On 28 September 61 BC Pompey the Great rode for the third time in a triumph through Rome. Even by his own standards it was a show of unparalleled magnificence. At its heart, naturally, was the conquering hero himself. For the benefit of spectators who did not have grandstand views, a huge portrait bust was carried in the procession, fashioned entirely out of pearls. Its predominant feature was an immaculate quiff. This was the same hairstyle Pompey had displayed in his first triumph, eighteen years previously. The role of boy wonder had proved a hard one to let slip. So sensitive was Pompey about his age that he had even arranged for his triumph to start on the day before his birthday – his forty-fifth. Not that this was a detail he chose to broadcast. Sporting the cloak as well as the quiff of Alexander, he had no wish to appear as mutton dressed as lamb. Alexander had famously died young, at the age of thirty-two. Pompey had already spent a whole decade being thirty-four.
Only with a career of short cuts behind him could a Roman have suffered a mid-life crisis of this nature. Most of Pompey’s countrymen yearned for their forties. Middle age was the prime of a citizen’s life, and for the upper classes a time when they could at last run for the consulship. To the Romans, the cult of youth appeared unsettling and foreign, a delusion to which kings in particular were prone. Greek potentates were forever attempting to hold back the years, whether by preserving their youth in images of marble or by raising pompous monuments to themselves. A Roman was expected to know better. After all, what was the lifeblood of the Republic if not the onward passage of time? Each year magistrate gave way to magistrate, and the man who relived his term of office excessively, as Cicero did, became a figure of ridicule. As water was used to dilute wine, so time was relied upon to dissipate the headiness of glory. The Romans, precisely because they had a deeper thirst for honour than any other people in the world, were the more alert to its perils. The sweeter it tasted, the greater the risk of intoxication. The limit of a magistracy was set at a year, but of a triumph at one or two days. The procession ended, the feast consumed, the trophies hung in the temples of the gods, all that was left behind was litter in the streets. For the Romans, the truest monuments to glory were fashioned not of marble but of memories. Spectacle, if it were not to be an insufferable affront to civic values, had to be fleeting, ephemeral, just like the authority of the magistrate who sponsored it. Forbidden great architecture, the Romans made an art form out of festival instead.
Never did their city appear more like the capital of an empire than when its shabbiness was transformed into a realm of fantasy. Whole theatres might be raised, adorned with marble columns, their floors made of glass or gilded floorboards, filled with bronze statues and dazzling trompe l’oeils – and yet the theatres themselves were merely sets. Thrown up to stage a festival, they would be torn down brutally the moment it had finished. Only once, back in 154, had the censors licensed the construction of a permanent theatre, but even as it was nearing completion, prominent at the base of the Palatine, opinion in the Senate had hardened against it and it had been dismantled, block by block. The result, still apparent nearly a century later, was a powerful incongruity: Rome, mistress of the world, lacked what even the most provincial towns in Italy possessed: a theatre built of stone.
To many citizens, this remained a source of pride, an emphatic demonstration of republican virtue and a guarantee of that ‘peculiar manliness which has always distinguished the Roman people’.1 To others, it was an embarrassment. Pompey, for instance, swaggering his way around the East, had resented being upstaged by the splendours of Greek architecture, regarding it as an affront to his own prestige and that of Rome. Having looted everything from wine-coolers to balsam trees for his triumph, he had rounded off his pilfering by having sketches drawn of the great theatre of Mitylene, planning to build a copy of it, ‘only larger and more magnificent’.2 Even as the debris from his triumph was being swept up, Pompey’s labourers were moving in on the Campus Martius. Flat, empty and close to the Forum, nothing more tempting to a developer could have been imagined – and Pompey had never been good at resisting temptation. The monumentalism of his plans was obvious from the start. He claimed, disingenuously, that he was building a temple to Venus and that the seats were designed as steps leading upwards to the shrine, but nobody was fooled. Once again, as had happened throughout Pompey’s career, precedent was being trampled with cavalier abandon. Not that Pompey himself was remotely bothered. The money being spent was his own, after all. What else should he spend his fortune on if not a gift to the Roman people?
Most of the Roman people, unsurprisingly, agreed. But while Pompey’s admirers thrilled to the gargantuan scale of their hero’s generosity, his peers in the Senate did not. There, particularly in its upper reaches, suspicion was deepening to the point of paranoia. It was noted that the foundations of the new theatre stretched almost to the Ovile. The completed complex would tower above the voting pens. Elections would be held literally in Pompey’s shadow. The Republic itself seemed in danger. This was the cry that had always united the aristocracy against over-reachers, and so it did again now. Catulus, long the leading critic of Pompey’s unconstitutional career, had died shortly after Clodius’ trial, perhaps driven into his grave by the result, but Cato remained unbending as the champion of tradition, and he was more than ready to take on Pompey. In association with the inveterately envious Crassus he constructed an unshiftable bloc of opposition to Pompey’s interests, reducing the great general, in the midst of all his glory, to a sudden, startled impotence. The Senate refused to ratify his settlement of the East. His veterans were denied the farms they had been promised. Even his victory over Mithridates was sneered at by Cato as ‘a war against women’.3
Pompey reacted with hurt and perplexity. Had he not conquered 324 different nations? Had he not doubled the size of Rome’s empire? Why did the Senate refuse to give him his due? Illegal in his methods he may have been, but in his aims he was the very model of convention. Far from aiming at a monarchy, as his enemies darkly hinted, Pompey longed for nothing more than to be accepted into the bosom of the establishment. He had his own insecurities. His family was not an ancient one. The prestige of a man such as Cato, whose achievements were a fraction of his own, gnawed at him, and inspired in him an envious respect. Even when his own reputation had been at its highest, on his return from the East in 62 BC, Pompey had demonstrated an almost puppyish desire to know that Cato respected him in turn. He had gone so far as to divorce his wife, despite the fact that she was the sister of his close ally, Metellus Celer, and announced that he and his son would marry Cato’s two nieces. Naturally, since he was now Rome’s most eligible bachelor, Pompey had assumed that Cato was bound to give his permission. So too had the prospective brides, but no sooner had the two girls excitedly started making their wedding plans than their uncle had told them to save their breath. Cries of joy had turned to tears. Not a woman in the household had failed to take their side. Cato, however, was hardly the man to be swayed by tantrums. ‘Pompey should know’, he pronounced dismissively, ‘that I will not be outflanked via the bedroom of a girl.’4 The embarrassed suitor was left looking sleazy and underhand, with nothing to show for the affair save the enmity of the insulted Metellus. Once again Cato’s unerring eye for the moral high ground had enabled him to seize the tactical heights as well. Pompey, floundering ever more badly in unfamiliar terrain, began to be worn down by his enemy’s constant sniping. By the spring of 60 he seemed almost to have given up the battle. The great man did nothing all day, Cicero confided to Atticus, except sit in wistful silence, ‘and gaze at the toga which he wore in his triumph’.5
Whatever the satisfaction that Cato took in such reports, however, he remained on his guard. Even amid the wreckage of his political fortunes Pompey remained a formidable foe. It was clear to everyone that if he wanted to break the logjam that Cato and Crassus had so skilfully constructed, then he would need an ally in the consulship, and not just any ally, but a heavyweight capable of facing down Cato. There was one obvious candidate for this role, but in the spring of 60 he was far away, in Spain.
Caesar, to most people’s surprise, had been making a great success of his spell as governor. The loose-belted dandy had proved a natural general. A dashing little war in what is now northern Portugal had not only enabled him to recoup many of his debts, but had led the Senate to award him a triumph. Even these successes, however, paled in comparison to the news of Pompey’s deepening predicament. Caesar could recognise the chance of a lifetime when he saw it. To seize it, however, he would have to hurry. Candidates for the consulship had to declare themselves in Rome by the start of July. Abandoning his province before his successor had even arrived, and travelling at his customary breakneck pace, Caesar made it to the Campus just in time. There, however, amid the clamour and dust of Pompey’s building work, he had to halt. Until he had celebrated his triumph he remained officially under arms, and therefore forbidden to enter Rome. Caesar installed himself in the Villa Publica, then hurriedly applied for the right to stand for the consulship by proxy – a request that the Senate, with a day to spare, appeared perfectly content to grant.
Cato, however, was not. Knowing that a vote would have to be taken before sunset, he rose to his feet and spoke long into the night. A furious Caesar found himself having to choose between his triumph and the consulship. He can hardly have hesitated. Unlike Pompey, he had never had any problem in distinguishing the substance from the shadow of power. He entered Rome and a race that he knew was his to win.
Cato and his allies knew it too. In their battle with Pompey this was a sudden and alarming twist. The fact that Caesar could rely not only on Pompey’s backing but on his own immense popularity served to make him doubly a threat. Having failed to block his old enemy’s entrance into the race, Cato now moved hurriedly to neutralise the effects of his anticipated victory. The most urgent requirement was to ensure the election of a sound second consul, one who could be relied upon to counteract Caesar’s measures. Money from Pompey’s limitless fortune was already flooding the electorate: it was obvious that he would be spending whatever it took to buy up both consulships. Cato’s chosen candidate was his son-in-law, an earnest and somewhat plodding senator by the name of Marcus Bibulus, who suddenly, to his delight, found himself cast as the saviour of the Republic. The full weight of Pompey’s enemies swung behind him. So grave did the situation appear to Cato that he was even prepared to turn a blind eye when Bibulus, going head to head with Pompey’s agents, began to hand out bribes himself.
The money proved to have been well spent. In the elections Caesar came first in a landslide, but Bibulus scraped into second place. So far so good for Cato – but now that he had countered Pompey’s manoeuvrings he also had to block Caesar’s own ambitions. The military talents of the consul-elect had been widely noted. To Cato, the prospect of allowing such a glory-hunter anywhere near another province was intolerable. But how to stop him? Every consul, once he had completed his term of office, was appointed to a governorship as a matter of course. But why, Cato began pointing out, when there was so much unrest near to home, should the consuls of 59 be dispatched to the empire’s outer reaches? After all, more than a decade after Spartacus’ defeat, Italy remained infested with bandits and runaway slaves. Why not, just for one year, make the consuls responsible for their extermination? The Senate was persuaded. The proposal became law. Rather than a province, Caesar could now look forward to policing Italian sheepfolds.
Austere though he was, Cato was evidently not without a sense of humour. It was a dangerous move, of course, to make a man such as Caesar into the butt of a joke, but Cato, by doing so, was priming a trap. If Caesar refused to accept the Senate’s decision, then he would have to rely on force to reverse it; he would be branded a criminal, a second Catiline; Pompey’s name too would be besmirched by association, and his programme stymied for good. Cato’s strategy had always been to identify himself with the constitution and corner his enemies into playing the role of wreckers. Ruthless and bold as Caesar was, how far would he dare to go? Any violent extremes would be met by a formidable coalition. At Caesar’s elbow his fellow consul promised him unwearying opposition: Bibulus had spent a lifetime being overshadowed by his glamorous rival and loathed him accordingly. In the Senate Cato’s allies formed a strong and cohesive majority. Crassus, with his powerful bloc, could surely be relied upon as well: if there was one constant in the world of Roman politics it was that Crassus would be on the opposite side of everything to Pompey. Perilous as the contest promised to be, Cato could feel grimly confident of victory. As he had to be – for he had chosen to use the Republic, and its very stability, as his stake.
From the start, then, crisis menaced the fateful year of Caesar’s consulship. The mood of the Senate as it assembled to hear the new consul for the first time was jittery, mistrustful. Caesar, surpassingly gracious, sought to charm his audience, but Cato, obdurate as ever, refused to be charmed. When Caesar presented a moderate and carefully reasoned bill for the settlement of Pompey’s veterans up he rose in kneejerk opposition. On and on he talked, repeating his favourite tactic, until Caesar cut it short by giving the nod to his lictors. As Cato was led away, the seats of the Senate House began to empty. Caesar demanded to know why the senators were leaving. ‘Because I’d rather be with Cato in prison’, one of them spat back, ‘than in the Senate House with you.’6 Caesar, hiding his fury, was forced to back down. Cato was released. Eyeball to eyeball the two men had gone – and Caesar had blinked.
Or so it appeared. In fact, it soon became clear that Caesar’s retreat had been merely tactical. Abandoning the Senate House altogether, he took the campaign for his land bill directly into the Forum. As he did so, Rome began to fill with Pompey’s veterans. Caesar’s enemies found themselves increasingly disconcerted by this menacing backdrop. So flustered did Bibulus become that he committed the supreme gaffe of telling the voters that he cared nothing for their opinion. Cato, watching, must have buried his face in his hands. All the same, he still believed that Caesar was bluffing. It was true that a bill passed by the people would have the full force of the law, but even so, to go against the stated wishes of the Senate was the tactic of a gangster. If Caesar persisted with it, then his credit among his colleagues would be destroyed and his career would be over. Surely no one could be so criminal as to court such a fate.
Caesar’s game plan, however, was soon to become all too clear. In the run-up to the vote on the bill he paraded his celebrity supporters. Few could have been surprised when Pompey stepped forward to argue in favour of the settlement of his veterans, but the identity of the second speaker came as a thunderbolt. Throughout a career of slipperiness and opportunism, Crassus had remained constant to a single principle: opposition to Pompey’s goals. Even that, it now appeared, had been a principle too far. Crassus justified his U-turn as the action of a statesman, performed in the interests of the Republic – but everyone knew that he had never made a selfless move in his life. In his cold and calculating soul not even the pleasure of hatred, it appeared, could compete with the passion for power. The pre-eminence that he had never quite been able to obtain on his own was now within his grasp. Cato, outflanked, found all his defences being turned. It quickly began to dawn on him that, while Pompey and Caesar on their own might have been withstood, the addition of Crassus to their alliance made his enemies the effective masters of Rome. The three men would be able to carve up the Republic as they pleased, ruling as a troika, a ‘triumvirate’. No wonder that Caesar had appeared so blithely self-assured.
Cato and Bibulus threw themselves into a desperate rearguard action to halt the passage of the land bill. On the day of the public vote Bibulus appeared in the Forum to announce that he had observed unfavourable omens in the sky, and that the vote would therefore have to be suspended. The response of the pontifex maximus to this news was to have a bucket of dung emptied over Bibulus’ head. No sooner had the hapless consul begun wiping the excrement from his eyes than he found that a bodyguard formed of Pompey’s veterans was beating up his lictors and smashing his fasces. Amid a chorus of jeers, Bibulus and Cato were then bundled from the Forum, after which the vote was taken and the land bill duly passed. To perform the lucrative task of administering it, a commission was established, headed by – who else? – Pompey and Crassus. Finally, to set the seal on his victory, Caesar demanded that the Senate swear to obey the new law. Intimidated and disoriented, his opponents meekly complied. Only two men held out. One of these was Metellus Celer, by now dangerously ill, but still with sufficient strength to continue his defiance of the man who had so grievously insulted his sister. The other, inevitably, was Cato. Both were finally persuaded to give way by Cicero, who pointed out that their exile would hardly serve to help their cause: ‘You may not need Rome, but Rome will need you.’7
Yet even as Cato braced himself to carry on the fight he could not help but reflect with bitterness on his own role in the crisis. By pushing Caesar and Pompey to the extremes, and failing to anticipate the full depths of Crassus’ cynicism, he had done much to precipitate the coup. ‘The three-headed monster’8 had been smoked out into the open, and now that it no longer had to keep to the shadows it was able to scavenge unfettered. Pompey had his settlement of the East ratified, Crassus toyed profitably with the tax laws, while Caesar scouted around for a proconsular command. He settled on the governorship of two provinces, Illyricum in the Balkans and, directly on the northern frontier of Italy itself, Gallia Togata, ‘Toga-Wearing Gaul’. The only consolation for senators concerned at the thought of Caesar being awarded three legions virtually on Rome’s doorstep was the fact that neither of his two provinces offered much scope for flamboyant conquests. Then suddenly, in the spring, Metellus Celer succumbed to his illness andCaesar was given the opportunity to lay his hands on a third province – for Metellus’ death had not only removed a thorn from Pompey’s side, but left Transalpine Gaul, on the far side of the Alps, without a governor. This was a province temptingly menaced by any number of barbarians, and Caesar snaffled it up eagerly. The term of his command, for all three provinces, was set at a stupefying five years. The new proconsul was promised a rich feast of glory indeed.
For Cato, this represented an especially bitter defeat. The shattered fragments of his coalition were powerless to oppose it. When hatred for Pompey tempted Lucullus out of retirement one last time he was treated with such dismissive hostility by Caesar that he broke down and begged for mercy on his knees. That so great and haughty a man should have abased himself was shocking to everyone: perhaps, in the tears he shed before Caesar, there was an early symptom of the senile dementia that would progressively destroy him until his death two years later. If so, then the darkening of Lucullus’ mind would have seemed to Cato a grim portent of the enfeeblement of the Republic. It was a sickness to which he was determined he would not succumb himself.
No true citizen could endure to be a slave. This was a truth written in the blood of Rome’s history. After the bucket of excrement had been poured over his head, Bibulus had turned to his fellow consul, loosed the folds of his shit-bespattered toga, and bared his throat. Caesar, amused, had ducked the invitation to cut it – but, for all the melodrama of Bibulus’ gesture, it had served to restore to him his honour. Cato and his allies had no qualms about offering themselves for martyrdom. The consul immured himself in his house, playing the refusenik to great effect for the remainder of the year, while Cato took the challenge directly into the Forum, daring his enemies to do their worst. Both men courted intimidation and violence. Not only did they succeed in casting a shadow of illegality over Caesar’s legislation, but they ruined the image of the triumvirate behind it. No more telling blow in the propaganda war could have been struck. Caesar, for the sake of his career, had been prepared to play fast and loose with the constitution, but neither Pompey nor Crassus wished to be regarded as a rapist of the Republic. As far as they were concerned, they were playing by the rules: that complex, unwritten skein of precedents that bound every player in the political game. The powerful had been joining together in syndicates since the earliest days of the Republic. So it was, for instance, that when Caesar wished to solidify his alliance with Pompey he did so in the most traditional manner possible: by giving him the hand of his daughter. Cato, however, with the moral authority of a man who had refused to take a similar step, immediately denounced him as a pimp. Insults such as this drew blood. Although Crassus, Macavity-like as ever, evaded much of the abuse, Caesar and Pompey both grew steadily more reviled. They kept their grip on the reins of power, but that, for a Roman aristocrat, was never enough. He also had to be respected, honoured, loved.
For Pompey, unpopularity was especially hard to bear. The man who had spent a lifetime basking in the adoration of his fans now found himself ‘physically twisted’ by the loss of his prestige, ‘moping miserably, racked with indecision’. So pathetic was the sight that Cicero told Atticus he believed that ‘only Crassus could enjoy it’.9 Naturally, the smirking of his old enemy did nothing to improve Pompey’s mood. The alliance between the two men came increasingly under strain. Neither Crassus, scanning around for fresh carcasses to pick at, nor Pompey, morose with resentment and self-pity, felt any loyalty to the other. Within months of the emergence of the three-headed monster, two of the three heads were snapping viciously at each other. Cato, observing the spectacle with stern satisfaction, could begin to hope that the Republic might be saved after all.
True, there remained the menace of the third head. Caesar had Gaul waiting for him. A war there, which he was almost bound to start, would provide him with an unparalleled opportunity to rebuild his reputation. All the same, Cato’s tactics had inflicted permanent damage on Caesar too. He would leave behind him in Rome a legacy of hatred and fear. No matter how much glory he won in Gaul, and no matter how much gold, a hard core of opponents would continue to regard him as a criminal. For as long as Caesar remained a proconsul he was safe from prosecution – but he could not remain in Gaul for ever. The five years would pass, and at the end of them Cato would be waiting, ready to move. Justice demanded it, as did the needs of his country. If Caesar were not destroyed, then force would be seen to have triumphed over law. A republic ruled by violence would barely be a republic at all.