When Hannibal had swept over the Alps in 218 BC, the Gauls had risen with him and, throughout the fifteen years he had spent in Italy, had proved the backbone of the Carthaginian’s army. The Romans accordingly had a great respect for the Gauls: not only for their fighting qualities but, now that they had become settlers and farmers, for their diligence, endurance and faithfulness. It was true that in “Gaul-across-the-Alps” their related tribes still swarmed as wild, fearsome and untamed—except in Romanized Narbonese Gaul—as when they had harried Italy. But now among the rich and noble Romans the big-boned, fair-haired Gauls were a familiar sight and respected for their many qualities, not least for their attachment to the family they served much as once they had been attached to their own clan. In somewhat similar fashion, many centuries later, the rulers of Britain’s empire would find in Egypt their trustworthy servants among the Sudanese, and in India and the Far East the amah, or devoted native nurse to care for their children.

Of Caesar’s early years nothing is recorded except that he is said to have written a poem in praise of Hercules and a tragedy based on the story of Oedipus. Certainly he was to write poetry until late in his life (though almost nothing has survived), and of course the muscular, limpid prose which distinguishes his seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul remains an eternal monument. The subject of Hercules might have been invented for the future hero and cleanser of the Augean stables, but Oedipus seems a curious choice although a Freudian might make too much of the fact that, as a child, his relationship with his mother Aurelia had always been very affectionate and happy, and in later years he was passionately attached to her. His father, having been praetor and then propraetor in Asia, died at Pisa in 85 BC SO that Caesar—with two sisters but no brother—became the man of the family in his sixteenth year. His mother, throughout the storm of his life, remained a steadfast image of the Roman hearthside and of values that everywhere else were collapsing. If Caesar’s political, financial, and sexual morals were a far call from those of old Rome, at least in his conduct as a soldier—in his toughness, endurance, and tenacity—he invariably displayed the same qualities which had given the Romans of an earlier century the final victory over Hannibal.

In 84 BC, at the age of sixteen, Caesar put on the toga of manhood. He was at this time in his life, Suetonius tells us, “tall, fair and well-built,” while Plutarch adds that “he had a fine white skin” but contradicts Suetonius by saying that he was “slightly built.” He had a rather broad face and keen, dark-brown eyes. Since both biographers lived long after Caesar was dead they were relying on busts and statues, hearsay and the memories of old men, themselves recounting tales told them as children. Suetonius, however, had access to the imperial and senatorial archives as well as to a large body of contemporary memoirs, while Plutarch cites lists of authorities for his Lives and was clearly a diligent researcher.

Caesar’s marriage had been arranged before his father’s death; indeed a formal engagement, as was not uncustomary, had taken place while he was still a boy. The bride whom his father had proposed was Cossutia who, although rich, came only from an equestrian family and therefore, would be of no particular asset to one who was both patrician and noble, patrician signifying the inner circle of the old aristocracy and noble those who belonged to the political inner circle. One thing is clear: after the death of Caesar’s father, the engagement with Cossutia was broken off. It is possible that Caesar listened to the voice of his own ambition in this as well as to his mother and, especially perhaps, to her sister, Julia.

The widow of the famous Marius, who had been seven times consul and leader of the “popular” party, was a woman who still exerted considerable influence upon the government of the time. Rome was a republic, and had been so ever since the expulsion of the kings in the distant past. Power was held by the senate, composed of three hundred members, although in theory this was a democratic state since every Roman citizen was a member of the Assembly, the executive and legislative body. Out of the senate were annually elected the chief officers of the state, the two consuls, the six praetors, and others. In a time of emergency a dictator might be elected, who took precedence over all the officials, but his position had to be ratified every six months. This had happened during the terrible invasion of Italy by Hannibal, when the old aristocrat Quintus Fabius Maximus had been elected dictator at a time when the divided command of the consuls had almost delivered Italy into the Carthaginian’s hands.

In the years since then, with the conquest of Carthage and the absorption of its African and Spanish empire, and then of nearly all the eastern Mediterranean states deriving from the conquests of Alexander the Great, Rome had become an imperial nation with conquered or otherwise submissive territories all round the Mediterranean shores. The republican framework, which had well suited Italy after the subjugation of the native tribes and the Gauls to the north, was not adequate to deal with the new responsibilities of organizing a multitude of countries, nations and races—with different languages, customs and religions. Even before Caesar was born, and certainly during his early life, the system that had evolved over centuries was collapsing through the pressure of circumstances for which it had never been de-signed. Historians and scholars, looking back with hindsight, have been quick to point out that the republic would have disintegrated even if Caesar had never lived. The fact is that Caesar in his struggle for power threw down the old building and laid the foundations for the Imperial one that would be its successor whether inadvertently or by design.

The acquisition of empire, and particularly the riches of the East, had effected an immense change on the Roman scene, both externally and internally. Externally the principal change was from an army which had formerly been composed of Roman citizens, summoned from their farms and small-holdings in time of national emergency, to a number of large armies situated in the various provinces, and com-posed of paid professional soldiers, not only of Italian but of many other nationalities. Internally, the accessibility of great wealth—especially for the powerful families who could occupy the offices that led to it—had transformed the Roman scene. The Rome of the citizen/farmer/soldier had given way to the Rome of the capitalist, the entrepreneur and the absentee landlord, whose broad acres were farmed by hundreds of slaves from the many subjugated nations within the empire. At the same time the city itself had filled with the dispossessed, the peasants and small farmers, rural villagers whose hamlets had lost their purpose with the advent of slave labor, and all the scourings of the Mediterranean ports and littorals. As Peter Green has written in his introduction to Juvenal’s Satires: “Collapsing social standards are as sure a sign of eventual upheaval as the ominous drying up of springs and wells which heralds a volcanic eruption.” Although he was writing over a century after Caesar’s birth, his was the Rome described by the great satirist:

 

The wagons thundering past

Through those narrow twisting streets, the oaths of draymen

Caught in a traffic jam…

 

If a business appointment

 

Summons the tycoon, he gets there fast, by litter,

Tacking above the crowd.