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A bitter election, with that snooty epitome of the establishment Domitius Ahenobarbus on one side and the young Mark Antony on the other, made it obvious to all. Amid the smog and forebodings of an oppressive summer, Hortensius had died, leaving behind him the largest private zoo in Italy, ten thousand bottles of wine, and an augurate. With the Republic seemingly lurching towards disaster, it was certainly no time to tolerate a vacancy in the augural college – for whenever Rome’s magistrates, whether by studying the flight of birds, or the pattern of lightning, or the eating habits of sacred chickens, sought to interpret the will of the gods and prescribe how best their anger could be appeased, it was the augurs who would confirm that the correct ruling had been made. Since the office was immensely prestigious, Domitius naturally regarded it as his by right. His young opponent disagreed. True, a hint of the disreputable still clung to the rake who had cohabited so outrageously with Curio and tangled with Clodius over the affections of his wife, but Antony had come a long way since the wild days of his youth. Serving in Gaul, he had covered himself in glory, and now, back in Rome, was fêted as one of Caesar’s most brilliant officers. Domitius, with the full weight of the senatorial establishment behind him, remained overwhelmingly the favourite, but Antony, at Alesia and elsewhere, had grown used to seeing off high odds. So he did again now. In a famous victory, worthy of being set beside Caesar’s own election as pontifex maximus, he won the augurate. Domitius was left incandescent with fury, and the chasm between the two factions in the Republic grew a little wider still.

It seemed by now that every skirmish thrown up in political life was having a similar effect. The vast majority of citizens who cared for neither side, or for both, were in despair. ‘I’m fond of Curio,’ wailed Cicero, ‘I wish to see Caesar honoured in the manner which is his due, and as for Pompey, I would lay down my life for him – all the same, what really counts with me is the Republic itself.’37 But there was nothing that he or anyone who thought like him could do. Spokesmen for peace were increasingly dismissed as appeasers. The rival factions were embracing their doom. It was as though, peering over the edge, vertigo was tempting them to jump. The thrill of a bloodlust was ripe in the winter air, and the talk was all of war.

In December 50 BC one of the two consuls, Gaius Marcellus, travelled in the full pomp of his office to Pompey’s villa in the Alban Hills. His colleague, having begun the year as an anti-Caesarian, had been persuaded, much like Curio, and no doubt for similar motives, to switch sides – but Marcellus, spurning all overtures, had remained implacable in his hostility to Caesar. Now, with only days left in office, he felt that the time had come to put some more steel into Pompey’s backbone. Watched by an immense number of senators and a tense, excited crowd, Marcellus handed his champion a sword. ‘We charge you to march against Caesar,’ he intoned sombrely, ‘and rescue the Republic.’ ‘I will do so,’ Pompey answered, ‘if no other way can be found.’38 He then took the sword, along with the command of two legions at Capua. He also set about raising fresh levies. All of which was illegal in the extreme – an embarrassment predictably made much of by Caesar’s supporters. Caesar himself, stationed menacingly at Ravenna with the 13th Legion, was brought the news by Curio, who by now had finished his term and had no wish to stay in Rome to suffer prosecution, or worse. Meanwhile, back in the capital, his place as tribune had been taken by Antony, who occupied himself throughout December by launching a series of blood-curdling attacks on Pompey and vetoing anything that moved. As the tension heightened, the deadlock remained.

Then, on 1 January 49 BC, despite the stern opposition of the new consuls, who were both, like Marcellus, virulent anti-Caesarians, Antony read out a letter to the Senate. It had been hand-delivered by Curio and penned by Caesar himself. The proconsul cast himself as the friend of peace. After a lengthy recitation of his many great achievements he proposed that both he and Pompey lay down their commands simultaneously. The Senate, nervous of the effect that this might have on public opinion, suppressed it. Metellus Scipio then stood up and dealt the death-blow to all the final, flickering hopes of compromise. He named a date by which Caesar should surrender command of his legions or be considered an enemy of the Republic. This motion was immediately put to the vote. Only two senators opposed it: Curio and Caelius. Antony, as tribune, then promptly vetoed the bill.

For the Senate, that was the final straw. On 7 January a state of emergency was proclaimed. Pompey immediately moved troops into Rome, and the tribunes were warned that their safety could no longer be guaranteed. With a typically melodramatic flourish, Antony, Curio and Caelius disguised themselves as slaves, and then, hiding in wagons, fled north towards Ravenna. There, Caesar was still waiting with his single legion. The news of Pompey’s emergency powers reached him on the tenth. Immediately, he ordered a detachment of troops to strike south, to seize the nearest town across the frontier, inside Italy. Caesar himself, however, while his men were setting out, passed the afternoon by having a bath, then attending a banquet, where he chatted with guests as though he had not a care in the world. Only at dusk did he rise from his couch. Hurrying in a carriage along dark and twisting byways, he finally caught up with his troops on the bank of the Rubicon. There was a moment’s dreadful hesitation, and then he was crossing its swollen waters into Italy, towards Rome.

No one could know it at the time, but 460 years of the free Republic were being brought to an end.

WORLD WAR

Blitzkrieg

In Gaul, against the barbarians, Caesar had preferred to stab hard and fast wherever he was least expected, no matter what the risks. Now, having taken the supreme gamble of his life, he aimed to unleash the same strategy against his fellow citizens. Rather than wait for his full complement of legions to arrive from Gaul, as Pompey had expected him to do, Caesar decided instead to rely upon the effects of terror and surprise. Beyond the Rubicon there was no one to oppose him. His agents had been busy softening up Italy with bribes. Now, the moment he appeared before them, the frontier towns opened their gates. The great trunk roads to Rome were easily secured. Still no one advanced from the capital. Still Caesar struck on south.

News of the blitzkrieg was carried to Rome upon crowds of refugees. The effect of their arrival was to send fresh refugees streaming out of the city itself. Invasions from the north stirred ancestral nightmares in the Republic. Cicero, as he followed the reports of Caesar’s progress with obsessive horror, wondered, ‘Is it a general of the Roman people we are talking about, or Hannibal?’1 But there were other ghosts abroad too, from a more recent period of history. Farmers working in the fields beside the tomb of Marius reported sightings of the grim old general, risen from his sepulchre; while in the middle of the Campus Martius, where Sulla’s corpse had been consumed, his spectre was glimpsed, intoning ‘prophecies of doom’.2 Gone was the war fever, so glad and confident only a few days before. Panicky senators, who had been assured by Pompey that victory would be a walkover, were now starting to calculate whether their names might not soon be appearing on Caesar’s proscription lists. The Senate rose and, as one body, besieged their generalissimo. One senator openly accused Pompey of having deceived the Republic and tempted it into disaster. Another, Favonius, a close friend of Cato, jeered at him to stamp his foot and produce the legions and cavalry he had promised.