Skill India

blood was no longer a political advantage; it was actually a handicap, since a patrician was
debarred from holding the paraconstitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The Julii
Caesares traced their lineage back to the goddess Venus, but the family was not snobbish or
conservative-minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished.A Roman noble
won distinction for himself and his family by securing election to a series of public offices, which
culminated in the consulship, with the censorship possibly to follow. This was a difficult task for
even the ablest and most gifted noble unless he was backed by substantial family wealth and
influence. Rome’s victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) had made
Rome the paramount power in the Mediterranean basin; an influential Roman noble family’s
clients (that is, protégés who, in return, gave their patrons their political support) might include
kings and even whole nations, besides numerous private individuals. The requirements and the
costs of a Roman political career in Caesar’s day were high, and the competition was severe;
but the potential profits were of enormous magnitude. One of the perquisites of the praetorship
and the consulship was the government of a province, which gave ample opportunity for
plunder. The whole Mediterranean world was, in fact, at the mercy of the Roman nobility and of
a new class of Roman businessmen, the equites (“knights”), which had grown rich on military
contracts and on tax farming.
Military manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry. This class had been partly
dispossessed by an economic revolution following on the devastation caused by the Second
Punic War. The Roman governing class had consequently come to be hated and discredited at
home and abroad. From 133 BCE onward there had been a series of alternate revolutionary
and counter-revolutionary paroxysms. It was evident that the misgovernment of the Roman
state and the Greco-Roman world by the Roman nobility could not continue indefinitely and it
was fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of military dictatorship backed
by dispossessed Italian peasants who had turned to long-term military service.The traditional
competition among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils of office was thus
threatening to turn into a desperate race for seizing autocratic power. The Julii Caesares did not
seem to be in the running. It was true that Sextus Caesar, who was perhaps the dictator’s uncle,
had been one of the consuls for 91 BCE; and Lucius Caesar, one of the consuls for 90 BCE,
was a distant cousin, whose son and namesake was consul for 64 BCE. In 90 BCE, Rome’s
Italian allies had seceded from Rome because of the Roman government’s obstinate refusal to
grant them Roman citizenship, and, as consul, Lucius Caesar had introduced emergency
legislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all Italian ally states that had not taken up
arms or that had returned to their allegiance.
Whoever had been consul in this critical year would have had to initiate such legislation,
whatever his personal political predilections. There is evidence, however, that the Julii
Caesares, though patricians, had already committed themselves to the antinobility party. An
aunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius, a self-made man (novus homo) who had
forced his way up to the summit by his military ability and had made the momentous innovation
of recruiting his armies from the dispossessed peasants.
The date of Caesar the dictator’s birth has long been disputed. The day was July 12 or 13; the
traditional (and perhaps most probable) year is 100 BCE; but if this date is correct, Caesar must
have held each of his offices two years in advance of the legal minimum age. His father, Gaius
Caesar, died when Caesar was but 16; his mother, Aurelia, was a notable woman, and it seems
certain that he owed much to her.
In spite of the inadequacy of his resources, Caesar seems to have chosen a political career as a
matter of course. From the beginning, he probably privately aimed at winning office, not just for
the sake of the honours but in order to achieve the power to put the misgoverned Roman state
and Greco-Roman world into better order in accordance with ideas of his own. It is improbable
that Caesar deliberately sought monarchical power until after he had crossed the Rubicon in 49
BCE, though sufficient power to impose his will, as he was determined to do, proved to mean
monarchical power.In 84 BCE Caesar committed himself publicly to the radical side by marrying
Cornelia, a daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a noble who was Marius’s associate in
revolution. In 83 BCE Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to Italy from the East and led the
successful counter-revolution of 83–82 BCE; Sulla then ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia.
Caesar refused and came close to losing not only his property (such as it was) but his life as
well. He found it advisable to remove himself from Italy and to do military service, first in the
province of Asia and then in Cilicia.
In 78 BCE, after Sulla’s death, he returned to Rome and started on his political career in the
conventional way, by acting as a prosecuting advocate—of course, in his case, against
prominent Sullan counter-revolutionaries. His first target, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, was
defended by Quintus Hortensius, the leading advocate of the day, and was acquitted by the
extortion-court jury, composed exclusively of senators.
Caesar then went to Rhodes to study oratory under a famous professor, Molon. En route he was
captured by pirates (one of the symptoms of the anarchy into which the Roman nobility had
allowed the Mediterranean world to fall). Caesar raised his ransom, raised a naval force,
captured his captors, and had them crucified—all this as a private individual holding no public
office. In 74 BCE, when Mithradates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, renewed war on the Romans,
Caesar raised a private army to combat him.
In his absence from Rome, Caesar was made a member of the politico-ecclesiastical college of
pontifices; and on his return he gained one of the elective military tribuneships. Caesar now
worked to undo the Sullan constitution in cooperation with Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius), who
had started his career as a lieutenant of Sulla but had changed sides since Sulla’s death. In 69
or 68 BCE Caesar was elected quaestor (the first rung on the Roman political ladder). In the
same year his wife, Cornelia, and his aunt Julia, Marius’s widow, died. In public funeral orations
in their honour, Caesar found opportunities for praising Cinna and Marius. Caesar afterward
married Pompeia, a distant relative of Pompey. Caesar served his quaestorship in the province
of Farther Spain (modern Andalusia and Portugal).
Caesar was elected one of the curule aediles for 65 BCE, and he celebrated his tenure of this
office by unusually lavish expenditure with borrowed money. He was elected pontifex maximus