The Historians' History of the World 05

The most substantial of all these tributes to Cæsar’s ascendency was the decree by which he was appointed dictator for a period of ten years; for thus the initiative of legal measures was united in his hands with the command of the legions both at home and abroad. Other specious honours, in the taste of the times, were accumulated upon him. His chair was to be placed between those of the consuls in the assembly of the senate; he was to preside and give the signal in the games of the circus; and his figure in ivory was to be borne in procession among the images of the gods, and laid up in the Capitol, opposite the seat of Jupiter himself. A statue was to be erected to him in bronze, standing upon a globe, with the inscription, “Cæsar the demi-god.” His name was to be engraved on the entablature of the Capitol, in the place of that of Catulus, its true restorer. The historian who recounts these honours assures us that many others besides these were offered; he has only omitted to specify them because Cæsar did not think fit to accept them. It is difficult to imagine to what lower depth of obsequiousness the senate could have descended, or what higher dignities the conqueror would have rejected.

CÆSAR’S TRIUMPHS

The time had now arrived for the celebration of the Gallic triumph, which had been so long postponed. In the interval, the imperator’s victories had been multiplied, and the ranks of his veterans had been recruited by fresh enlistments; so that every soldier who had shared in his later perils and successes demanded the reward of participating in his honours. Cæsar claimed not one, but four triumphs: the first, for his conquest of the Gauls; the second for his defeat of Ptolemy; another, for his victory over Pharnaces; and the last, for the overthrow of Juba. But he carefully avoided all reference to what were in reality the most brilliant of his achievements. In Spain and Thessaly he had routed the disciplined legions of his own countrymen; but their defeat brought no accession of honour or territory to the republic. The glory it reflected on the victor was dubious and barren. The four triumphs were celebrated, with intervals of a few days between each, that the interests of the public might not pall with satiety. The first procession formed in the Campus Martius, outside the walls of the city. It defiled through the triumphal gate at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, and crossed the deep hollow of the Velabrum and Forum Boarium, on its way to the Circus Maximus, which occupied the valley between the Palatine and Aventine. In passing through the Velabrum, the chariot in which the imperator stood, happened to break down; a mischance which so affected him that he never afterwards, it is said, ascended a vehicle without repeating a charm.

The long procession wound round the base of the Palatine, skirting the Aventine and Cælian hills, to the point where the arch of Constantine now stands. There it began the ascent of the gentle slope which separates the basin of the Colosseum from that of the Roman Forum. It followed the same track which now leads under the arch of Titus, paved at this day with solid masses of hewn stone, which may possibly have re-echoed to the tramp of Cæsar’s legions. Inclining a little to the right at the point where it gained the summit of the ridge and looked down upon the comitium and rostra, in the direction of the Capitol, it passed before the spot where the temple of Julius was afterwards built; thence it skirted the right side of the Forum, under the arch of Fabius, till it reached a point just beyond the existing arch of Severus, where the two roads branched off, the one to the Capitoline temple, the other to the Mamertine prison. Here it was that Cæsar took the route of triumph to the left, while Vercingetorix was led away to the right, and strangled in the subterranean dungeon. The Gallic hero doubtless met with firmness and dignity the fate to which he had so long been doomed, while his conqueror was exhibiting a melancholy spectacle of human infirmity, crawling up the steps of the Capitol on his knees, to avert, by an act of childish humiliation, the wrath of the avenging Nemesis. The next instance of similar degradation recorded is that of the emperor Claudius, who being corpulent and clumsy performed the ungraceful feat with the support of an arm on either side. The practice was probably of no unusual occurrence, and was deeply rooted, we may believe, in ancient and popular prejudices. A remnant of it still exists, and may be witnessed by the curious, even at the present day, on the steps of the Ara Cœli and at the Santa Scala of the Lateran.

A Sacrificator