Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

But the Republic itself was now securely in his hands. The Senate, stupefied by the scale of Caesar’s achievements, overawed by the magnitude of his power, had scrabbled to legitimize his victory and somehow reconcile it with the cherished traditions of the past. The strain of this attempt had cost constitutionalists a great deal of pain. Already Caesar had twice accepted the dictatorship: first, in late 49 BC for eleven days when he had presided over his own hurried election to the consulship, and second, in October 48 when he had been appointed to the office for a year. Now, in the spring of 46, he was awarded a dictatorship for the third time—and for the unprecedented span of ten years. Already consul, Caesar was also given the right to nominate all the Republic’s magistrates, and was created—to sardonic amusement—Rome’s “Prefect of Morals.” Never before, not even under Sulla, had there been such a concentration of authority in the hands of one man. Yet the example of Sulla did offer at least a glimmer of hope. A decade was a long time to endure a dictatorship, but it was not an eternity. Bitter medicine had proved restorative before. And who, after all, could deny that the Republic was very sick indeed?