Cicero - Anthony Everitt [93]
One evening in early April Cicero called on Pompey, who informed him he was leaving shortly for Sardinia to buy grain. Pompey was being more than ordinarily economical with the truth. When he left the city he in fact made a detour before setting sail for Sardinia and first made his way to Luca, a town at the extreme limit of Italian Gaul, where Caesar had secretly summoned him for emergency talks. Taking time off from his operations in Gaul, Caesar had already met Crassus in Ravenna and was planning a counterstroke which would silence his opponents in Rome.
Caesar had spent the last two years in a series of brilliantly conducted military campaigns. When taking up his governorship, he hoped for an opportunity to build on the military reputation he had won three years previously during his governorship in Spain. He was in luck, for long-standing hostilities between two Germanic tribes led one of them to invade Gaul from what is now Switzerland. Caesar claimed to see a potential threat to Italy from barbarian hordes and reacted vigorously. He routed the enemy with ease and then turned his attention to the other tribe, led by a charismatic chieftain who had incautiously reminded him when they once met that Caesar’s death would not be unwelcome in certain circles in Rome. This accurately aimed insult was not left unavenged. A victory, this time hard won, ensued.
“The Germans’ left was routed,” Caesar wrote, “but their right began to press our troops hard by weight of numbers. Their perilous position attracted the attention of young Publius Crassus [son of Caesar’s political partner], better able to move about and see what was happening than those in the fighting line. He therefore sent up a third line to their relief. This move turned the battle once more in our favor, and the enemy’s whole army broke and fled without stopping until they came to the Rhine, some fifteen miles away. A very few of the strongest tried to swim the river and a few others saved themselves by finding boats … but all the rest were hunted down and killed by our cavalry.”
Risings in the northeast gave Caesar the pretext to proceed to the subjugation of the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Channel. He briefly visited that remote, almost mythical island, Britannia, an exploit that was militarily insignificant but was received as a huge propaganda coup back home.
Propaganda was a matter of some moment. His political opponents looked for any opportunity to criticize him and argued that the war itself was illegal on the grounds that he had not had sufficient excuse to intervene. To promote his cause, Caesar devoted great care to his dispatches to the Senate and in due course wrote them up as a history of the Gallic wars.
He was proving to be a field commander of the first rank. Pompey and Crassus were gradually coming to realize that their junior partner was growing into a serious competitor in both wealth and reputation. He was no longer the “young man” they had seen him to be in 59.
Caesar was always on the move, ready to react to the latest military threat as it arose. But wherever he was stationed, he assiduously nurtured his links with the capital. After the campaigning season he spent every winter in Italian Gaul, a vantage point from which he could keep a close eye on political developments. His newfound riches were at the disposal of anyone who would sign up (literally in many cases, with oaths and written guarantees) to protect his interests. Few applicants were turned away.
From Caesar’s perspective the news from Rome in the spring of 56 could not have been worse. Clodius was running amok, Pompey and Crassus were at loggerheads, and several allies who stood for public office lost their elections. Caesar spoke bitterly at Luca about Cicero’s Senate motion to nullify his second Land Reform Act. He could see that the situation was slipping out of his grasp.
Caesar’s partners had long since gained all that had been covenanted when the First Triumvirate set up business: