Caesar crosses the Rubicon

The next generation grew up on Sulla's example, and two of its men ended up fighting over what was left.

Pompey, the exception

Gnaeus Pompeius raised a private army at twenty-three and brought it to Sulla's side. He celebrated a triumph before holding any office, and became consul in 70 BC while skipping the steps the law required.

Then the assemblies voted him huge commands, first against the pirates of the whole Mediterranean in 67, then against Mithridates in 66. Both grants were legal. Both made one man stronger than the system was meant to allow.

A private deal

In 60 BC Pompey, the rich Crassus, and Julius Caesar, an ambitious politician deep in debt, made a private pact. Modern books call it the First Triumvirate, though it was never an office.

Caesar was consul in 59. When his colleague Bibulus tried to block his laws, a crowd emptied a basket of dung over his head, and he spent the rest of the year at home declaring bad omens. Caesar passed his laws anyway. Romans joked that it was the consulship of Julius and Caesar.

Then Caesar spent nine years conquering Gaul and came out rich, with legions devoted to him. The pact came apart. Pompey's wife Julia, Caesar's daughter, died in 54. Crassus died fighting the Parthians in 53. Pompey drifted toward Caesar's enemies.

The trap

Caesar's command was running out. As a private citizen he could be put on trial for what he had done as consul, so he wanted to run for consul again while still holding his army. Hardliners in the Senate, led by Cato, insisted he give up the army first.

In December 50, the Senate voted 370 to 22 that Caesar and Pompey should both give up their armies. The presiding consul ignored the vote. In January 49, the Senate passed the final decree. Two tribunes who opposed it, Mark Antony and Quintus Cassius, fled north to Caesar. Now Caesar had a cause to sell: the sacred rights of the tribunes.

The river

The Rubicon was a small stream where Caesar's province ended and Italy began. Leading an army across it was treason. Around 10 January 49 BC, Caesar crossed with one legion. Suetonius has him say "The die is cast." Caesar's own history of the war doesn't mention the river at all. He had every reason to leave it out.

Move the crossing slider, then drag sideways to turn the model. The terrain is schematic: the important feature is the boundary between the province and Italy.

Caesar beat Pompey in Greece in 48, and Pompey was murdered as he stepped ashore in Egypt. Unlike Sulla, Caesar pardoned most of his enemies, but early in 44 he had himself named dictator for life.

The Ides of March

On 15 March 44 BC, Caesar was stabbed to death at a Senate meeting in a hall Pompey had built. More than sixty men had joined the plot, and Suetonius counts twenty-three wounds. The leaders, Brutus and Cassius, had both fought against him and been pardoned. "Et tu, Brute?" comes from Shakespeare. Suetonius writes that Caesar died with only a groan, then mentions a report that he said to Brutus in Greek, "You too, child?"

The killers called themselves liberators. They had planned the murder carefully and almost nothing after it, as if the old Republic would restart on its own. Within days, a crowd at Caesar's funeral burned his body in the Forum and went looking for the killers' houses with torches.