vexatious and inquisitorial as it was, would be little more than a dead letter, unless the inmates of the family were encouraged to denounce the violation of it, the multitude, delighted at any sumptuary restriction on the advantages of wealth, demanded that the testimony of slaves should be received in such cases against their masters. Cæsar, however, remained steadfast to the old principles of Roman law, and refused to sanction so dangerous an innovation.'

Amnesty granted to the

peius's and

Sulla's enactments.

The dictator's next measure was to procure the recal from banishment of certain personages who had been proscribed by the enactments of his adversaries. These penalvictims of Pom- ties had been inflicted, for the most part, under the law of Pompeius against bribery at elections. But the delinquents had been zealous in proffering their services to the armed assailant of the government by which they had suffered; they promised to become useful to his cause, and policy prompted him to satisfy their demands. The indignation of the patrician purists knew no bounds. While Cæsar was still absent in Spain, Antonius had held out the expectation of such an act of grace, and the sympathy he had thus expressed for the victims of the laws was branded as one of the worst of his enormities. In Cicero's view, such an act would fill the measure of Cæsar's iniquities. Sulpicius had declared that, if the exiles returned, he must himself go into exile. In the meanwhile Cæsar had abstained from receiving these applicants into his ranks. He waited till their recal should proceed from the mouth of the sovereign people; and he now suggested to certain high magistrates to lay a proposition to that effect before the assembly. But the amnesty was extended to more than one class of sufferers. Gabinius was among those who profited by it to return to Rome. On the other hand, it was denied to Milo, who had

ration that many of them withdrew to the camp of the senate in consequence, Sallust, Orat. ad Cæs. ii. 2.

1 Dion, l. c.

2 Cic. ad Att. x. 14.

Cæs. B. C. iii. 1.: "Prætoribus tribunisque plebis rogationes ad popu lum ferentibus."

perhaps made himself obnoxious in the defence of Massilia.' It must be allowed that this exception was in flagrant contradiction to the motive which the dictator himself assigns for the measure, his anxiety to reverse legal sentences which had been inflicted at a period when the tribunals were coerced by Pompeius's military force. This measure, it is probable, was connected with another, the subject of which had at least been broached on a former occasion, the rehabilitation, namely, of the descendants of Sulla's victims.'

conferred on

At the same time Cæsar accomplished an act, the policy and justice of which he had recognized at a much earlier period, and of which his own interests had never Full citizenship failed to remind him: this was the conferring the the Transpa Roman franchise upon the Transpadane Gauls.3 dane Gauls. His connexion with this people had been of long duration, and almost at his first outset in political life his enemies suspected that it was from thence he was to draw the military force destined to support the imaginary conspiracy with which they charged him. We have seen the insolence and violence with which this connexion had been resented by the nobles, in the treatment of the proconsul's clients at Novum Comum. But the elder Curio, a high authority among the optimates, had allowed the abstract justice of the concession for which Cæsar contended. He withstood it only from a perverse misapprehension of the interests of the commonwealth." The time had now arrived when every obstacle was removed, and henceforward the freedom of the city was bounded only by the Alps.

The measures which Pompeius appeared to contemplate for reducing the city by famine had been thwarted for the most part by the energy and success of Cæsar's lieutenants

1 Appian, B. C. ii. 48.

2 Plut. Cæs. 37. Dion, as we have seen, places it before the campaign in Spain; Velleius (ii. 43.), in Cæsar's ædileship, a. u. 689; but this is certainly an error, as Cicero had maintained the exclusion in his consulship.

3 Dion, xli. 36.: comp. Tac. Ann. xi. 24.

4. Suet. Jul. 9.

Cic. de Off. iii. 32.; Drumann, iii. 474.

Cæsar obtains

the consulship

in conjunction

with P. Servi

lius Isauricus.

in Sardinia and Sicily. But Africa withheld her supplies, and the produce of more distant shores might be cut off by the cruisers of a vigilant

enemy. The populace of Rome began to suffer from this pressure, and the dictator distributed gratuitously among them all the grain he could collect.' He seems to have indemnified himself for these extraordinary expenses by levying contributions on the deposits in the temples. The people easily pardoned these depredations. They were now in the highest good humour. Cæsar could trust his fortunes confidently to their grateful favour. Accordingly he proceeded, without further delay, to convene the assembly for the election of consuls, and presented himself as a candidate. He could fairly represent to the people that, in the discharge of the sovereign magistracy he had paid unusual deference to their rights as legislators; in his wish to make his dictatorship a name rather than a reality, he had abstained from the appointment of a master of the horse. He now encouraged P. Servilius Isauricus to offer himself for the other chair, and no one ventured to solicit the suffrages in opposition to either. The election of the other magistrates followed, and next in order the distribution of the provincial appointments. Lepidus received the Hither Spain, Q. Cassius retained his government of the Further province, and Decimus Brutus succeeded to that of Gaul beyond the Alps.

The last month of the Roman calendar had now arrived.* Cæsar performed, in his capacity of dictator, the solemn rites He resigns the of the great Latin festival on the Alban mount; and thus, at the moment of drawing his sword, he proclaimed himself in the face of gods and

dictatorship,

and repairs to his army at Brundisium.

A. U. 706.

B. C. 48.. men the supreme impersonation of the laws.

1

Appian, B. C. ii. 48. 3 Lucan, v. 384.:

2 Dion, xli. 39.

"Lætos fecit se consule fastos."

The month of December, A. u. 705, answered to October, B. C. 49. Plutarch and Florus forget the error in the current computation of time when they state that Cæsar arrived at Brundisium at the winter solstice. See Fischer, R. Z. p. 273.

It was by this ceremony that the chief magistrate of the republic was wont to invoke the divine favour before arming to encounter the national foes; and its celebration now seemed to denounce Pompeius, with his Oriental allies, as a foreign enemy. As soon as the sacrifice was completed the dictator abdicated his extraordinary office, only eleven days after he had entered upon it.' He had already summoned his veterans to attend him at Brundisium, and he went forth to the decisive conflict amidst the acclamations of the people; but their applause was mingled with painful presentiments, and at the last moment they earnestly entreated him to bring the struggle to a peaceful termination. Every eye was bent on the fatal field, were legion should be matched against legion, pile against pile, and eagle against eagle. The antagonists had assumed an attitude of personal defiance; the names of Senate and People had sunk into ominous oblivion. Cæsar and Pompeius were now the exclusive watchwords of the contending parties; even the children playing in the streets. divided themselves into Cæsarians and Pompeians.

Comparison of the position now occupied by Cæsar with that of his ad

versaries.

The judgment and ability which Cæsar manifested throughout these proceedings must raise his estimation as a statesman to the highest pitch. He who had crossed the Rubicon at the beginning of the year, in defiance of law and authority, and daringly confronted the government of his country, backed as it was by the general opinion of his order, had now completely turned against his opponents the current of public feeling. The moral victory he had gained over them was even more complete than the triumph of his arms. He was now the consul of the republic, legitimately elected and duly invested with full powers. Throughout the empire there were vast numbers of citizens who would bow implicitly to

1 Cæs. B. C. iii. 2.; Appian, B. C. ii. 48.; Plut. Cæs. 37.; Zonar. x. 8. 2 Lucan, i. 6.:

"Infestisque obvia signis

Signa, pares aquilas et pila minantia pilis."

8

Dion, xli. 39.

1

the wielder of this formal authority. There were many cities which would shut their gates against any party which opposed him, without asking a question as to the substantial justice of its cause. On the other hand, the Pompeians acknowledged by their own conduct that they had ceased to retain the government of Rome. In Epirus, though there were two hundred senators in their camp, they dared not enact a law or hold an election, or confer the imperium. They had neither curies, nor centuries, nor comitia; and the consuls, prætors, and quæstors, who had sailed from the shores of Italy, sank in the next year into proconsuls, proprætors and proquæstors." The representative of the people had become the guardian of precedent and order; while the champion of the aristocracy derived his unauthorized prerogatives from the suffrage or the passions of a turbulent camp. The position of the rivals was thus exactly reversed, and with it, in the eyes of a nation of formalists, the right seemed to be reversed also.

1 Cæs. B. C. iii. 12.: "Illi se daturos negare, neque portas consuli præclusuros, neque sibi judicium sumpturos contra atque omnis Italia populusque Romanus judicavisset."

2

Dion, xli. 43. This writer gives a confused account of the proceedings of the Pompeians, or rather the proceedings themselves were confused and inconsistent. He says that though, as some affirm, there were two hundred senators in the camp, together with the consuls, and though they consecrated a spot of ground for taking the auspices preliminary to an election, though they possessed a legitimate semblance of the Roman people, and even of the city itself, yet they did not proceed to make any election of public magistrates, because the consuls had not proposed a lex curiata. The proceedings then above mentioned, if they really took place, were a mere imposition: the Pompeian chieftains preferred the retention of their military commands by a mere change of title, to going through even the bare forms of an election. Lucan (v. init.), and Appian (ii. 50.), preserve the popular arguments by which it was sought to give a constitutional colour to these informal proceedings; but the alleged precedent of Camillus was far from the purpose. It is probable that Cæsar's senate was not less numerous than his rival's, notwithstanding the sneer of the poet:

"Libyæ squalentibus arvis

Curio Cæsarei cecidit pars magna Senatus."