Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford Read Free Book Online

many new friends in the north—a potential power base upon which he would one day draw.
    A year after the death of his wife Caesar married again. This time there could be no question of sentiment, since he married Pompeia, whose mother was the daughter of Sulla and whose father was the son of one of the two pro-Sulla consuls who had done so much to reduce the power of the tribunes in 88. He had, then, married right into the heart of the Optimates. Moreover his new wife’s family were extremely wealthy and Caesar still required money to pursue his ambitions.
    The prime political consideration in Rome at this moment was the appointment of someone to take over command of the Mediterranean sea and rid it once and for all of piracy. Caesar, as we have seen, had personal knowledge of this scourge, which had now reached such proportions that the whole trade of the empire was at risk. The pirates, as was quite clear, often worked hand in glove with Roman administrators and by contributing agreed percentages to the administrators were treating the Mediterranean as their private lake. The only way to rid the sea-lanes of this intolerable mischief was to appoint a supreme commander at the head of a national fleet. The man proposed for this position by one of the tribunes was Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great.
    Six years older than Caesar, he was a leading figure among the Optimates : the man who had marched with Sulla and become one of the dictator’s greatest generals, had been accorded the surname of Magnus in consequence of his victories in Africa over the Marian party. Pompey the Great should by all accounts have been the one man that Caesar would dislike more than all the other supporters of the conservative party. But Caesar, in the grip of the ambition that he seems to have brought back with him from Spain, had decided that Pompey was the man to ally himself with if he himself was to reach the upper echelons of power. When the proposition to give Pompey overall command of a fleet of two hundred vessels and all the soldiers and sailors he needed for the campaign was put to the people’s assembly it was immediately passed. The senators, however, were alarmed at the idea of giving such a command to one man, particularly perhaps because it seemed to be so popular with the masses. They saw the threat of a dictatorship and also, one suspects, there were those among them who had financial interests in the piracy. The entire senate, with one notable exception, informed the people’s assembly of their rejection of the plan. The exception was Caesar, who spoke out in its favor, thus aligning himself with Pompey and at the same time showing himself to the people in a favorable light as a popularist in agreement with their wishes. In the event, there was no way in which those who opposed the proposition could prevent its being carried out, and Pompey was duly given this independent command—with almost double the amount of ships and men that had first been proposed.
    As it turned out, the Romans could not have done better than to give this far-ranging command to Pompey, for it completely suited his talents. In the turmoil caused by the Mithridatic wars the coasts of Asia Minor had become infested with pirates because the Romans were too involved on land to be able to devote their energies to the sea-lanes, but many of the rebels against whom he was to conduct his campaign were far from being the rough and undisciplined murderers and rogues that the word pirate nowadays tends to conjure up. As Plutarch writes:
     
    whilst the Romans were embroiled in their civil wars, being engaged against one another even before the very gates of Rome, the seas lay waste and unguarded, and by degrees enticed and drew them on not only to seize upon and spoil the merchants and ships upon the seas, but also to lay waste the islands and seaport towns. So that now there embarked with these pirates men of wealth and noble birth and superior abilities,