baehr_p_richter_m_dictatorship_in_history_and_theory_bonapar

Streben nach der Konigsw¨ urde,¨ ” in Untersuchungen zur romischen¨ Geschichte

(ed. Franz Altheim), I, Frankfurt, 1961. The two trends in the interpretation of the Caesarian regime are represented by Eduard Meyer, Caesars Monarchie und das Prinzipat des Pompeius, 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1922 (reprint Darmstadt, 1974), who believes Caesar drew on Hellenistic models, and Konrad Kraft, “Der goldene Kranz Caesars und der Kampf um die Entlarvung des Tyrannen,” Jahrbuch fur¨ Numismatik und Geldgeschichte, 3–4, 1952–1953, 7–97, who interprets Caesar’s intent as a return to the sources to model his powers on those on the ancient kings of Rome.

A number of studies provide a historiographic perspective, notably those of Albert Mathiez, “La Revolution´ franc¸aise et la theorie´ de la dictature,” Revue historique, 1929, 304–15; Jean Gage,´ “La dictature romaine,” Bulletin de la Faculte´ des Lettres de Strasbourg, 15, 1937, 126–30; Giuseppe Sartori,

“Dittatura. Dalla dittatura antica alle dittature contemporanee,” Enciclopedia del diritto, 13, 1964, 356–60; Salvo Mastellone, “Il problema della dittatura in Francia nella prima meta` dell’ottocento,” Il pensiero politico, 1, 1968, 386– 407; “Dittatura ‘giacobina,’ dittatura ‘bonapartista’ et dittatura del proletario,” ibid., 8, 1975; Pirangelo Catalano, “A proposito dei concetti di ‘rivoluzione’ nella dottrina romanistica contemporanea (tra ‘rivoluzione della plebe’ et dittature rivoluzionarie),” Studia et Documenta Historia et Iuris, 43, 1977, 440–55; and “Consolato e dittatura: l’esperimento romano della repubblica del Paraguay (1813–1844),” Studi Romani, 26, 1978, 178–96. For “dictatorship” among the French positivists, cf. my book L’idee´ republicaine en France, 1789–1924: essai d’ histoire critique, Paris, 1982.

confronted every day. Hoc voluerunt: Another translation might be, “They asked for it.”

The purposes of this chapter are twofold. First, I want to suggest what experiences as a long-term ruler out in Rome’s provinces might have led Caesar toward overthrowing Rome’s republic in the name merely of his sacro egoismo. Second, I will trace some examples of how the fear that imperial administrators might become internal threats to established political order manifested itself later, both within the Roman Empire and in later empires as well. My thesis is that the experience of governing a large province on one’s own, the experience of exercising sole responsibility over large regions and great numbers of people, the experience of independence and power and control, the taste for it (and in some cases the great wealth that could be derived from it), all this sometimes created what one might call an “imperial counterculture” to the law-ruled state existing at the center. The contrast between the conduct of politics at the imperial metropole and the situation prevailing on the imperial peripheries could be very sharp. In the center, politicians had to deal with many foci of power, and they had to cooperate at least minimally with one another, to be dependent upon one another to some extent. Out in the provinces, however, it was different: Often one person, one superior person, made all major decisions. Additionally, out of this difference conflict could develop.

Let me cite one minor example from a modern empire to illustrate my point. In 1919, the wife of the British imperial administrator Joyce Carey demanded that he come home to Britain. Carey, the sole ruler of 100,000 Nigerians, loved his wife, but he refused because he had too much to do and he was enjoying it too much. Carey went everywhere accompanied by 130 porters and guards; a bourgeois life back in some London suburb would be so reduced in comparison with this. Joyce Carey is an example, in little, of the addictiveness of the habit of power.3 Caesar lived on a much grander scale, but like Caesar, Carey found it very difficult to make the transition from the elemental egotism of life on the imperial periphery to the complexities and limits of life at the center. Carey eventually, with great regret, did give up his imperial command (and was unhappy for the next ten years). Caesar, of course, never gave up his command at all: He had to be murdered.

The fears which we find so frequently expressed in various later empires about the corrupting impact on governors of the experience of total control over imperial provinces seem in retrospect somewhat exaggerated. None of

3On Joyce Carey, see conveniently V. Packenham, The Noonday Sun: Edwardians in the Tropics (London, 1985), 57–66.

the later fears I will discuss ever materialized into the imposition of tyranny at the center. However, the existence of those fears is a historical fact, called forth by the recognition of a general reality of imperial political life: the counterculture of personal power on the imperial periphery. Caesar was the prime historical example of it, and these fears existed under his shadow.

What then was the cause of the conflict between Caesar and the Senate that eventually led to civil war? At the simplest level, it was a dispute over the termination date of Caesar’s special provincial command in Gaul. This vast command, encompassing Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), Illyricum (the northern coasts of the Adriatic Sea), and Transalpine Gaul (modern France), had been gained by Caesar as consul in 59 B.C., as his payoff in a complicated deal with the politicians M. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Pompeius Magnus. For his part, Caesar had helped Crassus and Pompey push through the Roman assemblies various legislative measures they wished, illegally circumventing the attempts of his consular colleague to block them. Now, Roman public officials could not be prosecuted in court while holding office; but Caesar’s actions in 59, as well as some of his actions as proconsul in Gaul in 58–50, left him theoretically vulnerable to prosecution once his term of office ended. Note that I say theoretically vulnerable: For if Caesar finished his term as commander in Gaul and returned to Rome with the political support of Pompey, the likelihood of any successful prosecution was nil. Pompey’s own attitude toward Roman civil legal procedure (he himself had been a great conqueror in the eastern Mediterranean in the 60s) is shown by the fact that in 52 he ensured the conviction of one of his political enemies by ringing the court with troops. He could certainly ensure acquittal the same way.

That would require Caesar having to cooperate politically with Pompey, to be to some extent dependent upon him for political survival. Such dependence might have been acceptable to Caesar as long as Pompey was married to Caesar’s beloved daughter (and only child) Julia. This marriage had helped seal the pact between the two men back in 59 B.C., and it had turned out well: Pompey loved Julia as much as Caesar did, and the personal link between the two men was strong. However, Julia died in childbirth in 54 (as did her baby, Pompey’s son, Caesar’s only grandson). In the following years, the personal connection that might have eased tensions between Caesar and Pompey, and might have eased the psychological strain of cooperation and interdependence, was therefore missing. The polarization of Roman politics between the two men was increased by the death in 53 of the third member of the original coalition of 59, Crassus, while battling against the Parthians on the Syrian frontier.

In 52, there is no evidence yet of a break between Caesar and Pompey. In that year, Pompey used all his great political influence, against much opposition, to pass a special measure through the assembly on Caesar’s behalf, giving Caesar the right to run for the consulship again in absentia. In this way, Caesar could win the prize of a second consulship, as a reward for his conquests in Gaul, while avoiding any prosecution in the courts for his actions as consul in 59 and in Gaul later. Candidates running for office in Rome had to campaign personally in the city; but no governor returning from a province could enter the city at all without giving up his imperium, the legal right he obtained, via high office, to compel obedience to himself as representative of the state. He had to run as a “civilian.” Magistrates with imperium were, as I noted, not subject to prosecution in court; but if Caesar were forced to lay down his imperium in order to run for election to a second consulship, he would at that point be vulnerable to the courts. Giving Caesar the right to run for a second consulship in absentia avoided this danger and acknowledged Caesar’s special merits. In addition, there were rumors that his second consulship would be followed by a specially assigned command against the Parthians in the East, to avenge Crassus, thereby postponing any possible prosecution years into the future.

This is all rather complex, but my point is that Caesar was receiving very special and favorable treatment as he looked ahead to stepping down from his long command in Gaul and returning to Rome. Yet it was not enough for him. The year 51 turned into 50, late 50, and still there was no sign of his giving up his Gallic armies. This in turn made Pompey, in command of relatively small forces in Italy by special assignment, suspicious. Cato the Younger, and the leaders of other senatorial factions opposed to Caesar, worked on those suspicions. The knowledge that Pompey was associating more and more with his enemies in the Senate in turn alienated Caesar. Pompey’s new friendships were symbolized by a new marriage: Replacing Julia was the daughter of a great enemy of Caesar’s, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica. It is not necessarily the case that Caesar’s enemies consciously sought a civil war; more likely, their aim was to split the coalition of Caesar and Pompey, and thereby establish more traditional freedom of political movement.4 Their intervention in the relations between Pompey and Caesar turned out to be a disaster, of course. The ultimate cause of this cleavage lay not with them, however, but with Caesar, his reluctance to lay down the Gallic command and come home, even under special conditions.

4See the comments of E. S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1974), 496–7.

Where did that reluctance come from? The issue can hardly have been merely a legal one: Caesar desired more time to settle affairs in Gaul, while Pompey stuck firmly to the legal time limit established as the termination date of Caesar’s governorship. This is the so-called Rechtsfrage. Leaving aside the likelihood that Caesar’s special assignment in Gaul had no exact day and month termination date, if the issue between Caesar and Pompey had been this simple, it is hard to believe that some sort of political compromise could not have been reached. It was certainly taking Caesar a very long time to set up his peace settlement among the Gallic tribes, now that his conquests were complete; but there had been fighting well into 52. The peace settlement involved all of Transalpine Gaul up to the Rhine, and the Gallic political situation was complicated. In similar circumstances 150 years earlier (206 B.C.), it had taken Scipio Africanus only a few weeks of decisionmaking to create the intricate arrangements among tribes and polities that established Roman Spain.5 However, if Caesar felt he needed even another full year beyond 50 to make stable arrangements among the Gallic tribes, arrangements whose stability could only be in Rome’s interest, why not give him that year? Workable political compromises such as this were a Roman specialty: The Romans were the ancient world’s greatest diplomats, and not least among themselves. That was the way the Republic had always worked.

So the problem here goes deeper than the Rechtsfrage. In fact, it is the judgment of the ancients themselves. Caesar’s biographer Suetonius, in explaining how the civil war originated, underlines Caesar’s “habit of command” (imperii consuetudo), which had given him over time a love of power for its own sake; and Suetonius shows that Cicero was of this same opinion.6 Appian is similar: Caesar simply did not wish to give up his command, period (Bellum Civile 2.28). So is Lucan: Caesar in Gaul could no longer bear the idea of a superior, just as Pompey could not bear the idea of an equal.

Imperii consuetudo: The deep point which I think these ancient writers were making was this. To stand successfully for a second consulship in absentia, to have that second consulship carried though with honor and dignity (preceded by a senatorially approved magnificent triumphal procession for the victories in Gaul), to avoid prosecution (or at least conviction) for his actions in 59, and, later, to proceed thenceforth to an honored and secure place in the Senate, or perhaps to another great command, this time against the Parthians: All this would require Pompey’s cooperation – in other words,

5For discussion of the evolution of Scipio Africanus’s peace settlement among the Spanish tribes in 206 B.C., see A. M. Eckstein, Senate and General: Individual Decision-Making and Roman Foreign Relations, 264–194 B.C. (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1987), 209–28.

6Suet. Jul., 30.

of administrative reforms, but his eyes immediately turned to more warfare: This time a campaign of conquest, grandiose in size, against the Parthians, a campaign that would take at least three years in the field. He was about to set off on this campaign when he was assassinated by sixty senators in March of 44.

Caesar’s plans here have struck many modern scholars as irresponsible. It is hard, from a modern perspective, to disagree: Caesar was well into middle age now; he had many capable generals to deal with the Parthian question (for instance, Mark Antony); his place was at Rome, attempting to construct a system to replace the republican one he had destroyed. But evidently he found the work of systematic imperial administration a bore; and his dealings even with an overawed Senate were obviously complicated and tense. Better the provinces and the camp. Caesar had many virtues, but patience was not one of them. War promised excitement, even exaltation. In the camp, he would be surrounded by adulation, and everyone would obey him instantly. He essentially made his home there for the last fifteen years of his life.9

Caesar, according to Roman estimates, was a man who initiated wars that cost the lives of 1,192,000 human beings, many of them Romans;10 and at the end, he was happily planning for more of the same. How could such a man, not a modern man at all, but a classic Schumpeterian war machine, habituated to absolute power after nine years in Gaul, ever have returned to normal Republican politics in 49? It could be done, I suppose, but it would require an enormous adjustment and a willingness on Caesar’s part to run at least a few normal political risks. Pompey, for his part, seems to have sensed by the spring of 50 Caesar’s deep reluctance to return to city politics. Pompey’s consequent estrangement from Caesar, and his suspicions of him, made negotiations for a political compromise ever more difficult. Conversely, the growing estrangement from Pompey made Caesar ever less eager to return to the city without ironclad guarantees, although in the autumn of 50 he offered a variety of ways in which such ironclad guarantees could be managed.

Caesar, of course, will ever remain subject to differing interpretations. However, one thing that I would suggest from the above is fairly certain. The transition of Caesar from long-term absolute ruler of Gaul back into

9The parallel would be with the isolated, arrogant, archaic “Titanic” figure of Alexander the Great as presented by F. Schachermeyr: see, e.g., Alexander der Grosse: Ingenium und Macht (Vienna, 1949), with the comments of E. Badian, “Some Recent Interpretations of Alexander,” Entretiens Hardt 22 (1976), 282–5.

10Plin. NH, 7.91–2.

a city politician even of great stature raised enormous difficulties, and it was a transition which Caesar made increasingly clear he would undertake only on very specific conditions. When those conditions were not met, the result was war. Thus, when later writers, intellectuals, and statesmen worried about “Caesarism” in the sense of an imperial administrator who had developed a habit of command in the provinces dangerous to the central state (imperil consuetudo), they were looking back at a real phenomenon.

There is a long history of fears of this particular type of Caesarism, and I can only provide a few sketches of it in the space remaining. First, let us look at some stories from the Roman Empire itself, as it developed under the early Emperors. One of the most famous concerns Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, consul in A.D. 26 and ruler of the great military province of Upper Germany (the Rhineland) for thirteen years, from A.D. 26 to 39. Descended from a great noble family, Gaetulicus – handsome and rich – was popular with his troops and evidently quite happy commanding on the Rhine frontier. Gaetulicus’s grip on his province was made easier by the fact that his father-in-law, L. Apronius, was governor of the neighboring great military province of Lower Germany, and we are told that Gaetulicus had made himself popular not only with his own troops, but with those of his father-in-law as well. However, in 34 A.D., various charges were brought against Gaetulicus in the Roman Senate. Allegedly, he then wrote to the Emperor Tiberius, asserting his innocence, but asserting also that if found guilty in the Senate, he would take this as an act of hostility, and finally proposing “a kind of treaty”(velut foedus) between himself and the Emperor, whereby Gaetulicus would keep possession of his province and Tiberius would keep possession of the Empire. The historian Tacitus finds the story of Gaetulicus’s threatening letter reasonable even if apocryphal, a verdict which in itself tells us much about the potential powers, and the habit of power, of long-term provincial governors.11 What is certain is that under the next Emperor, Caligula, Gaetulicus was removed from his province – by assassination.12

Perhaps Tacitus accepted the story of Gaetulicus’s “treaty” with Tiberius because something similar had happened in his own family. Tacitus’s father- in-law, Cn. Julius Agricola, was a famous general, conqueror of northern and western Britain during his long governorship there of 77–84 A.D. Tacitus says that the Emperor Domitian became worried about Agricola’s brilliant military reputation, far better than the Emperor’s own, and by the fact that

11Tac. Ann., 6.30.

12On Gaetulicus and the Emperor Tiberius, see B. Levick, Tiberius the Politician (London, 1976), 205–6.