he prosecuted Rabirius, first by an obsolete procedure dating from the time of the kings, then by trial
before the popular assembly. Through this attempted vindication of the murdered tribune Saturninus,
Caesar demonstrated not only his belief in the Gracchan principle that no citizen could be put to death
without a trial authorized by the people, but also his grasp of ancient tradition and religious lore. For
Caesar was aiming to be elected pontifex maximus, the head of the state religion. A similar combination
of political principle and personal ambition had led him to support the bills granting Pompey his great
commands. Then, in the last phase of the Catilinarian affair, he nearly succeeded in swaying senatorial
opinion against the execution of the captured conspirators without trial, and he made clear his support
for the recall of Pompey to deal with the rebel forces.
Caesar had become a much hated man in some quarters. When he returned from governing Spain early
in 60, Cato led the Senate in blocking his request to be allowed to stand for the consulship in absence.
Caesar wished to remain outside the sacred boundary of the city which he would then cross as part of his
triumph, a privilege which the Senate had already granted him. The Senate further showed its reluctance
to have him as consul by allocating as the consular provinces for that year the task of clearing out the
woods and cattle-runs of Italy: there lurked the remnants of the bands of Spartacus and Catiline, the
latter, as some alleged, Caesar's own supporters.
The 'First Triumvirate'
Caesar gave up his triumph and retaliated by soliciting the support of those other victims of Cato's
righteousness, Pompey and Crassus. Once elected consul for 59 B.C., he reconciled the two rivals and
set out to fulfil the promises he had made to them. Cato was therefore largely responsible for the
formation of the so-called 'first triumvirate', and that moment, he later said, was the real beginning of the
end for the Republic.
It is tempting to conjecture what might have happened had Caesar not been denied his triumph and the
expectation of an important province after his consulship. Caesar was no radical fanatic: he had
performed the requisite military service under two Sullan generals and not felt tempted to join the
Marians under Lepidus and Sertorius. He was ultimately to say that his honour had always come before
anything else; he held it dearer than his life. If he had not felt humiliated by the Senate, might he have
proved a decorous consul, a rebel who had 'come round', as Cicero always hoped he would? Perhaps the
answer does not matter so very much. Perhaps the same can be said even of that more obvious, but
related, question: might civil war have been averted in 49? The interesting question for the historian is
not whether any particular event is inevitable, but whether it is explicable. Why the fall of the Republic
occurred exactly when and how it did is, after all, secondary to the main question: why did leading
members of the Roman governing class, who themselves had most to gain from the existence of the
Republic, destroy it, thereby committing political suicide?
The Romans, as we have said, thought of the issue in terms of moral degeneration. They believed that,
whereas their ancestors had aspired to glory through service to the state, their contemporaries had come
to put their own ambitions above the public welfare. The catalyst in the decline of traditional morality