Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

by Tom Holland

No one, not even the most embittered conservative, could deny his pre-eminence. ‘One and all acknowledge his unrivalled status as Princeps.’15 Unlike Scipio, Pompey did not owe this title to any vote of the Senate. Instead, like the incense he had brought back in groaning wagon trains from the East, his auctoritas hung dense over Rome, perfumed and intangible. The length and scope of Pompey’s campaigning had made a mockery of the traditional rhythms of political life in the Republic. The prospect of sharing his commands with a colleague, or of having them limited to a single year at a time, had never crossed his mind. What was the Senate, that it should hobble ‘the tamer of the world’?16 Pompey had secured his victories, not despite, but because of his criminality. The implications were unsettling in the extreme. Laws that had served Rome well in the days of her provincialism were palpably starting to buckle now that she ruled the world. The same kings who crept and cringed in Pompey’s train only served to demonstrate what dazzling pickings might be on offer to a citizen prepared to disdain the venerable safeguards against monarchy. Rome’s greatness, long treasured by her citizens as the fruit of their liberty, now appeared to be menacing the Republic with the decay of its freedoms.