Only after much indecision did he join Pompey on his campaign. He bravely stayed behind and negotiated with Caesar, hoping some settlement could be reached. Cicero did not immediately flock to team Pompey, however. Since ambitious Romans of the era did not consider submission a viable option, Caesar would soon turn his army on Rome and face Pompey in a war that would end the Republic for good.ĭuring the initial stage of Rome's civil war, Pompey and the senatorial class fled the city while Caesar occupied Rome and assumed dictatorial authority. Thus, Caesar faced a choice: fight a ruinous civil war, or let his enemies destroy him. Caesar had implored his old pal Pompey for peace, but was refused. Only Pompey's military backing could make Caesar come to heel. The Senate had legal authority, but no power of enforcement. When his efforts failed, the senate wanted to declare him an enemy of Rome, notes Plutarch.Ĭaesar had two things on his side: a battle-hardened army loyal directly to him and the admiration of ordinary Romans, per Livius. Caesar was desperately attempting to secure another title before his previous appointment lapsed, thus retaining immunity. Pompey's new father-in-law Scipio had been waiting for Caesar's title to lapse so he could drag him into court and ruin him politically and then send him into exile, or worse. But when Crassus was killed in a reckless war of aggression in 56 B.C., the fragile detente between Pompey and Caesar soon died too.Īll this hinged on a funny rule in republican Rome (per " Judicial Accountability and Immunity in Roman Law"): government officials could not be prosecuted. Perhaps that seeming moderation is what attracted Crassus and his riches as the "glue" that held this three-way alliance together, according to World History Encyclopedia. Neither man's beef was in itself radical. But when these reasonable requests were thwarted by a partisan rival, Pompey plotted to circumvent the senate entirely.Ĭaesar had his own grudges with senators bogging down a well-precedented request to be elected to a key post in absentia. He asked only that his veterans receive land grants and that his conquests be ratified. Instead, Pompey humbly disbanded his forces and entered Rome as an ordinary citizen. Pompey had won massive victories by 61 B.C., and the Senate feared the popular general would march into Rome and become a tyrant like Sulla. The trinity was good for the conspirators as long as it lasted. He, of course, proved his detractors correct when he named himself dictator for life in the year 44 B.C., according to National Geographic.Ĭaesar, Pompey, and Rome's richest man Crassus divided rule between themselves in a power-sharing agreement that lasted just seven years until it dissolved in 53 B.C. And while Pompey was never known for his oratory or shrewd maneuvering inside Rome's power structure, Caesar was a cunning political tactician whose enemies assumed his populism, and his fashion sense, were a shrewdly calculated route to kingly tyranny. The Populare cause was also synonymous with demagoguery since Rome's founding the republic itself was created upon the exile of Rome's last king. These recognizable class and culture wars, however, were hardly straightforward to interpret. His leadership among Rome's cool kids contrasted Pompey's closer embodiment of what had always been paramount to the republic: tradition. He famously wore his toga "loosely belted" and was even branded "effeminate," notes History Collection. And Caesar wasn't just a populist he was fashionable. The Populare cause was in some sense a romantic countercultural movement, too.
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