Finally there were Caesar’s own claims. If his forthcoming Consulship was to be a radical and reforming one, which he intended it to be, it would arouse great animosity and it would be essential to protect his personal position once it was over. This could be managed only if he obtained the governorship of a major province—better still, a province where he could further develop his military career. He was the junior partner of the quartet and doubtless perceived that his long-term future would be assured only if he could create the circumstances which would allow him to raise himself and his reputation to a level with that of Pompey.
In December Caesar quickly came to an understanding with Pompey, thoroughly disillusioned with the optimates, and, once he had been secured, sounded out the other two. Crassus presented no insuperable difficulties and sometime in the early new year he joined the alliance. The basic proposition was that all three would promise to take no political action of which one of them disapproved. Once Consul, Caesar would put through a land-reform act and get the eastern settlement confirmed, revise the tax farmers’ contracts and arrange a five-year provincial command for himself. For all these measures he would receive Pompey’s and Crassus’s support.
Cicero, however, was a tougher nut to crack. He was approached towards the end of December and for a time could not make up his mind how to react. The go-between was a millionaire businessman from Gades in Spain, Lucius Cornelius Balbus, who had received Roman citizenship about ten years previously. Caesar had come across him during his recent governorship and brought him to Rome, where he acted as his confidential agent. He and an eques, Caius Oppius, became the subtle and ingenious fixers Caesar used to promote his interests during his frequent absences from the capital during the coming years. They wrote letters and published pamphlets. On good terms with all the leading politicians of the day, they wheedled and cajoled, or when necessary threatened, enemies and influential neutrals. They did favors and called them in later as and when the need arose. They were fiercely loyal to their employer.
Balbus told Cicero that Caesar would like him to support the land-reform bill with which he intended to launch his Consulship; in return Caesar would follow his and Pompey’s advice in all things and try to draw Pompey and Crassus together. Cicero gave the proposition serious thought. The alliance would bring him closer to Pompey and would secure his position from his critics—and especially from Clodius, who had not forgotten his part in the Good Goddess triaclass="underline" the word was that as soon as he won public office he would prosecute Cicero for the execution of the conspirators.
Then some lines from the poem on his Consulship came to Cicero’s mind, in which the muse of epic poetry, Calliope, appears to him and gives him some advice:
Meantime the paths which you from earliest days did seek,
Yes, and when Consul too, as mood and virtue called,
These hold, and foster still your fame and good men’s praise.
Nobody else had taken the book very seriously, but, as he pointed out to Atticus, for Cicero the passage reminded him of his duty. AS he thought about what he had written, it struck him how it was essentially a celebration of traditional, aristocratic values. They were where his deepest feelings lay, even if the Patricians of his day cold-shouldered him. His decision not to join the Caesarian alliance was at bottom an emotional one. It was beyond his imagination that the established order could not be saved.
Caesar, Pompey and Crassus went ahead without Cicero and sealed their secret agreement. With their money, their influence, their access to military force and their ruthlessness, they were in a position to act more or less as they wished. They could control the results of elections and arrange special commands or postings almost at will. A cabal was now in command of affairs, which was willing and able to bypass the Senate. When a later contemporary, Caius Asinius Pollio, wrote one of the first histories of the period, it was no accident that he opened his narrative with this alliance, which signaled the bankruptcy of the old order.
Caesar’s success as a politician sprang not only from his capacity for rigorous analysis of a given situation and for decisive action but also from his charm and attention to detail. So, when softening up Pompey, he had appealed to the great man’s vanity by getting the Senate to let him wear his triumphal insignia, including the special embroidered purple gown, at public shows. Few people saw the steel behind his agreeable, good-humored manners. He knew how to make himself liked by all and sundry. He was scrupulously polite: once when he was served asparagus dressed with myrrh instead of olive oil, he ate it without objecting and told off his friends when they objected to the dish (because it tasted bitter and was vulgarly expensive). “If you didn’t like it, you didn’t need to eat it. But if one reflects on one’s host’s lack of breeding it merely shows one is ill-bred oneself.” His attitude towards money was strategic: it was not so much that he wanted it for himself, he sought it as a fund into which his friends and soldiers could dip, often providing them with cheap or interest-free loans. He was always giving people presents, whether or not they asked for them.
From his youth Caesar took a dandyish care of his appearance, once adding wrist-length sleeves to his purple-striped Senatorial tunic and wearing his belt fashionably loose. His dinner parties and entertainments were legendary; in Plutarch’s phrase, he was known and admired for a “certain splendour in his life-style.” Cicero observed: “When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.”
In January 59, the new Consul moved with speed, introducing his land-reform bill designed to resettle Pompey’s soldiers. He was determined to proceed legally if at all possible. The legislation had been very carefully framed to avoid giving needless offense, and Senators could find little to say against it. After he had read the text aloud, Caesar said he was ready to make any improvements that might be suggested. But Cato was having none of it: he tried to talk the proposal out by filibustering until sunset, when Senate meetings automatically closed.
The strategy of the optimates was simple; to oppose Caesar’s reforms lock, stock and barrel and to get his fellow Consul Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, to veto them. This would have the effect either of neutralizing Caesar or of pushing him into illegality, for which he could be put on trial once he resigned.
The Forum now provided the setting for one of those decisive turning points in history. AS recounted by Dio Cassius, Caesar seems to have been genuinely taken aback by the opposition of the diehards and, using his legal power of enforcement (coercitio), ordered an official to arrest Cato and take him to prison. This was too much for many Senators and, as in the recent case of Metellus Celer, they followed him to the prison.
“Why are you leaving the meeting early?” Caesar asked one of them.
“I prefer Cato’s company in prison to yours in the Senate,” came the reply.
Outmaneuvered, the Consul rescinded the arrest and announced that he would ignore the Senate from now on and take the bill directly to the People. An informal public meeting was held at which Caesar asked Bibulus if he had any objections to what was proposed. Bibulus replied that there would be no innovations during his term of office.
“You shall have the law,” Caesar told the crowd, “only if he agrees to it.”
“You shall not have this law this year, not even if you all want it,” Bibulus shouted back. This incautiously undemocratic admission made the Senate’s intransigence embarrassingly clear.