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Consular Provinces under the Late Republic II. Caesar's Gallic Command1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
When, before the consular elections in 56 B.C., the Senate, in obedience to the terms of the lex Sempronia, was choosing the provinces for the consuls of the following year, their choice lay between four possibilities: Cisalpine Gaul, held by Caesar, Transalpine Gaul, also held by Caesar, Syria, held by A. Gabinius, and Macedonia, held by L. Calpurnius Piso. Cicero urged that neither of the Gauls should be made a consular province. He argued, in general, that it would be wrong to disturb Caesar before his work in Gaul was finished, and then he spoke against those who wished to select not both, but one of, the Gauls. He considers the case of each of the two Gauls separately.
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- Copyright ©J. P. V. D. Balsdon 1939. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Footnotes
1
The first part of this paper appeared above, pp. 57–73. I am deeply indebted to the kindness of Professor H. M. Last, who read the first draft of this article and assisted me then and later with invaluable criticism and advice.
References
2 The circumstances of the delivery of this speech (in May or June; see De provinciis consularibus, ed. Butler, H. E. and Cary, M. (Oxford, 1924), 104–106Google Scholar) are puzzling. See below, p. 168 f.
3 i.e. the lex Vatinia of 59 B.C.
4 Greatly though I admire the article of Laqueur, R., ‘Caesars gallische Statthalterschaft und der Ausbruch des Bürgerkrieges,’ Neue Jahrbücher f.d. klass. Altertum xlv, 1920, 241–255Google Scholar, because he has freed himself from the bondage of Mommsen's rules for thinking on this subject, I cannot agree with his view that 1st March in this passage of the De provinciis consularibus is 1st March, 55 B.C.
5 The praetors of 62 B.C. were in such a position as this in the early months of the following year, for they did not receive their provinces until after 13th February in 6l B.C. Att; i, 14, 5 (TP i, 20). i, 15, 1 (TP i 21).
6 Plutarch, Cn. Pompeius 51, 4; Julius Caesar 21, 5; Appian, BC ii, 17, 62.
7 Fam. i, 7, 10 (TP ii, 114); cf. Pro Balbo 61.
8 JRS xxix (1939), 57–73Google Scholar, especially pp. 72 f.
9 This is not an original hypothesis on my part, but is suggested to me by Mr. C. E. Stevens' remarks at the foot of p. 176 in his article, AJP lix, 2, 1938. Similarly in an earlier period of Roman history a dictator was expected to resign his powers if the task for which he was appointed was accomplished before the end of his six months' term of office; see, e.g., Livy iii, 29, 7. On the selection of consular provinces for the consuls of 59 B.C., see further below, PP. 180 ff.
10 E.g. Livy xxx, 1, 10.
11 C.f. De prov. cons. 32, ‘Non enim sibi solum cum iis quos iam armatos contra populum Romanum videbat bellandum esse duxit, sed totam Galham in nostram dicionem esse redigendam.’
11a Caesar's ow n description of the Gallic situation at the end of 57 B.C. is worth noticing: BG ii, 35, ‘omni Gallia pacata’; iii, 7, ‘cum omnibus de causis Caesar pacatam Galliam existimaret.’
12 De prov. cons. 34.
13 See above, p. 169, n. 7.
14 Plutarch, Cn. Pompeius 25, 6, πεντεκαίδεκα πρεσβευτὰς. The ἡγεμονικοὶ καὶ στρατηγικοὶ…ἄνδρες εἰκοσιτέσσαρες (ib. 26, 3) may have included comites as well as legati. Appian, Mith. 94, however, states explicitly that Pompey had twenty-five legati. Perhaps the number was raised since the first proposal of the law: so H. M. Last, CAH ix, 346 f.
15 “The normal number of legati attached to a consular command was three. Caesar's command covered two provinces, and he would thus have started with six,’ Butler, H. E. and Cary, M., De provinciis consularibus (Oxford, 1924), 65Google Scholar. But there is no reason why Illyricum should not have ranked as a separate province; in which case Caesar was already entitled to nine legati.
16 Butler and Cary, l.c. (ad De prov. cons. 28), quote Polybius xxii, 24, Livy xlv, 17. Cf. Plutarch, Lucullus 36, 1, where the commission sent out prematurely in 67 B.C. to organize Lucullus' conquests, is called simply οἱ δέκα πρέσβεις. Suetonius states that the ‘decem legati’ to Caesar were sent ‘ad explorandum statum Galliarum’ (DJ 24, 3), Cassius Dio xxxix, 25, 1, explicitly says that they were sent ‘ὡς καὶ ἐπὶ δεδουλωμένοις παντελῶς τοῖς Γαλάταις’. There appears to me to be little ground for the belief of Butler and Cary that these ‘decem legati’ were not to form a commission for the organization of the new province.
17 ‘ὃ καὶ παραλογώτατον, ἐφαίνετο τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν,’ Plutarch writes, of the grant of stipendium and a second quinquennium (Julius Caesar 21, 3), though this may be a piece of very careless writing, and refer only to the stipendium.
17a De prov. cons. 29.
18 See below, p. 183.
19 An exception must be made of Adcock, F. E., CAH ix, 627 fGoogle Scholar., and Stevens, C. E., AJP lix (1938), 174Google Scholar. Stevens's speculations on the precise details of this law (the lex Pompeia de iure magistratuum he thinks it), ib. pp. 180 f., are unprofitable and sometimes (e.g. note 48) inaccurate. The majority of ‘these rather complicated measures’ were simply part of traditional routine concerning provincial appointments. See also the first part of this article, above, pp. 65–8.
20 Cf. Hirschfeld, Klio iv, 84, ‘Aber nicht nur eine Klausel in dem Pompeisch-Licinischen Gesetz ist dies gewesen, sondern meiner Überzeugung nach die einzige darin getroffene Bestimmung über die Dauer der Caesarischen Statthalterschaft.’ With this statement concerning the prohibition to supersede Caesar by explicit enactment before 1st March, 50 B.C., I am, naturally, in complete agreement.
21 This is what happened in 50 B.C. Thanks to tribunician veto, no provincial appointments at all were made in that year. Soon after the Caesarian tribunes left Rome on 7th January, 49 B.C., appointments could be made. By 27th January, Domitius Ahenobarbus had received Gallia Transalpina and Considius Nonianus Gallia Citerior. Fam. xvi, 12, 3 (TP iv, 312; How 45).
22 BG vii, 6, 1, ‘cum iam ille urbanas res virtute Cn. Pompei commodiorem in statum pervenisse intellegeret.’ Cf. Appian, BC ii, 25, 96 (of late 52 or early 51 B.C.), ‘τούσδε μὲν ὁ Καῖσαρ παρηγόρει καὶ τὸν Πομπήιον ηὐφήμει.’ There is no evidence of deliberate malice on Pompey's part in Suetonius, DJ 28, 3; ‘oblivio,’ after all, is not a particularly sinister human quality
23 Att. v, II, 2 (How 28).
24 CD xl, 59, 3, makes it clear that he considered that Caesar's command terminated in 50 B.C.—εὐθὺς ἐν τῷ ὑστέρῳ ἔτει. (Hirtius) BG viii, 39, 3 ‘Cum omnibus Gallis notum esse sciret reliquam esse unam aestatem suae provinciae, quam si sustinere potuissent, nullum ultra periculum vererentur’ is a passage which hardly seems to merit the attention which it has received. Hirtius writes that Caesar knew that all the Gauls knew (a) when Caesar's command would expire and (b) that from that moment their own troubles would be over. They were knowledgeable optimists–knowledgeable, though not, on Mommsen's or Hirschfeld's theories, omniscient; for they evidently did not know (like Mommsen and Hirschfeld) that, whenever Caesar's command expired, they might expect not to see the last of Caesar until the end of 49 B.C. But, as we do not hold the key to the other secrets of universal Gallic knowledge in 51 B.C. (e.g. whether they knew of M. Marcellus' proposals in the Senate and of the possibility of Caesar's standing for the consulship of 49 (see below, p. 177, n. 48)), it seems to me futile to speculate about this single fact which (unlike their contemporaries at Rome) they seem to have known so well.
25 See above, p. 73. It is one of the many merits of Mr. C. E. Stevens's vigorous discussion of this problem (AJP lix, 1938, 169–208Google Scholar, especially p. 176) that he has made this point clear.
26 Suetonius, DJ 24, 1.
27 Nero 2, 2.
28 So CAH ix, 629, n. 2, if I understand it rightly. The only evidence for the date, as far as I know, is Att. viii, 3, 3 (TP iv, 333; How 47), ‘(Pompeius) Marco Marcello consuli finienti provincias Gallias Kalendarum Martiarum die restitit,’ where the date may be thought to qualify ‘restitit’ rather than ‘finienti’.
29 F. E. Adcock, CAH ix, 629, n. 2, thinks on 1st March, 50. Suetonius, DJ 28, 2, says, ‘ut ei succederetur ante tempus.’
30 BG viii, 53, 1.
31 DJ 28, 2.
32 See above, p. 170.
33 Att. viii, 3, 3 (TP iv, 333; How 47).
34 BG viii, 53, i, ‘senatus frequens in alia omnia transiit.’
35 Att. v, 2, 3 (TP iii, 185), ‘auctoritas perscripta.’
36 Fam. viii, 1, 2 (TP iii, 192; How 27), Caelius to Cicero in the last week of May, 51, ‘Marcellus, quod adhuc nihil rettulit de successione provinciarum Galliarum et in Kalendas Iunias … eam distulit relationem.’ Appian, BC ii, 26, 99, ‘εἰσηγεῖτο δὲ ἤδη καὶ διαδόχους αὐτῷ πέμπειν ἐπὶ τὰ ἔθνη, προαφαιρῶν τοῦ χρόνου.’ CD xl, 59, 1, ‘ὥστε καὶ διαδοχόν οἱ ἤδη καὶ πρὸ τοῦ καθήκοντος χρόνου πεμφθῆναι ἐσηγήσατο.’
37 Fam viii, 4, 4 (TP iii, 206; How 30).
38 Fam. viii, 4, 4 (TP iii, 206; How 30); viii, 9, 2 (TP iii, 211).
39 Fam. viii, 9, 2 (TP iii, 211).
40 CD xl, 59, 3.
41 Fam. viii, 9, 5 (TP iii, 211).
42 Fam. viii, 9, 5 (TP iii, 211).
43 Appian, BC ii, 26, 99, ‘ὅτι χρὴ μετὰ τὸν χρόνον παραλύειν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀυτίκα τὸν Καίσαρα.’
44 Fam. viii, 8, 4 (TP iii, 223; How 32). I feel confident (with Rice Holmes, Watson and How) that this means ‘that a decision to recall Caesar should be taken after 1st March’, not, as Hardy thought (Some Problems in Roman History (Oxford, 1924), pp. 191 f.Google Scholar), that a decision should be taken thereupon) to recall Caesar after 1st March.
45 Fam. viii, 8, 9 (TP iii, 223; How 32).
46 The only other instance of this expression that I have discovered in Cicero's writings is in Fam. ix, 25, 1 (TP iii, 246), ‘Nescis quo cum imperatore tibi negotium sit,’ ‘You do not know with what a general you are dealing.’ There is no ground for thinking that ‘negotium’ means ‘quarrel’ in either passage. Cf. Stevens, C. E., AJP lix (1938), 177Google Scholarf Stevens and I have reached this conclusion independently.
47 Suetonius, DJ 26, 1.
48 Fam. viii, 8, 9 (TP iii, 223; How 32). I find myself in complete agreement here with Hirschfeld, Klio iv, 79, n. 1, and Adcock, F. E., CAH ix, 630Google Scholar, n. 2. That the reference is to candidature in 49 B.C. for the consulship of 48 is the view of Mommsen, Ges. Schr. iv, 140 and n. 138, Hardy, Problems 176 (Hardy has contrived to add complexity to an issue already sufficiently complex), and How, p. 268. How's remark ‘Since it is quite certain that Caesar throughout aspired to the Consulate of 48 B.C. … it is best taken as “the year in question”, i.e. 49 B.C.’ is a fine example of unhistorical reasoning. I agree, on this subject, with every word that writes, C. E. Stevens, AJP lix (1938), 172 ffGoogle Scholar. Professor Last on this subject writes to me, ‘Can it be seriously argued that “hic annus” is the Latin for “next year”? If not, and if in any particular context it cannot mean “the current year” it can then only mean—as far as I can see— “the year in question”, “the year we are talking about,” or something similar.’ I defer to Professor Last as a Latinist. The trouble is that there is no indication in the context what year Caelius was talking about, and in as far as he gives no indication that he is talking about ‘the year after next’, I should think it more probable that he was talking about ‘the coming year’. Cicero's language in Pro Sestio 71 f. shows that ‘annus’ in reference to Roman magistracies did not always mean ‘the period from 1st January–29th December’. In Att. i, 1, 1 f. (How 1), written in July, 65 B.C., Cicero speaks ‘de iis qui nunc petunt’—viz. the candidates at the forthcoming election in 65—and refers to the following year as ‘noster annus.’ He proposed to start his own canvass a year before the date of the election. In Att. vii, 8, 4 (TP iii, 299)—see below, p. 179, n. 62—Pompey is seen to refer in December, 50 B.C., to the 49 B.C. consular elections as happening ‘hoc anno’. Everything turns on whether or not it is possible for dictators in their official pronouncements to lie when they pronounce eulogies on themselves as constitutionalists; in fact, on whether Caesar in BC i, 32, 2 (see below, p. 180) wrote the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Professor Last, like Mommsen, pins his faith on Caesar's veracity; I don't.
49 Att. v, 20, 7 f. (TP iii, 228).
50 Att. vi, 1, 24 (TP iii, 252).
51 Att. vi,,2, 6 (TP iii, 256; How 36).
52 On this date, see above p. 66 f.
53 This is nothing more than a guess; there is no evidence available.
54 Fam. viii, 11, 3 (TP iii, 267). Mommsen changed from thinking the reference was to November, 50 B.C., and thought the date to be November, 49 (Ges. Schr. iv, 140, n. 138).
55 Fam. viii, 13, 2 (TP iii, 271) Caelius adds, ‘Quem ad modum hoc Pompeius laturus sit, cum cognoro, scribam.’ That is to say, Pompey's attitude to the question of Caesar's standing in absence is not yet known. Which means that the question has not previously been raised. This confirms my hypothesis (pp. 176 f. above) of the character of the ‘negotium’—a sort of ‘gentleman's agreement’. This has now broken down.
56 By the summer of 50 the consuls of 49 had been elected, and Caesar was intent on holding the consulship of 48: BG viii, 50, 4 (summer, 50) ‘… honorem suum sequentis anni commendaret petitione’.
57 Fam. viii, 14, 3 (TP iii, 280; How 40).
58 Att. vii, 7, 5 (TP iii, 298; How 41).
59 Att. vii, 7, 6 (TP iii, 298; How 41). Cf. Att. xiv, 14, 4 (TP v, 719) for the same use of the word ‘dies’: Cicero writes (27th or 28th April, 44 B.C.), ‘Quae scribis Kalendis Iuniis Antonium de provinciis relaturum, ut et ipse Gallias habeat et utrisque dies prorogetur, licebitne decerni libere?’
60 ibid.
61 Cf. Asconius in Pisonianam (Clark), 5 f., on this use of round figures by Cicero. If, in speaking against Catiline (in Cat. i, 4), he can say of the immediate past, ‘vicesimus iam dies,’ when he should have said ‘octavus decimus’ and, if Asconius regards this kind of inaccuracy as characteristic of him, then ‘ten years’ here need not worry us. Cf. Att. vii, 5, 5 (TP iii, 296), also written at the end of 50 B.C., ‘Sero enim resistimus ei, quem per annos decem aluimus contra nos.’
62 Att. vii, 8, 4 (TP iii, 299). Scholars who feel confidence that ‘hoc anno’ in a more amous letter—see above, p. 177, n. 48— does not mean ‘this coming year’, ought, I think, to pay greater attention to its meaning here.
63 Att. vii, 9, 4 (TP iii, 300; How 42).
64 The appointment is more likely to have been made just after than, as Appian states, BC ii, 32, 129, just before the departure of he tribunes, though Suetonius, DJ 34, 1, ‘per tumultum successor ei nominatus’ might be thought to lend fragile support to Appian.
65 i, 9, 2 f.
66 I do not attach much weight to Livy, Per. 108, ‘Cum is lege lata in tempus consulatus provincias obtinere deberet,’ which appears to me to be a half-truth altogether typical of the slovenly author of the Periochae (on whom see my remarks in Papers of the British School at Rome xiv (1938), 100, 104 fGoogle Scholar.). More interesting is Antony's statement in the funeral oration (CD xliv, 43, 1) that Caesar would have conquered Britain, had he not been forced to return to Italy ‘πρὸ τοῦ καθήκοντος καιροῦ’. This sort of statement is made frequently by the friends of generals (cf. TA ii, 26, 2, on the recall of Germanicus from Germany in A.D. 16) and in the case of Caesar's command, as has been seen above, pp. 170 ff., 175,it was often necessary at Rome to drive the point home that Caesar's work in Gaul was not yet completed. Whether Caesar hoped to return to Britain when he sailed away from it in 54 B.C. we cannot tell, but anybody who has read the De bello Gallico can tell that it would have given Caesar greater pleasure to continue his conquests in the north than to return to Roman politics. The only indication that Caesar wanted a further extension of his command is the statement of Appian (BC ii, 25, 97) that, probably in early 51 B.C., ‘ᾔτει χρόνον ἄλλον ὀλίγον ἐς τὴν παροῦσάν οἱ τῆς Γαλατίας ἡγεμονίαν.’
67 BG i, 2.
68 BG i, 2.
69 Att. i, 19, 2 (TP i, 25; How 7).
70 Att. i, 20, 5 (TP i, 26).
71 Suetonius, DJ 19, 2.
72 Meusel on Caesar, BC i, 22, 4. The matter is discussed by Rolfe, J. C., AJP xxxvi (1915). 323–331Google Scholar, ‘The so-called Callium Provincia.’ His conclusion is that ‘silvae callesque’ means ‘a province consisting of silvae callesque’ which was destined for Caesar's proconsulship, e.g. Corsica. This is not a very compelling suggestion.
73 Though Mommsen, Röm. Gesch. iii8, 214, does not question its accuracy.
74 Tacitus, Annals iv, 27, 2. The Senate must have known, of course, that, with Pompey's veterans at large, an agrarian law could not be indefinitely postponed. But it is difficult to imagine that this ‘provincia’ would have been chosen in connection with a prospective division of land. Leges agrariae, after all, habitually set up special commissioners for the purchase and distribution of land.
75 A. W. Zumpt, Stud. Rom., 66, emended the passage to read ‘id est Italia Galliaque’, thinking that Gallia was Gallia Cisalpina and that the two consuls were ‘instructed to divide the whole (Italy and Gaul) as they pleased’. Caesar, he thinks, received Gaul, and the complaisant Bibulus, Italy.
76 So Willems, P., Le Sénat de la république romaine, ii (1885), 576Google Scholar, n. 5. Holmes, T. Rice, The Roman Republic i, 474Google Scholar, devotes a short note to this subject, without reaching any very positive conclusion.
77 Italia was a consular province in 111 B.C., Sallust, B. Iug. 27, 5. Zumpt, Stud. Rom., 46 f., claimed that Italia was sometimes a consular province even after 80 B.C. This was denied firmly by Willems, Le Sénat ii, 576. No certain evidence is available in favour of either view, though it is certain that Catulus in 78 B.C. and the consuls of 72 B.C. campaigned in Italy during their consulship and they do not appear to have gone out to other provinces afterwards.
78 At an earlier period, in the second century B.C., the device by which the Senate kept a consul or a praetor up its sleeve for use in the event of an emergency, was by creating a vague provincia, ‘quo senatus censuisset.’ Cf. Livy xlii, 28, 7; xliv, 17, 10. I lack the courage to suggest that we should emend ‘silvae callesque’ in the text of Suetonius to ‘quo senatus censuisset’. My former pupil, Mr. M. S. H. Jones, makes the interesting suggestion that, if the province was intended only to be a ‘token province’, it may in fact have been ‘silvae callesque’. In which case Suetonius is correct in his facts, but wrong in his interpretation of them.
79 For the evidence, see P-W s.v. ‘Caecilius’ (iii, col. 1210, no. 86).
80 ‘Otium e Gallia nuntiari non magno opere gaudet. Cupit, credo, triumphare,’ Cicero writes of him to Atticus (i, 20, 5; TP i, 26) in May, 60. However, this sentiment, uttered at a safe distance from the enemy, does not prove Metellus a hero. And he may already have been feeling ill. After all, he died quite early in 59.
81 Tacitus, Annals iv, 27, 2.
82 The allocation of provinces under the lex Sempronia was revoked in 77, 74, 67, 60, 59, 58 and 55 B.C.
83 If the theory in this paragraph is accepted, Metellus' disappointment at the news of otium in Gaul does not prove that he received Gallia ulterior rather than Gallia citerior at the sortitio in 60. It is further possible that, perhaps on the ground of health, Metellus ‘deposuit provinciam’, either late in 60 or early in 59; in which case it is not necessary to make his death a terminus post quem for the passing of the lex Vatinia or for the s.c. giving Caesar Transalpine Gaul.
84 CD xxxviii, 8, 5; BG i, 7, 2; i, 10, 3.
85 A. W. Zumpt, Stud. Rom. 65 ff. arrived by a different route (see above, p. 181, n. 75) at almost the same conclusion as I have reached. He thought the consular provinces for 59 were Cisalpine Gaul and Italy; I think Italy was decreed for both consuls. But I agree with his reconstruction of the arguments used for selecting the provinces that were chosen (p. 67): ‘Securitati igitur Italiae duobus consularibus exercitibus duobusque imperatoribus esse consulendum. Afferebant fortasse etiam belli Cimbrici tempora.’ A comparison with the ‘belli Cimbrici tempora’ is made by Plutarch, Julius Caesar 18, 1.