No More Learning

His whole nature is transparent clearness ; and tradition preserves more copious and more vivid information about him than about any of his peers in the ancient world. Of such a personage our conceptions may well vary in point of shallowness or depth, but they cannot be, strictly speaking, different; to every not utterly perverted inquirer the grand figure has exhibited the same essential features, and yet no one has succeeded in reproducing it to the life. The secret lies in its perfection. In his character as a man as well as in his place in history, Caesar occupies a position where the great contrasts of existence meet and balance each other. Of mighty creative power and yet at the same time of the most penetrating judgment; no longer a youth and not yet an old man ; of the highest energy of will and the highest capacity of execution ; filled with republican ideals andatthesame timeborntobeaking; aRomaninthe deepest essence of his nature, and yet called to reconcile and combine in himself as well as in the outer world the Roman and the Hellenic types of culture —Caesar was the entire and perfect man. Accordingly we miss in him more than in any other historical personage what are called
3H
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
characteristic features, which are in reality nothing else than deviations from the natural course of human develop ment. What in Caesar passes for such at the first super ficial glance when more closely observed, seen to be the peculiarity not of the individual, but of the epoch of culture or of the nation; his youthful adventures, for instance, were common to him with all his more gifted contemporaries of like position, his unpoetical but strongly logical temperament was the temperament of Romans
It formed part also of Caesar's full humanity that he was in the highest degree influenced by the conditions
general.
of time and place for there
living man cannot but occupy
and definite line of culture.
just because he more than any other placed himself amidst the currents of his time, and because he more than any other possessed the essential peculiarity of the Roman nation — practical aptitude as citizen — in perfection for his Hellenism fact was only the Hellenism which had been long intimately blended with the Italian nationality. But in this very circumstance lies the difficulty, we may perhaps say the impossibility, of depicting Caesar to the life. As the artist can paint everything save only consummate beauty, so the historian, when once in thousand years he encounters the perfect, can only be silent regarding For normality admits doubtless of being expressed, but gives us only the negative notion of the absence of defect the secret of nature, whereby in her most finished manifesta tions normality and individuality are combined,
no abstract humanity —the place in given nationality Caesar was perfect man
beyond expression. Nothing left for us but to deem those fortunate who beheld this perfection, and to gain some
faint conception of from the reflected lustre which rests imperishably on the works that were the creation of this great nature. These also, true, bear the stamp of the time. The Roman hero himself stood by the side of his
it is
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in a
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chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
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youthful Greek predecessor not merely as an equal, but as a superior ; but the world had meanwhile become old and its youthful lustre had faded. The action of Caesar was no longer, like that of Alexander, a joyous marching onward towards a goal indefinitely remote ; he built on, and out of, ruins, and was content to establish himself as tolerably and as securely as possible within the ample but yet definite bounds once assigned to him. With reason therefore the delicate poetic tact of the nations has not troubled itself about the unpoetical Roman, and on the other hand has invested the son of Philip with all the golden lustre of poetry, with all the rainbow hues of legend. But with equal reason the political life of the nations has during thousands of years again and again reverted to the lines which Caesar drew; and the fact, that the peoples to whom the world belongs still at the present day designate the highest of their monarchs by his name, conveys a warning deeply significant and, unhappily, fraught with shame.
If the old, in every respect vicious, state of things was Setting to be successfully got rid of and the commonwealth was to ^de^ be renovated, it was necessary first of all that the country parties, should be practically tranquillized and that the ground
should be cleared from the rubbish with which since the
recent catastrophe it was everywhere strewed. In this
work Caesar set out from the principle of the recon ciliation of the hitherto subsisting parties or, to put it
more correctly —for, where the antagonistic principles are irreconcilable, we cannot speak of real reconciliation —from
the principle that the arena, on which the nobility and
the populace had hitherto contended with each other, was
to be abandoned by both parties, and that both were to
meet together on the ground of the new monarchical constitution. First of all therefore all the older quarrels
of the republican past were regarded as done away for
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ever and irrevocably. While Caesar gave orders that the statues of Sulla which had been thrown down by the mob of the capital on the news of the battle of Pharsalus should be re-erected, and thus recognized the fact that it became history alone to sit in judgment on that great man, he at the same time cancelled the last remaining effects of Sulla's exceptional laws, recalled from exile those who had been banished in the times of the Cinnan and Sertorian troubles, and restored to the children of those outlawed by Sulla their forfeited privilege of eligibility to office. In like manner all those were restored, who in the preliminary stage of the recent catastrophe had lost their seat in the senate or their civil existence through sentence of the censors or political process, especially through the im peachments raised on the basis of the exceptional laws
62. of 702. Those alone who had put to death the proscribed for money remained, as was reasonable, still under attainder; and Milo, the most daring condottiere of the senatorial party, was excluded from the general pardon.
Discontent of the democrats.
Far more difficult than the settlement of these questions which already belonged substantially to the past was the treatment of the parties confronting each other at the moment — on the one hand Caesar's own democratic adherents, on the other hand the overthrown aristocracy. That the former should be, if possible, still less satisfied than the latter with Caesar's conduct after the victory and with his summons to abandon the old standing -ground of party, was to be expected. Caesar himself desired doubtless on the whole the same issue which Gaius Gracchus had contemplated ; but the designs of the Caesarians were no longer those of the Gracchans. The Roman popular party had been driven onward in gradual progression from reform to revolution, from revolution to anarchy, from anarchy to a war against property ; they celebrated among themselves the memory of the reign of terror and now adorned the
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
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tomb of Catilina, as formerly that of the Gracchi, with flowers and garlands; they had placed themselves under Caesar's banner, because they expected him to do for them what Catilina had not been able to accomplish. But as it speedily became plain that Caesar was very far from intending to be the testamentary executor of Catilina, and that the utmost which debtors might expect from him was some alleviations of payment and modifica tions of procedure, indignation found loud vent in the inquiry, For whom then had the popular party conquered,
if not for the people ? and the rabble of this description, high and low, out of pure chagrin at the miscarriage of their politico-economic Saturnalia began first to coquet with the Pompeians, and then even during Caesar's absence of nearly two years from Italy (Jan. 706 — autumn 707) to instigate there a second civil war within the first.
The praetor Marcus Caelius Rufus, a good aristocrat and bad payer of debts, of some talent and much culture, as a vehement and fluent orator hitherto in the senate and in the Forum one of the most zealous champions for Caesar, proposed to the people — without being instructed from any higher quarter to do so — a law which granted to debtors a respite of six years free of interest, and then, when he was opposed in this step, proposed a second law which even cancelled all claims arising out of loans and current house rents; whereupon the Caesarian senate deposed him from his office. It was just on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, and the balance in the great contest seemed to incline to the side of the Pompeians ; Rufus entered into communication with the old senatorian
band-leader Milo, and the two contrived a counter-revolu tion, which inscribed on its banner partly the republican constitution, partly the cancelling of creditors' claims and the manumission of slaves. Milo left his place of exile Massilia, and called the Pompeians and the slave-herdsmen
48-47.
Caelius ^^
47. Dolabella.
Nevertheless there was found in the following year (707) a second fool, the tribune of the people, Publius Dolabella, who, equally insolvent but far from being equally gifted with his predecessor, introduced afresh his law as to creditors' claims and house rents, and with his colleague Lucius Trebellius began on that point once more — it was the last time — the demagogic war ; there were serious frays between the armed bands on both sides and various street - riots, till the commandant of Italy Marcus Antonius ordered the military to interfere, and soon afterwards Caesar's return from the east completely put an end to the preposterous proceedings. Caesar attributed to these brainless attempts to revive the projects of Catilina so little importance, that he tolerated Dolabella in Italy and indeed after some time even received him again into favour. Against a rabble of this sort, which had nothing to do with any political question at all, but solely with a war against property — as against gangs of banditti —the mere existence of a strong government is sufficient; and Caesar was too great and too considerate to busy himself with the apprehensions which the Italian alarmists felt regarding these communists of that
and thereby unduly to procure a false popularity for his monarchy.
While Caesar thus might leave, and actually left, the late democratic party to the process of decomposition which had already in its case advanced almost to the utmost limit, he had on the other hand, with reference to the former aristo
3i8
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK V
to arms in the region of Thurii ; Rufus made arrangements to seize the town of Capua by armed slaves. But the latter plan was detected before its execution and frustrated by the Capuan militia; Quintus Pedius, who advanced with a legion into the territory of Thurii, scattered the band making havoc there ; and the fall of the two leaders put
48. an end to the scandal (706).
Measures against Pompeians and re publicans.
day,
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
319
cratic party possessing a far greater vitality, not to bring about its dissolution —which time alone could accomplish —but to pave the way for and initiate it by a proper combination of repression and conciliation. Among minor measures, Caesar, even from a natural sense of propriety, avoided exasperating the fallen party by empty sarcasm ;
he did not triumph over his conquered fellow-burgesses ; l
he mentioned Pompeius often and always with respect, and caused his statue overthrown by the people to be re-erected at the senate-house, when the latter was restored,
in its earlier distinguished place. To political prosecutions after the victory Caesar assigned the narrowest possible limits. No investigation was instituted into the various communications which the constitutional party had held even with nominal Caesarians ; Caesar threw the piles
of papers found in the enemy's headquarters at Pharsalus and Thapsus into the fire unread, and spared himself and the country from political processes against individuals suspected of high treason. Further, all the common soldiers who had followed their Roman or provincial officers into the contest against Caesar came off with impunity. The sole exception made was in the case of those Roman burgesses, who had taken service in the army of the Numidian king Juba; their property was confiscated by way of penalty for their treason. Even
to the officers of the conquered party Caesar had granted unlimited pardon up to the close of the Spanish campaign
of "05 ; but he became convinced that in this he had 49. gone too far, and that the removal at least of the leaders among them was inevitable. The rule by which he was thenceforth guided was, that every one who after the
capitulation
of Ilerda had served as an officer in the
1 The triumph after the battle of Munda subsequently to be mentioned probably had reference only to the Lusitanians who served in great cumbers in the conquered army.
3*i
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
enemy's army or had sat in the opposition-senate, if he survived the close of the struggle, forfeited his property and his political rights, and was banished from Italy for life ; if he did not survive the close of the struggle, his property at least fell to the state; but any one of these, who had formerly accepted pardon from Caesar and was once more found in the ranks of the enemy, thereby forfeited his life. These rules were however materially modified in the execution. The sentence of death was actually executed only against a very few of the numerous backsliders. In the confiscation of the property of the fallen not only were the debts attaching to the several portions of the estate as well as the claims of the widows for their dowries paid off, as was reasonable, but a portion of the paternal estate was left also to the children of the deceased. Lastly not a few of those, who in consequence
of those rules were liable to banishment and confiscation of property, were at once pardoned entirely or got off with
fines, like the African capitalists who were impressed as members of the senate of Utica. And even the others almost without exception got their freedom and property restored to them, if they could only prevail on themselves to petition Caesar to that effect ; on several who declined to do so, such as the consular Marcus Marcellus, pardon
44. was even conferred unasked, and ultimately in 710 a general amnesty was issued for all who were still unre- called.
Amnesty.
The republican opposition submitted to be pardoned ; but it was not reconciled. Discontent with the new order of things and exasperation against the unwonted ruler were general. For open political resistance there was indeed no farther opportunity —it was hardly worth taking into account, that some oppositional tribunes on occasion of the question of title acquired for themselves the republican crown of martyrdom by a demonstrative intervention against
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
3a1
those who had called Caesar king — but republicanism found expression all the more decidedly as an opposition of sentiment, and in secret agitation and plotting. Not a hand stirred when the Imperator appeared in public. There was abundance of wall-placards and sarcastic verses full of bitter and telling popular satire against the new monarchy. When a comedian ventured on a republican allusion, he was saluted with the loudest applause. The praise of Cato formed the fashionable theme of oppositional pamphleteers, and their writings found a public all the more grateful because even literature was no longer free. Caesar indeed combated the republicans even now on their own field ; he himself and his abler confidants
to the Cato -literature with Anticatones, and the republican and Caesarian scribes fought round the dead hero of Utica like the Trojans and Hellenes round the dead body of Patroclus ; but as a matter of course in this conflict —where the public thoroughly republican in its feelings was judge —the Caesarians had the worst of it No course remained but to overawe the authors; on which account men well known and dangerous in a literary point of view, such as Publius Nigidius Figulus and Aulus Caecina, had more difficulty in obtaining permission to return to Italy than other exiles, while the oppositional writers tolerated in Italy were subjected to
a practical censorship, the restraints of which were all the more annoying that the measure of punishment to be dreaded was utterly arbitrary. 1 The underground machinations of the overthrown parties against the new monarchy will be more fitly set forth in another connec tion. Here it is sufficient to say that risings of pre tenders as well as of republicans were incessantly brewing
1 Any one who desires to compare the old and new hardships of authors will find opportunity of doing so in the letter of Caecina (Cicero, Att. fam. ri. 7).
replied
VOL. V
X54
Beanngof
towards the parties.
3a3 THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
throughout the Roman empire ; that the flames of civil war kindled now by the Pompeians, now by the republicans, again burst forth brightly at various places ; and that in the capital there was perpetual conspiracy against the life of the monarch. But Caesar could not be induced by these plots even to surround himself permanently with a body-guard, and usually contented himself with making known the detected conspiracies by public placards.
However much Caesar was wont to treat all things relating to his personal safety with daring indifference, he could not possibly conceal from himself the very serious danger with which this mass of malcontents threatened not merely himself but also his creations. If nevertheless, disregarding all the warning and urgency of his friends, he without deluding himself as to the implacability of the very opponents to whom he showed mercy, persevered with marvellous composure and energy in the course of pardon ing by far the greater number of them, he did so neither from the chivalrous magnanimity of a proud, nor from the sentimental clemency of an effeminate, nature, but from the
correct statesmanly consideration that vanquished
are disposed of more rapidly and with less public injury by their absorption within the state than by any attempt to extirpate them by proscription or to eject them from the commonwealth by banishment Caesar could not for his high objects dispense with the constitutional party itself, which in fact embraced not the aristocracy merely but all the elements of a free and national spirit among the Italian burgesses; for his schemes, which contemplated the re novation of the antiquated state, he needed the whole mass of talent, culture, hereditary and self-acquired distinction, which this party embraced; and in this sense he may well have named the pardoning of his opponents the finest reward of victory. Accordingly the most prominent chiefs of the defeated parties were indeed removed, but full pardon
parties
chaf. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
323
was not withheld from the men of the second and third rank and especially of the younger generation ; they were not, however, allowed to sulk in passive opposition, but were by more or less gentle pressure induced to take an active part in the new administration, and to accept honours and offices from it As with Henry the Fourth and William of Orange, so with Caesar his greatest difficulties
began only after the victory. Every revolutionary conqueror learns by experience that, if after vanquishing his opponents
he would not remain like Cinna and Sulla a mere party- chief, but would like Caesar, Henry the Fourth, and William of Orange substitute the welfare of the commonwealth for the necessarily one-sided programme of his own party, for the moment all parties, his own as well as the vanquished, unite against the new chief; and the more so, the more great and pure his idea of his new vocation. The friends of the constitution and the Pompeians, though doing homage with the lips to Caesar, bore yet in heart a grudge either at monarchy or at least at the dynasty ; the degen erate democracy was in open rebellion against Caesar from the moment of its perceiving that Caesar's objects were by
no means its own ; even the personal adherents of Caesar murmured, when they found that their chief was establishing instead of a state of condottieri a monarchy equal and just towards all, and that the portions of gain accruing to them were to be diminished by the accession of the vanquished. This settlement of the commonwealth was acceptable to no party, and had to be imposed on his associates no less than on his opponents. Caesar's own position was now in a certain sense more imperilled than before the victory ; but what he lost, the state gained. By annihilating the parties and not simply sparing the partisans but allowing every man
of talent or even mereiy of good descent to attain to office irrespective of his political past, he gained for his great building all the working power extant in the state ; and not
Caesar's work.
only so, but the voluntary or compulsory participation of men of all parties in the same work led the nation also over imperceptibly to the newly prepared ground. The fact that this reconciliation of the parties was for the moment only external and that they were for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things
than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well that antagonisms lose their keenness when brought into such outward union, and that only in this way can the statesman anticipate the work of time, which alone is able finally to heal such a strife by laying the old genera tion in the grave. Still less did he inquire who hated him or meditated his assassination. Like every genuine states man he served not the people for reward—not even for the reward of their love—but sacrificed the favour of his con temporaries for the blessing of posterity, and above all for the permission to save and renew his nation.
In attempting to give a detailed account of the mode in which the transition was effected from the old to the new state of things, we must first of all recollect that Caesar came not to begin, but to complete. The plan of a new polity suited to the times, long ago projected by Gaius Gracchus, had been maintained by his adherents and suc cessors with more or less of spirit and success, but without wavering. Caesar, from the outset and as it were by hereditary right the head of the popular party, had for thirty years borne aloft its banner without ever changing
or even so much as concealing his colours ; he remained democrat even when monarch. As he accepted without limitation, apart of course from the preposterous projects of Catilina and Clodius, the heritage of his party ; as he dis played the bitterest, even personal, hatred to the aristocracy and the genuine aristocrats ; and as he retained unchanged the essential ideas of Roman democracy, viz. alleviation of the burdens of debtors, transmarine colonization, gradual
324
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chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
325
equalization of the differences of rights among the classes belonging to the state, emancipation of the executive power from the senate : his monarchy was so little at variance with democracy, that democracy on the contrary only attained its completion and fulfilment by means of that monarchy. For this monarchy was not the Oriental despotism of divine right, but a monarchy such as Gaius Gracchus wished to found, such as Pericles and Cromwell founded —the representation of the nation by the man in whom it puts supreme and unlimited confidence. The ideas, which lay at the foundation of Caesar's work, were so far not strictly new ; but to him belongs their realization, which after all is everywhere the main matter ; and to him pertains the grandeur of execution, which would probably have surprised the brilliant projector himself if he could have seen and which has impressed, and will always impress, every one to whom has been presented in the living reality or in the mirror of history—to whatever his torical epoch or whatever shade of politics he may belong
—according to the measure of his ability to comprehend human and historical greatness, with deep and ever-deepen ing emotion and admiration.
At this point however proper expressly once for all to claim what the historian everywhere tacitly presumes, and to protest against the custom—common to simplicity and perfidy —of using historical praise and historical censure, dissociated from the given circumstances, as phrases of general application, and in the present case of construing the judgment as to Caesar into judgment as to what called Caesarism. It true that the history of past cen turies ought to be the instructress of the present; but not in the vulgar sense, as one could simply by turning over the leaves discover the conjunctures of the present in the records of the past, and collect from these the symptoms for political diagnosis and the specifics for prescription
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it
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THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
it is instructive only so far as the observation of older forms of culture reveals the organic conditions of civilization generally— the fundamental forces everywhere alike, and the manner of their combination everywhere different —and leads and encourages men, not to unreflecting imitation, but to independent reproduction. In this sense the history of Caesar and of Roman Imperialism, with all the unsur passed greatness of the master- worker, with all the historical necessity of the work, is in truth a sharper censure of
modern autocracy than could be written by the hand of man. According to the same law of nature in virtue of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic machine, every constitution however defective which gives play to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely surpasses the most brilliant and humane absolutism ; for the former is capable of development and therefore living, the latter is what it is and therefore dead. This law of nature has verified itself in the Roman absolute military monarchy and verified itself all the more com pletely, that, under the impulse of its creator's genius and in the absence of all material complications from without, that monarchy developed itself more purely and freely than any similar state. From Caesar's time, as the sequel will show and Gibbon has shown long ago, the Roman system
had only an external coherence and received only a mechanical extension, while internally it became even with him utterly withered and dead. If in the early stages of the autocracy and above all in Caesar's own soul (iv. 504) the hopeful dream of a combination of free popular development and absolute rule was still cherished, the government of the highly-gifted emperors of the Julian house soon taught men in a terrible form how far it was possible to hold fire and water in the same vessel. Caesar's work was necessary and
salutary, not because it was or could be fraught with bless ing in itself, but because —with the national organization of
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antiquity, which was based on slavery and was utterly a stranger to republican-constitutional representation, and in presence of the legitimate urban constitution which in the course of five hundred years had ripened into oligarchic absolutism —absolute military monarchy was the copestone logically necessary and the least of evils. When once the slave-holding aristocracy in Virginia and the Carolinas shall have carried matters as far as their congeners in the Sullan Rome, Caesarism will there too be legitimized at the bar of the spirit of history ; 1 where it appears under other con ditions of development, it is at once a caricature and a usurpation. But history will not submit to curtail the true Caesar of his due honour, because her verdict may in the presence of bad Caesars lead simplicity astray and may give to roguery occasion for lying and fraud. She too is a Bible, and if she cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool from misunderstanding and the devil from quoting her, she too will be able to bear with, and to requite, them both.
The position of the new supreme head of the state Dictator-
p-
appears formally, at least in the first instance, as a dictator- ship. Caesar took it up at first after his return from Spain
in 705, but laid it down again after a few days, and waged 49. the decisive campaign of 706 simply as consul — this was 48. the office his tenure of which was the primary occasion
for the outbreak of the civil war (p. 176), But in the autumn of this year after the battle of Pharsalus he reverted
to the dictatorship and had it repeatedly entrusted to him,
at first for an undefined period, but from the 1st January 709 as an annual office, and then in January or February 46. 710* for the duration of his life, so that he in the end 44.
1 When this was written —in the year 1857 —no one could foresee how aoon the mightiest struggle and most glorious victory as yet recorded in human annals would save the United States from this fearful trial, and secure the future existence of an absolute self-governing freedom not to be permanently kept in check by any local Caesarism.
' On the 26th January 710 Caesar is still called dictator IIII. (triumphal 44.
-
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expressly dropped the earlier reservation as to his laying down the office and gave formal expression to its tenure for life in the new title of dictator perpetuus. This dictatorship, both in its first ephemeral and in its second enduring tenure, was not that of the old constitution, but — what was coincident with this merely in the name — the supreme exceptional office as arranged by Sulla (iv. i00) ; an office, the functions of which were fixed, not by the constitutional ordinances regarding the supreme single magistracy, but by special decree of the people, to such an effect that the holder re ceived, in the commission to project laws and to regulate the commonwealth, an official prerogative de jure un limited which superseded the republican partition of powers. Those were merely applications of this general prerogative to the particular case, when the holder of power was further entrusted by separate acts with the right of deciding on war and peace without consulting the senate and the people, with the independent disposal of armies and finances, and with the nomination of the provincial governors. Caesar could accordingly de jure assign to himself even such prerogatives as lay outside of the proper functions of the magistracy and even outside of the province of state-powers at all ; 1 and it appears almost as a concession on his part, that he abstained from nominating the magistrates instead of the Comitia and limited himself to claiming a binding right of proposal for a proportion of the praetors and of the lower magistrates ; and that he moreover had himself empowered by special decree of the people for the creation of patricians, which was not at all allowable according to use and wont.
table) ; on the 18th February of this year he was already dittator perpetuus (Cicero, Philip, 34, 87). Comp. Staatmcht, u\» 716.
The formulation of that dictatorship appears to have expressly brought into prominence among other things the " improvement of morals " but Caesar did not hold on his own part an office of this sort (Staatsrtcht,
ii. » 705).
;
1
ii.
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For other magistracies in the proper sense there remained Other
alongside of this dictatorship no room ; Caesar did not t^,^
take up the censorship as such,1 but he doubtless exercised *""* »«** —. , , buttons,
censorial rights particularly the important right of nomi nating senators —after a comprehensive fashion.
He held the consulship frequently alongside of the dictatorship, once even without colleague; but he by no means attached it permanently to his person, and he gave no effect to the calls addressed to him to undertake it for five or even for ten years in succession.
Caesar had no need to have the superintendence of worship now committed to him, since he was already pontifex maximus (iv. 460). As a matter of course the membership of the college of augurs was conferred on him, and generally an abundance of old and new honorary rights, such as the title of a " father of the fatherland," the designation of the month of his birth by the name which it
still bears of Julius, and other manifestations of the incipient courtly tone which ultimately ran into utter deification. Two only of the arrangements deserve to be singled out : namely that Caesar was placed on the same footing with the tribunes of the people as regards their special personal inviolability, and that the appellation of Imperator was permanently attached to his person and borne by him as a title alongside of his other official designations.
Men of judgment will not require any proof, either that Caesar intended to engraft on the commonwealth his supreme power, and this not merely for a few years or even as a personal office for an indefinite period somewhat like Sulla's regency, but as an essential and permanent organ ; or that he selected for the new institution an appropriate and simple designation ; for, if it is a political blunder to create
1 Caesar bears the designation of imperator always without any number indicative of iteration, and always in the first place after his name (StaatsruU, ii* 767, note 1).
S
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Caesar Imperator.
names without substantial meaning, it is scarcely a less error to set up the substance of plenary power without a name. Only it is not easy to determine what definitive formal shape Caesar had in view; partly because in this period of transition the ephemeral and the permanent buildings are not clearly discriminated from each other, partly because the devotion of his clients which already anticipated the nod of their master loaded him with a multitude —offensive doubtless to himself—of decrees of confidence and laws conferring honours. Least of all could the new monarchy attach itself to the consulship, just on account of the collegiate character that could not well be separated from this office ; Caesar also evidently laboured to degrade this hitherto supreme magistracy into an empty title, and subsequently, when he undertook he did not hold through the whole year, but before the year expired gave away to personages of secondary rank. The dictatorship came practically into prominence most frequently and most definitely, but probably only because Caesar wished to use in the significance which had of old in the constitutional machinery —as an extraordinary presidency for surmounting extraordinary crises. On the other hand
was far from recommending itself as an expression for the new monarchy, for the magistracy was inherently clothed with an exceptional and unpopular character, and could hardly be expected of the representative of the democracy that he should choose for its permanent organiza tion that form, which the most gifted champion of the opposing party had created for his own ends.
The new name of Imperator, on the other hand, appears in everv respect by far more appropriate for the formal
expression
of the monarchy just because in this
application new, and no definite outward occasion for its
During the republican period the name Imperator, which denotes the
victorious general, was laid aside with the end of the campaign as permanent title first appears in the case of Caesar.
1 it
it it it
1
is ;
a
it
;
it
it,
it
it
ckaf. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
331
introduction is apparent The new wine might not be put into old bottles ; here is a new name for the new thing, and that name most pregnantly sums up what the demo cratic party had already expressed in the Gabinian law, only with less precision, as the function of its chief—the concentration and perpetuation of official power (frnperiuni) in the hands of a popular chief independent of the senate. We find on Caesar's coins, especially those of the last period, alongside of the dictatorship the title of Imperator prevailing, and in Caesar's law as to political crimes the monarch seems to have been designated by this name. Accordingly the following times, though not immediately, connected the monarchy with the name of Imperator. To lend to this new office at once a democratic and religious sanction, Caesar probably intended to associate with it once for all on the one hand the tribunician power, on the other the supreme pontificate.
That the new organization was not meant to be restricted merely to the lifetime of its founder, is beyond doubt ; but he did not succeed in settling the especially difficult question of the succession, and it must remain an undecided point whether he had it in view to institute some sort of form for the election of a successor, such as had subsisted in the case of the original kingly office, or whether he wished to introduce for the supreme office not merely the tenure for life but also the hereditary^ character, as his adopted son subsequently maintained. 1 It is not improbable that he had the intention of combining in seme measure the
two systems, and of arranging the succession, similarly to the
1 That in Caesar's lifetime the imperium as well as the supreme pontificate was rendered by a formal legislative act hereditary for his agnate descendants — of his own body or through the medium of adoption —was asserted by Caesar the Younger as his legal title to rule. As our traditional accounts stand, the existence of such a law or resolution of the senate must be decidedly called in question ; but doubtless it remains possible that Caesar intended the issue of such* decree. (Com p. Staatsrakt, ii. * 787, 1106. )
333
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book V
course followed by Cromwell and by Napoleon, in such a way that the ruler should be succeeded in rule by his son, but, if he had no son, or the son should not seem fitted for the succession, the ruler should of his free choice nominate his successor in the form of adoption.
In point of state law the new office of Imperator was based on the position which the consuls or proconsuls occupied outside of the pomerium, so that primarily the military command, but, along with this, the supreme judi cial and consequently also the administrative power, were included in it1 But the authority of the Imperator was qualitatively superior to the consular-proconsular, in so far as the former was not limited as respected time or space, but was held for life and operative also in the capital ; * as the
1 The widely-spread opinion, which sees in the imperial office of Imperator nothing but the dignity of general of the empire tenable for life, is not warranted either by the signification of the word or by the view taken by the old authorities. Impcrium is the power of command, imperator is the possessor of that power ; in these words as in the corre sponding Greek terms rpdros, airroKpdrwp so little is there implied a specific military reference, that it is on the contrary the very characteristic of the Roman official power, where it appears purely and completely, to embrace in it war and process—that the military and the civil power of command —as one inseparable whole. Dio says quite correctly (liii. 17 com zliii. 44 lii. 41) that the name Imperator was assumed by the emperors "to indicate their full power instead of the title of king and dictator (rpdt SrjXucnv rrfl avtorcXout ff$wv i^ovatas, optI rift tov (5aci\/ws tov re durrd-
for these other older titles disappeared in name, but in reality the title of Imperator gives the same prerogatives (ro Si 5Jj tpyor avT&v tov avToKp&topos rparrryoptf j3if}<uodvt<u), for instance the right
of levying soldiers, imposing taxes, declaring war and concluding peace, exercising the supreme authority over burgess and non-burgess in and out of the city and punishing any one at any place capitally or otherwise, and in general of assuming the prerogatives connected in the earliest times with the supreme imperium. " It could not well be said in plainer terms, that imperator nothing at all but a synonym for rex, just as imperare coincides with regere.
When Augustus in constituting the principate resumed the Caesarian imperium, this was done with the restriction that should be limited as to space and in certain sense also as to time the proconsular power of the emperors, which was nothing but just this imperium, was not to come into application as regards Rome and Italy (Staatsrtcht, ii. * 854). On this element rests the essential distinction between the Caesarian imperium and the Augustan principate, just as on the other hand the real equality
rwpos frurX^reo*)
;
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*; rjj
a
is
;
;
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is,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
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Imperator could not, while the consul could, be checked by colleagues of equal power ; and as all the restrictions placed in course of time on the original supreme official power — especially the obligation to give place to the provocatio and to respect the advice of the senate —did not apply to the Imperator.
In a word, this new office of Imperator was nothing else
than the primitive regal office re-established ; for it was
those very restrictions —as respected the temporal and local office, limitation of power, the collegiate arrangement, and the co operation of the senate or the community that was necessary
for certain cases — which distinguished the consul from the
king 318 /). There hardly trait of the new monarchy which was not found in the old the union of
the supreme military, judicial, and administrative authority
in the hands of the prince religious presidency over
the commonwealth the right of issuing ordinances with binding power the reduction of the senate to council
of state the revival of the patriciate and of the praefecture
of the city. But still more striking than these analogies
the internal similarity of the monarchy of Servius Tullius
and the monarchy of Caesar those old kings of Rome
with all their plenitude of power had yet been rulers of
free community and themselves the protectors of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come
to destroy liberty but to fulfil and primarily to break
the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy. Nor need
surprise us that Caesar, anything but political antiquary,
went back five hundred years to find the model for his
new state for, seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained at all times
ship restricted number of special laws, the idea of
the regal office itself had no means become obsolete.
of the two institutions rests on the imperfection with which even in prin ciple and still more in practice that limit was realized.
king
Re-estab-
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;
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by
by ;
is a
it, a
if
it a is
;
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;
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44.
At very various periods and from very different sides— in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's own dictatorship —there had been during the republic a practical recurrence to it ; indeed by a certain logical necessity, whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged, in contradistinction to the usual limited imperium, the unlimited imperium which was simply nothing else than the regal power.
Lastly, outward considerations also recommended this recurrence to the former kingly position. Mankind have infinite difficulty in reaching new creations, and therefore cherish the once developed forms as sacred heirlooms. Accordingly Caesar very judiciously connected himself with Servius Tullius, in the same way as subsequently Charlemagne connected himself with Caesar, and Napoleon attempted at least to connect himself with Charlemagne. He did so, not in a circuitous way and secretly, but, as well as his successors, in the most open manner possible ; it was indeed the very object of this connection to find a clear, national and popular form of expression for the
new state. From ancient times there stood on the Capitol the statues of those seven kings, whom the conventional history of Rome was wont to bring on the stage ; Caesar ordered his own to be erected beside them as the eighth. He appeared publicly in the costume of the old kings of Alba. In his new law as to political crimes the principal variation from that of Sulla was, that there was placed alongside of the collective community, and on a level with
the Imperator as the living and personal expression of the people. In the formula used for political oaths there was added to the Jovis and the Penates of the Roman people the Genius of the Imperator. The outward badge of monarchy was, according to the view univerally diffused in antiquity, the image of the monarch on the coins from the year 710
the head of Caesar appears on those of the Roman state.
334
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;
it,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
335
There could accordingly be no complaint at least on the score that Caesar left the public in the dark as to his view
of his position ; as distinctly and as formally as possible he came forward not merely as monarch, but as very king of Rome. It is possible even, although not exactly probable,
and at any rate of subordinate importance, that he had it
in view to designate his official power not with the new name of Imperator, but directly with the old one of King. 1 Even in his lifetime many of his enemies as of his friends were of opinion that he intended to have himself expressly nominated king of Rome ; several indeed of his most vehement adherents suggested to him in different
and at different times that he should assume the crown; most strikingly of all, Marcus Antonius, when he as consul offered the diadem to Caesar before all the people (15 Feb. 710). But Caesar rejected these proposals without 44. exception at once. If he at the same time took steps against those who made use of these incidents to stir republican opposition, it by no means follows from this that he was not in earnest with his rejection. The
1 On this question there may be difference of opinion, whereas the hypo thesis that it was Caesar's intention to rule the Romans as Imperator, the non-Romans as Rex, must be simply dismissed. It is based solely on the story that in the sitting of the senate in which Caesar was assassinated a Sibylline utterance was brought forward by one of the priests in charge of the oracles, Lucius Cotta, to the effect that the Parthians could only be vanquished by a " king," and in consequence of this the resolution was adopted to commit to Caesar regal power over the Roman provinces. This story was certainly in circulation immediately after Caesar's death.
But not only does it nowhere find any sort of even indirect confirmation, but it is even expressly pronounced false by the contemporary Cicero (Dt Div. ii. 54, 119) and reported by the later historians, especially by Suetonius (79) and Dio (xliv.
15) merely as a rumour which they are far from wishing to guarantee ; and it is under such circumstances no better accredited by the fact of Plutarch (Cots. 60, 64 ; Brut 10) and Appian (B. C. no) repeating after their wont, the former by way of anecdote, the latter by way of causal explanation. But the story not merely unattested also intrinsically impossible. Even leaving out of account that Caesar had too much intellect and too much political tact
to decide important questions of state after the oligarchic fashion by stroke of the orarle-machinery, he could never think of thus formally and legally splitting uj the state which he wished to reduce to a level.
ways
a
ii. ;
it is
is
it
33«
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
assumption that these invitations took place at his bidding, with the view of preparing the multitude for the unwonted spectacle of the Roman diadem, utterly misapprehends the mighty power of the sentimental opposition with which Caesar had to reckon, and which could not be rendered more compliant, but on the contrary
The new court
necessarily gained a broader basis, through such a public recognition of its warrant on the part of Caesar himself. It may have been
the uncalled-for zeal of vehement adherents alone that occasioned these incidents ; it may be also, that Caesar merely permitted or even suggested the scene with Antonius, in order to put an end in as marked a manner as possible to the inconvenient gossip by a declinature which took place before the eyes of the burgesses and was inserted by his com mand even in the calendar of the state and could not, in fact, be well revoked. The probability is that Caesar, who
appreciated alike the value of a convenient formal designa tion and the antipathies of the multitude which fasten more on the names than on the essence of things, was resolved to avoid the name of king as tainted with an ancient curse and as more familiar to the Romans of his time when applied to the despots of the east than to their own Numa and Servius, and to appropriate the substance of the regal office under the title of Imperator.
But, whatever may have been the definitive title present to his thoughts, the sovereign ruler was there, and accord ingly the court established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp, insipidity, and emptiness. Caesar appeared in public not in the robe of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes, but in the robe wholly of
purple which was reckoned in antiquity as the proper regal attire, and received, seated on his golden chair and without rising from the solemn procession of the senate. The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories, and of vows, filled the calendar. When Caesar
it,
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
337
came to the capital, his principal servants marched forth
in troops to great distances so as to meet and escort him.
To be near to him began to be of such importance, that
the rents rose in the quarter of the city where he dwelt Personal interviews with him were rendered so difficult
by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience, that
Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to com- munieate even with his intimate friends in writing, and
that persons even of the highest rank had to wait for hours
in the antechamber. People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself, that they no longer approached
a fellow-citizen. There arose a monarchical aristocracy,
which was in a remarkable manner at once new and old,
and which had sprung out of the idea of casting into the nobility, shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of royalty,
the nobility by the patriciate. The patrician body still subsisted, although without essential privileges as an order, in the character of a close aristocratic guild 370) but as
could receive no new gentes 333) had dwindled away more and more in the course of centuries, and in the time of Caesar there were not more than fifteen or sixteen patrician gentes still existence. Caesar, himself sprung from one of them, got the right of creating new patrician gentes conferred on the Imperator by decree of the people, and so established, in contrast to the republican nobility, the new aristocracy of the patriciate, which most happily combined all the requisites of monarchical aristocracy— the charm of antiquity, entire dependence on the govern ment, and total insignificance. On all sides the new sove reignty revealed itself.
Under monarch thus practically unlimited there could hardly be scope for constitution at all — still less for continuance of the hitherto existing commonwealth based on the legal co-operation of the burgesses, the senate,
and the several magistrates. Caesar fully and definitely
The new P"? TM*"
vox.
155
V
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;
LeguUi oa*
reverted to the tradition of the regal period ; the burgess- assembly remained — what it had already been in that period —by the side of and with the king the supreme and ultimate expression of the will of the sovereign people ; the senate was brought back to its original destination of giving advice to the ruler when he requested it ; and lastly the ruler concentrated in his person anew the whole magis terial authority, so that there existed no other independent state-official by his side any more than by the side of the kings of the earliest times.
For legislation the democratic monarch adhered to the primitive maxim of Roman state-law, that the community of the people in concert with the king convoking them had alone the power of organically regulating the common wealth ; and he had his constitutive enactments regularly sanctioned by decree of the people. The free energy and the authority half-moral, half-political, which the yea or nay of those old warrior-assemblies had carried with could not indeed be again instilled into the so-called comitia of this period; the co-operation of the burgesses in legisla tion, which in the old constitution had been extremely limited but real and living, was in the new practically an unsubstantial shadow. There was therefore no need of special restrictive measures against the comitia many years' experience had shown that every government—the
as well as the monarch—easily kept on good terms with this formal sovereign. These Caesarian comitia were an important element in the Caesarian system and indirectly of practical significance, only in so far as they served to retain in principle the sovereignty of the people and to constitute an energetic protest against sultanism.
But at the same time—as not only obvious of itself, but also distinctly attested —the other maxim also of the oldest state -law was revived by Caesar himself, and not merely fur the first time by his successors viz. that what
Edict*.
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oligarchy
;
is
is
;
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chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
339
the supreme, or rather sole, magistrate commands is un conditionally valid so long as he remains in office, and that, while legislation no doubt belongs only to the king and the burgesses in concert, the royal edict is equivalent to law at least till the demission of its author.
While the democratic king thus conceded to the com- The senate munity of the people at least a formal share in the sove- ^a*e rsignty, it was by no means his intention to divide his council authority with what had hitherto been the governing body, —JzJLj, the college of senators. The senate of Caesar was to be—
in a quite different way from the later senate of Augustus — nothing but a supreme council of state, which he made use of for advising with him beforehand as to laws, and for the issuing of the more important administrative ordinances through or at least under its name — for cases in fact occurred where decrees of senate were issued, of which none of the senators recited as present at their preparation had any cognizance. There were no material difficulties of form in reducing the senate to its original deliberative position, which had overstepped more de facto than de
jure but this case was necessary to protect himself from practical resistance, for the Roman senate was as much the headquarters of the opposition to Caesar as the Attic Areopagus was of the opposition to Pericles.
Chiefly for this reason the number of senators, which had hitherto amounted at most to six hundred in its normal condition (iv. 113) and had been greatly reduced by the recent crises,
was raised by extraordinary supplement to nine hundred; and at the same time, to keep at least up to this mark, the number of quaestors to be nominated annually, that of members annually admitted to the senate, was raised from twenty to forty. 1 The extraordinary filling up of the senate
According to the probable calculation formerly assumed (! ». 113), this would yield an average aggregate number of from 1000 to 1200 senators.
1
;
is
it
in
it
it
it,
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THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
was undertaken by the monarch alone. In the case of the ordinary additions he secured to himself a permanent influence through the circumstance, that the electoral colleges were bound by law1 to give their votes to the first twenty candidates for the quaestorship who were pro vided with letters of recommendation from the monarch ; besides, the crown was at liberty to confer the honorary rights attaching to the quaestorship or to any office superior to and consequently seat in the senate in particular, by way of exception even on individuals not qualified. The selection of the extraordinary members who were added naturally fell in the main on adherents of the new order of things, and introduced, along with equites of respectable standing, various dubious and plebeian person ages into the proud corporation —former senators who had been erased from the roll by the censor or in consequence of judicial sentence, foreigners from Spain and Gaul who had to some extent to learn their Latin in the senate, men lately subaltern officers who had not previously received even the equestrian ring, sons of freedmen or of such as
followed dishonourable trades, and other elements of like kind. The exclusive circles of the nobility, to whom this change in the personal composition of the senate naturally gave the bitterest offence, saw in an intentional depreciation of the very institution itself. Caesar was not capable of such self-destructive policy he was as deter mined not to let himself be governed by his council as he was convinced of the necessity of the institute in itself. They might more correctly have discerned this proceeding the intention of the monarch to take away from the senate its former character of an exclusive representation of the
oligarchic aristocracy, and to make once more—what
This certainly had reference merely to the elections for the years 711 42. and 71a (Staattrecht, ii. 3 730) but the arrangement was doubtless meant
to become permanent.
48.
;
a
*
a
it,
it
in
;
it
it a
a
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
341
had been in the regal period—a state-council representing all classes of persons belonging to the state through their most intelligent elements, and not necessarily excluding the man of humble birth or even the foreigner ; just as those earliest kings introduced non - burgesses (u 102, 329), Caesar introduced non-Italians into his senate.
While the rule of the nobility was thus set aside and its Personal
existence undermined,' and while the senate in its new form BoveTM- ment by
was merely a tool of the monarch, autocracy was at the same time most strictly carried out in the administration and government of the state, and the whole executive was concentrated in the hands of the monarch. First of all, the Imperator naturally decided in person every question of any moment. Caesar was able to carry personal govern ment to an extent which we puny men can hardly conceive, and which is not to be explained solely from the un paralleled rapidity and decision of his working, but has moreover its ground in a more general cause. When we see Caesar, Sulla, Gaius Gracchus, and Roman statesmen in general displaying throughout an activity which tran scends our notions of human powers of working, the reason lies, not in any change that human nature has undergone since that time, but in the change which has taken place since then in the organization of the household. The Roman house was a machine, in which even the mental powers of the slaves and freedmen yielded their produce to the master ; a master, who knew how to govern these, worked as it were with countless minds. It was the beau ideal of bureaucratic centralization ; which our counting- house system strives indeed zealously to imitate, but remains as far behind its prototype as the modern power of capital is inferior to the ancient system of slavery.
Caesar knew how to profit by this advantage ; wherever any post demanded special confidence, we see him filling it up on principle —so far as other considerations at all
Caesar
s
342
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permit —with his slaves, freedmen, or clients of humble birth. His works as a whole show what an organizing genius like his could accomplish with such an instrument ; but to the question, how in detail these marvellous feats were achieved, we have no adequate answer. Bureau cracy resembles a manufactory also in this respect, that the work done does not appear as that of the individual who has worked at but as that of the manufactory which stamps This much only quite clear, that Caesar in his work had no helper at all who exerted personal in fluence over or was even so much as initiated into the whole plan; he was not only the sole master, but he worked also without skilled associates, merely with common labourers.
With respect to details as matter of course in strictly political affairs Caesar avoided, so far as was at all possible, any delegation of his functions. Where was inevitable, as especially when during his frequent absence from Rome he had need of higher organ there, the person destined for this purpose was, significantly enough, not the legal deputy of the monarch, the prefect of the city, but confidant without officially-recognized jurisdiction, usually Caesar's banker, the cunning and pliant Phoenician merchant Lucius Cornelius Balbus from Gades. In ad-
in matters
""*' ministration Caesar was above all careful to resume the
keys of the state-chest —which the senate had appropriated to itself after the fall of the regal power, and by means of which had possessed itself of the government—and to entrust them only to those servants who with their persons were absolutely and exclusively devoted to him. In respect of ownership indeed the private means of the monarch remained, of course, strictly separate from the property of the state; but Caesar took in hand the administration of the whole financial and monetary system of the state, and conducted entirely in the way in which
it
a
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it
it. it
a
a
it,
it
a
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
343
he and the Roman grandees generally were wont to manage the administration of their own means and sub stance. For the future the levying of the provincial revenues and in the main also the management of the coinage were entrusted to the slaves and freedmen of the
Imperator, and men of the senatorial order were excluded from it—a momentous step, out of which grew in course of time the important class of procurators and the " imperial household. "
Of the governorships on the other hand, which, after they
had handed their financial business over to the new imperial £°verno,% tax-receivers, were still more than they had formerly been essentially military commands, that of Egypt alone was transferred to the monarch's own retainers. The country
of the Nile, in a peculiar manner geographically isolated
and politically centralized, was better fitted than any other
district to break off permanently under an able leader from
the central power, as the attempts which had repeatedly
been made by hard-pressed Italian party-chiefs to establish themselves there during the recent crisis sufficiently proved. Probably it was just this consideration that induced Caesar
not to declare the land formally a province, but to leave the harmless Lagids there; and certainly for this reason the legions stationed in Egypt were not entrusted to a man
to the senate or, in other words, to the former government, but this command was, just like the posts of tax-receivers, treated as a menial office 281). In general however the consideration had weight with Caesar, that the soldiers of Rome should not, like those of Oriental kings,
be commanded by lackeys. It remained the rule to entrust
the more important governorships to those who had been consuls, the less important to those who had been praetors; and once more, instead of the five years' interval prescribed
by the law of 702 (p. 147), the commencement of the 62. governorship probably was the ancient fashion annexed
belonging
in the
in
(p.
344
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
in the
directly to the close of the official functions in the city. On the other hand the distribution of the provinces among the qualified candidates, which had hitherto been arranged sometimes by decree of the people or senate, sometimes by concert among the magistrates or by lot, passed over to the monarch. And, as the consuls were frequently induced to abdicate before the end of the year and to make room for after- elected consuls {consules suffectt) ; as, moreover, the number of praetors annually nominated was raised from eight to sixteen, and the nomination of half of them was entrusted to the Imperator in the same way as that of the half of the quaestors ; and, lastly, as there was reserved to the Imperator the right of nominating, if not titular consuls, at any rate titular praetors and titular quaestors : Caesar secured a sufficient number of candidates acceptable to him for filling up the governorships. Their recall remained of course left to the discretion of the regent as well as their nomination ; as a rule it was assumed that the consular governor should not remain more than two years, nor the praetorian more than one year, in the province,
Lastly, so far as concerns the administration of the city which was his capital and residence, the Imperator evi-
tntionof
the capital, dently intended for a time to entrust this also to magis
trates similarly nominated by him. He revived the old
of the regal period 83) on different occasions he committed during his absence the adminis tration of the capital to one or more such lieutenants nomi
nated him without consulting the people and for an indefinite period, who united in themselves the functions of all the administrative magistrates and possessed even the right of coining money with their own name, although of
47. course not with their own effigy. In 707 and in the first 46. nine months of 709 there were, moreover, neither praetors nor curule aediles nor quaestors; the consuls too were
city-lieutenancy
by
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345
nominated in the former year only towards its close, and in the latter Caesar was even consul without a colleague. This looks altogether like an attempt to revive completely the old regal authority within the city of Rome, as far as the limits enjoined by the democratic past of the new monarch ; in other words, of magistrates additional to the king himself, to allow only the prefect of the city during the king's absence and the tribunes and plebeian aediles appointed for protecting popular freedom to con tinue in existence, and to abolish the consulship, the censorship, the praetorship, the curule aedileship and the quaestorship. 1 But Caesar subsequently departed from this ; he neither accepted the royal title himself, nor did he cancel those venerable names interwoven with the glorious history of the republic. The consuls, praetors, aediles, tribunes, and quaestors retained sub stantially their previous formal powers ; nevertheless their position was totally altered. It was the political idea lying at the foundation of the republic that the Roman empire was identified with the city of Rome, and in consistency with it the municipal magistrates of the capital were treated throughout as magistrates of the empire. In the monarchy of Caesar that view and this consequence
of it fell into abeyance ; the magistrates of Rome formed thenceforth only the first among the many municipalities of the empire, and the consubhip in particular became a purely titular post, which preserved a certain practical im portance only in virtue of the reversion of a higher governorship annexed to The fate, which the Roman community had been wont to prepare for the vanquished, now means of Caesar befell itself; its sovereignty over
Hence accordingly the cautious turns of expression on the mention at these magistracies in Caesar's laws cum censor aliusvc quit magistralus Romae populi censum aget (L. Jul. mun. 144) praetor isve quei Romae iure deicundo pram-it (L, Rubr. often) quaestor urianus queivt aerario praerit (L. Jul. mun. 37 et a I. ).
/-
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;
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;
;
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1
by
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The state- hierarchy,
the Roman empire was converted into a limited communal freedom within the Roman state. That at the same time the number of the praetors and quaestors was doubled, has been already mentioned; the same course was followed with the plebeian aediles, to whom two new " corn-aediles " (aediles Ceriales) were added to superintend the supplies of the capital. The appointment to those offices remained with the community, and was subject to no restriction as respected the consuls and perhaps also the tribunes of the people and plebeian aediles ; we have already adverted to the fact, that the Imperator reserved a right of proposal binding on the electors as regards the half of the praetors, curule aediles, and quaestors to be annually nominated. In general the ancient and hallowed palladia of popular freedom were not touched ; which, of course, did not prevent the individual refractory tribune of the people from being seriously interfered with and, in fact, deposed, and erased from the roll of senators.
As the Imperator was thus, for the more general and more important questions, his own minister; as he con trolled the finances by his servants, and the army by his adjutants ; and as the old republican state -magistracies were again converted into municipal magistracies of the city of Rome ; the autocracy was sufficiently established.
In the spiritual hierarchy on the other hand Caesar, though he issued a detailed law respecting this portion of the state-economy, made no material alteration, except that he connected with the person of the regent the supreme pontificate and perhaps also the membership of the higher priestly colleges generally ; and, partly in connection with this, one new stall was created in each of the three supreme colleges, and three new stalls in the fourth college of th'-
If the Roman state-hierarchy had hitherto served as a support to the ruling oligarchy, it might render precisely the same service to the new monarchy. The
banquet-masters.
char XI THE NEW MONARCHY
347
conservative religious policy of the senate was transferred to the new kings of Rome ; when the strictly conservative Varro published about this time his " Antiquities of Divine Things," the great fundamental repository of Roman state- theology, he was allowed to dedicate it to the Pontifex Maximus Caesar. The faint lustre which the worship of Jovis was still able to impart shone round the newly-estab lished throne ; and the old national faith became in its last stages the instrument of a Caesarian papacy, which, however, was from the outset but hollow and feeble.
In judicial matters, first of all, the old regal jurisdiction Regal was re-established. As the king had originally been judge jj? J£ in criminal and civil causes, without being legally bound in
the former to respect an appeal to the prerogative of mercy
in the people, or in the latter to commit the decision of the question in dispute to jurymen ; so Caesar claimed the right
of bringing capital causes as well as private processes for
sole and final decision to his own bar, and disposing of them in the event of his presence personally, in the event
of his absence by the city-lieutenant. In fact we find him,
quite after the manner of the ancient kings, now sitting in judgment publicly in the Forum of the capital on Roman burgesses accused of high treason, now holding a judicial inquiry in his house regarding the client princes accused of
the like crime ; so that the only privilege, which the Roman burgesses had as compared with the other subjects of the
king, seems to have consisted in the publicity of the judicial procedure. But this resuscitated supreme jurisdiction of
the kings, although Caesar discharged its duties with impartiality and care, could only from the nature of the
case find practical application in exceptional cases.
For the usual procedure in criminal and civil causes the Retention former republican mode of administering justice was sub- ^▼jons stantially retained. Criminal causes were still disposed of adminis- as formerly before the different jury-commissions competent justice.
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THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
to deal with the several crimes, civil causes partly before the court of inheritance or, as it was commonly called, of the centumviri, partly before the single indices ; the super intendence of judicial proceedings was as formerly con ducted in the capital chiefly by the praetors, in the provinces by the governors. Political crimes too continued even under the monarchy to be referred to a jury-commis sion ; the new ordinance, which Caesar issued respecting them, specified the acts legally punishable with precision and in a liberal spirit which excluded all prosecution of opinions, and it fixed as the penalty not death, but banish ment. As respects the selection of the jurymen, whom the senatorial party desired to see chosen exclusively from the senate and the strict Gracchans exclusively from the eques trian order, Caesar, faithful to the principle of reconciling the parties, left the matter on the footing of the com promise-law of Cotta (iv. 380), but with the modification —for which the way was probably prepared by the law
66. of Pompeius of 699 138) — that the tribuni aerarii who came from the lower ranks of the people were set aside; so that there was established rating for jurymen of at least 400,000 sesterces (^4000), and senators and equites now divided the functions of jurymen which had so long been an apple of discord between them.
Appeal monarch,
The relations of the regal and the republican jurisdiction were on the whole co-ordinate, so that any cause might ba initiated as well before the king's bar as before the com petent republican tribunal, the latter of course in the event of collision giving way on the other hand the one or the other tribunal had pronounced sentence, the cause was thereby finally disposed of. To overturn verdict pro- nounced by the jurymen duly called to act in civil or in criminal cause even the new ruler was not entitled, except where special incidents, such as corruption or violence, already according to the law of the republic
a
a a
; if
(p.
a
chap. XI THE NEW MONARCHY
349
gave occasion for cancelling the jurymen's sentence. On the other hand the principle that, as concerned any decree emanating merely from magistrates, the person aggrieved by it was entitled to appeal to the superior of the decreeing authority, probably obtained even now the great extension, out of which the subsequent imperial appellate jurisdiction arose ; perhaps all the magistrates administering law, at least the governors of all the pro vinces, were regarded so far as subordinates of the ruler, that appeal to him might be lodged from any of their decrees.
Certainly these innovations, the most important of which
—the general extension given to appeal—cannot even be ? . . ? . reckoned absolutely an improvement, by no means healed system, thoroughly the evils from which the Roman administration
of justice was suffering. Criminal procedure cannot be
sound in any slave-state, inasmuch as the task of proceed
ing against slaves lies, if not de jure, at least de facto in the
hands of the master. The Roman master, as may readily
be conceived, punished throughout the crime of his serf,
not as a crime, but only so far as it rendered the slave useless or disagreeable to him ; slave crinr'nals were merely drafted off somewhat like oxen addicted to goring, and, as the latter were sold to the butcher, so were the former sold to the fencing- booth. But even the criminal procedure against free men, which had been from the outset and always in great part continued to be a political process, had amidst the disorder of the last generations become transformed from a grave legal proceeding into a faction- fight to be fought out by means of favour, money, and violence. The blame rested jointly on all that took part in on the magistrates, the jury, the parties, even the public who were spectators but the most incurable wounds were inflicted on justice the doings of the advo cates. In proportion as the parasitic plant of Roman
Decay
; by
it,
35o
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
forensic eloquence flourished, all positive ideas of right became broken up ; and the distinction, so difficult of apprehension by the public, between opinion and evidence was in reality expelled from the Roman criminal practice. "A plain simple defendant," says a Roman advocate of much experience at this period, "may be accused of any crime at pleasure which he has or has not committed, and will be certainly condemned. " Numerous pleadings in
criminal causes have been preserved to us from this epoch; there is hardly one of them which makes even a serious attempt to fix the crime in question and to put into proper shape the proof or counterproof. 1 That the contemporary civil procedure was likewise in various respects unsound, we need hardly mention ; it too suffered from the effects of the party politics mixed up with all things, as for
•8-81. instance in the process of Publius
673), where the most contradictory decisions were given according as Cinna or Sulla had the ascendency in Rome ; and the advocates, frequently non-jurists, produced here also intentionally and unintentionally abundance of con fusion. But it was implied in the nature of the case, that party mixed itself up with such matters only by way of exception, and that here the quibbles of advocates could not so rapidly or so deeply break up the ideas of right ; accordingly the civil pleadings which we possess from this epoch, while not according to our stricter ideas effective compositions for their purpose, are yet of a far less libellous and far more juristic character than the contemporary
speeches
in criminal causes. If Caesar permitted the
1 Plura rnim multo, says Cicero in his treatise De Oratort (ii. 42, 178), primarily with reference to criminal trials, homines indicant odio ant amort cut cupiditate aut iracundia aut dolore out laetitia aul spe aut timoie aut errore aut aliqua permotione mentis, quam veritate aut praescripto aul iuris norma aliqua aut iudicii formula aut legibus. On this accordingly are founded the further instructions which he gives for advocates entering on their profession.
Quinctius (671-
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
351
curb imposed on the eloquence of advocates by Pom- peius (p. 138) to remain, or even rendered it more severe, there was at least nothing lost by this ; and much was gained, when better selected and better superintended magistrates and jurymen were nominated and the palpable corruption and intimidation of the courts came to an end. But the sacred sense of right and the reverence for the law, which it is difficult to destroy in the minds of the multitude, it is still more difficult to reproduce. Though the legislator did away with various abuses, he could not heal the root of the evil ; and it might be doubted whether time, which cures everything curable, would in this case bring relief.
The Roman military system of this period was nearly Decay of in the same condition as the Carthaginian at the time of mjijtary HannibaL The governing classes furnished only the system, officers ; the subjects, plebeians and provincials, formed
the army. The general was, financially and militarily,
almost independent of the central government, and,
whether in fortune or misfortune, substantially left to
himself and to the resources of his province. Civic
and even national spirit had vanished from the army,
and the esprit de corps was alone left as a bond of inward
union. The army had ceased to be an instrument of
the commonwealth ; in a political point of view it had
no will of its own, but it was doubtless able to adopt
that of the master who wielded it; in a military point
of view it sank under the ordinary miserable leaders into
a disorganized useless rabble, but under a right general
it attained a military perfection which the burgess-army
could never reach. The class of officers especially had
deeply degenerated. The higher ranks, senators and
equites, grew more and more unused to arms. While
formerly there had been a zealous competition for the
posts of stafif officers, now every man of equestrian rank,
352
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
who chose to serve, was sure of a military tribuneship, and several of these posts had even to be filled with men of humbler rank ; and any man of quality at all who still served sought at least to finish his term of service in Sicily or some other province where he was sure not to face the enemy. Officers of ordinary bravery and efficiency were stared at as prodigies ; as to Pompeius especially, his contemporaries practised a military idolatry which in every respect compromised them. The staff, as a rule, gave the signal for desertion and for mutiny; in spite of the culpable indulgence of the commanders proposals for the cashiering of officers of rank were daily occurrences. We still possess the picture —drawn not without irony by Caesar's own hand —of the state of matters at his own headquarters when orders were given to march against Ariovistus, of the cursing and weeping, and preparing of testaments, and presenting even of requests for furlough. In the soldiery not a trace of the better classes could any longer be discovered. Legally the general obligation to bear arms still subsisted ; but the levy, if resorted to alongside of enlisting, took place in the most irregular manner ; numerous persons liable to serve were wholly passed over, while those once levied were retained thirty years and longer beneath the eagles. The Roman burgess-cavalry now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses only played a part in the festivals of the capital ; the so- called burgess -infantry was a troop of mercenaries swept together from the lowest ranks of the burgess-population ; the subjects furnished the cavalry and the light troops exclusively, and came to be more and more extensively employed also in the infantry. The posts of centurions in the legions, on which in the mode of warfare of that time the efficiency of the divisions essentially depended, and to which according to the national military constitu
chap, XI THE NEW MONARCHY
353
tion the soldier served his way upward with the pike, were now not merely regularly conferred according to favour, but were not unfrequently sold to the highest bidder. In consequence of the bad financial management of the government and the venality and fraud of the great majority of the magistrates, the payment of the soldiers was extremely defective and irregular.
The necessary consequence of this was, that in the ordinary course of things the Roman armies pillaged the
mutinied against their officers, and ran off in presence of the enemy ; instances occurred where consider able armies, such as the Macedonian army of Piso in 697 (p. 104/), were without any proper defeat utterly ruined, simply by this misconduct Capable leaders on the other hand, such as Pompeius, Caesar, Gabinius, formed doubt less out of the existing materials able and effective, and to some extent exemplary, armies ; but these armies belonged far more to their general than to the common wealth. — The still more complete decay of the Roman marine which, moreover, had remained an object of antipathy to the Romans and had never been fully nationalized — scarcely requires to be mentioned. Here too, on all sides, everything that could be ruined at all had been reduced to ruin under the oligarchic govern ment
The reorganization of the Roman military system by Caesar was substantially limited to the tightening and strengthening of the reins of discipline, which had been relaxed under the negligent and incapable supervision previously subsisting. The Roman military system seemed to him neither to need, nor to be capable of, radical reform ; he accepted the elements of the army, just as Hannibal had accepted them. The enactment of his municipal ordinance that, in order to the holding of a
municipal magistracy or sitting in the municipal council
provincials,
67.
VOU T
156
I&reor- S"^^^
Foreign mercen aries.
Adjutants of the legion.
before the thirtieth year, three years' service on horseback —that as officer—or six years' service on foot should be required, proves indeed that he wished to attract the better classes to the army but proves with equal clearness that amidst the ever-increasing prevalence of an unwarlike spirit in the nation he himself held no longer possible to associate the holding of an honorary office with the fulfil ment of the time of service unconditionally as hitherto. This very circumstance serves to explain why Caesar made no attempt to re-establish the Roman burgess-cavalry. The levy was better arranged, the time of service was regulated and abridged otherwise matters remained on the footing that the infantry of the line were raised chiefly from the lower orders of the Roman burgesses, the cavalry and the light infantry from the subjects. That nothing was done for the reorganization of the fleet, surprising.
It was an innovation —hazardous beyond doubt even in the view of its author —to which the untrustworthy character of the cavalry furnished the subjects compelled him (p. 77), that Caesar for the first time deviated from the old Roman system of never fighting with mercenaries, and in corporated in the cavalry hired foreigners, especially Germans. Another innovation was the appointment of adjutants of the legion (legati legionis). Hitherto the military tribunes, nominated partly the burgesses, partly the governor concerned, had led the legions in such way that six of them were placed over each legion, and the command alternated among these single commandant of the legion was appointed by the general only as temporary and extraordinary measure. In subsequent times on the other hand those colonels or adjutants of legions appear as permanent and organic institution, and as nominated no longer by the governor whom they obey, but by the supreme command in Rome both changes seem referable to Caesar's arrangements connected with the Gabinian law
354
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND BOOK V
;
a
a
a
by
is
by
; it
;
a by
;
it
is,
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
355
The reason for the introduction of this important intervening step in the military hierarchy must be sought partly in the necessity for a more energetic centralization of the command, partly in the felt want of capable superior officers, partly and chiefly in the design of providing a counterpoise to the governor by associating with him one or more colonels nominated by the Imperator.
The most essential change in the military system con- The sisted in the institution of a permanent military head in the 1^^°TM. person of the Imperator, who, superseding the previous ship-in- unmilitary and in every respect incapable governing cor
poration, united in his hands the whole control of the
army, and thus converted it from a direction which for
the most part was merely nominal into a real and energetic
supreme command. We are not properly informed as to the
position which this supreme command occupied towards the
special commands hitherto omnipotent in their respective
spheres. Probably the analogy of the relation subsisting
between the praetor and the consul or the consul and
the dictator served generally as a basis, so that, while the governor in his own right retained the supreme military
authority in his province, the Imperator was entitled at
any moment to take it away from him and assume it for
himself or his delegates, and, while the authority of the
governor was confined to the province, that of the Im
perator, like the regal and the earlier consular authority, extended over the whole empire. Moreover it is ex
tremely probable that now the nomination of the officers,
both the military tribunes and the centurions, so far as it
had hitherto belonged to the governor,1 as well as the nomi
nation of the new adjutants of the legion, passed
into the hands of the Imperator ; and in like manner even
now the arrangement of the levies, the bestowal of leave of
1 With the nomination of a part of the military tribunes by the burgesses (iit. 13) Caesar —in this also a democrat— did not meddle.
(iv. 388).
directly
Caesar's plans.
Defence frontfer
absence, and the more important criminal cases, may have been submitted to the judgment of the commander-in- chief. With this limitation of the powers of the governors and with the regulated control of the Imperator, there was no great room to apprehend in future either that the armies might be utterly disorganized or that they might be con verted into retainers personally devoted to their respective officers.
But, however decidedly and urgently the circumstances pointed to military monarchy, and however distinctly Caesar took the supreme command exclusively for himself, he was nevertheless not at all inclined to establish his authority by means of, and on, the army. No doubt he deemed a standing army necessary for his state, but only because from its geographical position it required a comprehensive regulation of the frontiers and permanent frontier garrisons. Partly at earlier periods, partly during the recent civil war, he had worked at the tranquillizing of Spain, and had established strong positions for the defence of the frontier in Africa along the great desert, and in the north-west of the empire along the line of the Rhine. He occupied himself with similar plans for the regions on the Euphrates and on the Danube. Above all he designed an expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the day of Carrhae ; he had destined three years for this war, and was resolved to settle accounts with these dangerous enemies once for all and not less cautiously than thoroughly. In like manner he had projected the scheme of attacking Burebistas king of the Getae, who was greatly extending his power on both sides of the Danube 06), and of protecting Italy the north-east by border-districts similar to those which he had created for in Gaul. On the other hand there no evidence at all that Caesar contemplated like Alexander
career of victory extending indefinitely far; said indeed that he had intended to march from Parthia to
356
THE OLD REPUBLIC AND book v
a
it
is
is
in
it
(p. 1
chap, xi THE NEW MONARCHY
357
the Caspian and from this to the Black Sea and then along its northern shores to the Danube, to annex to the empire all Scythia and Germany as far as the Northern Ocean—which according to the notions of that time was not so very distant from the Mediterranean —and to return home through Gaul ; but no authority at all deserving of credit vouches for the existence of these fabulous projects. In the case of a state which, like the Roman state of Caesar, already included a mass of barbaric elements difficult to be controlled, and had still for centuries to come more than enough to do with their assimilation, such conquests, even granting their military practicability, would have been nothing but blunders far more brilliant and far worse than the Indian expedition of Alexander. Judging both from Caesar's conduct in Britain and Germany and from the conduct of those who became the heirs of his political ideas, it is in a high degree probable that Caesar with Scipio Aemilianus called on the gods not to increase the empire, but to preserve
and that his schemes of conquest restricted themselves to settlement of the frontier — measured, true, by his own great scale —which should secure the line of the Euphrates and, instead of the fluctuating and militarily useless boundary of the empire on the north-east, should establish and render defensible the line of the Danube.
But, remains mere probability that Caesar ought
not to be designated world-conqueror in the same sense ° c&e^r as Alexander and Napoleon, quite certain that his military
design was not to rest his new monarchy primarily on the support of the army nor generally to place the military authority above the civil, but to incorporate with, and as far as possible subordinate to, the civil commonwealth.