Not that anyone truly believed that this could happen. Win over Pompey and win the argument – such was the expectation. The great man himself, desperately struggling to maintain control of the situation, vacillated. Still not wishing to alienate either side, he gave to Caesar with one hand and took away with the other. The problem with this strategy, as Caelius pointed out, was that ‘he lacks the cunning to keep his real views out of sight.’31 Those views, by the summer of 51 BC, were coming ever more clearly into focus. Cato’s grisly warnings were having their effect. Since Caesar’s ultimate sanction was his army, this could not help but strike Pompey as a challenge to himself. Honour and vanity alike obliged him to dig in his heels. Rome’s greatest general could not appear to be nervous of the legions of Gaul. At the end of September he finally delivered an unambiguous verdict: Caesar should give up his command the following spring. This would be months before the consular elections, and provide Cato, or anyone else, with plenty of time to bring a prosecution. And what if Caesar put up a tribune to veto such a proposal and still sought to win the consulship while keeping hold of his army? Pompey was asked. The answer was softly spoken, but delivered with unmistakable menace: ‘You might as well ask, What if my son chooses to raise a stick against me?’32
Now at last the rupture between the two old allies was in the open. Pompey, the son-in-law, had claimed the fearsome rights of a Roman father over Caesar. The conqueror of Gaul was to be treated – and presumably punished – like a rebellious child. Since this was an attack as much upon Caesar’s self-regard as upon his interests, it was doubly unforgivable. But if he were to stay in the fight, then he would need fresh supporters. Above all, he would need a tribune, a heavyweight with the nerve and spirit to stand up to proposals that now had the full muscle of Pompey behind them. Unless they could be vetoed, Caesar knew that he was finished.
But when the results of the elections for 50 BC were announced it appeared that his fortunes had taken a further turn for the worse. Ablest and most charismatic of the new tribunes was none other than Curio, reaping due reward for his spectacular theatre. He had been the darling of the Roman people for almost a decade, ever since the summer of Caesar’s consulship. Then, still in his twenties, he had dared to defy the menaces of the consul and been cheered for it in the streets. In the ensuing nine years the bad blood between the two men had worsened. As a result there could be no doubt who had most to fear from the energies of the combustible new tribune. Surely now, people began to hope, Caesar would have to back down? Surely the crisis might be abating?
That winter, as Rome shivered, it certainly appeared so. The city, it struck Caelius, was numb with cold and lethargy. Most surprisingly of all, Curio’s tribunate had nothing to show for itself. As Caelius wrote to Cicero, in a tone of half regret, ‘it’s deep frozen’. But midway through his letter he suddenly had to eat his words: ‘I take back everything I wrote above, when I said that Curio was taking things coolly – because, to be sure, he’s suddenly started turning up the temperature – and how!’33 The news was astonishing, barely believable. Curio had swung behind his old enemy. The man who had confidently been expected to take the side of Cato and the constitutionalists had done just the opposite. Caesar had his tribune after all.
It was a sensational ambush. Caelius himself attributed his friend’s volte-face to irresponsibility, but that, as he would later recognise, was unfair. Others were to assume that Curio had been bought with Gallic gold, which was probably closer to the mark, but again did not tell the whole story. In fact, the tribune was playing a classic game. By working to outflank Cato’s obstructions, he hoped to do for Caesar what Caesar himself had done for Pompey – and to reap similar rewards. It was hardly principled, but Curio was doing nothing that had not been sanctioned by centuries of similar sharp practice.
Nor was Cato, nor was Pompey. Nor even was Caesar. Throughout the centuries of the Republic’s history, its great men had sought to win glory, and to do their enemies down. Nothing had changed over the years save the scale of opportunities on offer and the scope for mutual destruction that they had brought. To the Romans of a later age, mourning the death of their freedom, this was to be tragically clear. ‘By now,’ wrote Petronius of the Republic’s last generation, ‘the conquering Roman had the whole world in his hand, the sea, the land, the course of the stars. But still he wanted more.’34 And because he wanted more, he took more; and because he took more, he wanted more. It was almost impossible for appetites so monstrous to be sated within the ancient limits of custom or morality. Pompey and Caesar, Rome’s greatest conquerors, had won resources for themselves beyond all the imaginings of previous generations. Now the consequences of such obscene power were becoming grimly apparent. Either man had the capability to destroy the Republic. Neither wished to do so, but deterrence, if it were to have any value, obliged both to prepare for the worst. Hence Caesar’s recruitment of Curio. So high were the stakes, and so finely poised the equilibrium of power, that the activities of a single tribune, Caesar hoped, might prove sufficient to tip the balance of terror – to make the difference between peace with honour and catastrophe beyond recall. So Curio trusted too.
But their enemies remained as determined as ever to call their bluff. As Curio vetoed their every effort to prise Caesar away from his command, demands began to be made of Pompey that he should make good his boasts of forcing the proconsul to back down. Pompey responded by taking to his bed. Whether his illness was diplomatic or not, it certainly convulsed Italy with anxiety. In every town, the length and breadth of the country, sacrifices were offered up for the great man’s preservation. The invalid, unsurprisingly, was gratified in the extreme. By the time he finally emerged from his sickroom, he felt a perfect confidence in his popularity. He had been given the reassurance he needed to prepare for the ultimate sanction of war. When a nervous supporter asked what forces he would be able to put into the field should Caesar do the unthinkable and march on Rome, Pompey smiled calmly and told him not to worry. ‘I only have to stamp my foot, and all over Italy legionaries and cavalry will rise up from the ground.’35
But many were not so sure. To Caelius, it appeared self-evident that Caesar’s army was incomparably superior to anything that Pompey could muster. ‘In peacetime,’ he wrote to Cicero, ‘while taking part in domestic politics, it is most important to back the side that is in the right – but in times of war, the strongest.’36 Nor was he alone in this cynical judgement. Behind it lay the same calculation arrived at by Curio: that support for Caesar might offer a short cut to power. Hungry for immediate pickings, an entire generation was turning away from the cause of legitimacy. Between the fast set and the senior statesmen of the Senate, draped in the dignity of their offices and years, there had always been tensions, but now, amid all the war talk, the mutual contempt was widening into something truly ominous.