Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford Read Free Book Online Page B

mines to slave farms and property dealing. In Pompey and Crassus, Caesar had deliberately sought—and found—two different aspects of power, both of which he intended to turn to his advantage.
     
     

 
    6
     
    From Conspirator to Chief Priest
     
    CRASSUS was determined to buy his way into power and, in the course of doing so, was happy to help along others who would owe their growing ascendancy to him. As client-states to Rome itself, so clients were essential to any rich Roman. Caesar, as his now intimate friend and adviser, was naturally one of those to be assisted, and Crassus, who had been elected in 65 to the censorship, was able to exercise both his position and his money to help promote his protégé.
    The censors held the highest office of all Roman magistrates; they were responsible not only for the conduct and morals of citizens (an irony in view of the lives of some of them) but also superintended the five-yearly census. It was this that gave the censor much of his power, and Crassus (like Caesar) had his eye on the people who lived north of the Po: he wished to include them in the roll of citizens. He had a further ambition, and this was to make Egypt into a Roman province. It had long been ruled by the Greek Ptolemies but the last king, Ptolemy XI, had been murdered shortly after his accession to the throne and was said to have bequeathed his rich kingdom to Rome, just as Nicomedes of Bithynia had done. If Crassus could achieve either or both of these ambitions he would add immeasurably to the number of clients who would give him their support in the jungle of Roman politics. He was as pleased as Caesar to see the departure of Pompey to the East—and for the same reasons. He was also happy to help along his younger associate, and he—like then many another—saw no threat to his own position from the dandified, art-loving philanderer.
    Crassus now provided the funds to support Caesar in his campaign for the office of curule aedile. This was yet a further rung on the ladder of any ambitious senator, being an urban magistracy with the function of superintending trade, the money market, streets and buildings, the sanitation of the city, and the games. It was, as we know, in this latter department that Caesar was to shine, buying himself goodwill with borrowed money. Although money from the treasury was available for the games, it was a recognized fact in political life that it was only by spending an immense amount over and above this that higher offices of state could be attained through the enthusiastic approval of the people. Needless to say, Caesar was elected and with him as his colleague was a certain Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, a man who was later to feature largely in Caesar’s life. Bibulus was an honest, stubborn old-fashioned type of Roman, an aristocrat of the opposite party to Caesar’s, the type of staid conservative with whom history has made us familiar, and certainly no match’ for the mercurial Caesar. The latter, as Suetonius tells us, laid on wild-beast hunts and stage-plays, sometimes at his own expense but at other times in cooperation with his colleague. Yet even when Bibulus was involved in the production of some entertainment it made no difference—it was Caesar who got the praise. As Bibulus himself wrily remarked: “In the Forum the Temple of the Heavenly Twins is always just known as ‘Castor’s,’ so I always fare like Pollux to Caesar’s Castor whenever it comes to giving a public entertainment together.”
    In Pompey’s absence Crassus was making a great play for most powerful man in the Roman world. Caesar’s aedileship was a comparatively small move upon this chessboard, for Crassus almost certainly had a hand in financing the election of the two consuls, P. Cornelius Sulla and P. Autronius Paetus for the year 65. However the senate took alarm at the spectacle of Rome’s wealthiest man now aspiring to manipulate the consulship, and the two men were condemned for