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Senators had to belong to the equestrian order, the wealthiest property-holding class listed in the census. Their name, equites or ‘knights’, derived from their traditional role as cavalrymen in the Roman army.
As Cicero would later declare, ‘For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by a sense of history?’
Ultimately, most of the Roman elite preferred to allow some of the major problems facing the Republic to go unanswered rather than see someone else gain the credit for dealing with them.
Napoleon–believed that being lucky was one of the most important virtues of a general.
As always in Caesar’s story, we need to be very careful not to allow hindsight to impose a sense of inevitability on events. The scale of Caesar’s successes in Gaul was startling, even in a Rome so recently dazzled by Pompey’s achievements. Yet the balance between success and failure was often narrow, and he might easily have been killed, or have died from accident or disease before he could return. That he would eventually come back as a rebel to fight against his former ally and son-in-law Pompey was unlikely to have occurred to anyone. When Caesar went to Gaul he had plans and ambitions,
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This was always the risk for a commander who took up a very strong position, for if the advantages it gave were obvious, then there was little incentive for the enemy to engage.
Whenever he felt that it was in his interest, Caesar was utterly ruthless.
the conventional opening for any letter from a Roman governor to the Senate, ‘I am well, and so is the army’
Napoleon was later to comment that it was better to have one bad commander than two good ones with shared authority.
Caesar could not leave his men to die if there was any chance of saving them. He had already shown the depth of his feeling for the loss of the fifteen cohorts by swearing an oath not to shave or cut his hair until he had avenged them. This was a particularly significant gesture for the ever fastidious Caesar. Unshaven, the proconsul force marched his 7,000 men onwards.
‘“What if,” someone else said, “he wants to be consul and still retain his army?” To this Pompey responded mildly, “What if my son wants to attack me with a stick?” These words have made people suspect that Pompey is having a row with Caesar.’7
The use of the senatus consultum ultimum was ironic, though it should be said that Caesar had never challenged its validity, merely the appropriateness of its use against him.
A dictator had a subordinate rather than a colleague and this officer was titled the Master of Horse (Magister Equitum)-when originally created it had been considered important for the dictator to stay with the heavy infantry of the legions and so his deputy was given the task of leading the aristocratic cavalry. Mark Antony was named as Caesar’s Master of Horse.
‘I have lived long enough for either nature or glory.’ – Caesar, 46 BC.
