The Rest Is History - 135. Crossing the Rubicon: The die is cast

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Now ready to take on Pompey and the Senate, Julius Caesar must take the final step and cross over into Italy with his legion. Join The Rest Is History Club for early access, ad-free episodes, bonus content and more at www.restishistorypod.com *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Julius Caesar has just got his command, the long-anticipated command that he wanted to bring him wealth, fame, status and power. So he's going off to Gaul to fight Asterix, versus Getterix and so on and so forth.

And that's basically what happens, isn't it, Tom? I mean, Caesar claims that he kills a million people. That's the report of Plutarch, writing a century or so later, he says. Over the course of the conquest of Gaul, Caesar slaughtered a million and enslaved another million. So is this as true as the talking snakes in the story of Alexander the Great? I think it's likely to be true. I mean, it's likely to derive from claims made by caesar himself right this was seen as kind of glorious bloody feats yeah um caesar's caesar's conquest of all is completely illegal under roman law

actually caesar himself had brought in a law saying that uh the governors of provinces shouldn't go on kind of um glory raids beyond the frontiers of their provinces that's exactly what caesar does um he uh he crosses the rhine he famously crosses the channel to britain uh it's it's an incredibly bloody brutal ultimately glorious process um and it brings caesar exactly what he wants exactly what he wants it makes what he wants. It makes him famous. He writes his own reports. You know, it's like, isn't it the Churchill thing that history will be kind to me? Because I intend to write it. Yes. So Caesar does that, his famous commentaries.

So he makes sure that everyone back in Rome is kept abreast of his great feats, which he reports in a tone of kind of sober modesty, which is all the more effective for that yeah and he starts to lavish money on the people uh bribing um high flyers in the senate um he recruits large numbers of legions um so that the 13th legion which he will take to the rubicon he's he's recruited that in i think um 58 57 bc and it's followed him across Gaul. Now, all of this, of course, back in Rome, where large chunks of the Roman elite regard him rather as AC Grayling would regard Nigel Farage. I mean, that's the kind of, that's how Caesar is hated. You know, it's how Caesar is hated. Right. You know, it's how Remainers view Boris Johnson. Yeah. It's that level of hatred.

Hatred and fury at continued success, right? And envy and jealousy. Yeah. And, of course, back in Rome, Pompey and Crassus still hate each other. So there's every prospect that the tranvirate will fall to pieces. It's not an official arrangement. It's a kind of shadowy behind the scenes agreement of the kind that had always operated in Rome. It's just that these three men are so powerful that they really can basically run Rome as they want. But by 56, Pompey and Crassus are falling

out. And a guy called Domitius Ahenobarbus who comes from a kind of very distinguished senatorial family he's a massive snob hates detests Caesar and he runs for the consulship on a ticket of cancelling Caesar's command um and so it looks as though everything is going to fall to pieces and Caesar can't have this. So he basically knocks the heads of Pompey and Crassus together. He meets up with them in a place called Lucca, a town which is just within his province. The triumvirate is reanimated. And by the terms of it, Pompey gets the province of Spain for five years. Crassus gets the province of Syria for five years. Caesar gets an extension of his command in Gaul for another five years.

So basically, those three men have divided up the most military significant provinces between them. So again, they are effectively impregnable. What then happens over the course of the following years is that that alliance falls to pieces. Well, isn't that partly because it stops being a true umbrage and it becomes a due umbrage? Yeah. And so Crassus, he's basically thinking, isn't he, I'm going to become the big man because I'm going to win a victory that will make me utterly unassailable against the parthians who were the the kind of they're the inheritors of the persian empire aren't they and um i know you'll enjoy telling everybody what happens to crassus well so so crassus basically has he's picked he's absorbed the same lesson that caesar had that you need conquests basically to be at the top table now in Rome.

And so he gets Syria because he wants to use it as a base to attack the Parthians. It all goes horribly wrong. It's the first disastrous invasion of Iraq by a Western Republic. And yeah, so Crassus ends up beheaded. And it said either that Milton Gold is poured down his throat or his head is used as a prop in a Parthian staging of a Greek play. It becomes a sort of Christmas tree bauble type thing.

Yeah. But surely both those things are perfectly possible, Tom, aren't they? Yeah, they are possible, I guess. I mean, pour the gold down first and then cut the head off, I'd say. The story of gold being poured down the throat is one that pops up on a suspiciously large number of occasions in this period. So how accurate it is, I don't know. But that then, of course, means that one of the stools of the three-legged stool has been knocked. And a further disaster for the triumvirate, is now a duomvirate,

is that Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, Julia, and had loved her very much. But in 54, Julia dies. So again, another kind of bond between the two men goes. Pompey is Caesar's elder, isn't he? Pompey is older.

No, Caesar's older, I think. Oh, okay. So it's not really weird that Pompey has married Caesar's daughter. No, but Pompey lays claim to being the first man, the princeps. Yeah. He's the top dog, and everyone basically accepts that. And Caesar essentially has accepted Pompey's primacy. But by 54, when Julia dies, and then 53, when Caesar's, you know, he's trying to match Pompey up with another relative of his.

And Pompey says no. It's becoming evident by that point that Pompey is starting to become a bit alarmed by Caesar's power and by the large number of legions that he has. Pompey, as the governor of Spain, has a large number of legions himself, but he stayed in Rome. So he doesn't have the close personal bond that Caesar has with his legions. And I said at the beginning about how for Caesar, the bonds of citizenship are, I think, incredibly important. And I think that what he finds in the army camp and his relationship with each of these legiones, each of these levies, is that he does respond to the idea of these legions a truer understanding of what the bonds of citizenship should be than the kind of what he sees as the effete schemers in Rome. Well, that is an interesting point, Tom, because a few people. So I mentioned Edward Habsburg in the first half.

He asked for our takes on Julius Caesar. He says, is he a ruthless, manipulating thug that brought down the Republic or a brilliant soldier and lawgiver that saw the signs of the times? But you're suggesting there's a third option there, which is, I mean, that probably has elements of those two things, that Caesar is not trying, in his own mind, he's not really dismantling the Republic,

but he sees himself as being truer to the spirit of the Republic because he thinks the Republic is incarnated by the army rather than the Senate. Is that right? I don't think he'd do it quite like that. But I mean, if you think if you think of Cromwell discovering in the new model army. Yes. A kind of a truer representation of of England and of England of england than say the parliament yeah that makes

complete sense kind of slight parallel there and yeah the idea that we have of legions as distinct entities caesar really is the guy who who develops that so the legions is so you know the um the 13th legion for instance that will be a distinct entity right the way up to the 5th century. It kind of briefly gets cashiered, but then it gets revived by the civil wars under Octavian. These idea of legions as distinct entities with distinct loyalties to commanders. Caesar is the guy who really, really leverages that. And Pompey has all the soldiers who followed him in the Middle East have been given their farms, so they've all gone away.

So Pompey, in a way, is behind the speed with that. But to throw forward to the Rubicon, Tom, when Caesar is standing there at the edge of the Rubicon, and we will come back to that in greater detail later. Heath, in a way, does he think that Rome is with him because the men around him are the true Rome and that the city beyond... I think there's a huge, huge part of that.

Because he doesn't think he's betraying Rome or he thinks he's being true to the vision. There's a question here. Yeah, from Max Parker. Was there any chance that the army would refuse the order to cross the Rubicon? thinks he's being true to the vision there's a question here um yeah from max parker was there any chance that the army would refuse the order to cross the rubicon no there wasn't because caesar would not even have contemplated it if that had been the case and caesar absolutely makes sure that the the army with him the legions are with him but i think that that more than that it's the

fact that the legions are with him that gives Caesar the feeling that he has the right to do what he does. That it's not just about his dignitas, which doesn't quite mean dignity. It's kind of his honour, his sense of worth, the due that he's owed for his achievements, but that the soldiers share in that. And they understand this better than the kind of do-nothing politicians scheming and whining and scrapping and complaining back in Rome. Yeah. So let's get back to the position in the years running up to the final schism. So clearly the tension is growing between Caesar and Pompey. And there's this basically, as I understand it, what happens is that the end of Caesar's command is approaching. And everybody knows this is going to be make or break, don't they? Because he's basically, presumably he's just terrified that he gives up his command, comes back to Rome, and he'll just get put on trial or something.

Or he'll get politically humiliated in some way that will stop him ever holding power again. Well, the key thing is that as long as he has his command, he is immune from prosecution. So no one can prosecute him for, as his enemies see it, the crimes that he had committed during his consulship. Right. But they're all desperate. They're waiting for their chance to prosecute Caesar. So therefore, for Caesar, it's incredibly important that he maintains his immunity from prosecution by getting another magistracy when he ends his term of governorship. And so he wants to go straight from governorship to a consulship. And so there's a tribune called Caelius, who in 52 BC proposes that Caesar should have the right to run for election to the

consulship while he's in Gaul. And the backdrop to this is that Caesar has just won the greatest, most extraordinary victory of his entire career, possibly in the whole of Roman military history, which is where he crushes a Gallic revolt at Alesia. And anyone who's read Asterix will remember Vercingetorix coming out and dropping his armor on Caesar's feet. That's how they portray it. And what happened at this is that Caesar is besieging Vercingetorix in this stronghold of Alesia.

And Vercingetorix's Gauls outnumber Caesar's legions, but they're penned in. And then another relief army of Gauls comes. And so Caesar builds another series of fortifications to keep them out. So they're being attacked on both sides by two armies, both of which outnumber them. And somehow Caesar wins.

Somehow he slaughters them all. And this essentially ends the Gallic revolt. Everyone back in Rome recognises the astonishing scale of what Caesar's achieved. Even the Senate votes him 20 days of Thanksgiving. And this is the backdrop where Caelius is able to say, okay, we think that Caesar's achievements are such that he should be allowed this immunity and to run for the consulship while he's in Gaul. Now, Caesar's enemies refuse to countenance this. They hate him so much. It's kind of, you know, it's AC Grayling.

AC Grayling level of hatred for Johnson or for Raj or whatever. I mean, it's that level. So Boris Johnson has won this battle. Yes, he's won. Boris Johnson has, yes, exactly. And basically, Liberal London is absolutely determined they will put them on trial regardless. So there is no compromise.

And essentially, it's fought over and fought over and fought over. And there is a kind of slight echoing of that kind of Brexit deadlock. So Caelius, the tribune who pushed that through, is a friend of Cicero, who's the great orator, whose letters and speeches are essentially our major source for this period. And Caelius writes to Cicero, you know, the form, some decision will be reached about Gaul, then someone stands up and complains about it, then someone else stands up in turn. And so it drags on a long, elaborate game. And the horror of the situation is that no one can see a way, it's impossible to square the circle. And the person for whom this is a particular nightmare is Pompey, because Pompey doesn't want to have to choose. Becausey doesn't want to have to choose. Because he doesn't want to have to alienate Caesar, particularly when Caesar is potentially so dangerous.

But equally, he doesn't want to lose the respect of all his new chums in the Senate who suddenly are kind of backing him. And in 51, Pompey comes out against Caesar and says that he should lay down his command um and he specifically says that that he is going to act like a father to Caesar so that's incredibly offensive to Caesar yeah you know Pompey is laying claim to the rights of a father over Caesar his own father-in-law Tom could could Pompey have chosen differently? Could Pompey have thought, well, you know what? I don't want to risk civil war. I've basically got half the power. I mean, that was his great mistake, was it?

He just should have carved up power with Caesar and sold out the Senate, basically. As it turned out, yes, that would have worked out better for him. Yeah. But I think that the opportunity to, well, it wasn't just to pose as the defender of the Constitution. I mean, he believed it, even though Pompey himself had engaged in endless kind of criminal, unconstitutional actions at his heart he wanted the approval of the constitutionalists and so the chance ultimately to pose as the defender of the constitution was was too big an opportunity um and so once Pompey has swung behind the constitutionalists it means that the no resolution is. So you go into 50 in December of 50 BC. One of the two consuls goes out to Pompey's villa in the Auburn Hills outside Rome.

And he takes a sword and he hands Pompey the sword. And he says, we charge you to march against Caesar to defend the Republic. Pompey takes the sword and says i will do i will do it if necessary and that's when it becomes evident that you know there is going to be the most almighty bust up because now you know we've talked about this before first of january consuls turn over the tribunes turn over um tribune in uh 49, who comes in on the 1st of January, is one of Caesar's most decorated, most celebrated officers from Gaul, a man called Mark Antony. And so Mark Antony becomes Tribune. He's Caesar's man in the Senate. And on the 1st of January 49,

Antony reads out a proposal in the senate from caesar that both caesar and pompey should lay down their commands simultaneously that's a pretty good compromise isn't it why does he take it well the senate decide that this might look too favorable that you know they're so committed to destroying caesar that they they think that that might make him look good so they suppress suppress it. It is. Again, but you can see the kind of the Brexit echo that by pushing for total victory, they lose the chance to bank some winnings. They go for the second referendum and it blows up in their face.

They go for the second referendum. Exactly. Yes, exactly. And so then they vote, they agree on a date by which Caesar has to give up his command. And that gets passed. Now, the role of a tribune, of course, the tribunes famously have the veto. A tribune can veto a measure. So Antony vetoes this measure.

And the Senate, rather than accepting that, you know, this is the idea that they're constitutionalists. They're perfectly happy to bend the constitution when it suits their needs. They declare a state of emergency. So 7th of January, they declare a state of emergency. Antony very, very flamboyantly disguises himself as a slave, as does Caelius, as does another Caesarian tribune. They kind of hide in a wagon and very ostentatiously

head off to the frontier to ravenna how can you hide ostentatiously that's how they did it it's all theater you know they make sure that everyone knows oh so every so in other words right okay so it's a performance basically it's performative i believe right yes very good so they are and so they head off to ra Ravenna which is where Caesar is with the 13th legion waiting for news and there's some confusion in this in the in the sources about when exactly the tribunes get to Caesar some say it's after the Rubicon some say before but in disputed the news reaches Caesar in Ravenna and you know he basically faces this excruciating decision at At last, we have finally reached

the banks of the Rubicon. And on that note, we'll be back after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix

of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the Rubicon, and we have had a lot of questions about this moment.

So Nick R says, what would have happened if Caesar hadn't crossed the Rubicon? John O'Henker says, what was Caesar intending to do? There's this sort of... Mark Woodhouse says, was he ever not going to cross it what his other options i mean the way you presented it suggests to me that he's always going to cross it um not least because yeah suller has already has already done this right he's already marched on rome so caesar the crossing of the rubicon is not such a an unprecedented is it so there are various there are various accounts of it but one person who does

not give an account of the crossing of the rubicon is caesar himself so caesar writes you know as he had written commentaries on on his gallic campaigns he writes one on the civil war as well um and uh his the target you know he goes from ra Ravenna to a town called Arminium. And Caesar's comment on this is he set out with his legions to Arminium. There is no mention of the Rubicon. There's no mention of the fact that he's crossed it, that he's come into Italy. So you may wonder, well, where does all this stuff about him standing on the banks of the Rubicon and, you know, wondering and pondering come from?

And I think almost certainly it comes from a guy called Gaius Asinius Polio, who was an officer with Caesar and with him on the backs of the Rubicon. He goes on to become a very significant cultural figure as well as political figure. So he's the patron of Virgil. He's a friend of Horace. He's a kind of Republican who stays true to that ideal right the way through his life. He kind of dies, I think, in AD4. He says that Caesar stands on the banks of the Rubicon and kind of ponders. And then he says, let the die be cast.

He says this in Greek. Okay, not in Latin. No. So it's a quotation from Menander. Aneritho cubos. Let the die be thrown. let the die be thrown let the die be cast now in uh in suetonius's account it's this is translated into latin as as uh yacta alia est yeah that's the more famous that's the most famous version isn't it i mean it is but there's i see there's a question from

um amy madrivadi do we accept Erasmus' assertion that Caesar said, let the die be cast and not the die is cast? And interestingly, the, so I've been doing translation of Suetonius for Penguin Classics. And the text I've been using, the Oxford classical text, it has,

which is let the die be cast. So we don't, know yeah whether he may not have said the die is cast or let the die be cast i mean ultimately it doesn't matter i think he probably did say it i bet because pollio clearly remembered you know pollio is making it up i mean doesn't he have this line tom uh it's not that's not all he says doesn't't he also say, where is it? Let us follow where the omens of the gods and the evils of our foes will lead us or something like that. Do you think he said that? Well, we talked about the magic snakes, didn't we?

In the context of Alexander. Okay. So I will read you my translation of that passage. Go for it. It's in Suetonius. So according to Suetonius um the news has reached caesar um he affects absolute lack of concern he attends a public festival he inspects the plans for gladiator school he hosts a dinner party um and then the sun sets uh he harnesses mules from a nearby mill to his carriage and he sets

off in utmost secrecy with a kind of very small retinue heading off to the banks of the rubicon but um his torches blow out and he gets lost so he blunders about until the sun starts to rise again in the in the east he locates a guide and and this guide then takes him to the banks of the Rubicon. And he stands there and Suetonius says that he says, even now we could turn back. But once we have crossed that tiny bridge, everything will have to be decided by war. And then, according to Suetonius, a wondrous thing happens. Nearby him, a figure of remarkable size and beauty abruptly appeared, sitting and playing on a pipe. And when some of his soldiers, trumpeters among them, abandoned their posts to join the large number of shepherds who had run to listen to the music,

the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of the trumpeters, leapt into the river, sounded the advance with a mighty blast and crossed over to the riverbank. And that's when Caesar says, let us go where we are summoned, both by divinely authored signs and by the wrongs our foes have done us. Let the die be cast or the die is cast as you prefer. So it's an incredibly dramatic moment. And Caesar crosses the Rubicon. Civil war ensues. Pompey is defeated, all the armies of Caesar's enemies are defeated.

Caesar follows Sulla in making himself dictator. He ends up, unlike Sulla, he says Sulla was an idiot for ever having laid down his dictatorship. Caesar is appointed dictator for life and for this, he is assassinated by the people that he has pardoned and forgiven to his own clement is it clementia did you say yeah has come back to bite him because people they feel humiliated yeah by his pardons don't they and the paradox of that is that that caesar pardons them because in that you know in is a true Republican. He doesn't want to behave like Sulla.

He doesn't want to execute people. He doesn't want to pay bounty money for heads. And so the people he's pardoned murder him as the murderer of the Republic because they're able to, because Caesar had pardoned them for impeccably Republican reasons. So do you think, Tom, that that moment, so just one last, one tiny detail, it would be an even more dramatic moment, wouldn't it, if the Rubicon was a better river than it is? It's a terrible river.

Because it's basically little more than a, it's just a stream, isn't it really? Yeah. So it's, nobody was really sure which one it is. I guess we're still not entirely certain, but it's thought to be a river that I think until Mussolini, I think Mussolini changed the name officially to back to Rubicon. But it was the Fiumicino. And I remember going to look for it and it's incredibly disappointing. It's very, very polluted. It kind of runs through industrial zones and it's all snagged with cans and waste. So it's called Rubio because it's kind of rusty red,

and even in ancient times it had kind of iron deposits, you know, turning it red. But now it's absolutely filthy, as I remember. But do you think, so to cross the Rubicon in sort of modern idiom means to take a decision that changes everything, after which there is no going back. Does it change everything though? I think it does. But don't you think what follows is to some degree inevitable, the decline of, the collapse of the Republican system and the rise of basically imperial dictatorship? Or do you think it took Caesar to make it happen?

I think that had Pompey swallowed his pride and negotiated a compact with Caesar, you could imagine a kind of duumvirate. Yeah. I mean, they may well have still have ended up fighting a civil war but you could imagine you know they they wouldn't um had Caesar's opponents been less obdurate you can imagine him becoming consul and then kind of being embroiled back into the the cut and thrust of republican politics so I don't think it was always inevitable um i think i think i think it's i mean i think it was always very very likely and i think that um the reason that you you asked why do we remember caesar and not sulla partly it's because um caesar's march on rome Rome is properly terminal for the Republic.

Caesar despises, you know, is not going to do what Sulla did. But I think it's also because you have that, you know, it's that physical idea of the river. And it's the idea that on one side of the river, you have the Republic and on the other, you have the empire. You know, on one side, you have freedom. And on the other, you have tyranny. Or as if you prefer, on one side, you have anarchy and chaos, and on the other, you have order. And it's a kind of primal dividing line in what will become Western

politics. And that's why it's remembered, because Rome does serve this primal role in the imagination of the West. It always has done. And the counterpointing of a Republican system of government with an autocratic system of government, those are the kind of the great poles around which the Western political imagination has always revolved. I think that's a really convincing argument, but it does raise one last question, which is Danny Kaye's question. This is such a dividing line in kind of Western political imagination, as you say,

between order and anarchy or between empire and freedom or whatever. But why is it Caesar, who is so totally remembered, when the man who really incarnates that change is the man who ends up as his adopted heir, his great nephew, Octavian Augustus, who is the first. I mean, Caesar is not the first emperor. Augustus is. So why is it that we remember? I mean, everybody's heard of Julius Caesar. Even people who have no interest in history at all have heard of him. And probably even a lot of people who have no interest in history have heard of the crossing of the Rubicon. But people who have no interest in history often have not heard of Augustus at all. I would say, why do you think that is? Because Augustus veils his power. Augustus enters a compact with the Senate that the Senate will

pretend to be more powerful than it is. And Augustus will pretend to be less powerful than he is. Caesar doesn't do that caesar is in that sense a republican he wants his his glory he wants his dignitas he wants his his fame and caesar is a kind of His powers are demonic and sublime, and he has these qualities of boldness, of dash, of perseverance, of a yearning to be the best, that in a way is the essence of what the Republic had always been and why the Republic had become the superpower that it did. And the subtitle of Rubicon, the book I wrote on this, is The Triumphant Tragedy of the Roman Republic. It's a wonderful book, by the way.

People who are listening should go out and buy it forthwith. But the reason it's one way to define a tragedy is that qualities that under normal circumstances would be positive become negatives and in that sense I suppose Caesar

he's a very republican figure but he becomes a kind of cancer I guess within the body politic of the republic that all those qualities that had been working for the Republic turn against it. Joe, we've got a podcast coming up on 1922, and he's like David Lloyd George. So Stanley Baldwin said, Lloyd George, Lloyd George is a dynamic force, but a dynamic force is a terrible thing.

And that's pretty much how the Romans think of Caesar, isn't it? They recognize his qualities, but they think they're too much. He has to go. But Augustus is a greater politician, isn't he? Augustus is incomparably a greater politician, but Caesar is a greater man. And if we're talking about greatness in that sense, and we are suspicious of greatness.

We've talked about this so many times. But Caesar, indisputably, if there is such a thing as a great man, Caesar was a great man. He was a great conqueror. He was a great political leader. He was brilliant at almost everything he touched. And I think there is something terrifying and, yeah, kind of demonic about it. And if we're talking about 1922, I'm sure WB Yeats, who becomes a senator in that year. Yeats wrote a brilliant poem about Caesar on the banks of the Rubicon. That civilization may not sink, its great battle lost.

Quiet the dog, tether the pony to a distant post. Our master Caesar is in the tent where the maps are spread his eyes fixed upon nothing a hand upon his head like a long-legged fly upon the stream his mind moves upon silence um augustus does not generate does not inspire that that kind of poetry from virgil maybe or maybe maybe anyway, I could listen to you talking about all this. I could actually listen to you for hours, but I recognise that people listen to this podcast while walking the dog or doing the dishes

and that nobody does the dishes for three hours. So we should probably, we will return to the end of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire in future podcasts. We have so many plans for podcasts about the Romans. But our path leads us later this week to 1922. And thank you very much, Tom. We will see you all in 1922 next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.