Civil War
Meanwhile a change in the method of appointing provincial governors not only resulted in the dispatch
of the reluctant Cicero to govern Cilicia, but introduced complications into Caesar's length of tenure in
Gaul. Behind the legal question, however, lay constitutional questions, and behind them lay a struggle
for power more complex than the rivalry of Pompey and Caesar.
Cato's antagonism had removed any temptation Caesar may have felt to sacrifice his popularis image to
his ambition. Instead, he remained true to the first as long as there was any risk to the second. Caesar
now took his stand on the fact that the people had granted his command and the right to stand for the
consulship in absence, which, he claimed, implied that he would still be in his province in the summer of
- The Optimates had always disapproved of provincial commands granted by the people: they believed
that the Senate should retain over foreign affairs the control it had acquired de facto as the only organ of
government with a continuous existence and membership. Though sovereignty lay with the people, they
did not agree with those Populares who held that the people could properly legislate on any matter, even
without senatorial guidance. Had not the Republic long been thought of as 'the Senate and People of
Rome'?
Marcus Marcellus, the consul of 51, tried to force the issue and recall Caesar a year early. Pompey tried
to arrange a compromise, while nevertheless agreeing that the Senate ought to be obeyed. In 50 and
early 49 Caesar had recourse to conciliatory offers, reinforced by the vetoes of friendly tribunes: when
the die-hards ignored them, he crossed the Rubicon, the river that marked the boundary of his province,
in defence of their sacred rights-and of his honour.
Pompey went east to gather his forces, saying 'Sulla did it: why not I?' But the only resemblance lay in
his threat of reprisals against his enemies. Speed and organization belonged to Caesar, and his policy of
clemency captured public opinion.
Cicero, an honourable man trying to choose the side of the Republic, lamented that neither Pompey nor
Caesar had any aim but dominatio. He could not do other than attribute blame to the protagonists,
including the enemies of peace in the Senate, because he believed that the political system itself was
blameless. If Cato spoke as if living in Plato's Republic, Cicero had written that the Roman Republic
surpassed even that Utopia. In the late fifties, when chaos and violence had become the order of the day,
he was moved to write two works of political philosophy based, in title and in content, on Plato's
Republic and Laws. In the first he explained that Roman tradition had evolved a mixed constitution,
which was the most balanced and stable kind. The laws he presented in the second work were designed
for a future citizen body trained to virtue and resembled closely existing law and practice. What
innovations there are in the part of the treatise that survives are designed to increase the power and
authority of the Senate and senior magistrates.
Both De re publica and the roughly contemporary De oratore are set in the past when public affairs were
in the hands of Scipio and Laelius or Lucius Crassus and Marcus Antonius. Cicero's answer to the