Cicero - Anthony Everitt [125]
During this second flying visit to Rome he was elected to the second Consulship for which he had spent so many years struggling and intriguing. The onset of civil war had brought financial activity in Italy to an almost complete standstill and a debt crisis was creating serious social unease. Throughout the century revolutionaries such as Catilina had promoted a policy of total cancellation of debts and many expected that this was what Caesar would do. But he was too intelligent and responsible a politician not to realize that this cure would be far worse than the disease. He issued a well-considered decree which obliged creditors to accept land at prewar values as repayment and allowed up to a quarter of the value of a debt to be set off against previous interest payments.
It was on this issue that Caelius surprisingly broke with his new master in the following year. Praetor for 48, he tried to bounce an uncertain and edgy government into more radical measures after Caesar left Rome again for Greece in pursuit of Pompey. In January 48 he was in a cocky frame of mind when he wrote his final surviving letter to Cicero. Critical of Pompey’s strategy of masterly inactivity in Greece, he promised that his own dash and drive would rescue the Republican cause. “I’ll make you win in spite of yourselves. Cato and company will be smiling on me yet. You lot are fast asleep.” However, he was quickly dismissed from office and driven to taking up arms. He called Cicero’s old friend Milo back to Italy because he owned some gladiators he could make use of. Also, unforgivably in Roman eyes, he armed some slaves. But the revolt was easily quashed by Caesar’s troops and both Caelius and Milo were killed.
Brilliant, amusing and attractive, Caelius was disabled by a refusal to take serious things seriously. He threw his life away pointlessly. By opposing Caesar this late in the game, he ignored the advice he had himself given Cicero. “To go against him now in the hour of his victory … is the acme of folly,” he had said. So it was.
Caesar joined his army at Brundisium at the end of the year. He was determined to retain the initiative and had no intention of waiting for Pompey to invade Italy. Despite the fact that it was now winter, when sailing was unsafe, he decided to cross over to Greece as soon as possible, whatever the risk. On January 4, 48, he sailed unobserved to the coast of Epirus with part of his army, evading Bibulus’s naval blockade. However, bad weather and Bibulus’s unwillingness to be caught napping a second time meant that it was not until early April that his remaining troops under Mark Antony were able to join him. For a while Caesar had had too few forces to match Pompey and had been in serious danger, but now he went on the offensive. At the same time, in a continuing effort to retain the moral high ground, he launched another abortive peace initiative, but his opponents, filled with optimism, were having none of it.
Caesar decided to surround Pompey’s camp near Dyrrachium with a fifteen-mile fortified line and besiege him. Pompey responded by building his own fortifications and then launched a major breakout. For a moment Caesar faced total defeat, but the advantage was not followed through. Caesar observed dismissively of his opponent: “He has no idea how to win a war.” Short of supplies, Caesar cut his losses and marched away south to the more fertile region of Thessaly, with the enemy in pursuit.
It was typical of his tirelessness and attention to detail that, in the press of business, he remembered Cicero. In May he asked Dolabella, who was on his staff, to write a friendly letter to his father-in-law, which he duly did. After itemizing the humiliations and reverses that Pompey had suffered, he advised: “Consult your own best interests and at long last be your own friend rather than anybody else’s.” If there was anything