Veni, Vidi, Vici
After his fateful crossing of the Rubicon river, Caesar would spend the better part of the next five years gallivanting across the Mediterranean, fighting Senatorial forces in Italy, Spain, Greece, and North Africa, invaders in Anatolia, and weighing in on a civil war over the Egyptian throne for good measure. Going into all his exploits in detail would be impossible to do in any reasonable timeframe, but by the end of the ordeal, Caesar would firmly establish himself as one of the greatest military commanders to ever live.
Caesar’s Civil War. Wiki Commons.
Summarizing the highlights of the civil war, after Caesar crossed into Italy he faced very little immediate opposition. The Republic’s legions were scattered across its border provinces to guard against revolting tribes or foreign invaders — Italy wasn’t prepared for an invasion by its own troops.
Pompey, a great general in his own right, saw the writing on the wall and ordered a strategic retreat from the Italian peninsula — the Senate was apoplectic and abandoning the capital at the start of the civil war was terrible from a propaganda perspective, but Caesar effortlessly smacked aside the ragtag militias they were able to raise and Pompey had powerful clients in the East — he had spent most of his military career carving an empire out of that territory. Pompey and most of the Senate fled for Greece and Pompey began massing a proper army there.
Caesar, who, as a matter of course, was named dictator by the few remaining senators in the city, initially wanted to follow them — he knew as well as Pompey did that the longer the war dragged on the worse his chances became, but loyalist legions in Spain threatened his rear. To his west, Caesar faced an army without a leader — to his east, he faced a leader without an army. Caesar mopped up the Spanish legions first, knowing that the more time Pompey had to prepare the more difficult he would be to deal with.
In January of 48 BC, Caesar prepared to launch a naval invasion of Greece from Italy. The Romans were not great mariners, and crossing the Adriatic in the vessels the Romans had was … difficult, to say the least. Romans also didn’t particularly respect naval commanders or naval warfare — which is why Pompey put Bibulus of all people in charge of his Adriatic fleet, where he would be out of the way and couldn’t bother him. During the winter, Bibulus kept his fleet in port, since the harsh weather would preclude any Caesarian incursions.
But it wasn’t actually winter.
The Roman calendar did not track with the seasons — its standard months accounted for 355 days, and it was up to the pontifex maximus to manually add in ~10 extra days throughout the year to keep the calendar in sync. In this case, the pontifex maximus happened to be one Gaius Julius Caesar, who was too busy conquering all of Gaul and then starting a civil war to bother with the minutiae of his job.
But, Caesar brilliantly used his prior incompetence to give himself a strategic advantage, because while the Pompeiians were acting like it was mid-winter, the actual conditions were more like autumn. Crossing the Adriatic in the autumn was still treacherous, but it was possible, and poor, unfortunate Bibulus was surprised to see Caesar’s ships making a supposedly suicidal voyage. To his credit, he was able to rally and deploy his forces to cut off Caesar’s convoy … but only after it had established a beachhead behind enemy lines.
That incident is in many ways emblematic of the entire civil war and Caesar’s overall ethos — the man was an incredible opportunist who could squeeze almost every conceivable advantage out of even the most bizarre of circumstances. Caesar’s campaigns were often characterized by boldness bordering on stupidity, which sometimes blew up in his face, but often led to some of the most outstanding feats of military triumph in human history.
Battle of Pharsalus. Wiki Commons.
Caesar and Pompey would have two significant clashes in Greece — Pompey would repulse Caesar’s army at the Battle of Dyrrhachium in April of 48 BC, but by August Caesar’s forces had regrouped and decisively defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. There would be years of mop-up operations, and foreign flare-ups, and domestic crises, but after this point, Caesar was the presumptive ruler of Rome and could turn some of his attention to governing.
And one of the first items on the agenda was finally getting around to fixing that calendar.
Caesar’s Clemency
In clear contrast with Rome’s previous dictator for life, Caesar pardoned as many of his former political rivals as he could. He desperately wanted to appear as the legitimate ruler of the Republic and not a brutal warlord who had seized power by force: magnanimity was good for his image. Furthermore, any former enemy who accepted clemency was explicitly acknowledging Caesar as the rightful sovereign of Rome.
Among the people he pardoned were Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus.
Cassius had been a Pompeiian commander who Caesar captured after his victory at Pharsalus. Caesar had pardoned Cassius, and even fought alongside him in the Egyptian boondoggle Caesar dragged himself into while chasing after Pompey. (Pompey went to recruit allies in Egypt to continue the war, but the Egyptians decided it would be more prudent to kill Pompey and impress Caesar, not realizing Caesar actually wanted Pompey alive, a miscommunication that spiraled into overthrowing the Pharaoh and replacing him with his half sister and Caesar’s lover, Cleopatra).
Cassius was happy to fight foreign enemies but refused to campaign against his former allies and sat out the remainder of the civil war in Caesar’s proverbial doghouse.
Brutus, on the other hand, was always one of Caesar’s favorites and his loyalties were far more complex.
Bust of Marcus Junius Brutus. Wiki Commons.
On one hand, Brutus was the nephew of Cato the Younger, the archconservative and champion of the Senate. On the other hand, Pompey, the adolescent butcher, had been directly responsible for the death of Brutus’s father, and Brutus hated him with a passion.
By contrast, Caesar had been on good terms with Brutus for all his life — Caesar happened to be carrying on a decades long affair with Brutus’ mother, Servilia — who was also Cato’s sister.
In one particularly charming incident during the Catiline Conspiracy in 63 BC, during an emergency meeting of the Senate a courier surreptitiously brought Caesar a letter. Caesar and Catiline, the ringleader of the conspiracy, were ideologically sympathetic to one another, and Cato suspected the two may be collaborating, so when he saw someone slip Caesar a letter he thought it must be a communique from the traitors and ordered Caesar to hand it over so he could share it with the entire Senate. Caesar politely suggested that Cato might not want to do that, but Cato insisted, and only realized partway through reading it aloud that it was a lurid love letter addressed to Caesar from his own sister.
This is real. This happened.
Some ancient conspiracy theorists went so far as to suggest that Brutus might have actually been Caesar and Servilia’s secret lovechild, but as far as we know the timeline doesn’t add up there, since Caesar would’ve only been 15 when Brutus was born, but while Caesar most likely wasn’t Brutus’ biological father, in many ways he doted on the orphaned son of his favorite mistress. Caesar had no legitimate sons and at minimum, he viewed Brutus as something of a protege.
But Brutus was a staunch supporter of the republic — according to legend, his ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, had been a key player in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing the Republic, and Brutus took that legacy very seriously. So, while he loved Caesar and loathed Pompey, Brutus took Pompey’s side during the civil war.
Brutus surrendered after Pharsalus and by all accounts, Caesar welcomed him back with open arms. He even appointed him as governor of the vital province of Cisalpine Gaul.
But, despite this mercy, Brutus and Cassius would emerge as the ringleaders of the plot to kill Caesar.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
While Caesar had won the civil war, his policy of leaving so many of his former enemies alive and in key positions of power meant that many such people were well-positioned to do serious damage. Between 60-70 senators were involved in the plot to assassinate Caesar.
For context, the Senate only had around 900 members — and that figure was well above the historical norm of 300-600. Many Romans of Senatorial rank had been killed in the fighting, and Caesar saw an opportunity to replenish that august body’s number by elevating many of his longtime supporters: including former centurions of his legions and provincial citizens from Gaul.
Stacking the Senate with staunch Caesarians was seen by many of the older senators as a power grab — and it did guarantee that the hundreds of new senators would happily rubber stamp whatever policy Caesar wanted, but even with that biased list by early 44 BC roughly 7% of the Senate was convinced that Caesar had to go.
Many of the conspirators believed that Caesar was planning on officially making himself king, with some reason. One month before the date of Caesar’s assassination, one of his closest followers, Mark Antony, publicly offered Caesar a crown. (As an aside, Lupercalia was a bizarre fertility festival that involved nude officials chasing women around the city with whips — Antony happened to be one of those officials that year which makes this exchange even more bizarre).
Vintage engraving of Julius Caesar refusing the Crown offered by Mark Antony. Getty Images.
Caesar refused to take the crown after being offered it three times, but many of his contemporaries suspected the entire affair was staged: at best, Caesar symbolically refused to become a king so he could defang critics, without having to give up any of the de facto powers of a king. At worst, the incident may have been a trial balloon — if the crowd seemed to approve of Caesar taking the crown, he probably would’ve done it.
Whatever Caesar’s motives, the incident convinced the conspirators that time was of the essence. Caesar was going to leave the city soon to take command of an army and prosecute a war in the east against Parthia — Crassus’s earlier misadventure had kicked up a hornet’s nest that somebody needed to deal with. If Caesar was in the field with an army by his side it would be nearly impossible to kill him, so they had to do it before he left.
The conspirators settled on Caesar’s final meeting with the Senate before he planned to leave the city as the perfect opportunity — practically, everyone would have an excuse to be gathered together and close to Caesar, and symbolically the tyrant would be struck down on the Senate floor, the heart of the Republic. The meeting was set to take place in the Theatre of Pompey on March 15, 44 BC.
Of course, when 60-70 people are in on a secret, word tends to spread. Shakespeare immortalized the warning to Caesar to “beware the Ides of March,” but both Plutarch and Suetonius report a similar event: Seutonius goes so far as to identify the soothsayer as a mystic named Spurrina. If the exchange really did happen, Spurrina may well have overheard details of the plot, but may have not wanted to divulge too much information for fear of retaliation, hence the vague warning to Caesar to “beware the Ides of March.”
According to Suetonius, Caesar happened to pass Spurrina on the way to that fateful meeting and jokingly dismissed his earlier warnings.
“The Ides have come.”
”Aye, Caesar, they have come, but they are not yet gone.”
Shortly afterwards Caesar was attacked by five of the conspirators, while the rest distracted his bodyguards and those who might have come to his aid. Caesar was stabbed 23 times, although doctors would later determine that only one of the wounds was mortal.
The death of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate – painting by Vincenzo Camuccini (1771-1844) Napoli, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)
After decades of tribulation and civil war, the conspirators hailed themselves as liberators and heralded an end to the dictatorship and the rebirth of the republic.
Those celebrations were premature.
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