CHAPTER II.BOYHOOD DURING THE CIVIL WARS—EARLIEST POLITICAL EXPERIENCES. 89-82 B.C.

WE SAW THAT IN THE year of Caesar’s birth, Marius, his aunt’s husband, was at the height of his military glory. It was in that summer that he utterly destroyed a vast host of wandering Germans, who for several years had been imperilling the very existence of the Roman Empire in the West. The battle was fought at Aquae Sextiae (Aix in southern France), in the same Gallic province which Caesar himself was destined to rule so long, and to protect, like his uncle, from barbarian inroads. Next year (101 B.C.), in conjunction with the aristocrat Catulus, Marius destroyed another army of invaders, who had penetrated by the Brenner Pass into northern Italy, and were actually within a few days’ march of Rome. Italy was saved, and the conqueror was elected consul for the sixth successive year.

It is hard for us to appreciate the full value of these victories. We are apt to think of the Roman Empire as a system of marvellous stability, and of Rome as the Eternal City. We do not easily grasp the fact that, at this time and for many years afterwards, the Empire was often in a condition of the utmost peril. As we shall see, the northern barbarians were not the only enemies of Rome who seemed likely to change the course of history. Mithridates, the great King of Pontus, was soon to overrun her territory in the East. Internal discord and civil war were to sap her material strength and destroy what little moral force was left in her. He who would judge truly of Caesar’s place in the history of the world must understand that the Empire, during all the earlier part of his life, was terribly deficient both in stability and unity.

But at the time of his birth the immediate danger was passing away. Two years later (100 B.C.) the wars were over, and Marius was supreme in Rome. It turned out, however, that this great master of armies was helpless as a statesman. He was a man of the people, and the re-assertion of democracy seemed inevitable ; but he bungled, hesitated, and finally subordinated himself to the Senate. After his year of office he left Rome, and disappeared from politics for many years. A senatorial reaction followed ; and ten years later there broke out a terrible struggle between Rome and her Italian subjects, who united to obtain by force of arms that Roman citizenship which they had so long coveted and sought for in vain. Once more Rome was in the direst extremity. Face to face with the Italians, she was as weak materially as her position was morally unjust. By their help she had been adding for more than a century to her dominion and her wealth, yet she made no sign of renewing for their benefit the old policy of absorption which had raised her to her supremacy in Italy. Now that her citizenship had far outstripped in value that of all other states, and was indeed the only one worth having in the world for men of business, of pleasure, or of ambition, she would not share it even with those who had done so much to make her what she was. Real statesmen like Gaius Gracchus had urged it on her, but both senate and people had turned a deaf ear. Selfish motives, which this is not the place to examine, had prevailed over a large-minded and liberal policy.

It was soon shown how weak she was without her Italian supports. Everywhere her armies were beaten by their old comrades; one disgrace followed another. At the first gleam of returning fortune, the Senate seized the opportunity to yield the whole point at issue ; bills were passed which, in conjunction with other measures taken later, had the effect of enrolling the whole Italian population south of the Po on the register of Roman citizens.

We may not pause here to consider the immense importance of those measures in the history of Rome and of the world. But in a sketch of Caesar’s life, it is necessary to point out that they were very far from removing all difficulty in the relations between Rome and her new citizens. Though the question of citizenship had been settled, other questions of adjustment and organisation at once arose. How was the local government of these Italian communities to be co-ordinated with the imperial government in the city of Rome ? How were the Italians to find time and means to come and vote in the elections of the Roman magistrates who were now to govern them ? How were these city magistrates to discharge the business of all Italy ? A complete re-organisation was called for ; a task of great difficulty, for the position was an entirely novel one, and no such problem had ever yet confronted either Greek or Roman statesman. Nor was it really grappled with until Caesar himself put his hand to it more than forty years later.

The storm of civil war broke out in Caesar’s thirteenth year ; he was therefore too young to take any part in the struggle. He probably only assumed the toga virilis, or mark of Roman manhood, in 87 B.c., when his older contemporaries, Pompeius and Cicero, had already seen their first military service. But if his youth prevented his bearing arms in these wars, whose mercilessness must have vitiated many noble natures and hardened many generous hearts, his political instincts were now assuredly generated and growing rapidly into definite opinions resting on principles never to be abandoned while he lived. Boys were doubtless apt, then as now, to take the colour of their political ideas from family tradition, and from relations and teachers who could win their admiration and worship. Both these influences were at work on the youthful Caesar, and secured him once and for ever for the cause of popular government as against the Senate, for the Many as against the Few. Though his relations were not uniformly “ Populares,” the marriage of his aunt with Marius, which must have taken place long before the outbreak of civil war, makes it probable that in his own family circle the views held were not of the narrow oligarchic type. And when this Marius, who was the greatest soldier Rome had yet produced, and the saviour of his country from barbarian enemies, now became the victim of exile, persecution, and degradation, in the cause of Italian liberty, he must at once have become a hero in Caesar’s boyish mind.

It is not to be supposed that Caesar then fully understood the principle of the policy for which the Marian party were struggling ; it is indeed unlikely enough that Marius understood it himself. But as Caesar’s later life shows plainly not only that he eventually came to understand it, but that he understood it more effectually than any of his contemporaries, it will be as well once for all to place it succinctly before the reader, as the solidly laid foundation-stone of all Caesar’s political training.

Just as in a modern state there can be found, underlying the varying phases of action of a political party, some deeply rooted principle which permanently but secretly governs them, so at Rome, even in that unreasoning age, both sides in the political battle had a basis of reasoned conviction, on which, in the minds of the better men at least, their immediate aims were supported and steadied. Among those who were called “ Optimates,” this might almost be described as a definite rule of faith, inherited from the fathers of their constitution. They believed that the Senate, as embodying all the gathered wisdom and experience of the State, and as exercising supervision over the magistrates elected by the people, was alone capable of administering the business of the city and her dependents in Italy; to this axiom, which had in former times been proved sound, they had naturally enough added the conviction that the vast territories which had been acquired since the war with Carthage could likewise only be governed by the same machinery. This political creed, coinciding with and confirming their own material interests, floated them on a course of dogmatic selfishness which has rarely been equalled in history ; but that creed was a perfectly natural and intelligible one, and was rooted not only in the accumulated experience of their own countrymen, but also in the whole history and philosophy of the ancient city-state.

The views of the Populares, on the other hand, which were newer and less definitely shaped, were based on the conviction that in the task of government which had fallen to the lot of Rome the material interests and well-being of the governed must be taken into account, as well as the convenience and glory of the governors. This party in fact, or the leaders of it, was dimly aware that Rome had vast responsibilities ; that the whole condition of the civilised world had changed, and that it lay with her to accept the position, and accustom herself to the ideas—new then in the political world— of progress and development. Such views, unpractical and unreasoned as they must have been, and often obscured by the selfish aims and personal bitterness of the leaders who held them, can nevertheless be traced in almost every great measure of reform proposed by this party, from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus onwards. Whether the question of the moment were the better distribution of land, the reform of corrupt law-courts, or the extension of the citizenship to the Italians, the true interests of the mass of the governed were in the minds of the more thoughtful of the leaders of this party, and guided their policy steadily in one direction, in spite of checks and back-currents.

When Caesar was growing towards manhood, and beginning...