Yet how could it be prevented? It was useless now to
bribe the Comitia, to work with clubs and wire-pullers. The enfranchised
citizens would come to vote for Caesar from every country town. The
legionaries to a man would vote for him; and even in the venal city he was
the idol of the hour. No fault could be found with his administration. His
wars had paid their own expenses. He had doubled the pay of his troops,
but his military chest was still full, and his own wealth seemed
boundless. He was adorning the Forum with new and costly buildings.
Senators, knights, young men of rank who had been extravagant, had been
relieved by his generosity and were his pensioners. Gaul might have been
impatient at its loss of liberty, but no word of complaint was heard
against Caesar for oppressive government. The more genius he had shown the
more formidable he was. Let him be consul, and he would be the master of
them all.
Caesar had been credited with far-reaching designs. It has been assumed
that in early life he had designed the overthrow of the Constitution; that
he pursued his purpose steadily through every stage in his career, and
that he sought the command of Gaul only to obtain an army devoted to him
which would execute his will. It has not seemed incredible that a man of
middle age undertook the conquest of a country of which nothing is known
save that it was inhabited by warlike races, who more than once had
threatened to overrun Italy and destroy Rome; that he went through ten
years of desperate fighting exposed to a thousand dangers from the sword,
from exposure and hardship; that for ten years he had banished himself
from Rome, uncertain whether he would ever see it again; and that he had
ventured upon all this with no other object than that of eventually
controlling domestic politics.
Pages:
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467