Cicero and His Friends

Caelius

The Roman Youth in the Time of Caesar

There is perhaps no more curious figure than that of Caelius in the history we are studying. His life has a special interest for us. He was not, like Brutus, a brilliant exception among his contemporaries; on the contrary, he quite belongs to his time; he lived as others lived around him. All the young men of that time, the Curios, the Dolabellas, resemble him. They are all, like him, corrupted early, little concerned about their dignity, prodigal of their wealth, friends of facile pleasures; they all throw themselves into public life as soon as they can, with a restless ambition and great needs to satisfy, and with few scruples and no beliefs. His history, then, is that of all the rest, and the advantage we find in studying it is that we know at once the whole generation of which he formed part. Now, thanks to Cicero, this study is easy for us. Notwithstanding so many differences in conduct and principles, Cicero always felt a singular inclination for Caelius; he liked the conversation of this clever man who laughed at everything, and was more at ease with him than with people like Cato or Brutus, whose severity somewhat alarmed him. He defended him in the law courts when a woman whom he had loved tried to ruin him, and this speech of his is certainly one of the most interesting that remain to us. Later, when he was obliged to go to Cilicia, he chose him for his political correspondent. By a happy chance Caelius’ letters have come down to us with those of Cicero, and there are none in all this collection that are more witty and more racy. Let us collect all the details scattered through them; let us try, in collecting them, to reproduce an account of Caelius, and by it to gain an idea of what the Roman youth of that time was. It is not without interest to know them, for they played an important part, and Caesar made use of them more especially for the revolution that he wished to accomplish.

I

Caelius did not come of an illustrious family. He was the son of a Roman knight of Puteoli, who had been in trade and acquired great wealth in Africa. His father, who had all his life no other concern than that of enriching himself, showed, as often happens, more ambition for his son than for himself: he wished him to become a politician, and as he saw that dignities were reached only through eloquence, he took him betimes to Cicero, that he might make him a great orator, if it were possible.

It was not yet the custom to confine young men to the schools of the rhetoricians, and to be contented with exercising them in imaginary cases. As soon as they had assumed the toga virilis, that is, when they were about sixteen years old, no time was lost in taking them to some statesman of reputation, whom they did not leave. Admitted to his most intimate society, they listened to his conversations with his friends, his disputations with his adversaries; they saw him prepare himself in silence for the great battles of eloquence, they followed him into the basilicas and the Forum, they heard him pleading causes or speaking to the assembled people, and when they had become capable of speaking themselves, they made their first appearance at his side and under his patronage. Tacitus much regrets this manly education, which, placing a young man under the conditions of reality instead of retaining him among the fictions of rhetoric, gave him a taste for real and natural eloquence which strengthened him, by throwing him from the first into the midst of real contests, and, according to his expression, taught him war on the field of battle, pugnare in praelio discebant.179 This education, however, had its dangers. It taught him things that it is better to be ignorant of for a long time, it familiarized him with the scandalous and corrupt sights that public life usually offers, it gave him a too rapid maturity and inflamed him with precocious ambition. Must not a young man of sixteen, who thus lived in intimacy with old and unscrupulous statesmen, and to whom were laid bare without precaution the basest manœuvres of parties, must he not have lost something of the generosity and sensitiveness of his age? Was it not to be feared that this corrupting intercourse might end by giving him a taste for intrigue, for the worship of success, an unbridled love of power, the desire to attain a high position quickly and by any means, and as, generally, the worst means are also the quickest, the temptation to employ them by preference? This is what happened to Caelius. For three entire years, three honest and laborious years, he did not leave Cicero; but he perceived at length, that a young man like himself, who had his political fortune to make, would gain more with those who wished to destroy the government than with him who wished to preserve it, and he abandoned Cicero to attach himself to Catiline. The change was sudden, but Caelius never took the trouble to delay about these transitions. Henceforth, we can easily understand, his life took another turn; he became a seditious and turbulent man, whose biting speech in the Forum and violence in the Campus Martius were dreaded. At the election of a pontif he struck a senator. When he was appointed quaestor, every one accused him of having bought his votes. Not content with disturbing the comitia at Rome, we see him stirring up a popular tumult at Naples, we do not know why. At the same time, he did not neglect his pleasures. The debaucheries of those noisy young men of whom he was one, continually disturbed the public peace. It is said that the streets of Rome were unsafe when they returned at night from their suppers, and that, after the manner of those giddy fellows that Plautus and Terence depict, they molested honest women whom they met on their road. All these follies did not go on without great expense, and the father of Caelius, although he was rich, was not of a temper to be always paying. No doubt at this time the honest merchant of Puteoli must have regretted his ambition for his son, and thought it cost him dear to have wished to make him a politician. Caelius, on his side, was not of a temper to put up with reprimands easily; he left the paternal house, and, under pretext of being nearer the Forum and business, rented a lodging on the Palatine, in the house of the famous tribune Appius Clodius, for ten thousand sesterces (£80). This was an important event in his life, for it was there that he became acquainted with Clodia.

If we relied on the evidence of Cicero we should have a very bad opinion of Clodia; but Cicero is a too partial witness to be altogether just, and the furious hatred he bore the brother renders him very much suspected when he speaks of the sister. Moreover, he partly contradicts himself when he tells us she had kept up relations with very honourable people, which would be very surprising if it were true that she had committed all the crimes that he lays to her charge. It is very difficult to believe that persons of consideration in the republic, and persons who were careful of their reputation, would have continued to see her if they had thought that she had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of her brothers. Cicero, however, did not invent this; it was public rumour that he complacently repeated. Many people in Rome believed it, Clodia’s enemies liked to repeat it, and mischievous verses were made about it which were written upon every wall. Clodia’s reputation was, then, very bad, and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding some exaggerations, she partly deserved it. There is nothing to show that she killed her husband, as she was accused of doing; these accusations of poisoning were then widespread, and were accepted with incredible levity, but she had made him very unhappy during his life, and did not appear very much grieved at his death. It is doubtful, also, whatever Cicero may assert, that her brothers were her lovers, but it is unfortunately too certain that she had a good many others. The sole excuse that can be pleaded for her is that this way of living was then very general. Scandals of this kind had never been more common among the great ladies of Rome. Roman society was passing through a crisis whose causes, which go back a long way, deserve to be considered. We must say a few words about them, in order to account for the grave injury that public morals had received.

In a country where the family was respected as it was at Rome, women could not fail to have much importance. It was impossible that their influence, which was already so great within the house, should not attempt to show itself outside, and the honourable place they held in private life must one day tempt them to invade public life also. The ancient Romans, so jealous of their authority, had the consciousness of this danger, and neglected nothing in order to defend themselves against it. We know how they affected to treat women; there was no sort of unkind remarks they did not make about them; they got them attacked on the stage and mocked them even in their political speeches:180 but we must not mistake the sense of these railleries and pity the objects of them too much. They are only attacked thus because they are feared, and all these pleasantries are not so much insults as precautions. These rough soldiers, these rude peasants, have learnt, in living with them, how subtle and enterprising their minds are, and in how many ways they are more capable than themselves; consequently they take a good deal of trouble to confine them to their households, and even that does not suffice to reassure them; in the household itself they must be subjugated and bridled. They affect to think and to say that they are weak and untamed beings (indomita animalia), incapable of governing themselves alone, and they hasten to provide for their management. They are kept, under this pretext, in a continual state of tutelage; they are always “under the hand” of their father, brother, or husband; they cannot sell, buy, trade, or do anything without a council to assist them: in acting thus the men pretend they are protecting them, in reality it is themselves they are protecting against them. Cato, their great enemy, ingenuously admits it in a moment of frankness. “Remember,” Livy makes him say à propos of the lex Oppia, “all those regulations our ancestors made to subject wives to their husbands. Shackled as they are, you have trouble to manage them. What will happen if you give them their liberty, if you allow them to enjoy the same rights as yourselves? Do you think you will then be their masters? The day they become your equals they will be your superiors.”181 This day arrived just about the time of which we are treating. In the midst of the weakening of ancient usages, the laws against women were not more respected than others. Cicero says that the gallant lawyers furnished them with ingenious means to free themselves from these laws without appearing to violate them.182 At the same time, men were accustomed to see them take a more important place in society, and to recognize their influence in the government of the republic. Almost all the politicians of that time are governed by their wives or by their mistresses, thus the innumerable gallantries of Caesar must have passed in the eyes of many people, as later those of Augustus did, for profound policy, as it might be supposed that he only sought to please the women in order to lead their husbands.

Thus, by the abolition of the old laws, and by the alteration of ancient maxims, women had become free. Now, it is to be remarked that, in general, the first use made of regained liberty is to abuse it. We cannot enjoy quietly the rights of which we have been long deprived, and the first moments of liberty bring a sort of intoxication that it is difficult to check. This is what happened to the Roman society of that time, and all these irregularities that we notice in the conduct of women then are partly explained by the allurements and intoxication of their new liberty. Those who love money, like Terentia, Cicero’s wife, hasten to take advantage of the right of disposing of their fortune, that has been restored to them, they associate themselves with freedmen and agents for doubtful gains, rob their husbands without scruple, and throw themselves into speculations and trade, to which they bring, together with an almost incredible rapacity, that taste for small savings and economies which is natural to them. Those who prefer pleasure to wealth give themselves up to all pleasures with a passionate eagerness. The less bold take advantage of the facilities of divorce to pass from one amour to another under cover of the law. Others do not even take this trouble, and impudently flaunt their scandalous behaviour.

Clodia was one of the latter; but among all her vices, which she took no care to hide, we are forced to recognize in her some good qualities. She was not grasping; her purse was open to her friends, and Caelius was not ashamed to dip into it. She liked clever men, and attracted them to her house. At one time she wished to persuade Cicero, whose talents she much admired, to give up his foolish Terentia for her and to marry her; but Terentia, who suspected it, succeeded in mortally embroiling them. An old scholiast says that she danced better than it was proper for an honest woman to do.183 This was not the only art for which she had a taste, and it has been thought possible to infer from a passage of Cicero that she also wrote verses.184 To cultivate letters, to seek out clever men, to like refined and elegant pleasures, does not seem at first sight to be blameworthy; on the contrary, these are among us the qualities that a woman of society is obliged to possess or to feign. They thought otherwise at Rome, and, as the courtesans alone had then the privilege of following this free and accomplished life, every woman who sought this ran the risk of being confounded with them, and of being treated with the same rigour by public opinion; but Clodia did not care for public opinion. She brought into her private conduct, into her affections, the same passionateness and the same ardour that her brother did into public life. Ready for all excesses, and not blushing to avow them, loving and hating furiously, incapable of self-control, and hating all restraint, she did not belie that great and haughty family from which she was descended, and even in her vices her blood was recognized. In a country where so much respect was shown for ancient customs, in that classic land of decorum (the thing and the word are Roman), Clodia took pleasure in shocking the established customs; she went out publicly with her male friends; she was accompanied by them in the public gardens or on the Appian road, constructed by her great ancestor. She boldly accosted people whom she knew; instead of timidly lowering her eyes as a well-brought-up matron should have done, she dared to speak to them (Cicero says that she even kissed them sometimes), and invited them to her repasts. Grave, staid, and rigid people were indignant; but the young, whom this freedom did not displease, were charmed, and went to dine with Clodia.185

Caelius was at that time one of the fashionable young men of Rome. Already he had a great reputation as an orator. He was dreaded for the satirical sharpness of his speech. He was bold to temerity, always ready to throw himself into the most perilous enterprises. He spent his money freely, and drew after him a train of friends and clients. Few men danced as well as he,186 no one surpassed him in the art of dressing with taste, and the beauty and breadth of the purple band that bordered his toga were spoken of on all hands in Rome. All these qualities, the serious as well as the trivial, were of a nature to attract Clodia. Neighbourhood made their acquaintance more easy, and she soon became the mistress of Caelius.

Cicero, notwithstanding his reserve, permits us to guess the life they then led. He speaks in hints of those brilliant fêtes that Clodia gave to her lover and to the youth of Rome in her gardens on the banks of the Tiber; but it seems that Baiae was the chief theatre of these amours. Baiae had been for some time already the regular rendezvous of the fashionable people of Rome and Italy. The hot-springs that are found there in abundance served as the occasion or pretext for these gatherings. Some invalids went there for their health, and their presence provided an excuse for a crowd of healthy people who went there to amuse themselves. People flocked there from the month of April, and during the fine season a thousand light intrigues were carried on, the report of which reached Rome. Grave folks took great care not to be seen in this whirl of pleasure, and later Clodius accused Cicero, as if it were a crime, simply of having passed through it; but Caelius and Clodia were not anxious to hide themselves; consequently they gave themselves up without restraint to all the pleasures that were to be found in that country that Horace calls the most beautiful in the world. All Rome talked of their races on the shore, the brilliancy of their feasts and water-parties in boats carrying singers and musicians. This is all that Cicero tells us, or rather only gives us a glimpse of, for, contrary to his habit, and to our great loss, he has for once in a way been discreet, in order not to compromise his friend Caelius. Fortunately we can learn more about this society and satisfy our curiosity; to do so we have only to turn ourselves to him who was, with Lucretius, the greatest poet of that time, Catullus. Catullus lived among these persons who were so well worthy of study, and had relations with them which permitted him to depict them well. Everybody knows that Lesbia whom his verses have immortalized; but it is not so well known that Lesbia was not one of those fictitious persons that the elegiac poets often create. Ovid tells us that this name covered that of a Roman lady, probably a great lady, since he will not name her, and by his way of speaking we see clearly that everybody then knew her.187 Apuleius, who lived much later, is less reticent, and he tells us that Lesbia was Clodia.188 Catullus, then, was the lover of Clodia, and the rival of Caelius: he also frequented that house on the Palatine, and those fine gardens on the Tiber, and his verses complete our knowledge of that society of which he was one of the heroes.

I said just now that Clodia did not love money with the avidity of the women of gallantry of that time and of all times. The history of Catullus proves this well. This young provincial of Verona, although he belonged to an honourable family, was not very rich, and after he had lived a life of dissipation and pleasure for some time at Rome, he had nothing left. His poor little estate was soon deeply mortgaged. “It is not exposed, he says gaily, either to the impetuous north wind, or to the fury of the auster: it is a hurricane of debts that blows on it from all sides. Oh! the horrible and pestilent wind!”189 By the picture that he draws of some of his friends, still poorer and more indebted than himself, we see clearly that he could not reckon upon them, and that his purse which was “full of spiders” had no great help to expect from them. It was not, then, fortune or birth that Clodia loved in Catullus, but wit and talent. What attracted him in her, what he so passionately loved, was distinction and grace. These are not usually the qualities of women who live like Clodia; but, however low she might have descended, she was still a great lady. Catullus says so in an epigram in which he compares Lesbia to a celebrated beauty of that time—“Quintia is considered beautiful by many men. I think her tall, fair, erect: these are her attractions; I recognize them all. But that their union forms beauty, that I deny. There is nothing graceful in her, and in all that vast body there is not a spark of wit or charm. It is Lesbia who is beautiful, more beautiful than all, and she has so much grace that there is none left for the rest.”190

A woman like Clodia, who had such a decided taste for clever people, must have been pleased to frequent the society in which Catullus lived. We see plainly, by what he relates to us of it, that there was none more witty and agreeable in Rome. It united writers and politicians, poets and noblemen, differing in position and fortune, but all friends of letters and pleasure. There were Cornificius, Quintilius Varus, Helvius Cinna, whose verses had then much reputation, Asinius Pollio, who was as yet only a youth of great promise; there was above all Licinius Calvus, at once statesman and poet, one of the most striking figures of that time, who, at twenty-one, had attacked Vatinius with so much vigour, that Vatinius, terrified, had turned towards his judges, saying: “If my opponent is a great orator, it does not follow that I am guilty!” In the same group we must place Caelius, who, by his wit and tastes, was worthy to belong to it, and over it Cicero the protector of all this brilliant youth, which was proud of his genius and renown, and which saluted in him, according to the expression of Catullus, the most eloquent of the sons of Romulus.

In these assemblies of clever men, of whom many were political personages, politics were not excluded; they were very republican, and from them issued the most violent epigrams against Caesar. We know the tone in which those of Catullus are written; Calvus had composed others which are lost, and which were, it is said, still more cutting. Literature, however, we can well understand, held in them at least as high a place as politics. They did not fail to laugh at bad writers from time to time, and in order to make an example, ceremoniously burnt the poems of Volusius. Sometimes, at the end of the repast, when wine and laughter had heated their brains, they sent each other poetic challenges; the tablets passed from hand to hand, and each wrote the most incisive verses he could make. But it was pleasure more than anything else that occupied them. All these poets and politicians were young and amorous, and whatever pleasure they may have found in rallying Volusius, or tearing Caesar to pieces, they preferred to sing their loves. It is this which has made them famous. The lyrical poetry of the Latins has nothing to compare with those short and charming pieces that Catullus wrote for Lesbia. Propertius mingles too much mythology with his sighs; Ovid is only an inspired debauchee, Catullus alone has tones that touch the heart, because he alone was mastered by a deep and sincere love. Till then he had led a gay and dissipated life, and his heart was wearied with passing connections; but the day that he met Lesbia he learnt the meaning of passion. Whatever we may think of Clodia, the love of Catullus elevates her, and we never see her in a more favourable light than in this exquisite poetry. The verses of Catullus seem to make real and living those fêtes that she gave to the youth of Rome, and of which we regretted just now the absence of sufficient details; for was it not for these charming parties, for these free and sumptuous repasts, that he composed his finest works? It was there, no doubt, under the groves on the banks of the Tiber, that he sang that fine imitation of Sappho’s most fervid ode that he made for Lesbia. It was, perhaps, on the shore of Baiae, fronting Naples and Capreae, under that voluptuous sky, in the midst of the attractions of that enchanted land, that for the first time were read those verses in which so much grace is mingled with so much passion, and which are so worthy of the exquisite landscape in the midst of which I take pleasure in placing them:

“Let us live, let us love, my Lesbia, and laugh together at all the reproaches of stern old age. The sun dies to be born again; but we, when our short-lived light is once extinguished, must sleep an eternal night without awakening. Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred once more, then a thousand and a hundred again. Afterwards, when we have embraced thousands of times, we will confuse the reckoning to know it no longer, and leave the jealous no pretext to envy us by letting them know how many kisses we have given each other.”191

That is a remarkable moment in Roman society, when we meet with these polished assemblies, in which everything is talked of and all ranks are mingled, where the writers have their place beside the politicians, where they dare openly express their love for the arts and treat imagination as a power. We may say, to use a quite modern expression, that it is here that the life of society begins. There was nothing like it among the old Romans. They lived on the Forum or in their houses. Between the multitude and the family they knew little of that middle point that we call society, that is to say, those elegant and select assemblies, numerous without confusion, where we are at once more at liberty than among unknown persons in public places, and yet less at home than in the family circle. Before reaching this point it was necessary to wait until Rome was civilized and literature had won her place, which scarcely happened until the last age of the republic. And yet we must not exaggerate. That society which then had its beginning, seems to us at times very coarse. Catullus tells us that at those luxurious entertainments where such fine poems were read, there were guests who would even steal the napkins.192 The conversations they held were often risky, to judge by certain epigrams of the great poet. Clodia who assembled at her house these clever men, had singular eccentricities of conduct. The elegant pleasures sought by a woman of society were far from satisfying her, and she fell at last into excesses that made her former friends blush. They themselves, those heroes of fashion, whose good taste was vaunted on all sides, who talked with so much charm and made such tender verses, did not behave much better than she, and were not much more delicate. They had much to reproach themselves with while their connection with Clodia lasted; when it ended, they committed the unpardonable fault of not respecting the past, and of failing in that consideration that is always due to a woman whom one has once loved. Catullus stung with coarse epigrams her who had inspired his finest verses. Caelius, alluding to the price paid to the vilest courtesans, called her, in open court, the quarter of an as (quadrantaria) woman, and this cruel epithet stuck to her. We see that this society had still much progress to make; but it will do it quickly, thanks to the monarchy which was about to commence. Everything changed with Augustus. Under the new government, these remains of coarseness which savoured of the old republic, disappeared; men made such progress, and became so fastidious, that the refined were not slow in laughing at Calvus and Catullus, and that Plautus passed for a barbarian. They polish and refine themselves, and at the same time become insipid. A courtly tone is spread over gallant literature, and the change is so sudden, that little more than a quarter of a century was needed for the descent from Catullus to Ovid. The amours of Clodia and Catullus ended very sadly. Clodia did not pride herself on being faithful, and justified her lover only too well when he wrote to her: “A woman’s promises must be confided to the wind, or written on running water.”193 Catullus, who knew he was deceived, was angry with himself for submitting to it. He reasoned with himself, he chid himself, but he did not cure himself. Notwithstanding all the trouble he took to gain courage, love was the stronger. After painful struggles which rent his heart, he returned sad and submissive to the feet of her whom he could not help despising, and whom he yet continued to love. “I love and I hate, said he; you ask me how that can be, I cannot tell; but I feel that it is so, and my soul is in tortures.”194 So much suffering and resignation touched Clodia very slightly. She plunged deeper and deeper in obscure amours, and the poor poet, who had no more hope, was compelled to separate from her for ever. The rupture between Clodia and Caelius was much more tragic. It was by a criminal trial that their amour was ended. This time Caelius wearied first. Clodia, who, as we have seen, usually took the first step, was not used to such an end to her amours. Enraged at being abandoned, she concerted with the enemies of Caelius, who were not few, and had him accused of several crimes, and particularly of having tried to poison her. This, it must be admitted, was a very sad morrow to the charming fêtes of Baiae! The trial must have been very amusing, and we may believe that the Forum that day did not lack curious hearers. Caelius appeared accompanied by those who had been his protectors, his friends, and his teachers, the wealthy Crassus and Cicero. They had divided his defence between them, and Cicero specially undertook the part regarding Clodia. Although he declared, in the opening of his speech, “that he was not the enemy of women, and still less of a woman who was the friend of all men,” we may well believe that he did not miss such a good opportunity of avenging himself for all the ill this family had done him. That day Clodia suffered for her whole family. Never had Cicero been so sharp and stinging; the judges must have laughed much, and Caelius was acquitted.

Cicero had solemnly promised in his speech that his client would alter his conduct. In fact, it was quite time for him to reform, his youth had lasted only too long. He was then twenty-eight, and it was really time for him to think of becoming aedile or tribune, if he wished to play that political part that had been his father’s ambition for him. We do not know whether, in the sequel, he rigorously carried out all the undertakings Cicero had made in his name; perhaps he avoided henceforth compromising himself by too open scandals, and perhaps the ill success of his amours with Clodia had cured him of these noisy adventures; but it is very difficult to suppose that he became austere and lived after the manner of the old Romans. We see that, several years later when he was aedile and taking part in the most serious business, he found time to learn and repeat all the scandalous tales of Rome. This is what he wrote to Cicero, then proconsul of Cilicia:—

“Nothing new has happened except a few little adventures that, I am sure, you will be glad to hear about. Paula Valeria, the sister of Triarius, has divorced herself, without any reason, from her husband, the very day he was to arrive from his province; she is going to marry Decimus Brutus. Have you never suspected it? Since your absence incredible things of this kind have happened. No one would have believed that Servius Ocella was a man of intrigue, if he had not been caught in the act twice in the space of three days. You will ask me where? In truth it was where I should not wish it to be,195 but I leave you something to learn from others. I should be glad to think that a victorious proconsul will go and ask everybody with what woman a man has been caught.”196

Evidently he who wrote this entertaining letter was never so thoroughly converted as Cicero made believe, and it seems to me that we still find the harebrained young fellow who made so much racket in the streets of Rome, and the lover of Clodia, in the man of wit who recounts so pleasantly these trifling intrigues. We may affirm, then, without temerity that, although from this moment his private life is unknown to us, he never entirely renounced the dissipations of his youth, and that, magistrate and politician as he was, he continued to the end to mix pleasure with business.

II

But Caelius was not only a hero of amorous adventures, and did not content himself with the empty honour of giving the tone for elegance of manners to the youth of Rome. He had more solid qualities. Thanks to Cicero’s lessons he speedily became a great orator. A short time after he had escaped from this honourable tutelage, he made a brilliant commencement in a case in which he was opposed to Cicero himself, and this time the disciple beat the master. Since this success his reputation had continued to increase. There were orators in the Forum that men of taste admired more, and whose gifts they considered more perfect; there were none more dreaded than he, such was the violence of his attack and the bitterness of his raillery. He excelled in seizing the ridiculous side of his opponents, and in making, in a very few words, those ironical and cutting observations on them which are never forgotten. Quintilian quotes one as a model of its kind, which well exemplifies the talent of this terrible wit. He is speaking, in this passage, of that Antony who had been the colleague of Cicero in his consulship, and who, in spite of all the eulogies that the Orations against Catiline lavish on him, was but an inferior intriguer and a coarse debauchee. After having, according to custom, pillaged Macedonia, which he governed, he had attacked some neighbouring tribes in order to obtain a pretext for a triumph. He counted upon an easy victory, but as he was more taken up with his pleasures than with the war, he was ignominiously beaten. Caelius, who attacked him on his return, described, or rather imagined, in his speech, one of those orgies during which the general, while dead drunk, allowed himself to be surprised by the enemy.

“Women, his ordinary officers, fill the banqueting-hall, stretched on all the couches, or lying about on the ground. When they learn that the enemy is come, half-dead with fright, they try to awaken Antony; they shout his name, they raise him up by the neck. Some whisper soft words in his ear, others treat him more roughly and even strike him; but he, who recognizes their voices and touch, stretches out his arms by habit, seizes and wishes to embrace the first he meets with. He can neither sleep, so much they shout to awaken him, nor wake, so drunk is he. At last, powerless to shake off this drowsiness, he is carried off in the arms of his centurions and his mistresses.”197

When a man possesses such a biting and incisive talent it is natural for him to have an aggressive temper; nothing therefore suited Caelius better than personal struggles. He liked and sought disputation because he was sure to succeed in it, and because he could make use of those violent modes of attack that could not be resisted. He wished to be contradicted, for contradiction excited him and gave him energy. Seneca relates that one day one of the clients of Caelius, a man of pacific temper, and who, no doubt, had suffered from his rudeness, confined himself during a meal to agreeing with him. Caelius at last grew enraged because the man gave him no opportunity for getting angry, and exclaimed: “Do contradict me that there may be two of us.”198 The talents of Caelius, such as I have just depicted them, marvellously suited the time in which he lived. This thoroughly explains the reputation that he enjoyed, and the important position he took among his contemporaries. This fiery debater, this pitiless wit, this vehement accuser would not have been altogether in his place in quiet times; but in the midst of a revolution he became a valuable auxiliary whom all parties contended for. Caelius was moreover a statesman as well as an orator, and it is for this that Cicero most frequently praises him. “I know no one, he told him, who is a better politician than you.”199 He knew men thoroughly, he had a clear insight into situations; he decided quickly, a quality that Cicero much appreciated in others, for it was just that which he most lacked, and when once he had decided, he set to work with a vigour and force that gained him the sympathies of the multitude. At a time when power belonged to those who were bold enough to seize it, the audacity of Caelius seemed to promise him a brilliant political future.

Nevertheless, he had also great defects, which sometimes arose from his very good qualities. He knew men well, a great advantage no doubt, but in studying them it was their bad side that struck him most. By dint of trying them in every way, his startling penetration succeeded in laying bare some weakness. He did not reserve his severity for his adversaries only; his best friends did not escape his clear-sighted analysis. We see in his private correspondence that he knew all their defects, and did not stand on ceremony in speaking of them. Dolabella, his companion in pleasure, is a poor babbler, “incapable of keeping a secret, even though his imprudence should ruin him.”200 Curio, his usual associate in political intrigues, “is only an unstable busybody, changing with every breath of wind, who can do nothing sensible,”201 nevertheless, at the time when he is treating them thus, Curio and Dolabella had sufficient influence over him to draw him into Caesar’s party. As to Caesar himself, he speaks no better of him, although he is preparing to embrace his cause. This son of Venus, as he calls him, appears to him “but an egotist who scoffs at the interests of the republic and only cares for his own,”202 and he has no scruple in confessing that in his camp, where, nevertheless, he is going, there are only dishonourable men, “all of whom have causes for apprehension in the past and criminal hopes for the future.”203 With such a disposition of mind, and so decided a leaning to judge every one harshly, it was natural that Caelius should not trust any one entirely, and that no one dared to count upon him with confidence. To serve a cause usefully you must give yourself up to it completely; now, how can you do so if you cannot shut your eyes a little and not see too clearly its bad sides? Those cautious and clear-sighted persons, who are entirely taken up with the fear of being dupes, and who always see the faults of others so plainly, are never anything but lukewarm friends and useless allies. While they inspire no confidence in the party that they wish to serve, because they always make reservations in serving it, they are not sufficiently enthusiastic to form a party themselves, and always fall short of that degree of passion that leads a man to undertake great things. Therefore it happens that, as they can neither be chiefs nor privates, and cannot attach themselves to others or attach others to themselves, they end by finding themselves alone.

Let us add that Caelius, who had no illusions about persons, seemed also to have no preference for parties. He never sought the reputation of being a man of principle, nor to put order and consistency into his political life. In that, as in his private affairs, he lived from hand to mouth. The circumstances of the moment, interest, or friendship, gave him an accidental conviction to which he did not pretend to be long faithful. He went over from Cicero to Catiline when Catiline seemed to him the stronger; he returned to Cicero when Cicero was victorious. He was the friend of Clodias as long as he remained Clodia’s lover; he abandoned the brother at the same time that he left the sister, and suddenly embraced Milo’s party. He passed several times from the people to the senate, and from the senate to the people without scruple or embarrassment. At bottom, the cause that he served was of little consequence to him, and he had not to make much effort to disengage himself from it. At the time that he seemed to be taking the most trouble for it, he spoke of it in a tone that left people to imagine it was quite foreign to him. Even in the gravest affairs, and when it was a question of the fate of the republic, he did not appear to suppose that it had anything to do with him, and that he was interested in its safety or ruin. “It is your business, rich old men,”204 he said. But what did it matter to him? As he is always ruined he never has anything to lose. Therefore all forms of government are indifferent to him, and curiosity alone makes him take an interest in these struggles, in which, nevertheless, he plays such an active part. If he plunges with so much ardour into the tumult of public life, it is because events and men are seen closer, and one can make piquant reflections on it, or find amusing scenes in it. When he announces to Cicero, with remarkable perspicacity, the approaching civil war and the misfortunes that are coming, he adds: “If you were not running some risk, I should say that fortune was preparing a great and curious spectacle for you!”205 A cruel speech that Caelius paid for dearly in the sequel, for one does not play at these deadly games without peril, and often becomes a victim while thinking to be only a spectator.

When this war, which he thus announced to Cicero, was on the point of breaking out, Caelius had just been appointed aedile, and his great anxiety was to have some Cilician panthers for the games that he wished to give to the people. At this time, after having belonged more or less to all parties, he made profession of defending the cause of the senate, that is to say, that in speaking of the senators, he said, “our friends,” and that he affected to call them “good citizens”; which did not prevent him, according to his custom, having his eyes open to the faults that the “good citizens” might commit, and scoffing at his “friends” bitterly when the opportunity presented itself. Cicero thought him cold and undecided; he would have wished to see him pledge himself deeper. At the time of his departure for Cilicia, he did not cease to extol the great qualities of Pompey to him: “Believe me, he said, trust yourself to this great man, he will gladly welcome you.”206 But Caelius took good care not to do anything of the kind. He knew Pompey, of whom he has drawn satirical portraits on different occasions; he did not much admire him, and did not like him at all. If he kept aloof from him at the time of his greatest power, he certainly would not, we can well understand, throw himself into his arms when this power was threatened. In proportion as the crisis that he had foreseen advanced, he took more care to hold himself in reserve, and waited for the turn of events.

It was, moreover, a time when the most honourable hesitated. This irresolution, which does not seem to have been very surprising then, has been much blamed in our days. It is easy, however, to understand this. Questions do not present themselves to the eyes of contemporaries with the same clearness as to those of posterity. When they are looked at from a distance, and with a mind free from all prejudice; when, besides, the results and the causes are taken in at the same time, and when we can judge the causes by the results, nothing is easier than to come to a decision; but it is not so when one lives in the midst of the events, and too near them to take in the whole, when one’s mind is influenced by previous ties or personal preferences, and when the decision one is about to take may endanger one’s safety and fortune. It is not possible, then, to see things so clearly. The state of anarchy in which the old parties of the Roman republic were added to the confusion at that time. To speak the truth, there were no longer parties, but coalitions. For fifty years they had struggled, not for questions of principle, but for personal questions. Parties being no longer organized as formerly, it followed that timid minds which have need to attach themselves to ancient traditions to guide them, drifted about, and often changed. These striking changes of opinion in honourable and respected persons disturbed the less settled minds, and rendered it difficult to make out the right. Caesar, who knew of these vacillations, and hoped to profit by them, did what he could to increase their causes. At the very moment when he was preparing to destroy the constitution of his country, he had the art to appear to respect it more than anybody. An expert judge in these matters, and one who knows the Roman laws thoroughly, has declared, after mature examination, that the law was on the side of Caesar, and that the grievances he complained of were well founded.207 He took good care not to disclose all his projects then, or to speak with so much freedom as he did afterwards, when he was master. Sometimes he presented himself as the successor of the Gracchi, and the defender of popular rights; sometimes he affected to say, in order to reassure everybody, that the republic was not interested in the dispute, and reduced the quarrel to a struggle for influence between two powerful competitors. While he was gathering his legions in the cities of Upper Italy, he only spoke of his desire to preserve the public peace; in proportion as his enemies became more violent he became more moderate, and he never proposed conditions so acceptable as when he was sure that the senate would not listen to them. On the other side, on the contrary, in the camp where moderate and wise men ought to be found, there was nothing but rashness and stupidity. Those who showed some repugnance to civil war were treated as public enemies; they talked only of proscribing and confiscating, and the example of Sulla was in every one’s mouth. It happened then, by a strange contradiction, that it was in the camp where profession was made of defending liberty, that exceptional measures were most persistently demanded; and while the man who expected everything from the war, and whose army was ready, offered peace, those who had not a soldier under arms were eager to refuse it. Thus the two sides exchanged characters, and each appeared to speak and act contrary to its interests, or its principles. Is it surprising that in the midst of such obscurity, and among so many reasons for hesitation, honourable men like Sulpicius and Cicero, devoted to their country, but fitter to serve it in quiet times than in these violent crises, should not have decided at once?

Caelius also hesitated; but not altogether for the same reasons as Cicero and Sulpicius. While they anxiously asked themselves where the right lay, Caelius only sought where the superior force lay. He admitted this himself with singular candour: “In intestine quarrels,” he writes to Cicero, “as long as one struggles by legal means, and without having recourse to arms, one ought to attach oneself to the most honourable party; but when one comes to war it is necessary to turn towards the stronger, and regard the safest party as the best.”208 From the moment that he was satisfied with simply comparing the strength of the two rivals, his choice became easier; in order to decide it was enough to open his eyes. On one side there were eleven legions, supported by tried auxiliaries, and commanded by the greatest general of the republic, ranged on the frontiers, and ready to open the campaign at the first signal;209 on the other, few or no trained troops, but a great number of young men of illustrious families as incapable of commanding as they were little disposed to obey, and many of those great names that honour a party more than they help it; on one side, military rule and the discipline of a camp; on the other, quarrels, disputes, resentments, rival authorities, differences of opinion, in short, all the inconvenient habits of civil life transported into a camp. These are the ordinary difficulties of a party that claims to defend liberty, for it is difficult to impose silence on people who fight to preserve the right of free speech, and all authority quickly becomes suspected when men have taken up arms to oppose an abuse of authority. But it was the character of the two chiefs, more than anything else, that made the difference between the two parties. Caesar appeared to all the world, even to his greatest enemies, a prodigy of activity and foresight. As to Pompey it was clearly seen that he committed only faults, and it was not any easier then than it is now to explain his conduct. The war had not taken him unawares; he told Cicero that he had foreseen it for a long time.210 There was no great difficulty in foreseeing it, he had appeared to wish for it; Caesar’s proposals had been rejected by his advice, and the majority of the senate did nothing without consulting him. He had, then, seen the crisis approaching from afar, and during all that long diplomatic war which preceded actual hostilities he had had the time necessary to prepare himself. Every one, therefore, believed that he was ready, although nothing showed it. When he said, with his usual boastfulness, that he had only to stamp his foot to bring up legions, it was supposed he meant to speak of secret levies, or of alliances not generally known, that at the last moment would bring him troops. His confidence restored courage to the most terror-stricken. In truth, such a strange self-confidence in the midst of such real danger, in a man who had conquered kingdoms, and conducted great affairs, passes our comprehension.

Whence then could this confidence come to Pompey? Had he no exact information of the strength of his enemy? did he really believe, as he said, that his troops were discontented, his generals unfaithful, and that no one would follow him in the war he was going to wage against his country? or did he reckon on the good fortune of his earlier years, on the prestige of his name, on the happy chances that had given him so many victories? It is certain that, at the moment when the veterans of Alesia and Gergovia were assembling at Ravenna, and approaching the Rubicon, Pompey imprudently exhibited a great disdain for the general and for his troops, vehementer contemnebat hunc hominem!211 But this foolish boasting did not last long; on the news that Caesar was marching resolutely on Rome, it ceased at once, and this same man whom Cicero showed us just now disdaining his rival and predicting his defeat, he shows us a few days later, terrified and flying into the depths of Apulia without daring to halt or make a stand anywhere. We have the letter that Pompey then wrote to the consuls, and to Domitius, who attempted at least to hold out in Corfinium: “Know, he tells them, that I am in great uneasiness (scitote me esse in summa sollicitudine”).212 What a contrast to the over-confident words of just now! This is just the tone of a man who, waking up with a start from exaggerated hopes, passes suddenly from one extreme to another. He had prepared nothing because he had been too well assured of success; he dared undertake nothing because he was too certain of failure. He has no confidence or hope in any one; all resistance seems to him useless; he does not even count upon the awakening of a patriotic spirit, and it does not occur to him to make an appeal to the republican youth of the Italian municipia. At each step that his enemy takes in advance, he retreats still farther. Brundusium itself, with its strong walls, does not give him confidence; he thinks of quitting Italy, and does not believe that he is safe until he has put the sea between himself and Caesar.

Caelius had not waited so long to take a side. Even before the struggle commenced it was easy for him to see where the superior strength lay and on which side victory would be. He had then boldly faced about and put himself in the front rank among Caesar’s friends. He took his side openly when he supported with his usual vigour the proposition of Calidius, who demanded that Pompey should be sent back to his province of Spain. When the hope of peace was completely lost, he left Rome with his friends Curio and Dolabella, and went to join Caesar at Ravenna. He followed him in his triumphal march through Italy; he saw him pardon Domitius, who had been taken in Corfinium, pursue Pompey, and shut him up closely in Brundusium. In the intoxication of these rapid successes he wrote to Cicero: “Have you ever seen a man more foolish than your Pompey, who brings us into such great troubles, and whose conduct is so childish? On the other hand, have you ever read or heard of anything that surpasses the ardour of Caesar in action and his moderation in victory? What do you think of our soldiers, who, in the depth of winter, notwithstanding the difficulties of a wild and frozen country, have finished the war in an unopposed march?”213

When Caelius had once decided, his only thought was to draw Cicero after him. He knew that he could do nothing more agreeable to Caesar. Victorious though he was, Caesar, who did not delude himself about those who served him, felt that he wanted a few honest men to give his party a better appearance. The great name of Cicero would have sufficed to correct the bad impression that the character of those about him produced. Unfortunately it was very difficult to get Cicero to decide. From the day when the Rubicon was passed till the capture of Brundusium he wavered and changed his mind every day. Both sides were equally anxious to secure him, and the two chiefs themselves approached him, but in a very different manner. Pompey, always bungling, wrote him short and imperious letters: “Take the Appian road as soon as possible, come and join me at Luceria, at Brundusium, there you will be safe.”214 Strange language in the vanquished who persists in speaking as a superior! Caesar was much more judicious: “Come, he says to him, come and aid me with your counsel, your name, and your glory!”215 This consideration, these advances from a victorious general, who humbly solicited when he had the right to command, could not fail to influence Cicero. At the same time, to be more sure of gaining him over, Caesar got his dearest friends to write to him, Oppius, Balbus, Trebatius, and especially Caelius, who knew so well how to approach him. They attacked him on all his weak sides at once; they revived his old grudges against Pompey; they moved him by the picture of the misfortunes that threatened his family; they excited his vanity by pointing out to him the honour of reconciling parties and pacifying the republic.

So many assaults were bound to end by shaking a mind so undecided. At the last moment, he resolved to remain in Italy, in some isolated country house or in some neutral town, living apart from public affairs, not siding with any one, but preaching moderation and peace to all. Already he had begun an eloquent treatise on peace among citizens; he wished to finish it at leisure, and, as he had a good opinion of his eloquence, he hoped it would cause the most stubborn to lay down their arms. It was an idle fancy, no doubt; but we must not forget that Cato, who is beyond suspicion, regretted that Cicero had given up his plan so soon. He blamed him for going to Pharsalia, where his presence was not a great assistance to the combatants, while, by remaining neutral, he could preserve his influence over the two rivals and serve as intermediary between them. But one single day overturned all these fine projects. When Pompey quitted Brundusium, where he did not think he was safe, and embarked for Greece, Caesar, who counted upon this news to retain Cicero, hastened to transmit it to him. It was precisely this that made him change his mind. He was not one of those men who, like Caelius, turn with fortune and decide for success. On the contrary, he felt himself drawn to Pompey as soon as he saw him unfortunate. “I have never desired to share in his prosperity, said he; I could wish to share his misfortune!”216 When he knew that the republican army had departed, and with it almost all his old political friends; when he felt that on that Italian soil there were no longer magistrates, consuls or senate, he was seized with profound grief; it seemed that there was a blank around him, and that the sun itself, according to his expression, had disappeared from the world. Many people came to congratulate him on his prudence, but he reproached himself with it as a crime. He bitterly accused his weakness, his age, his love of repose and of peace. He had but one thought, to leave as quickly as possible. “I cannot support my regret, he said; my books, my studies, my philosophy are of no use to me. I am like a bird that wishes to fly away, and I always look seawards.”217

From that time his resolution was taken. Caelius tried in vain to retain him at the last moment, by a touching letter, in which he spoke to him of the probable loss of his fortune, and of the danger of jeopardizing the future of his son. Cicero, although he was much moved, was content to reply with a firmness unusual with him: “I am glad to see that you are so anxious for my son; but, if the republic continues, he will always be rich enough with his father’s name; if it must perish, he will suffer the common fate of all the citizens.”218 And, soon after, he crossed the sea to repair to Pompey’s camp. Not that he counted upon success; in joining a party whose weaknesses he was acquainted with, he well knew that he was going voluntarily to take his share in a disaster. “I come, said he, like Amphiaraüs to cast myself alive into the abyss.”219 It was a sacrifice that he thought he ought to make for his country, and it is proper to give him so much the more credit for it as he did it without illusions and without hope.

While Cicero thus went to rejoin Pompey, Caelius accompanied Caesar to Spain. All relations became henceforth impossible between them; consequently their correspondence, which had until then been very active, stops from this moment. There remains, however, one letter, the last that passed between them, and which forms a strange contrast to those that precede. Caelius addressed it to Cicero a few months only after the events that I have just spoken of, but under very different circumstances. Although it has only come down to us very mutilated, and it is not easy to restore the sense of all the phrases, we see clearly that the writer was a prey to violent irritation. This zealous partisan of Caesar, who sought to convert others to his opinion, has suddenly become a furious enemy; that cause that he lately defended with so much warmth, he now only calls a detestable cause, and thinks “it is better to die than remain on that side.”220 What had happened, then, in the interval? What motives had led Caelius to this last change, and what was the result of it? It is well to relate it, for the narrative may throw some light on the policy of the dictator, and above all make us acquainted with those about him.

III

In his treatise, De Amicitia, Cicero affirms that a tyrant cannot have friends.221 In speaking thus he was thinking of Caesar, and it must be admitted that this example seems to justify him. Courtiers are not wanting when a man is master, and Caesar, who paid them well, had more than any other, but we know of scarcely any sincere and devoted friends. Perhaps he had some among those obscure servants whose memory history has not preserved,222 but none of those whom he placed in the first rank, and whom he invited to share in his good fortune, remained faithful to him. His liberalities only brought him ingratitude, his clemency disarmed no one, and he was betrayed by those on whom he had lavished most favours. His soldiers alone can really be called his friends, those veterans who remained from the great Gallic wars; his centurions, all of whom he knew by name, and who let themselves bravely be killed for him under his eyes: that Scaeva, who at Dyrrhachium had his shield pierced with two hundred and thirty arrows;223 that Crastinus, who said to him on the morning of Pharsalia, “This evening you shall thank me dead or alive.”224 These men served him faithfully, he knew them and relied upon them; but he well knew that he could not trust his generals. Although he had heaped money and honours upon them after his victories, they were discontented. A few, and those the most honourable, were grieved to think that they had destroyed the republic and shed their blood to establish absolute power. The greater number had not these scruples, but all thought their services ill rewarded. Caesar’s liberality, great as it was, had not sufficed to satisfy them. The republic was delivered up to them, they were praetors and consuls, they governed the richest provinces, and yet they ceased not to complain. Everything served them as a pretext for murmuring. Antony had got Pompey’s house awarded to him at a low price; when they came for the money he got in a passion and only paid with insults. No doubt he thought that day that they were wanting in respect for him, and called Caesar ungrateful. It is not uncommon to see those warriors, so brave before the enemy, and so admirable on the day of battle, become again in private life vulgarly ambitious, full of base jealousy and insatiable greed. They began by murmuring and complaining; they almost all ended by betraying him. Among those who killed Caesar were found perhaps his best generals, Sulpicius Galba, the conqueror of the Nantuates, Basilus, one of his most brilliant cavalry officers, Decimus Brutus and Trebonius, the heroes of the siege of Marseilles. Those who were not in the plot did not conduct themselves any better that day. When we read in Plutarch the narrative of the death of Caesar, our heart bleeds at seeing that no one tried to defend him. The conspirators were only about sixty in number, and there were more than eight hundred senators. The greater number among them had served in his army; all owed to him the honour of sitting in the curia, of which they were not worthy, and these wretches, who held their fortune and their dignity from him, who begged for his protection and lived on his favours, saw him killed without saying a word. All the time this horrible struggle lasted, while, “like a beast attacked by the hunters, he strove among the swords drawn against him,” they remained motionless on their seats, and all their courage consisted in flying when Brutus, beside the bleeding corpse, essayed to speak. Cicero recalled this scene, of which he had been a witness, when he said later, “It is on the day when the oppressors of their country fall that we see clearly that they have no friends.”225

When Caesar’s generals, who had so many motives for remaining faithful to him, betrayed him, could he reckon more on those doubtful allies that he had recruited on the Forum, and who before serving him had served all parties? To accomplish his designs he had need of politicians; in order that the new government should not appear to be a wholly military rule he had need of the greatest number possible. Therefore he was not squeamish, he took them without selection. It was the dishonest men of all parties that came to him by preference. He received them well, although he esteemed them little, and carried them everywhere in his train. Cicero had been very much afraid of them when Caesar came with them to see him at Formiae: “There is not a rascal in all Italy,” said he, “who is not with him,”226 and Atticus, usually so reserved, could not help calling this retinue an infernal troop.227 However habituated we may be to see the initiative in such revolutions taken by men who have not much to lose, there is reason, nevertheless, to be surprised that Caesar did not find a few more honourable allies. Even those who are most opposed to him are compelled to recognize that much which he wished to destroy did not deserve preservation. The revolution that he contemplated had profound causes, it was natural that it should have also sincere partisans. How does it happen then that, among those who aided him to change a government of which many complained, and from which every one had suffered, there are so few who seem to act from conviction, and that almost all, on the contrary, are only paid conspirators working without sincerity for a man whom they do not love, and for a purpose that they consider bad?

Perhaps we must explain the composition of Caesar’s party by the means that he usually took to recruit it. We do not see that when he wished to gain any one over to his cause he lost his time in demonstrating to him the defects of the old government and the merits of that by which he wished to replace it. He employed more simple and sure arguments: he paid. This showed that he knew well the men of his time, and he was not deceived in thinking that, in a society altogether given up to luxury and pleasure, weakened beliefs only left room for self-interest. He organized then without scruple a vast system of corruption. Gaul furnished the means. He pillaged it as vigorously as he had conquered it, “seizing,” says Suetonius, “all that he found in the temples of the gods, and taking towns by assault, less to punish them than to have a pretext for plundering them.”228 With this money he made himself partisans. Those who came to see him never went away empty-handed. He did not even neglect to make presents to the slaves and freedmen who had any influence over their masters. While he was absent from Rome, the clever Spaniard Balbus and the banker Oppius, who were his agents, distributed bounties in his name; they discreetly helped embarrassed senators; they became the treasurers of young men of high family who had exhausted the paternal resources. They lent money without interest, but the services by which they would have to repay the loans were well known to every one. It was thus they bought Curio, who set a high price on himself; he was in debt for more than 60,000,000 sesterces (£480,000). Caelius and Dolabella, whose affairs were in a not much better state, were probably gained by the same means. Never was corruption practised on a greater scale and displayed with more impudence. Almost every year, during the winter, Caesar returned to Cisalpine Gaul with the treasures of the Gauls. Then the market was opened, and the great personages arrived one after another. One day, at Lucca, so many came at once that two hundred senators were counted in the apartments, and one hundred and twenty lictors at the door.

In general, the fidelity of people who are bought does not last much longer than the money they receive; now, in their hands, money does not last long, and the day one tires of providing for their prodigality, one is obliged to begin to distrust them. There was besides, in the case of all these political friends of Caesar, a special reason why, one day or other, they should become discontented. They had grown up amidst the storms of the republic; they had thrown themselves early into that active and bustling life, and they had acquired the taste for it. No men more than they, had used and abused liberty of speech; to it they owed their influence, their power, and their renown. By a strange inconsistency, these men, who worked with all their might to establish an absolute government, were those who could least do without the struggles of public life, the turmoil of business, and the excitement of the rostrum, that is to say just those things which exist only under free governments. There were no men who would sooner find despotic power burdensome than those who had not been able to support even the light and equitable yoke of the law. Accordingly they were not long in perceiving the error they had committed. They soon found out that in aiding a master to destroy the liberty of others, they had delivered up their own. At the same time it was easy for them to see that the new government that they had established with their own hands could not give them what the old one had given them. What, in fact, were those dignities and those honours with which it was pretended to reward them, when one man alone possessed real power? There were, no doubt, still praetors and consuls; but what comparison could be made between these magistrates, dependent on one man, subject to his caprices, dominated by his authority, overshadowed, and, as it were, obliterated by his glory, and those of the old republic? So then must inevitably arise mistakes, regrets, and often also treasons. This is why those allies whom Caesar had recruited in the different political parties, after having been very useful to him, all finished by causing him great trouble. None of those restless and intractable minds, undisciplined by nature and habit, had willingly consented to submit to discipline, or heartily resigned himself to obey. As soon as they were no longer under the eye of the master and restrained by his powerful hand, the old instincts in them gained the upper hand; they became again, on the first opportunity, seditious as before, and though Rome had been pacified by absolute power, troubles recommenced every time Caesar was absent. It is thus that Caelius, Dolabella, and Antony compromised the public tranquillity they had been charged to maintain. Curio, the head of that youth that rallied round the new government, died too soon to have had the time to be discontented; but we may conjecture, from the light and flippant manner in which he already spoke of Caesar in his private conversation, from the small degree of illusion he seemed to have about him, that he would have acted like the rest.229

It is easy now to understand what reasons Caelius had to complain, and how that ambition which the dignities of the old republic had not satisfied at last found itself ill at ease under the new government. The strange letter that he wrote to Cicero, and that declaration of war which he made to Caesar and his party are now explained. He had early become discontented. From the very beginning of the civil war, when he was congratulated on the success of his party, he answered gloomily: “What do I care about that glory which never reaches to me?”230 The truth is that he was beginning to understand that there was only room for one man in the new government, and that he alone for the future would have glory as well as power. Caesar took him on his expedition to Spain without giving him, it appears, an opportunity of distinguishing himself. On his return to Rome he was appointed praetor, but he did not have the urban praetorship which was the most honourable, and Trebonius was preferred to him. This preference, which he regarded as an insult, caused him great vexation. He resolved to revenge himself, and only waited for an opportunity. He thought it had come when he saw Caesar set out with all his troops for Thessaly, in pursuit of Pompey. He thought that in the absence of the dictator and his soldiers, in the midst of the excitement of Italy, where a thousand contradictory rumours on the result of the struggle were circulating, he might attempt a decisive stroke. The moment was well chosen; but what was still better chosen was the question on which Caelius resolved to begin the fight. Nothing does more credit to his political ability than to have so clearly discerned the weak sides of the victorious party, and to have seen at a glance the best position he could take up for a successful attack upon it.

Although Caesar was master of Rome and of Italy, and it was seen that the republican army would not check him, he still had great difficulties to surmount. Caelius knew this well; he knew well that in political struggles success is often an ordeal full of danger. After the enemy has been vanquished one’s own friends have to be provided for, a task which is often troublesome. That greed must be resisted which has hitherto been tolerated, or even encouraged, when the time to satisfy it seemed distant; it is necessary above all to defend oneself against the exaggerated hopes that victory produces in those who have gained it, and which yet cannot be realized. Usually, when one belongs to the weaker party and wishes to gain adherents, promises are not spared; but when one reaches power it is very difficult to keep all the engagements that have been made, and those fine programmes that have been accepted and scattered abroad become then a source of great embarrassment. Caesar was the recognized chief of the democratic party; thence came his strength. We remember that he had said, on entering Italy, that he came to restore liberty to the republic which was enslaved by a handful of aristocrats. Now, the democratic party of which he thus proclaimed himself the representative had its programme ready prepared. It was not exactly that of the Gracchi. After a century of often bloody struggles, hatred had become envenomed, and the senseless resistance of the aristocracy had made the people more exacting. Each of the chiefs who, since Caius Gracchus, had come forward to lead them, had formulated for them some fresh demand the more surely to draw them after him. Clodius had aimed at establishing the unlimited right of association and of governing the republic by secret societies. Catiline promised confiscation and pillage; accordingly his memory had remained very popular. Cicero speaks of the funeral banquets which were celebrated in his honour, and of the flowers that his tomb was covered with.231 Caesar, who presented himself as their successor, could not altogether repudiate their heritage; he must promise that he would finish their work and satisfy the wishes of the democracy. At this moment the democracy did not appear to care much about political reforms; what it wanted was a social revolution. To be fed in idleness at the expense of the state, by means of gratuitous distributions very frequently repeated; to appropriate the best lands of the allies by sending colonies into the richest Italian cities; to arrive at a sort of division of property, under pretext of recovering from the aristocracy the public domain which it had appropriated, such was the ordinary idea of the plebeians; but what they most urgently demanded, what had become the watchword of all this party, was the abolition of debts, or, as they said, the destruction of the registers of the creditors (tabulae novae), that is to say, the authorized violation of public faith, and a general bankruptcy decreed by the law. This programme, violent as it was, Caesar had prepared to accept in proclaiming himself the head of the democracy. As long as the struggle was doubtful, he took care to make no reservations, for fear of weakening his party by divisions. Therefore it was thought that as soon as he was victorious he would set himself to work to realize it.

But Caesar had not only come to destroy a government, he wished to found another, and he knew very well that nothing solid can be established on spoliation and bankruptcy. After having used, without compunction, the programme of the democracy to overturn the republic, he understood that he would have to take up a new part. On the day that he became master of Rome, his statesman’s instinct, and his interest as a sovereign made him a conservative. While he extended his hand to the moderate men of the old parties, he had no scruple in often returning to the traditions of the old government.

It is certain that the work of Caesar, taking it altogether, is far from being that of a revolutionary; some of his laws were praised by Cicero after the Ides of March; which is as much as to say that they were not conformable to the wishes and hopes of the democracy. He sent eighty thousand poor citizens into the colonies, but over sea, to Africa and to Greece. He could not think of altogether abolishing the donations made by the State to the citizens of Rome, but he diminished them. In the place of the three hundred and twenty thousand citizens who shared in these under the republic, he only admitted a hundred and fifty thousand; he ordered that this number should not be exceeded, and that every year the praetor should fill up the place of those persons, thus privileged by poverty, who had died within the year. Far from changing anything in the prohibitive regulations that were in force under the republic, he established import duties on foreign merchandise. He promulgated a sumptuary law, much more severe than the preceding, which regulated in detail the manner in which people should dress and live, and had it executed with tyrannical rigour. The markets were guarded by soldiers lest anything should be sold that the law forbade, and the soldiers were authorized to enter houses and seize prohibited food even on the tables. Caesar had taken these measures, which hampered commerce and industry, and consequently were hurtful to the interests of the people, from the traditions of the aristocratic governments. They could not therefore be popular; but the restriction he put upon the right of meeting was still less so. This right, to which the democracy clung more than to any other, had been respected even to the last days of the republic, and the tribune Clodius had skilfully used it to frighten the senate and to terrorize the Forum. Under pretext of honouring the tutelar deities of each cross-way, associations of the districts (collegia compitalicia), comprising the poor citizens and the slaves, had been formed. Beginning by being religious, these societies soon became political. In the time of Clodius they formed a sort of regular army of the democracy, and played the same part in the riots of Rome as the “sections” in ’93 did among us. By the side of these permanent associations, and on the same model, temporary associations were formed, every time a great election took place. The people were enrolled by districts, they were divided into decuries and centuries; chiefs, who led them to vote in military order, were appointed; and as in general the people did not give their votes for nothing, an important person named sequester was appointed beforehand, in whose hands the sum promised by the candidate was deposited, and distributors (divisores) charged, after the voting, to divide it among each tribe. This is how universal suffrage was exercised in Rome towards the close of the republic, and thus this race, naturally inclined to discipline, had succeeded in giving an organization to disorder. Caesar, who had often made use of these secret associations, who by them had managed elections and dominated the deliberations of the Forum, would no longer suffer them when he had no longer need of them. He thought that a regular government would not last long if he allowed this underground government to work by its side. He did not shrink then from severe measures to rid himself of this organized disorder. To the great scandal of his friends, he suppressed, at a single stroke, all the political societies, only allowing the most ancient, which presented no danger, to continue in existence.

These were vigorous measures, and such as must have offended many people; accordingly he did not venture to take them till late, after Munda and Thapsus, when his authority was no longer disputed and he felt himself strong enough to resist the democracy, his ancient ally. When he set out for Pharsalia he had still to observe much caution; prudence commanded him not to displease his friends, while so many enemies remained. Moreover, there were certain questions which could not be deferred, so important were they in the eyes of the democracy which demanded their immediate settlement. One of the chief of these was the abolition of debts. Caesar turned his attention to it immediately on his return from Spain; but here again, notwithstanding the difficulties of his position, he was not so radical as he was expected to be. Placed between his conservative instincts and the demands of his friends, he adopted a middle course: instead of abolishing the debts completely, he contented himself with reducing them. Firstly, he ordered that all sums paid up to that time as interest should be deducted from the capital sums; then, to make payment of the amount thus reduced easier, he ruled that the property of the debtors should be valued by arbitrators; that they should assess it, not at its present value, but at that which it had before the civil war, and that the creditors should be obliged to take it at that rate. Suetonius says that, in this manner, debts were reduced by more than one-fourth. These measures certainly still appear to us sufficiently revolutionary. We cannot approve this intervention of authority, to despoil without reason private persons of a part of their wealth, and nothing can seem to us more unjust than that the law itself should annul contracts which have been placed under its protection; but at that time the effect produced on men’s minds was very different. The creditors, who had feared that nothing would be left them, thought themselves very fortunate not to lose all, and the debtors, who had reckoned upon being altogether freed, bitterly complained because they were still required to pay part. Hence disappointment and murmuring. “At this moment,” wrote Caelius, “with the exception of a few usurers, everybody herd is Pompeian.”232

This was a good opportunity for a secret enemy like Caelius. He hastened to seize it, and to take advantage of the disaffection which he clearly perceived. His tactics were bold. The plan which he devised was to take upon himself this character of advanced democrat, or, as we should say now, of socialist, which Caesar rejected, to form a more radical party of all these malcontents, and to declare himself their head. While the arbitrators appointed to value the property of the debtors performed their delicate functions to the best of their ability, and the praetor of the city, Trebonius, settled the disputes which arose upon their decisions, Caelius had his curule chair placed beside the tribunal of Trebonius, and setting himself up, by his own authority, as judge of the sentences of his colleague, he declared that he would support the demands of those who had any complaints; but whether it was that Trebonius satisfied everybody, or rather, that they were afraid of Caesar, no one dared to come forward. This first check did not discourage Caelius: he thought, on the contrary, that the more difficult his position became, the more necessary it was to put a bold face on the matter, and therefore, notwithstanding the opposition of the consul Servilius, and of all the other magistrates, he published two very daring laws, one remitting a year’s rent to all tenants, the other abolishing entirely all debts. This time the people seemed disposed to come to the aid of him who took their part so resolutely; disturbances took place; blood was shed as in former times in the Forum; Trebonius, attacked by a furious multitude, was thrown down from his tribunal and only escaped by a miracle. Caelius triumphed, and no doubt thought that a new revolution was about to commence; but, by a singular coincidence, he soon found himself the victim of the same error that later ruined Brutus. In causes quite opposed, these two men so unlike each other deceived themselves in the same manner: both had reckoned too much on the people of Rome. One restored them liberty, and thought them capable of desiring and defending it, the other called them to arms, promising to share among them the wealth of the rich; but the people listened neither to the one nor the other, for they were no more powerfully stirred by evil passions than by noble sentiments; they had played their part and they were aware of it. On the day that they had surrendered themselves to absolute power they seem to have lost entirely all memory of the past. From that time we see that they have renounced all political activity, and nothing can rouse them from their apathy. Those rights, which they had desired with such ardour, and gained with so much trouble, that greed so carefully encouraged by the popular leaders, even the tribunate and the agrarian laws, all become indifferent to them. They are already that populace of the empire which is so admirably painted by Tacitus, the most worthless of all peoples, cringing to the successful, cruel to the defeated, welcoming all who triumph with the same applause, whose sole part in all revolutions consists in joining the train of the conqueror, when the struggle is over.

Such a people could not be a real support to anybody, and Caelius was wrong to reckon upon them. If, by force of habit, they appeared one day to be moved by those great promises which had stirred them so often, when they were free, the feeling was but a passing one, and a small body of cavalry which chanced to be marching through Rome was sufficient to reduce them to order. The consul Servilius was armed by the senate with the famous formula which suspended all legal powers, and concentrated authority in a single hand. Aided by these passing troops, he forbade Caelius to exercise the functions of his office, and when Caelius resisted, he had his curule chair broken,233 and dragged him from the tribune from which he would not descend. This time the people remained quiet, not a voice answered when he tried to awaken the old passions in these dead souls. Caelius went home with rage in his heart. After such a public disgrace it was not possible to remain longer in Rome. Accordingly he hastened to quit it, telling everybody that he was going to have an explanation with Caesar; but he had quite other projects. Since Rome abandoned him, Caelius was going to attempt to rouse Italy and recommence the social war. It was a bold enterprise, and yet with the help of an intrepid man whose support he had procured he did not despair of success. There was at that time in Italy an old conspirator, Milo, who had made himself dreaded by his violence during the anarchy which followed Cicero’s consulship, and when condemned later for assassination, he had taken refuge at Marseilles. Caesar, in recalling all the exiles, had excepted this man whose incorrigible audacity he feared; but, on the invitation of Caelius, he had secretly returned and awaited the turn of events. Caelius went to see him, and both wrote pressing letters to the free towns of Italy, making them great promises, and exciting them to take up arms. The free towns remained quiet. Caelius and Milo were forced to make use of the last resource that remained to them. Abandoned by the free citizens of Rome, and of Italy, they appealed to the servile population, opening the prisons of the slaves, and calling upon the shepherds of Apulia and the gladiators of the public games. When they had by these means got together some partisans, they parted to tempt fortune separately, but neither succeeded. Milo, who had dared to attack an important town defended by a praetor with a legion, was killed by a stone. Caelius, after having vainly essayed to induce Naples and Campania to declare in his favour, was obliged to retreat to Thurium. There he met some Spanish and Gallic cavalry who had been sent from Rome, and as he advanced to speak with them and promised them money if they would follow him, they killed him.

Thus perished at the age of thirty-four years this intrepid young man who had hoped to equal the fortunes of Caesar. Never had such vast designs so miserable an end. After having shown an incredible audacity, and formed projects which grew more and more bold as the first attempts failed; after having in a few months successively tried to raise the people of Rome, Italy, and the slaves, he died obscurely by the hand of some barbarians whom he wished to induce to betray their duty; and his death, happening at the moment when all eyes were fixed on Pharsalia, passed almost unobserved. Who would dare to say, however, that this end, sad as it may be, was not deserved? Was it not just, after all, that a man who had lived by adventures should perish as an adventurer? He was not a consummate politician, whatever Cicero may assert; he failed to be that, because he lacked conviction and a genuine devotion. The instability of his feelings, the inconsistency of his conduct, that sort of scepticism that he affected for all convictions were not less hurtful to his talents than to his character. If he had known how to put greater unity into his life, if he had early attached himself to some honourable party, his capacities, finding employment worthy of them, would have attained their perfection. He might have no doubt failed, but to die at Pharsalia or Philippi is still considered an honour by posterity. On the contrary, as he changed his opinions as often as his interests or caprices, as he served by turns the most opposite parties without belief in the justice of any, he was never anything but an immature orator and a hap-hazard politician, and he died on the high-road like a common malefactor. However, notwithstanding his faults, history has some difficulty in judging him harshly. The ancient writers never speak of him without a secret liking. The brilliancy that surrounded his youth, the charms of his mind, the elegance which he knew how to preserve in his worst disorders, a sort of daring frankness which prevented him seeking honourable pretexts for dishonourable actions, his clear judgment of political situations, his knowledge of men, his fertility of resource, his strength of resolution, his boldness in daring all and in constantly risking his life; these many brilliant qualities though mingled with so many great defects have disarmed the most severe judges. The sage Quintilian himself, little fitted as he was to understand that passionate nature, dared not be severe upon him. After having praised the graces of his mind and his incisive eloquence, he contented himself with saying, by way of moral: “He was a man who deserved to have had a juster sense of conduct and a longer life, dignus vir cui mens melior et vita longior contigisset!”234

At the time that Caelius died, that elegant youth of which he was the model, and which the verses of Catullus and the letters of Cicero have helped us to know, had already partly disappeared. There remained scarcely any of those young men who had shone in the fêtes of Baiae and who had been applauded in the Forum. Catullus died first, at the very moment when his talents were being ripened by age, and were becoming more serious and more elevated. His friend Calvus was soon to follow him, carried off at thirty-five, no doubt by the fatigues of public life. Curio had been killed by Pompey’s soldiers, as Caelius was by Caesar’s. Dolabella survived, but only for a short time, and he also was to perish in a tragic manner. It was a revolutionary generation which the revolution mowed down, for it is true, according to the celebrated saying, that in all times as in all countries revolution devours her own children.