".they [Caesar and Pompey] were both reaching out after the supreme power and were influenced greatly by native ambition and greatly also by acquired rivalry, - since men can least endure to be outdone by their equals and intimates; hence they were not willing to make any concessions to each other.in temper they differed from each other to this extent, that Pompey desired to be second to no man and Caesar to be first of all." Dio's Roman History, Book XLI.

Caesar and one legion began the Civil War of 49 BC by defying the Senate, crossing the Rubicon and marching on Rome. The legions of the Republic were officially under Pompey's command. Caesar appears to have been aware that, by this act alone, he would forever attach a certain ignominy to his own reputation, which (as he often said) was dearer to him than his life. This decision was at the time, and has been since, the single most condemned or extenuated act of Caesar's life. The ensuing Civil War would effectively complete the destruction of the Roman Republic and deliver the state to one-man rule for the next five centuries.

For well over a year Caesar had sought every type of political accommodation with the Boni, (what Cicero called the "honest men"), that obdurate minority of Roman senators who were determined at almost any cost to strip him of his army in Gaul and prosecute him for perceived crimes against the State. When it became clear in late 50 BC that no accommodation except surrender would serve and when the Consuls gave Pompey command of the Republican armies, Caesar acted with the lightning decisiveness that, had the Gauls been consulted, they could have warned the Pompeians to fear.

ACROSS THE RUBICON

The frantic Senatorial consultations of December, 50, were full of ironies. Throughout 50, the Senate attempted to strip Caesar of his proconsular imperium in Gaul. Caesar clearly intended to run for the consulship for a second time in 49(precisely within Roman law, which demanded 10 years between consulships). If he could run for the consulship in absentia, he could then go straight from the imperium of his governorship to that of a Consul, and those Senators who wanted to try him for supposed illegalities in his own career would be prevented. If there was a gap between the two offices, he could be prosecuted (and Caesar had no doubt that witnesses would be found and juries bought to convict him). Throughout 50, his tame Tribune of the Plebs, C. Curio, vetoed any attempts to remove Caesar from command, arguing with a certain logic that, if Caesar should be removed from his command, so should Pompey; if Caesar had to give up his armies, so should Pompey. In mid-December, a vote was actually held in the Senate voting a metaphorical plague on both houses by stripping both Pompey and Caesar of their commands and imperium; it passed by an overwhelming margin. The Consul of that year ignored the vote and, on his own initiative and with the Boni in support, offered Pompey command of the Republican armies. It is difficult to imagine just how the Boni thought Caesar would accept the ultimatum, but Cicero's correspondence leaves the impression they simply hoped Caesar would give up, or go away. If so, this was a catastrophic misjudgment of his character.

On or before January 7, 49, the Senate voted to demand Caesar's resignation from command. Within days, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and moved into northern Italy with one legion. The Rubicon was a small and unimportant river, but with great importance: it was the border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italia proper, and a provincial governor was forbidden from entering Italia with an army in defiance of the Senate. Caesar had carefully positioned other legions in Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul in case events moved against him, and held these in reserve. When word reached him of the Senate's decree he harangued his soldiers with what was to become his standard version of events, telling them that ".They [the hostile senators] have seduced Pompey . . . and led him astray, through jealous belittling of my merits . . . I ask you to defend my reputation and standing against the assaults of my enemies." Caesar, The Civil War, I.8. Throughout the course of the war, Caesar consistently claimed hat he acted merely defensively, to defend his own dignitas (that combination of integrity, reputation, and self-esteem no Roman could live without). Repeatedly, he emphasized that the sole cause of the war was a corrupt cabal of Senators who were trying to destroy him solely through personal jealousy and hatred.

To later historians at least, Caesar's arguments had some merit, however overridden by his own ambition. A letter attributed to the historian Sallust (a supporter of Caesar who was expelled from the Senate in this year) sums up the rage felt by Caesar's supporters at the selective hostility of his enemies:

"Either out of a spirit of sheer perversity, or an overriding desire to obstruct you, Pompey has sunk so low as to put weapons into the hands of the enemy; you must therefore use the same methods to restore the government as he has to overthrow it." Quoted in Saaben-Clare, 177.

Stone commemorating Caesar's arrival in Stone marker from Rimini (Arrimium), the first stop after the Rubicon, where Caesar spoke to his army, January, 49 BC , just beyond the Rubicon, 50 B

The senatorial party had given command to Pompey but, as Pompey slowly gathered his legions, Caesar took city after city in northern Italy, almost all by peaceful surrender. It appeared that all of northern Italy would fall to Caesar without a serious battle. Pompey was now in his late '50s, and had not commanded troops in the field for 15 years. His slow response to Caesar's invasion may have been a sign of age, or possibly a sign that the legions available to the Republic in Italia had, in many cases, fought with Caesar's legendary Gallic legions: their loyalty was debatable. Within weeks, Rome was in a sufficient state of panic and rumor for Pompey to announce that he and the Republican senators were leaving the city. He is said to have decreed that any Romans who remained thereafter would be considered Caesar's allies and his enemies. Pompey intended to fight Caesar, not in Italia, but in Asia, an area of the Roman world in which he had strong connections and many client-kings. Unfortunately, in the scramble to evacuate Rome, neither Pompey nor the Senators thought to take charge of Rome's treasury, stored under the Temple of Saturn. Caesar would find it intact when he entered Rome and impounded the lot - 15,000 bars of golden, 30,000 bars of silver, and 30,000,000 sesterces in coin.

When a hostile young Tribune, Marcellus, tried to prevent Caesar and his party from entering the Treasury (saying the funds belonged to the genuine republican government), Caesar noted pleasantly that it would be much easier for him to kill Marcellus than to merely threaten to do so. He got the money. The move was unpopular but, at a stroke, Caesar's war chest vastly outweighed Pompey's.

Cicero, representative of many, metaphorically wrung his hands and vacillated, finally choosing the side of his senatorial colleagues. Every family in Rome had a similar choice to make. When Sulla marched on Rome a generation and more earlier, his triumph had been followed by massive proscriptions, murders, confiscation of his enemies' property; many were sure that the same fate would befall them under Caesar. Instead, Caesar from the first showed a policy of clementia (mercy), which reaped rewards and earned the grudging admiration of his bitterest enemies. This shrewd political move won many nervous Romans to his side of the quarrel. Time and again he pardoned whole cities and armies standing against him, releasing his enemies with pacific words to join Pompey if they wished. It is an irony of history that most of his murderers, save one, were men who had fought against him and been pardoned, in some cases more than once, during the Civil War. As Cicero wrote Atticus,

Caesar pursued Pompey's army to Brundisium (Brindisi) where he was just too late to prevent Pompey, the Consuls and senatorial followers, and the army from decamping for the Balkans en masse on March 17, As for Caesar,

"Finding that the consuls had crossed the sea he returned to the city [Rome], and after rendering to the senate and also to the assembly of the people an account of his motives and of the deplorable necessity of his position, in that he had been driven to arms by others, who had themselves resorted to arms, he resolved to march on Spain." Paterculus, Roman History.

Within days of taking forcible possession of the treasury, Caesar left Lepidus and Antony to hold Rome and Italy, and departed to fight Pompey's legions in Spain, fearing to leave them in his rear when following Pompey to the east.

CICERO AND CAESAR

Many in Italy, knowing that Pompey had the resources to gather a vast fleet and that Caesar had no fleet and scant time to build one, put their money on Pompey. Cicero's letters in this period are particularly fascinating, not only for his wonderfully immediate description of the dangers on all sides but because he preserves copies of letters from Caesar to Cicero and others. His personal choices were stark. To leave Italy, following Pompey, would declare him as Caesar's enemy, bad politics if Caesar won. To stay behind would lose him all credibility with the ruling Optimates and Pompey, his longtime patron. As Cicero wrote in mid-February,

"Pompey alone counts with me, because of what he did for me, not because of the weight of his name. What weight after all would it carry in this cause? When all of us feared Caesar, Pompey was his friend; now that he has started to fear him he expects us all to be Caesar's enemies." Cicero, 64.

On March 5, en route to Brundisium, Caesar wrote his powerful client, Balbus (in a letter certainly meant for circulation) that

To Cicero himself, Caesar wrote on March 26 that

"You rightly surmise of me (you know me well) that of all things I abhor cruelty...I am not disturbed by the fact that those whom I have released are said to have left the country in order to make war against me once more. Nothing pleases me better than that I should be true to my nature and they to theirs." Cicero, 70.

Yet, as Cicero writes Atticus on March 28, Caesar had visited him in Formiae and determinedly sought to bring Cicero to Rome, probably to give respectable color to the rump Senate left behind. Cicero had nervously but determinedly demurred unless Caesar restored the prewar status quo of the republic. Caesar kept his claws sheathed, but Cicero clearly saw them:

"But we were wrong in thinking him accommodating; I have never found anybody less so. He said I was passing judgment against him, that the rest would be slower to come if I did not." Worse, "After a long discussion, [Caesar said] 'Come along then and work for peace.' 'At my own discretion?' I asked. "Naturally,' he answered, 'Who am I to lay down rules for you?' 'Well,' I said, 'I shall take the line that the Senate does not approve of an expedition to Spain or of the transport of armies into Greece and,' I added 'I shall have much to say in commiseration of Pompey.' At that he protested that this was not the sort of thing he wanted said.'" Cicero to Atticus, 71.

The battles were about to begin.

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