Rome on Credit — Caesar II: Rome on Credit
Rome, 65 BC. Caesar is a curule aedile, the official in charge of temples, markets and games. This office has one great advantage: people can see what they are voting for. Caesar adorns the Forum and the Capitol with temporary colonnades and stages wild-beast hunts and theatrical shows. Then he puts on a gladiatorial spectacle as well, and according to Pliny the Elder the arena gleams with silver equipment.
The Senate is alarmed. So many armed men in the city, at one politician’s beck and call? It quickly passes a law limiting the number of gladiators that may be kept in Rome. Caesar therefore fields fewer pairs than he had planned (Suetonius), though according to Plutarch there are still as many as three hundred and twenty.
He stages some of the shows jointly with his colleague in office, Marcus Bibulus, but all the glory goes to Caesar. Bibulus jokes bitterly that he is like Pollux: everyone calls the temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum simply the temple of Castor. Remember the name: you will hear it again, in less happy circumstances.
Not everything he does in these years is spectacle. As presiding judge of the murder court, Caesar also convicts those who under Sulla took money from the state treasury for bringing in the heads of citizens, though Sulla’s law expressly protected them (Suetonius). This is not justice, it is politics: every such verdict is a blow to Sulla’s faction and a gift to Marius’s men. He also tries to secure a special command in Egypt through the tribunes, but the aristocrats block it. Suetonius writes that at the time he wanted to weaken them by any means possible.
Caesar defends himself before the Senate and, as Plutarch writes, wins the senators over. His supporters are emboldened and urge him not to yield to anyone, because the people would gladly see him the first man in the state. Velleius Paterculus would later write that he restored the monuments of Marius in defiance of the aristocracy. Caesar wins this round, but even in victory he is counting the cost.
Before you see the bill, try to guess it. How much did Caesar owe before he held any important office?
Then there is the Appian Way: Caesar had earlier been put in charge of its upkeep and, as Plutarch writes, spent enormous sums of his own money on it.
Where does the money for all this come from? From loans. Caesar borrows from anyone he can, far more than he could ever repay. His chief guarantor is Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Rome. He does not do it out of kindness. Plutarch says plainly that Crassus needed Caesar’s zeal and fire in his contest with Pompey. He is buying himself a politician who will come in handy someday.
We know the mechanism from politics today: spend on popularity, turn popularity into offices, offices into money. It works as long as you keep winning. Caesar is playing for everything. If he loses one important election, his creditors will eat him alive. And now an election is coming where more than an office is at stake.
Dawn, 63 BC. Aurelia stands in the doorway. The mother sees her son off to the election and, as Plutarch writes, weeps. Caesar kisses her goodbye and says: Mother, today you will see your son either as pontifex maximus or as an exile. Suetonius records it more briefly: he will come home as pontifex or not at all.
Metellus Pius, the pontifex maximus and lifelong head of Roman religion, has died. This office carries a prestige and authority that no one challenges, and it usually goes to an old, distinguished senator. Two such men are running, Catulus and Servilius Isauricus, both former consuls and men of high standing in the Senate. Caesar is thirty-seven, has not even been praetor yet, and has debts he cannot count.
Catulus is so afraid of defeat that he sends messengers to Caesar with money, to make him withdraw. The sums are large. What does a man with nothing say to that?
By evening the news is out: Caesar has won. According to Suetonius, in his rivals’ own districts he wins more votes than both of them together in all the districts. He moves into the house of the pontifex maximus, the state residence by the Forum. The title of pontifex maximus will pass from him to the emperors, and then to the bishops of Rome. The pope still holds it today.
That same year the consul Cicero uncovers the conspiracy of Catiline, who wanted to overthrow the Republic. Catiline’s accomplices, Lentulus and Cethegus, are caught in Rome. The Senate must decide what to do with them. All who speak demand death, until it is Caesar’s turn. He is then praetor-elect.
Caesar rises and speaks at length. He says that men of the best families must not be killed without trial, except as a last resort. Let them be imprisoned in the towns of Italy. The speech is so good that many senators change their minds, including some who had already spoken before him. Only Cato and Catulus tip the scales toward the death penalty.
When Caesar leaves the session, the young men of Cicero’s guard draw their swords. According to Plutarch, Curio shields him with his toga and leads him out, and Cicero shakes his head when the young men look to him for a signal. Suetonius speaks of knights serving as guards who threaten Caesar with death. In both versions Caesar escapes unharmed. Suetonius adds that he avoids the Senate until the end of the year.
Plutarch also describes how, a few days later, it is the Senate that proves to be at the mercy of the street: Caesar answers the suspicions against him, the debate drags on, and the people surround the building and shout for his release. Cato persuades the senators to calm the poor with grain subsidies. And Cicero will long be told that he missed the best chance to be rid of Caesar.
The suspicions do not vanish. Suetonius describes two accusations: the informer Lucius Vettius even offers a letter from Caesar to Catiline, and in the Senate Quintus Curius claims to have it from Catiline himself. Caesar rebuts the charges by citing Cicero’s testimony that he had volunteered details of the plot to the consul in advance. Curius loses his reward, and Vettius barely escapes the mob alive and ends up in prison. Plutarch records that Catulus and Piso later blame Cicero for sparing Caesar when he could have implicated him.
Caesar remembers who stood there with a sword and who shook his head. He becomes praetor. In December 62 BC his own house will become the scene of a scandal that Rome will talk about for years.