Imperium and the command dispute · 统帅权争议
reported-in-source
Caesar narrates efforts to end his command and frames the crisis through his own rights and the conduct of opponents.
Evidence limit: His position is not an impartial statement of the law or the only contemporary assessment.
bc 1.5
Julius Caesar. The Civil Wars. Peskett, Arthur George, translator. London, UK: William Heinemann; New York, NY, 1914.
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.5
For these reasons everything is done in hurry and confusion. Caesar’s friends are allowed no time to inform him, nor are the tribunes given any opportunity of protesting against the peril that threatened them, nor even of retaining, by the exercise of their veto, the most fundamental of their rights, which L. Sulla had left them, but within the limit of seven days they are compelled to take measures for their own safety, whereas the most turbulent of the tribunes in earlier times had been wont to regard with apprehension the conclusion of at least eight months of administration. Recourse is had to that extreme and ultimate decree of the senate which had never previously been resorted to except when the city was at the point of destruction and all despaired of safety through the audacity of malefactors: The consuls, the praetors, the tribunes, and all the proconsular who are near the city shall take measures that the state incur no harm. These resolutions are recorded by decree of the senate on January 7. So on the first five days on which a meeting of the senate could be held after the date on which Lentulus entered on his consulship, except two election days, decrees of the severest and harshest character are passed affecting Caesar’s imperial command and those highly important officials, the tribunes of the people. The tribunes at once flee from the city and betake themselves to Caesar. He was at that time at Ravenna and was awaiting a reply to his very lenient demands, in the hope that by some sense of equity a peaceable conclusion might be reached.
Context before
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.4
All these speakers encounter opposition and are confronted with speeches from the consul, from Scipio, and from Cato. Cato is goaded on by his old quarrels with Caesar and vexation at his defeat. Lentulus is moved by the greatness of his debts, by the prospect of a military command and a province, and by the lavish bribes of rulers claiming the title of king, and boasts among his friends that he will prove a second Sulla to whom shall fall the supreme command. Scipio is stimulated by the same hope of a province and of armies, which he thinks that kinship will entitle him to share with Pompeius; also by the dread of the law courts, by the flattery of certain powerful men who had then great influence in public affairs and in the law courts, and by his own and their ostentatious character. Pompeius, urged on by Caesar’s enemies and by his desire that no one should be on the same level of authority with himself, had completely withdrawn himself from Caesar’s friendship and become reconciled with their common enemies, most of whom he had himself imposed upon Caesar at the time of their connexion by marriage. Stirred, too, by the discredit attaching to his diversion of two legions from their route by Asia and Syria and his appropriation of them for his own power and supremacy, he was eager that the issue should be brought to the arbitrament of war.
Context after
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.6
On the following days the senate meets outside the city. Pompeius carries out the policy which he had indicated by the mouth of Scipio. He commends the manly consistency of the senate, and sets forth the strength of his forces, showing that he has ten legions ready to hand, and, moreover, that he had ascertained for certain that the troops were ill-disposed to Caesar and could not be persuaded to defend or follow him. Other matters are at once referred to the senate—that a levy should be held throughout Italy, that Faustus Sulla should he at once sent into Mauritania, and that a grant of money should be made to Pompeius from the treasury. A motion is also proposed that King Juba should be styled Ally and Friend. But Marcellus refuses to allow this for the present. The tribune Philippus vetoes the motion about Faustus. On the other matters decrees of the senate are recorded in writing. The provinces, two consular, the rest praetorian, are decreed to private persons. Syria falls to Scipio, Gallia to L. Domitius; Philippus and Cotta are passed over by private arrangement, nor are their lots cast into the urn. To the rest of the provinces praetors are sent. Nor do they wait, as had been the habit in previous years, for a motion to be brought before the people about their imperial command; but, wearing the scarlet military cloak, they leave Rome after offering the usual vows. The consuls quit the city, a thing which had never previously happened, and private persons have lictors in the city and the Capitol, contrary to all the precedents of the past. Levies are held throughout Italy, arms are requisitioned, sums of money are exacted from the municipal towns and carried off from the temples, and all divine and human rights are thrown into confusion.
bc 1.9
Julius Caesar. The Civil Wars. Peskett, Arthur George, translator. London, UK: William Heinemann; New York, NY, 1914.
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.9
Though these proceedings seemed to have no effect in lessening the sense of wrong, nevertheless now that he had found suitable persons to convey his wishes to Pompeius he makes a request of each of them that, as they had brought him the messages of Pompeius, they should not object to convey his demands in reply, in the hope that by a little trouble they might be able to put an end to serious disputes and free the whole of Italy from alarm. As for myself, he said, I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life. I was indignant that a benefit conferred on me by the Roman people was being insolently wrested from me by my enemies, and that, robbed of my six months’ command, I was being dragged back to the city, when the people had directed that I should be allowed to be a candidate in absence at the next election. Nevertheless, for the sake of the state I have borne with equanimity this infringement of my prerogative; when I sent a dispatch to the senate proposing that all should give up arms failed to obtain even this request. Levies are being held throughout Italy, two legions which had been filched from me under the pretence of a Parthian war are being held back, the state is in arms. To what does all this tend but to my own ruin? Still Lam_prepared to resort to anything, to submit to anything, for the sake of the commonwealth.. Let Pompeius go to his own provinces, let us disband our armies, let everyone in Italy lay down his arms, let fear be banished from the state, let free elections and the whole control of the republic be handed over to the senate and the Roman people. That this may be done more easily and on definite terms and be ratified by an oath, let Pompeius himself come nearer or allow me to approach him. In this way a conference will settle all disputes.
Context before
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.8
Having thus learnt the disposition of the soldiery, he sets out for Ariminum with that legion, and there meets the tribunes who had fled to him. The rest of the legions he summons from their winter quarters and orders them to follow him. Thither comes the young L. Caesar whose father was one of Caesar’s legates. When their first greetings were over he explains—and this was the real reason of his coming —that he has a message from Pompeius to give him regarding a personal matter. He says that Pompeius wishes to be cleared of reproach in the eyes of Caesar, who should not construe as an affront to himself what he had done for the sake of the state. He had always placed the interests of the republic before private claims. Caesar, too, considering his high position, should give up for the benefit of the state his partisan zeal and passion, nor be so bitterly angry with his enemies as to injure the commonwealth in the hope that he is injuring them. He adds a few other remarks of this kind, at the same lime making excuses for Pompeius. The praetor Roscius lays substantially the same proposals before Caesar, and in the same language, and makes it clear that he received them from Pompeius.
Context after
urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi002.perseus-eng2:1.10
Having received his instructions, Roscius arrives at Capua with L. Caesar, and there finds the consuls and Pompeius, and delivers Caesar’s demands. After deliberation they reply and send him back by their hands written instructions, the main purport of which was that Caesar should return to Gaul, quit Ariminum and disband his forces; if he did this, Pompeius would go to the Spanish provinces. Meanwhile, until a pledge was given that Caesar would carry out his promise,the consuls and Pompeius would not interrupt their levies.
T. Corey Brennan, “Power and Process under the Republican ‘Constitution’,” in Harriet I. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, 2nd ed. (2014), p. 19. Publisher record