Читать книгу Men and Deeds - John Buchan - Страница 13

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There is no warrant for believing that Caesar, when in 59 he entered upon his first consulship, had in his mind any far-reaching policy for the remaking of Rome. Hitherto he had been exercising his talents in a squalid game, building up a half-ruined party, climbing step by step the political ladder, using without much scruple whatever methods seemed to him the speediest and the best. He had not stopped to think about an ultimate goal, believing, with Cromwell, that no man goes so far as he who does not know where he is going. Now that he had reached the battlements he was still without a distant prospect. He had the consulship before him, and after that a province, and he was content to wait upon what they might bring forth. But he was already conscious of his supreme talents, conscious that he was far abler not only than his old colleagues of the half-world but than the gilded Crassus and the resplendent Pompey. He had discovered in himself the power of the administrator for putting crooked things straight and making difficult adjustments, and he desired an ampler opportunity of exercising that power. He believed, too, that he had a gift for war and for the creation of armies, and, knowing the weight of the sword in the balance, he was determined upon the enlargement of that gift. He was dimly aware that a great crisis was imminent which would decide the destiny of Rome, and he braced himself to meet it, though he could not forecast its form. Pompey and Crassus desired to be great figures, Caesar to do great deeds. The difference lay in what St. Paul calls ‘the substance of things hoped for,’ the ultimate orientation of the spirit.

His first task was to strengthen his ties with Pompey and Crassus. To the former he gave in marriage his adored daughter Julia—a dynastic match, which seemed to Cicero to mean the end of the republic. He settled Pompey’s veterans on the land, and ratified Pompey’s eastern arrangements. Following the precedent of 71 and the Gabinio-Manilian laws, he was granted an extraordinary command for five years after the close of his consulship. The Senate would have given him as his proconsular province the management of the Italian roads and forests, but this farcical proposal was rejected, and by decrees of the Assembly he was given Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul and Illyria with four legions. In his absence Pompey would keep an eye on Italy and Rome, and for the year 58 two safe men were elected consuls, the Pompeian Gabinius and Lucius Piso, who was Caesar’s father-in-law. Crassus got nothing except a reduction in the contract for the Asian taxes, but he was encouraged to hope for a second consulship and a military command, and at the moment he was wholly under Caesar’s spell.

Caesar attempted at first to work with the Senate, and treated it with studied courtesy. What he asked was in the circumstances not unreasonable, and he began by introducing all his measures in the orthodox way. He made some small reforms. If the Senate was to be of any value it must be made to face its responsibilities and be open to intelligent criticism, so he arranged for an official Hansard, and the regular publication of its debates. He was a pioneer also in popular journalism, for he ordered the magistrates to have a summary of important news inscribed on white-washed walls in various parts of the city. Then he entered upon his main legislative programme. Apart from the bills necessary to ratify his bargain with Pompey and Crassus, his chief measures were his agrarian laws and his attempt to reform provincial administration. The first flung open the rich district of Campania to settlement and provided from the treasury, now swollen with the proceeds of Pompey’s conquests, money to buy further land. The second measure, the famous Lex Julia Repetundarum, stiffened the penalties for provincial extortion, and made every member of a governor’s staff equally liable with the governor himself. It provided for copies of the governor’s accounts being left for inspection in the province as well as forwarded to the Roman treasury, and it prohibited specifically what was already prohibited by the common law, the leading of an army beyond the province and the making war without the mandate of Senate and people—a provision doubtless inserted to comfort tender conservative consciences.

But the Senate would have none of these measures or accept anything from Caesar. Cato tried to talk them out and had to be placed under arrest. Bibulus, the other consul, endeavoured to block them by declaring the auspices unfavourable. Caesar had no other course before him except to appeal to the Assembly and carry them by plebiscite. This was easily arranged. A tribune who attempted to veto the proceedings was brushed aside, and Bibulus was left in solitary grandeur to watch the skies. If the Senate chose to make government impossible it would be side-tracked at the cost of any informality, since the business of the state must be carried on.

But the vital event of the year was the determination of Caesar’s proconsular province. Pompey had shown no jealousy of the five years’ extraordinary command, for he had no reason to believe in Caesar’s military gifts, and Gaul was not likely in his eyes to be the theatre of a great campaign. It was poor and barbarous and outside the ken of the civilised world. But Caesar was content. He had a liking for the people of Cisalpine Gaul, which he had already visited, and he had long been an earnest advocate of the claim of the district north of the Po to the Roman citizenship. As for Gaul beyond the mountains there seemed to be a flickering there which might soon be a flame. He was not thinking of conquests like Pompey’s, but of making for himself an army and of winning a name as a defender of Rome in the field, and it looked as if there might soon be an opportunity there. Diviciacus the Aeduan chief had been in Rome two years before, and the Aedui had been specially marked for Rome’s protection in their strife with the Burgundian Sequani. Now there seemed to be one of those strange stirrings, familiar in the Celtic world, among a Gallic tribe, the Helvetii, in the Swiss lowlands, who threatened to invade the Aeduan lands. Also the German Ariovistus, king of the Suebi, was a perpetual menace to Gaul. He had offered Rome his friendship, and, in order to gain time, the Senate had accepted him as an ally, but every one knew that the truce was hollow and that he was only waiting his chance to swoop westward on the Province of the Narbonne. North of the Alps there was no lack of tinder for the inevitable spark.

Caesar, sick of the wrangling in the Senate and Forum, full of the pioneer’s passion for new lands, and eager for a life of action, had one task to accomplish before he set his face to the wilds. He must make easy the work of Pompey and Crassus by getting rid of the chief mischief-makers. Cato, on account of his surpassing virtue, was solemnly entrusted by plebiscite with a special mission to arrange the affairs of Cyprus, and departed unwillingly, taking with him a bookish nephew, one Marcus Brutus. Cicero was a more difficult case. For him Caesar had a sincere affection; he had tried to induce him to join the triumvirate; and, when he failed, he had proposed to take him with him on his staff to Gaul, an offer which an ex-consul and the leader of the bar could scarcely accept. But he must at all costs be got out of Rome, and Caesar’s jackal, Clodius, was used for the purpose. Clodius, after getting himself adopted into a plebeian family, was elected tribune for the year 58, and his first act was to bring a bill before the Assembly punishing with exile any one who had condemned a Roman citizen to death without an appeal to the people—a measure directly aimed at Cicero. That honest man was filled with disquiet, for by means of his clubs and his gangsters Clodius was certain to carry his measure. From Crassus he could expect nothing, and his senatorian friends were apathetic or powerless. Pompey, when Cicero flung himself at his feet, referred him to Caesar. Caesar repeated his offer of a post on his staff, but did nothing more. He would not call off his hound if Cicero could not be induced to leave Rome by gentler means. So he kept his legions near the walls till the end of March, and not till he heard that the disconsolate philosopher had turned his melancholy steps towards Brundisium did he hurry north along the Flaminian Way.