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From that time on Caesar managed all the affairs of state alone and after his own
pleasure; so that sundry witty fellows, pretending by way of jest to sign and seal
testamentary documents, wrote "Done in the consulship of Julius and Caesar,"
instead of 'Bibulus and Caesar," writing down the same man twice, by name and by
surname. Presently too the following verses were on everyone's lips:
"In Caesar's year, not Bibulus', an act took place of late;
For naught do I remember done in Bibulus' consulate."
The plain called Stellas, which had been devoted to public uses by the men of
by-gone days, and the Campanian territory, which had been reserved to pay revenues for the
aid of the government, he divided without casting lots [through a special commission of
twenty men] among twenty thousand citizens who had three or more children each. When the
publicans asked for relief, he freed them from a third part of their obligation, and
openly warned them in contracting for taxes in the future not to bid too recklessly. He
freely granted everything else that anyone took it into his head to ask, either without
opposition or by intimidating anyone who tried to object. Marcus Cato, who tried to delay
proceedings [by making a speech of several hours' duration; Gell. 4.10.8. The senate arose
in a body and escorted Cato to prison, and Caesar was forced to release him], was dragged
from the House by a lictor at Caesar's command and taken off to prison. When Lucius
Lucullus was somewhat too outspoken in his opposition, he filled him with such fear of
malicious prosecution [for his conduct during the Third Mithridatic War] that Lucullus
actually fell on his knees before him. Because Cicero, while pleading in court, deplored
the state of the times, Caesar transferred the orator's enemy Publius Clodius that very
same day from the patricians to the plebeians [59 B.C.], a thing for which Clodius had for
a long time been vainly striving; and that too at the ninth hour [That is, after the close
of the business day, an indication of the haste with which the adoption was rushed
through]. Finally taking action against all the opposition in a body, he bribed an
informer to declare that he had been egged on by certain men to murder Gnaeus Pompeius,
and to come out upon the rostra and name the guilty parties according to a pre-arranged
plot. But when the informer had named one or two to no purpose and not without suspicion
of double-dealing, Caesar, hopeless of the success of his over-hasty attempt, is supposed
to have had him taken off by poison.
XXI. At about the same time he took to wife Calpurnia, daughter of Lucius Piso, who was
to succeed him in the consulship, and affianced his own daughter Julia to Gnaeus Pompeius,
breaking a previous engagement with Servilius Caepio, although the latter had shortly
before rendered him conspicuous service in his contest with Bibulus. And after this new
alliance he began to call upon Pompeius first to give his opinion in the senate, although
it had been his habit to begin with Crassus, and it was the rule for the consul in calling
for opinions to continue throughout the year the order which he had established on the
Kalends of January.
XXII. Backed therefore by his father-in-law and son-in-law, out of all the numerous
provinces he made Gallia his choice, as the most likely to enrich him and furnish suitable
material for triumphs. At first, it is true, by the bill of Vatinius he received only
Gallia Cisalpina with the addition of Illyricum; but presently he was assigned Gallia
Comata as well by the senate, since the members feared that even if they should refuse it,
the people would give him this also. Transported with joy at this success, he could not
keep from boasting a few days later before a crowded house, that having gained his heart's
desire to the grief and lamentation of his opponents, he would therefore from that time
mount on their heads [used in a double sense, one sexual]; and when someone insultingly
remarked that that would be no easy matter for any woman, he replied in the same vein that
Semiramis too had been queen in Syria and the Amazons in days of old had held sway over a
great part of Asia.
XXIII. When at the close of his consulship the praetors Gaius Memmius and Lucius
Domitius moved an inquiry into his conduct during the previous year, Caesar laid the
matter before the senate; and when they failed to take it up, and three days had been
wasted in fruitless wrangling, went off to his province. Whereupon his quaestor was at
once arraigned on several counts, as a preliminary to his own impeachment. Presently he
himself too was prosecuted by Lucius Antistius, tribune of the commons, and it was only by
appealing to the whole college that he contrived not to be brought to trial, on the ground
that he was absent on public service. Then to secure himself for the future, he took great
pains always to put the magistrates for the year under personal obligation, and not to aid
any candidates or suffer any to be elected, save such as guaranteed to defend him in his
absence. And he did not hesitate in some cases to exact an oath to keep this pledge or
even a written contract.
XXIV. [55 B.C.] When, however, Lucius Domitius, candidate for the consulship, openly
threatened to effect as consul what he had been unable to do as praetor, and to take his
armies from him, Caesar compelled Pompeius and Crassus to come to Luca, a city in his
province, where he prevailed on them to stand for a second consulship, to defeat Domitius;
and he also succeeded through their influence in having his term as governor of Gallia
made five years longer. Encouraged by this, he added to the legions which he had received
from the state others at his own cost, one actually composed of men of Gallia Transalpina
and bearing a Gallic name too (for it was called Alauda [A Celtic word meaning a
crested lark (Plin. N.H. 11.37) which was the device on the helmets of the
legion]), which he trained in the Roman tactics and equipped with Roman arms; and later on
he gave every man of it citizenship. After that he did not let slip any pretext for war,
however unjust and dangerous it might be, picking quarrels as well with allied, as with
hostile and barbarous nations; so that once the senate decreed that a commission be sent
to inquire into the condition of the Gallic provinces, and some even recommended that
Caesar be handed over to the enemy. But as his enterprises prospered, thanksgivings were
appointed in his honor oftener and for longer periods than for anyone before his time.
XXV. [58-49 B.C.] During the nine years of his command this is in substance what he
did. All that part of Gallia which is bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Cévennes,
and by the Rhine and Rhone rivers, a circuit of some 3,200 miles [Roman measure, about
3,106 English miles], with the exception of some allied states which had rendered him good
service, he reduced to the form of a province; and imposed upon it a yearly tribute of
40,000,000 sesterces. He was the first Roman to build a bridge and attack the Germans
beyond the Rhine; and he inflicted heavy losses upon them. He invaded the Britons too, a
people unknown before, vanquished them, and exacted moneys and hostages. Amid all these
successes he met with adverse fortune but three times in all: in Britannia, where his
fleet narrowly escaped destruction in a violent storm; in Gallia, when one of his legions
was routed at Gergovia; and on the borders of Germania, when his lieutenants Titurius and
Aurunculeius were ambushed and slain.
XXVI. Within this same space of time he lost first his mother, then his daughter, and
soon afterwards his grandchild. Meanwhile, as the community was aghast at the murder of
Publius Clodius, the senate had voted that only one consul should be chosen, and expressly
named Gnaeus Pompeius. When the tribunes planned to make him Pompeius' colleague, Caesar
urged them rather to propose to the people that he be permitted to stand for a second
consulship without coming to Rome, when the term of his governorship drew near its end, to
prevent his being forced for the sake of the office to leave his province prematurely and
without finishing the war. On the granting of this, aiming still higher and flushed with
hope, he neglected nothing in the way of lavish expenditure or of favors to anyone, either
in his public capacity or privately. He began a forum with the proceeds of his spoils, the
ground for which cost more than a hundred million sesterces. He announced a combat of
gladiators and a feast for the people in memory of his daughter, a thing quite without
precedent. To raise the expectation of these events to the highest possible pitch, he had
the material for the banquet prepared in part by his own household, although he had let
contracts to the markets as well. He gave orders too that whenever famous gladiators
fought without winning the favor of the people [when ordinarily they would be put to
death], they should be rescued by force and kept for him. He had the novices trained, not
in a gladiatorial school by professionals, but in private houses by Roman knights and even
by senators who were skilled in arms, earnestly beseeching them, as is shown by his own
letters, to give the recruits individual attention and personally direct their exercises.
He doubled the pay of the legions for all time. Whenever grain was plentiful, he
distributed it to them without stint or measure, and now and then gave each man a slave
from among the captives.
XXVII. Moreover, to retain his relationship and friendship with Pompeius, Caesar
offered him his sister's granddaughter Octavia in marriage, although she was already the
wife of Gaius Marcellus, and asked for the hand of Pompeius' daughter, who was promised to
Faustus Sulla. When he had put all Pompeius' friends under obligation, as well as the
great part of the senate, through loans made without interest or at a low rate, he
lavished gifts on men of all other classes, both those whom he invited to accept his
bounty and those who applied to him unasked, including even freedmen and slaves who were
special favorites of their masters or patrons. In short, he was the sole and ever ready
help of all who were in legal difficulties or in debt and of young spendthrifts, excepting
only those whose burden of guilt or of poverty was so heavy, or who were so given up to
riotous living, that even he could not save them; and to these he declared in the plainest
terms that what they needed was a civil war.
XXVIII. He took no less pains to win the devotion of princes and provinces all over the
world, offering prisoners to some by the thousand as a gift, and sending auxiliary troops
to the aid of others whenever they wished, and as often as they wished, without the
sanction of the senate or people, besides adorning the principal cities of Asia and
Graecia with magnificent public works, as well as those of Italia and the provinces of
Gallia and Hispania. At last [51 B.C.], when all were thunder-struck at his actions and
wondered what their purpose could be, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, after first
making proclamation that he purposed to bring before the senate a matter of the highest
public moment, proposed that a successor to Caesar be appointed before the end of his
term, on the ground that the war was ended, peace was established, and the victorious army
ought to be disbanded; also that no account be taken of Caesar at the elections, unless he
were present, since Pompeius' subsequent action [i.e., in correcting the bill after
it had been passed and filed, as explained in the following sentence] had not annulled the
decree of the people. And it was true that when Pompeius proposed a bill touching the
privileges of officials, in the clause where he debarred absentees from candidacy for
office he forgot to make a special exception in Caesar's case, and did not correct the
oversight until the law had been inscribed on a tablet of bronze and deposited in the
treasury. Not content with depriving Caesar of his provinces and his privilege, Marcellus
also moved that the colonists whom Caesar had settled in Novum Comum by the bill of
Vatinius should lose their citizenship, on the ground that it had been given from
political motives and was not authorized by the law.
XXIX. Greatly troubled by these measures, and thinking, as they say he was often heard
to remark, that now that he was the leading man of the state, it was harder to push him
down from the first place to the second than it would be from the second to the lowest,
Caesar stoutly resisted Marcellus, partly through vetoes of the tribunes and partly
through the other consul, Servius Sulpicius. When next year Gaius Marcellus, who had
succeeded his cousin Marcus as consul, tried the same thing, Caesar by a heavy bribe
secured the support of the other consul, Aemilius Paulus, and of Gaius Curio, the most
reckless of the tribunes. But seeing that everything was being pushed most persistently,
and that even the consuls elect were among the opposition, he sent a written appeal to the
senate, not to take from him the privilege which the people had granted, or else to compel
the others in command of armies to resign also; feeling sure, it was thought, that he
could more readily muster his veterans as soon as he wished, than Pompeius his newly
levied troops. He further proposed a compromise to his opponents, that after giving up
eight legions and Gallia Transalpina, he be allowed to keep two legions and Gallia
Cisalpina, or at least one legion and Illyricum, until he was elected consul.
XXX. But when the senate declined to interfere, and his opponents declared that they
would accept no compromise in a matter affecting the public welfare, he crossed to Gallia
Citerior, and after hearing all the legal cases, halted at Ravenna, intending to resort to
war if the senate took any drastic action against the tribunes of the commons who
interposed vetoes in his behalf. Now this was his excuse for the civil war, but it is
believed that he had other motives. Gnaeus Pompeius used to declare that since Caesar's
own means were not sufficient to complete the works which he had planned, nor to do all
that he had led the people to expect on his return, he desired a state of general unrest
and turmoil. Others say that he dreaded the necessity of rendering an account for what he
had done in his first consulship contrary to the auspices and the laws, and regardless of
vetoes; for Marcus Cato often declared, and took oath too, that he would impeach Caesar
the moment he had disbanded his army.
It was openly said too that if he was out of office on his return, he would be obliged,
like Milo [who had been accused and tried for the murder of Publius Clodius], to make his
defence in a court hedged about by armed men. The latter opinion is the more credible one
in view of the assertion of Asinius Pollio, that when Caesar at the battle of Pharsalus
saw his enemies slain or in flight, he said, word for word: "They would have it so.
Even I, Gaius Caesar, after so many great deeds, should have been found guilty, if I had
not turned to my army for help." Some think that habit had given him a love of power,
and that weighing the strength of his adversaries against his own, he grasped the
opportunity of usurping the despotism which had been his heart's desire from early youth.
Cicero too was seemingly of this opinion, when he wrote in the third book of his De
Officiis [3.82; cf. 1.26] that Caesar ever had upon his lips these lines of
Euripides [Phoenissae, 524ff.], of which Cicero himself adds a version:
'If wrong may e'er be right, for a throne's sake
Were wrong most right:---be God in all else feared.'
XXXI. [49 B.C.] Accordingly, when word came that the veto of the tribunes had been set
aside and they themselves had left the city, he at once sent on a few cohorts with all
secrecy, and then, to disarm suspicion, concealed his purpose by appearing at a public
show, inspecting the plans of a gladiatorial school which he intended building, and
joining as usual in a banquet with a large company. It was not until after sunset that he
set out very privily with a small company, taking the mules from a bakeshop hard by and
harnessing them to a carriage; and when his lights went out and he lost his way, he was
astray for some time, but at last found a guide at dawn and got back to the road on foot
by narrow bypaths. Then, overtaking his cohorts at the river Rubicon, which was the
boundary of his province, he paused for a while, and realizing what a step he was taking,
he turned to those about him and said: 'Even yet we may draw back; but once cross yon
little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword."
XXXII. As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden there appeared hard
by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a reed; and when not
only the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers left their posts, and
among them some of the trumpeters, the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of them,
rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty blast, strode to the opposite
bank. Then Caesar cried: " Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the
false dealing of our foes point out. The die is cast [ A>Iacta alea est,' inquit'].
XXXIII. Accordingly, crossing with his army, and welcoming the tribunes of the
plebeians, who had come to him after being driven from Rome, he harangued the soldiers
with tears, and rending his robe from his breast besought their faithful service. It is
even thought that he promised every man the estate of an eques, but that came of a
misunderstanding; for since he often pointed to the finger of his left hand as he
addressed them and urged them on, declaring that to satisfy all those who helped him to
defend his honor he would gladly tear his very ring from his hand, those on the edge of
the assembly, who could see him better than they could hear his words, assumed that he
said what his gesture seemed to mean; and so the report went about that he had promised
them the right of the ring and four hundred thousand sesterces as well [The equites
as well as senators had the privilege of wearing a gold ring, and must possess an estate
of 400,000 sesterces].
XXXIV. The sum total of his movements after that is, in their order, as follows: He
overran Umbria, Picenum, and Etruria, took prisoner Lucius Domitius, who had been
irregularly named his successor, and was holding Corfinium with a garrison, let him go
free, and then proceeded along the Adriatic to Brundisium, where Pompeius and the consuls
had taken refuge, intending to cross the sea as soon as might be. After vainly trying by
every kind of hindrance to prevent their sailing, he marched off to Rome, and after
calling the senate together to discuss public business, went to attack Pompeius' strongest
forces, which were in Hispania under command of three of his lieutenants--Marcus Petreius,
Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro---saying to his friends before he left "I go to
meet an army without a leader, and I shall return to meet a leader without an army."
And in fact, though his advance was delayed by the siege of Massilia, which had shut its
gates against him, and by extreme scarcity of supplies, he nevertheless quickly gained a
complete victory.
XXXV. [48 B.C.] Returning thence to Rome, he crossed into Macedonia, and after
blockading Pompeius for almost four months behind mighty ramparts, finally routed him in
the battle at Pharsalus, followed him in his flight to Alexandria, and when he learned
that his rival had been slain, made war on King Ptolemy, whom he perceived to be plotting
against his own safety as well; a war in truth of great difficulty, convenient neither in
time nor place, but carried on during the winter season, within the walls of a
well-provisioned and crafty foeman, while Caesar himself was without supplies of any kind
and ill-prepared. Victor in spite of all, he turned over the rule of Egypt to Cleopatra
and her younger brother [47 B.C.], fearing that if he made a province of it, it might one
day under a headstrong governor be a source of revolution. From Alexandria he crossed to
Syria, and from there went to Pontus, spurred on by the news that Pharnaces, son of
Mithridates the Great, had taken advantage of the situation to make war, and was already
flushed with numerous successes; but Caesar vanquished him in a single battle within five
days after his arrival and four hours after getting sight of him, often remarking on
Pompeius' good luck in gaining his principal fame as a general by victories over such
feeble foemen. Then he overcame Scipio and Juba [46 B.C.], who were patching up the
remnants of their party in Africa, and the sons of Pompeius in Spain [45 B C.].
XXXVI. In all the civil wars he suffered not a single disaster except through his
lieutenants, of whom Gaius Curio perished in Africa, Gaius Antonius fell into the hands of
the enemy in Illyricum, Publius Dolabella lost a fleet also off Illyricum, and Gnaeus
Domitius Calvinus an army in Pontus. Personally he always fought with the utmost success,
and the issue was never even in doubt save twice: once at Dyrrachium, where he was put to
flight, and said of Pompeius, who failed to follow up his success, that he did not know
how to use a victory; again in Spain, in the final struggle, when, believing the battle
lost, he actually thought of suicide.
XXXVII. Having ended the wars, he celebrated five triumphs, four in a single month, but
at intervals of a few days, after vanquishing Scipio; and another on defeating Pompeius'
sons. The first and most splendid was the Gallic triumph, the next the Alexandrian, then
the Pontic, after that the African, and finally the Hispanic, each differing from the rest
in its equipment and display of spoils. As he rode through the Velabrum on the day of his
Gallic triumph, the axle of his chariot broke, and he was all but thrown out; and he
mounted the Capitol by torchlight, with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right and his
left. In his Pontic triumph he displayed among the show-pieces of the procession an
inscription of but three words, "I came, I saw, I conquered," [ 'Veni, vidi,
vici'] not indicating the events of the war, as the others did, but the speed with which
it was finished.
XXXVIII. To each and every foot-soldier of his veteran legions he gave twenty-four
thousand sesterces by way of plunder, over and above the two thousand apiece which he had
paid them at the beginning of the civil strife. He also assigned them lands, but not side
by side, to avoid dispossessing any of the former owners. To every man of the people,
besides ten pecks of grain and the same number of pounds of oil, he distributed the three
hundred sesterces which he had promised at first, and one hundred apiece because of the
delay. He also remitted a year's rent in Rome to tenants who paid two thousand sesterces
or less, and in Italy up to five hundred sesterces. He added a banquet and a dole of meat,
and after his Hispanic victory two dinners; for deeming that the former of these had not
been served with a liberality creditable to his generosity, he gave another five days
later on a most lavish scale.
XXXIX. He gave entertainments of divers kinds: a combat of gladiators and also
stage-plays in every ward all over the city, performed too by actors of all languages, as
well as races in the circus, athletic contests, and a sham sea-fight. In the gladiatorial
contest in the Forum Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian stock, and Quintus Calpenus, a
former senator and pleader at the bar, fought to a finish. A Pyrrhic dance was performed
by the sons of the princes of Asia and Bithynia. During the plays Decimus Laberius, a
Roman eques, acted a farce of his own composition, and having been presented with
five hundred thousand sesterces and a gold ring [in token of his restoration to the rank
of eques, which he forfeited by appearing on the stage], passed from the stage
through the orchestra and took his place in the fourteen rows [the first fourteen rows
above the orchestra, reserved for the equites by the law of L. Roscius Otho,
tribune of the plebeians, in 67 B.C.]. For the races the circus was lengthened at either
end and a broad canal was dug all about it; then young men of the highest rank drove
four-horse and two-horse chariots and rode pairs of horses, vaulting from one to the
other. The game called Troy was performed by two troops, of younger and of older boys.
Combats with wild beasts were presented on five successive days, and last of all there was
a battle between two opposing armies, in which five hundred foot-soldiers, twenty
elephants, and thirty horsemen engaged on each side. To make room for this, the goals were
taken down and in their place two camps were pitched over against each other. The athletic
competitions lasted for three days in a temporary stadium built for the purpose in the
region of the Campus Martius. For the naval battle a pool was dug in the lesser Codeta and
there was a contest of ships of two, three, and four banks of oars, belonging to the
Tyrian and Egyptian fleets, manned by a large force of fighting men. Such a throng flocked
to all these shows from every quarter, that many strangers had to lodge in tents pitched
in the streets or along the roads, and the press was often such that many were crushed to
death, including two senators.
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