The year 70 thus marked the loss of control by the Sullan establishment. The nobility (families descended from consuls) continued to gain most of the consulships, with the old patriciate (revived by Sulla after a long decline) stronger than for generations; the Senate still supervised administration and made ordinary political decisions; the system continued to rely essentially on mos majorum (constitutional custom) and auctoritas (prestige)—potent forces in the status society of the Roman Republic. The solid bases of law and power that Sulla had tried to give it had been surrendered, however. The demagogue—tribune or consul—could use the legal machinery of the popular assembly (hence such men are called populares), while the commander could rely on his army in the pursuit of private ambition. The situation that Sulla had tried to remedy now recurred, made worse by his intervention. His massacres and proscriptions had weeded out the defenders of lawful government, and his rewards had gone to the timeservers and the unscrupulous. The large infusion of equites into the Senate had intensified the effect. While eliminating the serious friction between the two classes, which had made the state ungovernable by 91, it had filled the Senate with men whose tradition was the opposite of that sense of mission and public service that had animated the best of the aristocracy. Few men in the new ruling class saw beyond self-interest and self-indulgence.
One result was that massive bribery and civil disorder in the service of ambition became endemic. Laws were repeatedly passed to stop them, but they remained ineffective because few found it in their interest to enforce them. Exploitation of the provinces did not decrease after Verres: governors (still with unlimited powers) feathered their own nests and were expected to provide for all their friends. Extortion cases became a political ritual, with convictions impossible to obtain. Cicero, thenceforth usually counsel for the defense, presented hair-raising behaviour as commonplace and claimed it as acceptable. The Senate’s traditional opposition to annexation faded out. Pompey made Syria into a province and added a large part of Pontus to Bithynia (inherited in 74 and occupied in 70); the demagogue Clodius annexed Cyprus—driving its king to suicide—to pay for his massive grain distributions in Rome; Caesar, finally, conquered Gaul by open aggression and genocide and bled it white for the benefit of his friends and his ambitions. Crassus would have done the same with Parthia, had he succeeded. Opposition to all this in the Senate, where it appeared, was based on personal or political antagonism. If the robber barons were attacked on moral grounds, it was because of the use they made of their power in Rome.
Politically, the 60s lay under the shadow of Pompey. Refusing to take an ordinary province in 69, he waited for his chance. It came in 67 when his adherent Gabinius, as tribune, secured him, against the opposition of all important men, an extraordinary command with unprecedented powers to deal with the pirates. Pompey succeeded within a few months where Antonius and others had failed. The equites and the people were delighted because trade, including Rome’s food imports, would now be secure. Meanwhile Lucullus had driven Mithradates out of Anatolia and into Armenia; but he had offended Roman businessmen by strict control and his own soldiers and officers by strict discipline. Faced with mutinies, he suffered a reverse and became vulnerable to attacks in Rome. In 66 another tribunician law appointed Pompey, fresh from his naval victories, to take over supreme command in the East, which he did at once, studiously insulting his predecessor. He quickly defeated Mithradates and procured his death, then spent some time in a total reorganization of the East, where Asia (the chief source of revenue) was protected by three further provinces and a ring of client states beyond the frontier. The whole of the East now stood in his clientela (clientship), and most of it owed him money as well. He returned by far the wealthiest man in Rome. Political suspicion and violence
Meanwhile Roman politics had been full of suspicion and violence, much of it stirred up by Crassus who, remembering 71, feared Pompey’s return and tried to make his own power impregnable. There was much material for revolution, with poverty (especially in the country, among families dispossessed by Sulla) and debt (among both the poor and the dissolute rich) providing suitable issues for unscrupulous populares. One such man, the patrician Catiline, after twice failing to gain the consulship by traditional bribery and intrigue, put himself at the head of a movement planning a coup d’état in Rome to coincide with an armed rising in Italy (late 63). Cicero, as consul, defeated these efforts and, relying on the doubtful legality of a Senate vote in support, had Catiline’s eminent Roman associates executed. Catiline himself fell in a desperate battle.
For Cicero—the “new man” who had made his way to the top by his own oratorical and political skill, obliging everyone by unstinting service, representing Pompey’s interests in Rome while avoiding offense to Pompey’s enemies—this was the climax of his life. Like his compatriot Marius, he had saved the state for its rulers: he had taken resolute action when those rulers were weak and vacillating; and, like Marius, he got small thanks for it. Pompey was miffed at having to share his fame with a municipal upstart, and eminent gentlemen could not forgive that upstart for having driven patricians to their death.
Pompey’s return was peaceful. Like Marius, he wanted recognition, not tyranny. He dismissed his army, to the surprise of Crassus and others, and basked in the glory of his triumph and the honours voted to him. But having given up power, he found himself caught in a net of constitutional obstruction woven by his politically experienced enemies and was unable to have either of his principal demands met: land for his veterans and the ratification of his arrangements in the East. It was at this point that Caesar returned from Spain.
Gaius Julius Caesar, descended (as he insisted) from kings and gods, had shown talent and ambition in his youth: he opposed Sulla but without inviting punishment, married into the oligarchy but advocated popular causes, vocally defended Pompey’s interests while aiding Crassus in his intrigues and borrowing a fortune from him, flirted with Catiline but refused to dabble in revolution, then worked to save those whom Cicero executed. In 63 he won a startling success: defeating two distinguished principes, he, who had not yet been praetor, was elected pontifex maximus—a post of supreme dignity, power, and patronage. Despite some cynicism among Roman aristocrats toward the state religion, its ceremonial was kept up and was a recognized means of political manipulation; thus priesthoods could give more lasting power than magistracies, in addition to the cachet of social success. Young Caesar was now head of the hierarchy. After his praetorship (62), Caesar successfully governed Spain, clearing a surplus sufficient to pay off his debts. On returning to Rome, he naturally hoped for the consulship of 59; but his enemies, by legal chicanery, forced him to choose between standing for office and celebrating a triumph. He gave up the triumph and easily became consul. The final collapse of the Roman Republic (59–44 bc) Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus
For his consulship Caesar fashioned an improbable alliance: his skill in having won the trust of both Crassus and Pompey enabled him to unite these two enemies in his support. Crassus had the connections, Pompey had the soldiers’ vote, and Caesar was consul and pontifex maximus. The combination (often misleadingly called the “first Triumvirate”) was invincible, especially since the consul Caesar had no scruples about countering legal obstruction with open force. Pompey got what he wanted, and so did Crassus (whose immediate need was a concession to the Asian tax farmers, in whose companies he probably had much of his capital). In return, Caesar got a special command in Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years by vote of the people; the Senate itself, on Pompey’s motion, extended it to Transalpine Gaul. Marriage alliances sealed the compact, chief of them Pompey’s marriage to Caesar’s daughter Julia.