose defence would be all the more difficult because Cicero
had just been denouncing him on the other count; but he had no wish to offend
Pompey and he was eager to do Caesar this favor. He therefore undertook the
defence; but his heart was not in his work, and Gabinius was found guilty and
sentenced to exile—a not altogether unpleasant rustication from which he was
recalled after a while by Caesar.
In regard to Antony, the only fact which is known as to his movements at this time is that, having been summoned by Caesar, he made the journey from Syria to Gaul without passing through Rome. Gabinius had made a slow business of handing over his province to Crassus, and it is known that he left some of his officers there to clear up the affairs of the country before resigning their posts to the newcomers. It is to be supposed, therefore, that Antony did not leave for home until the late summer of 54 BC, and that a timely letter from Caesar, permitting him to join his staff, diverted his journey towards Rome and sent him northwards to the Alps with light heart and high hopes to serve under his hero.
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