Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic Read online

  Tom Holland has adapted Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

  Praise for Tom Holland’s Rubicon

  Winner of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2004

  ‘This is narrative history at its best … It really held me, in fact, obsessed me … Bloody and labyrinthine political intrigue and struggle, brilliant oratory, amazing feats of conquest and cruelty. Holland’s lucid account of this alien civilisation moves at a fine pace. He makes no facile comparisons with our times, but you sense you are witnessing through him the enduring difficulty of reconciling power and peace’

  Ian McEwan, Books of the Year

  ‘It’s terrific and I’m so grateful to [Tom Holland] for reminding me, so vividly, of not just the Roman Empire but of the people it produced and influenced’

  Joanna Trollope, Observer Books of the Year 2005

  ‘I am afraid I have read nothing but books about the Roman Empire, the most gripping of which was Tom Holland’s Rubicon’

  Boris Johnson, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 2005

  ‘Holland writes throughout with wonderful zest … this is a terrific read and a remarkable piece of scholarship. As an introduction to Roman history, it is unlikely to be bettered’

  Christopher Matthews, Daily Mail

  ‘A fine achievement, a book which will still deserve to be read when the political fashion has moved on … For any newcomer who wants the story of the Republic [and] who is tired of hearing people bang on about what the Romans did for us and wants to know what (and how) the Romans did for themselves, this is probably as good as it gets’

  Peter Stothard, Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A model of exactly how a popular history of the classical world should be written … a riveting study of the period … the most readable book on the later Roman republic since Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution … Next time someone asks me why they should study Roman history, Rubicon will be one of the first books that I shall direct them to’

  Richard Miles, Guardian

  ‘The blood-stained drama of the last decades of the Roman Republic … is told afresh with tremendous wit, narrative verve and insight … What characters there were in this drama! He resurrects them with a novelistic luminosity which illuminates not only that lost world, but our own as well’

  Christopher Hart, Independent on Sunday

  ‘The story of Rome’s experiment with republicanism – peopled by such giants as Caesar, Pompey, Cato and Cicero – is told with perfect freshness, fine wit and true scholarship’

  Andrew Roberts

  ‘Holland has the rare gift of making deep scholarship accessible and exciting. A brilliant and completely absorbing study’

  A. N. Wilson

  ‘Tom Holland’s Rubicon makes history read like a thrilling mafia epic. Classical celebrities who flit across the subconscious of half-educated people like me keep walking in and swaggering about, all alive’

  Griff Rhys Jones, Books of the Year

  ‘A history of the Roman Republic at the height of its fame … The excitement of this book lies in the knowledge that once the summit is reached, either of a mountain or a civilisation, the trail leads downwards’

  Beryl Bainbridge, Books of the Year

  ‘An excellent and extremely readable study of the last days of the Roman republics’

  John Bayley, Books of the Year

  ‘Ancient history often descends to us either through impregnable academic works or the sword-and-sandal epics of the cinema. What Holland achieves is to draw from both genres to write a modern, well-paced and finely observed history which entertains as it informs’

  Elizabeth Speller, Observer

  ‘The Republic won an empire, and destroyed itself in doing so. Tom Holland tells the story of how this came about, and does so with splendid verve … His writing is as pellucid as Macauley’s’

  Allan Massie, Spectator

  ‘Engrossing … a lively narrative style … A thoroughly worthwhile and timely project – an account of a formative period of Western history that manages to be accessible and not over-simplified’

  Harry Eyres, Daily Telegraph

  ‘A master of the telling detail … Rubicon is unrivalled in revealing the humbug behind the cant and stripping Julius Caesar and company of their moral finery’

  Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times

  ‘Tom Holland’s excellent new study of the fall of the Republic … reevaluating Rome for a new generation’

  Robert Harris, Sunday Times

  ‘For the student of contemporary politics as well as the classicist, Tom Holland’s account of the last century or so of the Roman Republic is timely. It enables the reader to re-live the slow, bloodstained collapse of a system, not only as a fascinating drama in its own right, but as a morality tale … This gripping narrative resurrects some of the half-forgotten personalities and events that shaped who we are. In the light of the parallels between the two great imperial republics, it can be recommended as an instructive beach-read for senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic’

  Anthony Everitt, Independent

  ‘Fresh and vivid … Holland’s strength is as a narrative historian and there is no better and clearer guide to the tangled political events of 100–44 BC … if a new readership is to be won for ancient history, it is books like this that will pave the way’

  Frank McLynn, New Statesman

  ‘Rubicon … is no dry history: it is immensely readable, a perfect combination of authoritative scholarship and racy narrative … all Holland’s people are real and alive. Sometimes they even talk’

  David Wishart, The Scotsman

  ‘Holland paints a vivid social portrait of the Roman world … Ideal bedside reading for George W. Bush’

  Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Explosive stuff … a seriously intelligent history of the late republic that approximates as closely to the condition of the novel as should be allowed. Concentrating on the characters, plotting their interactions, rise and fall with considerable narrative skill, writing with élan and gusto … It is a history for our times … One can see classicists like Paul Wolfowitz in the White House eagerly seizing this book to find out how to deal with those tricky middle-easterners … a wickedly enjoyable book and a very sharp “reading” of the late Roman republic’

  Peter Jones, BBC History Magazine

  ‘Holland brings to vivid life the names found in thousands of schoolbooks … and gives them both personality and relevance…. With authoritative prose, this comes as recommended reading for those interested in the ancient world’

  Good Book Guide

  ‘Always readable and often beautiful … essential reading for anyone interested in ancient history. However, it also says more about our modern civilisation than many books that more overtly address the contemporary political and social issues … [Holland] blows the dust off an ancient civilisation, and shows that we still have plenty to learn from the past’

  Sunday Business Post

  ‘Holland brings a diverse cast of characters to life and in his descriptions of the skullduggery, luxury and squalor of ancient Rome he’s marvellously entertaining’

  Evening Herald

  ‘Stunning … Rubicon is unusually well informed by any standard and impressive for its large but not overwhelming cast of characters. The roster goes well beyond the expected Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Crassus, Caesar and Cicero. Look out for prototypical metrosexuals, high-class oyster purveyors, overprivileged aristo table-dancers, back-alley prostitutes and a small army of
political bit players – mercifully, not all identified by name. Holland keeps his narrative moving at chariot-race speed’

  Corey Brennan, Newsday

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-13105-1

  Copyright © 2003 Tom Holland

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  For Eliza.

  Welcome to the world.

  Contents

  Praise

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  List of Maps

  Note on Proper Names

  Preface

  1 THE PARADOXICAL REPUBLIC

  2 THE SIBYL’S CURSE

  3 LUCK BE A LADY

  4 RETURN OF THE NATIVE

  5 FAME IS THE SPUR

  6 A BANQUET OF CARRION

  7 THE DEBT TO PLEASURE

  8 TRIUMVIRATE

  9 THE WINGS OF ICARUS

  10 WORLD WAR

  11 THE DEATH OF THE REPUBLIC

  Timeline

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for their help with the writing of this book. To my editors, Richard Beswick and Stephen Guise in London, and Bill Thomas and Gerry Howard in New York. To that best of agents and dearest of friends, Patrick Walsh. To Jamie Muir, for being the first to read the manuscript, and for all his unstinting friendship, encouragement and advice. To Caroline Muir, for being such a help whenever my failure to be a stern pater familias threatened to overwhelm me. To Mary Beard, for saving me from more errors than I can bear to count. To Catharine Edwards, for doing the same. To Lizzie Speller, for being as obsessed by Pompey’s quiff as I was, and for all her conversation and support. To everyone at the British School in Rome, and to Hilary Bell, for not complaining (too much) as I dragged her round yet another coin collection. To the staff of the London Library, and the library of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. To Arthur Jarvis and Michael Symonds, for first introducing me to the late Republic. And above all, of course, to my beloved wife and daughter, Sadie and Katy, for keeping me sane when it seemed that I would never have time for anything except for the Romans: ‘ita sum ab omnibus destitutus ut tantum requietis habeam quantum cum uxore et filiola consumitur.’

  List of Maps

  1 The Roman World in 140 BC

  2 Rome in 140 BC

  3 Italy in the First Century BC

  4 Campania in the First Century BC

  5 The Forum and Environs

  6 The Eastern Mediterranean in 50 BC

  7 Gaul in 60 BC

  8 Rome in AD 14

  9 The Roman World in AD 14

  Note on Proper Names

  Where familiar use has served to anglicise proper names, I have chosen to employ the modern rather than the classical usage: Pompey rather than Pompeius, for instance; Naples rather than Neapolis.

  Preface

  January 10th, the seven-hundred-and-fifth year since the foundation of Rome, the forty-ninth before the birth of Christ. The sun had long set behind the Apennine mountains. Lined up in full marching order, soldiers from the 13th Legion stood massed in the dark. Bitter the night may have been, but they were well used to extremes. For eight years they had been following the governor of Gaul on campaign after bloody campaign, through snow, through summer heat, to the margins of the world. Now, returned from the barbarous wilds of the north, they found themselves poised on a very different frontier. Ahead of them flowed a narrow stream. On the legionaries’ side was the province of Gaul; on the far side Italy, and the road that led to Rome. Take that road, however, and the soldiers of the 13th Legion would be committing a deadly offence, breaking not only the limits of their province, but also the sternest laws of the Roman people. They would, in effect, be declaring civil war. Yet this was a catastrophe for which the legionaries, by marching to the border, had shown themselves fully steeled. As they stamped their feet against the cold, they waited for the trumpeters to summon them to action. To shoulder arms, to advance – to cross the Rubicon.

  But when would the summons come? Faint in the night, its waters swollen by mountain snows, the stream could be heard, but still no blast of trumpets. The soldiers of the 13th strained their ears. They were not used to being kept waiting. Normally, when battle threatened, they would move and strike like lightning. Their general, the governor of Gaul, was a man celebrated for his qualities of dash, surprise and speed. Not only that, but he had issued them with the order to cross the Rubicon that very afternoon. So why, now they had finally arrived at the border, had they been brought to a sudden halt? Few could see their general in the darkness, but to his staff officers, gathered around him, he appeared in a torment of irresolution. Rather than gesture his men onwards, Gaius Julius Caesar instead gazed into the turbid waters of the Rubicon, and said nothing. And his mind moved upon silence.

  The Romans had a word for such a moment. ‘Discrimen’, they called it – an instant of perilous and excruciating tension, when the achievements of an entire lifetime might hang in the balance. The career of Caesar, like that of any Roman who aspired to greatness, had been a succession of such crisis points. Time and again he had hazarded his future – and time and again he had emerged triumphant. This, to the Romans, was the very mark of a man. Yet the dilemma which confronted Caesar on the banks of the Rubicon was uniquely agonising – and all the more so for being the consequence of his previous successes. In less than a decade he had forced the surrender of 800 cities, 300 tribes and the whole of Gaul – and yet excessive achievement, to the Romans, might be a cause for alarm as well as celebration. They were the citizens of a republic, after all, and no one man could be permitted to put his fellows forever in the shade. Caesar’s enemies, envious and fearful, had long been manoeuvring to deprive him of his command. Now, at last, in the winter of 49, they had succeeded in backing him into a corner. For Caesar, the moment of truth had finally arrived. Either he could submit to the law, surrender his command, and face the ruin of his career – or he could cross the Rubicon.

  ‘The die is cast.’* Only as a gambler, in a gambler’s fit of passion, was Caesar finally able to bring himself to order his legionaries to advance. The stakes had proved too high for rational calculation. Too imponderable as well. Sweeping into Italy, Caesar knew that he was risking world war, for he had confessed as much to his companions, and shuddered at the prospect. Clear-sighted as he was, however, not even Caesar could anticipate the full consequences of his decision. In addition to ‘crisis point’, ‘discrimen’ had a further meaning: ‘dividing line’. This was, in every sense, what the Rubicon would prove to be. By crossing it, Caesar did indeed engulf the world in war, but he also helped to bring about the ruin of Rome’s ancient freedoms, and the establishment, upon their wreckage, of a monarchy – events of primal significance for the history of the West. Long after the Roman Empire itself had collapsed, the opposites delineated by the Rubicon – liberty and despotism, anarchy and order, republic and autocracy – would continue to haunt the imaginings of Rome’s successors. Narrow and obscure the stream may have been, so insignificant that its very location was ultimately forgotten, yet its name is remembered still. No wonder. So fateful was Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon that it has come to stand for every fateful step taken since.

  With it, an era of history passed away. Once, there had been free cities dotted throughout the Mediterranean. In the Greek world, and in Italy too, these cities had been inhabited by men who identified themselves not as the subjects of a pharaoh or a king of kings, but as citizens, and who proudly boasted of the values that distinguishe
d them from slaves – free speech, private property, rights before the law. Gradually, however, with the rise of new empires, first those of Alexander the Great and his successors, and then of Rome, the independence of such citizens everywhere had been stifled. By the first century BC, there was only one free city left, and that was Rome herself. And then Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the Republic imploded, and none was left at all.

  As a result, a thousand years of civic self-government were brought to an end, and not for another thousand, and more, would it become a living reality again. Since the Renaissance there have been many attempts to ford back across the Rubicon, to return to its far bank, to leave autocracy behind. The English, American and French revolutions were all consciously inspired by the example of the Roman Republic. ‘As to rebellion in particular against monarchy,’ Thomas Hobbes complained, ‘one of the most frequent causes of it is the reading of the books of policy, and histories of the ancient Greeks, and Romans.’1 Not, of course, that the desirability of a free republic was the only lesson to be drawn from the dramas of Roman history. It was no less a figure than Napoleon, after all, who went from consul to emperor, and throughout the nineteenth century the word most commonly applied to Bonapartist regimes was ‘Caesarist’. By the 1920s and 1930s, when republics everywhere appeared to be collapsing, those crowing over their ruin were quick to point out the parallels with the death-throes of their ancient predecessor. In 1922 Mussolini deliberately propagated the myth of a heroic, Caesar-like march on Rome. Nor was he the only man to believe that a new Rubicon had been crossed. ‘The brown shirt would probably not have existed without the black shirt,’ Hitler later acknowledged. ‘The march on Rome was one of the turning points of history.’2