There’s plenty of room inside:

He can read, or take notes, or snooze as he jogs along—

Those drawn blinds are most soporific. Even so

He outstrips us: however fast we pedestrians hurry

We’re blocked by the crowds ahead, while those behind us

Tread on our heels. Sharp elbows buffet my ribs,

Poles poke into me; one lout swings a crossbeam

Down on my skull, another scores with a barrel.

My legs are mud-encrusted, big feet kick me, a hobnailed

Soldier’s boot lands squarely on my toe. Do you see

All that steam and bustle? The great man’s hangers-on

Are getting their free dinner, each with his own

Kitchen-boy in attendance. Those outsize dixies,

And all the rest of the gear one poor little slave

Must balance on his head, while he trots along

To keep the charcoal glowing, would tax the strength

Of a muscle-bound general. Here’s the great trunk of a fir-tree

Swaying along its wagon, and look, another dray

Behind it, stacked high with pine-logs, a nodding threat

Over the heads of the crowd.

 

Juvenal (Trans. Peter Green)

 

Politically the peninsula was torn apart during Caesar’s boyhood by what was called the Social War—the war in which many of the allies of Rome (socii) rebelled against the city. They were tired of paying taxes and being sacrificed for Rome while denied the vote by the old reactionaries of the senate, as well as the privileges of Roman citizenship. It was the cry (later to become familiar) of “No taxation without representation!” The war lasted from 91-87 BC, while Caesar was a boy, and cost on a rough estimate 300,000 lives, but by its end some 80,000 new citizens were enfranchised. Its hero was the great soldier Marius, a man of obscure origins but one of the outstanding Roman soldiers: victor in Spain and in Gaul, his life was almost as tumultuous as his nephew Caesar’s was to be. Then, hard on the heels of the social war, came a power conflict between what had gradually become the two main political “parties” in Italy. No parties as such existed in name but distinctions, as between Conservative and Labour, Republican and Democrat, have been in evidence since man became a social and city-dwelling animal. They were very evident in ancient Athens, and since the Romans took almost all their thought, art, political science, science itself, poetry, drama, and philosophy from Greece, it would hardly be surprising if they took their political groupings from the same source.

Although not clearly distinguished by simple names, the two main groups were the Populates (Demos) and the Optimates (Aristoi). These were not organized political parties as are understood today in the western world, but somewhat vague groupings impelled by somewhat dissimilar aims and objectives. Of course, as always with human beings, their principal aim was the same: power and the control of power by their own group. Wealth and all that it brought with it would automatically follow. In the civil strife between the Populates and the Optimates the Populates were headed by Caesar’s uncle by marriage, Marius, and the Optimates by the patrician Sulla. During Marius’ absence in the East and after his death in 86 BC the Populates were led by L. Cornelius Cinna.

It was almost certainly Caesar’s widowed aunt Julia who now took a hand in the first major development in his life, for, after breaking off his engagement to Cossutia, he immediately married Cornelia, the daughter of the now all-powerful Cinna. Marriages were very much matters of politics in the Roman world, and the patrician Julian clan had doubly allied itself with the popular party. Caesar, now in his seventeenth year, was young to marry but no doubt his aunt Julia saw the opportunity as too good to miss. In any case, as events would show, he seems to have been genuinely fond of Cornelia. She bore him a daughter in the following year who was called Julia after her clan. She too was to play an important part in the politics of his life.

Six years older than Caesar was a man who embraced the policies of the Optimates as zealously as Caesar did those of the Populates. This was the great orator and politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero. As a man, a citizen and a politician, Cicero was vain and weak; politically he in many respects resembled the celebrated “Vicar of Bray” in the old English ballad. His real genius was with language; in his letters, his oratorical works, his speculative philosophy, he raised the Latin tongue to the peak of its perfection. His political stand is most clearly seen in a speech written in defense of a man called Sextius, who had been arrested for his involvement in one of the innumerable brawls that disfigured the political face of Rome. The orator paints a dream picture of the party he favored, which never existed in the Rome that he knew and can only have existed in his head.

 

In the Commonwealth there have always been two parties—the Populates and the Optimates. The Populates say and do what will please the mob. The Optimates say and do what will please the best men. And who are the best men? They are of all ranks and infinite in number—senators, municipal citizens, farmers, men of business, even freedmen.