Western Civilization

enormous, enabling them to dominate the political scene

and achieve their basic aims: Pompey received lands for

his veterans and a command in Spain, Crassus was given

a command in Syria, and Caesar was granted a special

military command in Gaul (modern France). When Cras-

sus was killed in battle in 53B.C.E., his death left two

powerful men with armies in direct competition. Caesar

had used his time in Gaul wisely. He had conquered all

of Gaul and gained fame, wealth, and military experience

as well as an army of seasoned veterans who were loyal

to him. When leading senators fastened on Pompey as

the less harmful to their cause and voted for Caesar to

lay down his command and return as a private citizen to

Rome, Caesar refused. Such a step was intolerable, as it

would leave him totally vulnerable to his enemies (see

the box on p. 114). Caesar chose to keep his army and

moved into Italy by illegally crossing the Rubicon, the

river that formed the southern boundary of his prov-

ince. (The phrasecrossing the Rubiconis still used today

to mean taking a decisive action from which there is no

turning back.) According to his ancient biographer Sue-

tonius, Caesar said to his troops, “Even now we could

turn back; but once we cross that tiny bridge, then

everything will depend on armed force.”^4 Caesar

marched on Rome, starting a civil war between his

forces and those of Pompey and his allies. The defeat of

Pompey’s forces left Caesar in complete control of the

Roman government.

Caesar had officially been made dictator in 47B.C.E.,

and three years later he was made dictator for life. He

continued to hold elections for offices but saw to it that

his supporters chose the people he recommended. Upon

becoming Rome’s ruler, he quickly instituted a number

of ambitious reforms. He increased the senate to nine

hundred members by filling it with many of his support-

ers and granted citizenship to a number of people in the

provinces who had helped him. By establishing colonies

of Roman citizens in North Africa, Gaul, and Spain, he

initiated a process of Romanization in those areas. He

also reorganized the administrative structures of cities

in Italy in an attempt to create a sense of order in their

government. Caesar was a generous victor and pardoned

many of the republican leaders who had opposed him,

allowing them to return to Rome. He also reformed

the calendar by introducing the Egyptian solar year of

365 days (with changes implemented in 1582C.E., it

became the basis of our current calendar). He

planned much more in the way of building projects

and military adventures in the East, but in 44B.C.E., a

group of leading senators who resented his domina-

tion assassinated him in the belief that they had

struck a blow for republican liberty. In truth, they

had set the stage for another civil war that delivered

the death blow to the republic.

Within a few years after Caesar’s death, two men had

divided the Roman world between them—Octavian

(ahk-TAY-vee-un), Caesar’s heir and grandnephew, took

the West, and Antony, Caesar’s ally and assistant, the

East. But the empire of the Romans, large as it was, was

still too small for two masters, and Octavian and Antony

eventually came into conflict. Antony allied himself with

the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII, with whom, like

Cicero,Letter to Atticus

Pray, what’s all this? What is going on? I am in the

dark. Is it a Roman general or Hannibal we are talking

of? Deluded wretch, with never in his [Caesar’s] life a

glimpse of even the shadow of Good! And he says he is

doing all this for his honor’s sake! Where is honor

without moral good? And is it good to have an army

without public authority, to seize Roman towns by way

of opening the road to the mother city, to plan debt

cancellations, recall of exiles, and a hundred other vil-

lainies “all for that first of deities, Sole Power”? He is

welcome to his greatness. I would rather a single hour

with you, warming myself in that “bonus” sunshine of

yours, than all such autocracies, or rather I had sooner

die a thousand deaths than entertain one such

thought.

Q How did Caesar view the steps he had taken? How

did Cicero view those steps? What do the

differences between Caesar and Cicero tell you

about the end of the republic? How do the views of

Caesar and Cicero give support to Sallust’s

argument? What do these three selections have in

common in regard to the fall of the republic? How

do they differ?

Sources: Sallust,The War with Catiline. Reprinted fromSallust, Loeb Classical Library, trans. by J. C. Rolfe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921. The Loeb Classical Library is a

registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Caesar,The Civil Wars. Reprinted from Caesar,The Civil Wars, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966. The

Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Cicero’sLetter to Atticus. Reprinted from Cicero’sLetters to Atticus, Vol. IV, D. R. Shackleton

Bailey, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic (133–31B.C.E.) 115

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