Rome

and preferable to life. I was indignant that a benefit conferred on me by the Roman people was being insolently wrested from me by my enemies.” And so, in that legendary phrase which has come to mean taking any fateful and irrevocable decision, he crossed the Rubicon and entered Italy with his troops.

This inevitably meant civil war. The commander of Rome’s troops in the war was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106–48 B.C.E.), known to history as Pompey, a resourceful and highly skilled commander, the only man in Rome capable of standing up against Julius Caesar. Pompey’s career, up to this point, had been marked by brilliant successes which also served dramatically to highlight the weaknesses of the aging republican system. From now on, Roman politics would have less and less to do with democracy, becoming more and more determined by ambitious individuals backed by their own armies.

Quite early in his career, Pompey showed every sign of developing into just such a prototypical strongman, utterly ruthless and bent on power. Sulla had recognized that Rome’s growing empire could not possibly be governed by popular acclamation, by democratic votes. That system was too unwieldy. His policy, therefore, was to shift the authority of the state away from Rome’s tribunes, magistrates and popular assembly, which he regarded as mere rabble, and return them to the Senate. Under Sulla’s new system, the senators got all their judicial powers back, while consuls and praetors, shorn of their military power, had to content themselves with being the Senate’s good servants. But there was a question: what if some new Roman warlord turned on the Senate with his forces and simply threw them out? Sulla’s solution was to pass a law whereby there would be no Roman armed force in Rome. As soon as any returning soldiers, or their officers, crossed the limits of the urbs Romae, they would automatically have to lay down their arms, surrender their command, and become private citizens once more. Of course, this needed enforcement, which Sulla, the winner of the war against Mithridates, king of Pontus, was prompt to supply. He had accumulated huge reserves of booty and cash, and these financed his own invasion of Italy in 83 B.C.E. Naturally, this did not go without a hitch, for there were strong anti- Sulla feelings in both Sicily and North Africa, and Sulla enlisted the brilliant and ruthless young Pompey to suppress them—which he did with unrestrained butchery and bloodshed. By 81 B.C.E. the anti-Sulla factions were crushed, and Pompey—who was only twenty-five at the time—was in a position to demand a full triumph from Sulla on his return to Rome, and the cognomen Magnus, “Pompey the Great,” attached to his name. There was no denying that Pompey had burst through the exclusive ranks of Rome’s upper establishment, the optimates. No previous Roman had won such an honor so early in his military career.

In 70 B.C.E., he was appointed consul. The other consul, his reluctant and watchful yokefellow, was Marcus Licinius Crassus, the man who had put down Spartacus’ slave revolt (it particularly irked him that Pompey, who had mopped up a last remnant of Spartacus’ defeated army, took credit for suppressing the whole rebellion) and made a huge fortune by corralling the confiscated property of Roman citizens stripped of their assets in the proscriptions. Friction and ill-submerged conflict between the two billionaires, Crassus and Pompey, were inevitable.

In January 49 B.C.E., seeing that the Rubicon had been crossed and Caesar was now on Italian soil, the Senate voted martial law against Caesar and turned over the government of the Republic to Pompey. But Caesar did not delay for a moment after crossing the Rubicon. He led his ever-growing army in a whirlwind march down the east coast of Italy, and Pompey and the Senate had to skedaddle out of Rome so fast that they even left the national treasury behind. The continuous presence of senators turned out to be a great encumbrance to Pompey. They kept demanding reports, criticizing plans, and in general getting in the way. This did much to neutralize what would otherwise have been a clear advantage for the Pompeians. They had ships, and Caesar had no navy. They were able to assemble and train a large army at Dyrrhachium in the west of Greece. Caesar’s troops were so poorly supplied that many were reduced to eating the bark off trees. And yet, by a combination of superior generalship and good military luck, Caesar was able to beat Pompey, who offered him battle at Pharsalus in August 48 and was roundly defeated. Unnerved, Pompey fled to take refuge in Egypt, where the Ptolemaic government—fearing reprisals from the dreaded Caesar—cut off his head and dispatched that grisly trophy to Caesar.

Julius Caesar now ruled Rome and its enormous, ever-growing empire without opposition. In 46 B.C.E. he made himself dictator for ten years, and in February 44, the appointment was extended for the whole of his future life. The official calendar, which stood badly in need of revision, was indeed revised, with the month which had been known as Quintilis renamed “July.” Caesar’s head began to appear on coins, an homage which up to then had been reserved for kings and gods. Caesar was the first man to overcome, and in essence overthrow, the ancient Roman republican aversion to kingship. Plutarch believed that Caesar planned to have himself turned into a deified king, and he was probably right, though the issue is still debatable. Certainly the masses of Rome came very rapidly to view him as the next thing to a living god, and a kind of Caesarian cult was fostered by his closest friend, Mark Antony.

Now that the wars were over and won, Caesar, with the support of a thoroughly complaisant Senate, awarded himself no fewer than five complete triumphs, four after destroying Scipio (at Thapsus in North Africa, April 46 B.C.E.) and one more for smashing the sons of Pompey (at Munda in Spain, March 45 B.C.E.). The grandest was the triumph awarded him for his conquest of Gaul, but it was in his Pontic triumph at Zela over Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, whom he suspected of trying to restore his father’s kingdom in the east, that Caesar was inspired to produce the most famous phrase in military history. On the victorious march-past, he displayed on a placard the three laconic words: “Veni, vidi, vici”—“I came, I saw, I conquered.”

These Roman triumphs were ceremonies of great importance, and they followed a set pattern, whose origins lay in the Etruscan past. To qualify as a triumphator, the conquering hero had first to be acclaimed by his soldiers. He must hold a magistracy with imperium, the autocratic power to command. (If he did not have such a magistracy, there could be no triumph for him, no matter how resounding his victory.) He must show that he had killed at least five thousand enemy soldiers, and brought home enough of his army to demonstrate their complete victory. Because Rome itself did not fall within his imperium, he must now wait outside the city limits until the Senate had agreed to grant him that absolute power for a single day. Once that was done, the triumphant leader could enter at the head of his troops, preceded by his lictors, each of whom carried a bundle of rods and an ax—the fasces re-adopted by Mussolini in the twentieth century—to symbolize his power to arrest, punish, and execute. A dictator had twenty-four lictors, lesser officials fewer. The soldiers raised a chant of praise, “Io triumphe,” and sang mildly obscene songs, the “Fescennine verses,” poking fun at their leader; a typical verse about Caesar (who was bald, and renowned for his sexual appetites) ran:

??????Home we bring the hairless Fucker,

??????Roman maidens, bar your doors—

??????For the Roman gold you sent him

??????Went to pay his Gallic whores.

Usually the appearance of the victor would be preceded by a long parade of his spoils. Thus the triumph of Aemilius Paullus was preceded, according to Plutarch, by an entire day’s march-past of some 250 wagons bearing the statues, paintings, and colossal images looted from Perseus, king of Macedon. The next day, looted Greek silver, bronze, and gold were displayed on a similar train of chariots, along with captured armor. Not until the third day did triumphant Aemilius Paullus make his appearance, followed by Perseus, “looking like one altogether stunned and deprived of reason through the greatness of his misfortunes,” as he must indeed have been.

The conquering hero would, of course, dress for the occasion. His face would be painted with red lead, to