Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford Page B

more than anything else. And Caesar was always a gambler.
    Another candidate for the consulship was the same Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus who had been Caesar’s more-than-uneasy colleague as praetor and who took almost the same view of Caesar as did Cato. These two old aristocrats, as well as many others, regarded the profligate Caesar as a man who had used his birth—and the advantages which it gave him—as a means of attaining power by joining the Left. (Modern examples are not uncommon.) True conservatives viewed such men not only with suspicion but considerable dislike, which could easily turn to hatred.
    Many in the senate believed Caesar might well become one of the next consuls, but whether his fellow consul would be Bibulus or a third candidate, one Lucius Lucceius (not even a member of the nobility), was in some doubt. Caesar, finding the idea of Lucceius as a colleague slightly less distasteful than his known enemy Bibulus, cultivated him, but the dominant junto in the senate, anxious that at least one of the future consuls should be acceptable to them, put their shoulders behind Bibulus and his campaign (and this meant money). Caesar now had even deeper grievances against the “old brigade”: they had managed to prevent him from securing a triumph and they were to go even farther. The rewards of a consulship were to be found in the year after it terminated, when the consuls were given the great provincial commands that secured wealth, prestige and often fame. The senators, recognizing the danger of Caesar and the ineffectiveness of Bibulus, gave them instead the insulting reward of something comparable to boundary and forestry commissions in areas belonging to the state. This not only deprived them of the expected profits of office but was an open humiliation. Bibulus might accept the position, being a wealthy conservative, but they had sadly misjudged their man if they thought that Caesar would take such an insult lying down.
    The old caucus who had so offended Caesar had made an even bigger mistake (and one which shows only too clearly that the aristocratic so-called Optimates were quite unfit to rule an empire) by infuriating Pompey. They had long despised him for his comparatively humble origins and they now envied and feared him because he had made for himself a power base of immense proportions in the East. If Pompey had not been so unwise as to disband his army he might indeed have set himself up as a dictator, from which position he could have ensured that his soldiers received all that he had promised. But he had been foolish—or arrogant enough—to think he was a prince among men and above any of the senators. Now he was to be humiliated. The land-law which Pompey sought to enable his troops to be rewarded for their services was blocked. Pompey, who had ruled like an emperor in the East, who had held almost limitless power, organizing and apportioning territories as he thought fit, was to have his promises to his troops made null and void—as if he was just any other citizen who had promised more than he could perform. The senators who had feared his power when he had his army behind him had decided to remind him that, now that he was in Rome, and without his troops, he was no more than any other senator. For the moment the conservative Optimates seemed to have enjoyed great success by demeaning Caesar and injuring Pompey, but in the long run they had ensured their ultimate ruin. It was these actions of the senate that brought about the partnership of two powerful and embittered men, and the unlikely alliance of Caesar and Pompey dates from shortly after that time.
    It seems that either before or after Caesar’s election as consul in the summer of 60 (and opinions differ among ancient authorities as well as subsequent historians) he and Pompey engaged in some kind of contract to support each other politically. Caesar promised that he would do all he could to ensure the distribution of land promised