When we last left the city of Rome, it was falling headlong into anarchy.
The radical Senator Clodius had transformed himself into a man of the people, and through
the use of street gangs, had disrupted public life in the city.
Another Senator, a Conservative named Milo, had responded by raising street gangs of his
own.
Public life had slowly returned to normal, but at the cost violence on the streets and
political uncertainty.
Milo, the Conservative, looked to the courts to bring an end to the violence.
He brought a case against Clodius, accusing him of inciting violence.
Everybody knew Clodius was guilty, but he was able to bribe and threaten his way to
a not guilty verdict.
As a big ol' middle finger to Milo, Clodius then brought an identical case against him.
Everybody knew Milo was guilty too, but that didn't stop the the Senate from running to
his defence.
At the trial, as Pompey was speaking on Milo's behalf, Clodius turned to his supporters in
the crowd, and together they drowned Pompey out with an obnoxious chant.
Clodius would shout "Who is starving the people to death?", and the crowd would answer "Pompey!"
They were referencing the fact that Pompey had been put in charge of Rome's grain supply.
Then Clodius would shout "Who wants to campaign in the east?", and the crowd would answer
"Pompey!"
There were rumblings that the Senate was going pick somebody to lead an army to Egypt, and
Pompey was definitely interested in the job, so that one was true.
Then Clodius would shout "Who should go instead?", and the crowd would answer "Crassus!"
*Record Scratch*
Crassus!?!
Pompey's ally?
What did he have to do with this?
There had always been unsubstantiated rumours that Crassus was secretly funding Clodius's
street violence, and this seemed to confirm that there was some sort of arrangement between
the two men.
The chants soon died away, and Clodius supporters changed tactics spitting at Pompey.
Before too long this caused a fight, mostly because it's bad manners.
In the struggle that followed, Pompey was pulled down off the speaking platform.
He escaped, injured.
The trial was called off.
After the brawl, Crassus started to make a series of public speeches arguing that the
Senate should put him, and not Pompey, in charge of the yet-to-be-formalized expedition
to the east.
Pompey's worst fears were confirmed.
The two men were coordinating.
This was dangerous.
Pompey privately confessed to Cicero that he feared that Crassus would send assassins
after him.
When it was time for candidates to declare themselves for next year's consulship, the
Conservatives put forward Cato's brother-in-law, a man named Domitius.
If elected, he pledged to recall Caesar from Gaul, and take over his command.
It was in this context that Caesar summoned Pompey and Crassus to come and meet with him
at what we now call the Conference of Luca.
Pompey and Crassus were at each other's throats, and Caesar's command was in jeopardy.
The secret alliance between the three men, the Triumvirate, was splintering.
Caesar's political survival depended on Domitius going down in defeat.
This is when Caesar suggested that Pompey and Crassus should run against Domitius on
a joint ticket.
If they won, Pompey and Crassus would have the power to extend Caesar's governorship,
and secure prestigious governorships for themselves.
The three men agreed.
As we know, Pompey would get Spain and Crassus would get Syria.
The two men returned to Rome with their alliance renewed.
Around this time Caesar sent a message to Clodius to negotiate a side deal.
If Clodius would agree to throw his support behind Pompey and Crassus this year, the Triumvirate
would agree to support his older brother's bid for consul next year.
Clodius agreed.
This was an ingenious bit of politicking on Caesar's part.
It was spring now, and the elections were scheduled for the summer.
Pompey and Crassus immediately declared their candidacies and started campaigning.
But they needed more time, so Clodius summoned his street gangs, and did everything he could
to disrupt public business.
It worked, and the elections were postponed for the sake of public safety.
But Clodius's tactics didn't make him any friends.
At one point, when the Senate was scheduled to meet, a bunch of his fellow Senators physically
blocked Clodius from entering the building.
Clodius promised that if they didn't let him in, he'd have the Senate House burned down.
Yikes.
Summer turned to autumn, and then winter, and still, no elections.
When the snows came in Gaul, Caesar allowed his men to travel to Rome as private citizens
to vote.
And so, late in the year, thousands of off duty soldiers showed up in the city, and then,
"coincidentally," the street violence stopped.
Elections were scheduled for January.
On the last day of the year, Rome's two consuls stepped down, and there was nobody there to
replace them.
On the day of the election, before dawn, a group of Conservatives lead by Cato and Domitius,
their candidate for consul, showed up at the voting grounds.
They wanted to be there early, to make sure that there was no funny business.
But there WAS funny business.
A bunch of Pompey and Crassus's supporters were already there.
Armed.
They attacked the Conservatives, killing some, and driving the rest away.
Apparently Cato was wounded while defending Domitius.
After the sun rose, Caesar's soldiers and Clodius's gangs members came forward to cast
their votes.
Pompey and Crassus won their elections easily, surprisingly nobody.
Since this election was taking place in January, the two men assumed office immediately.
When elections happened, they were supposed to be overseen by the consuls.
This lead to this weird scenario, where Pompey and Crassus were immediately responsible for
overseeing the election that they had just participated in.
The elections for Praetor happened next, and this year, Cato was a candidate.
As Cato was in the process of winning his election, Pompey arbitrarily dissolved the
assembly, citing bad omens.
Then, after his armed thugs made their rounds, he started up the voting again.
This time, weirdly, a bunch of people switched their votes, and Cato did not win.
It was obvious to everybody what Pompey had done, and many in the crowd were upset.
Then, they elected the Aediles.
Pompey began picking and choosing which elections were valid, and which were not.
Coincidentally, his allies got in, and everybody else had their results thrown out.
This was too much for people to handle.
Pompey had gone mad with power.
There was some pushing and shoving in the election pens, and then violence broke out.
Both factions had secretly brought weapons, and things got deadly pretty quickly.
At the end of the day, Pompey returned home victorious, but covered in blood.
When his pregnant wife saw him, she fainted and would later have a miscarriage.
His wife, by the way, was Caesar's daughter, Julia.
The marriage had been arranged years earlier to cement Caesar and Pompey's alliance through
the Triumvirate.
Once the dust had settled, Pompey and Crassus had an ally in the Senate introduce legislation
giving 5 year governorships to Pompey, and Crassus, and a 5 year extension to Caesar.
As agreed, Pompey would get Spain, Crassus would get Syria, and Caesar would stay in
Gaul.
But these weren't normal governorships.
The legislation also gave the governors authority to unilaterally declare war, without consulting
the Senate.
This ruffled a lot of feathers, but eventually the legislation passed, and their obligation
to the Triumvirate was fulfilled.
And then our sources get a little patchy, but in the fall, we know that elections were
held for the year 54 BCE.
Pompey and Crassus supported Claudius's older brother for consul, just as they had promised.
He won his election, but so did Domitius, Cato's Conservative brother-in-law that ran
last year.
In the winter, Crassus departed for Syria.
He would not return, but we'll leave that for another day.
Pompey decided to ignore his previous agreement with Caesar and Crassus, and stay in Rome
instead of going to Spain.
His reasoning was this.
Let Crassus win victories in Syria.
Let Caesar win victories Gaul.
Pompey's military career was already unparalleled.
They called him the next Alexander the Great.
He had nothing left to prove.
He would stay in Rome, free from Caesar and Crassus's influence, and establish himself
as the most powerful man in the city.
His subordinates would govern Spain in his absence.
He ended the year by throwing expensive public games.
Apparently the big draw was elephant vs elephant fights, which people seemed to like.
The games went over very well, and Pompey's popularity began to rise.
And then, in 54 BCE, his wife unexpectedly died in childbirth.
Pompey was genuinely heartbroken, and spent a good portion of the year in mourning.
Caesar was off campaigning in Britain that summer, and wouldn't learn about his daughter's
death until he returned to the Gallic coast in the fall.
Now, the legal bond between Pompey and Caesar was severed, and the Triumvirate was back
to being as fragile as ever.
When the elections for that year rolled around, there was a massive corruption scandal.
All of the candidates for consul were caught bribing the consuls who would be overseeing
their election.
Last year, Pompey had shown everybody how easy it was for consuls to pick winners and
losers, and everybody was interested in replicating his success.
But fortunately, they were all caught before any of this could happen.
Everybody was disqualified, and the election was pushed back 6 months so that new candidates
could be found.
With violence on the streets, and corrupt elections, Romans were feeling like the political
system was becoming more and more unstable.
People began to whisper that Pompey should step up and reestablish order.
The word "Dictator" started to be thrown around.
Before too long, brand new candidates were campaigning for consul.
One of the candidates was Milo, the Conservative senator and leader of half of the city's street
gangs.
To Clodius, the leader of the other half of the city's street gangs, this was unacceptable.
Clodius decided that if Milo was running, there would be no election.
He took to the streets, and Rome descended into anarchy.
Clodius's gangs and Milo's gangs clashed all over the city.
There were deaths every day, and corpses were just left lying openly on the streets.
Public business ground to a halt.
This continued for months, and the elections kept on being pushed back.
When January 1st rolled around, there had been no elections, which meant that again,
there were no new consuls there to assume office.
One day in late January, Milo was leaving Rome on business, and just happened to meet
Clodius returning to the city on the same road.
Each man was flanked by armed bodyguards.
The groups almost passed in peace, but two gladiators working for Milo couldn't keep
their mouths shut, and started taunting Clodius's men.
Fighting broke out spontaneously.
In the confusion, Clodius was hit in the shoulder with a javelin.
Clodius's men tried to rush him into a building, but Milo's men overpowered them.
Clodius was killed, and his body was just left on the road.
Eventually, a traveler recognized Clodius's body, and had it sent to Rome.
When it got to Rome, news spread of Clodius's death.
An angry mob gathered.
They took his body, and marched toward the forum.
They had intended to hold a funeral in the forum, but instead, the mob stormed the Senate
House.
They took tables, chairs, benches, and anything else that would burn, and piled it in the
center of the Senate chamber.
Clodius's body was laid atop the makeshift pyre, and the wood was ignited.
In death, Clodius fulfilled his promise.
His funeral pyre burned the Senate House down.
Rome's Senators were horrified by this.
Rome had been ungovernable for months, but if an angry mob could burn down the Senate,
an angry mob could overthrow the government.
The whispering intensified.
"Dictator."
The people wanted Pompey to restore order.
Everybody was now taking the threat of the mob seriously, but the Conservatives in the
Senate had an understandable aversion to dictators, so they struck a compromise.
Pompey would allowed to rule as sole consul in the year 52.
This was super duper illegal.
First, there had to be a 10 year gap between consulships.
That was the law.
Pompey had served only 3 years earlier.
Second, there was no election.
The Senate just decided that Pompey would be the next consul.
Since when was that a thing?
But nevertheless, in the year 52 BCE, Pompey assumed power.
When they had their consul in place, Bibulus, (maybe you've heard of him,) put forward some
legislation.
The Senatus Consultum Ultimum.
The Final Act.
This special piece of legislation gave the consuls, in this case just Pompey, unrestricted
power to defend the Republic.
It was the Roman equivalent to Martial Law.
The bill passed without much debate.
Pompey was now empowered to ignore the law and do whatever was necessary to restore order.
Pompey immediately raised an army, and had it enter the city.
Just like that, Rome was under military occupation.
Legionaries patrolled the streets, and fought the street gangs wherever they were found.
Eventually, with soldiers on every street-corner, people began to go about their lives again.
As an olive branch, Pompey had Milo arrested for Clodius's murder.
Milo was found guilty, and was exiled from Rome.
The army patrolled the streets for about a month.
Peace was restored, and Pompey was the most powerful man in Rome.
This is exactly what he wanted.
Finally, Pompey decided that the crisis had passed, and that it was time to relinquish
his extralegal authority.
Somewhere in this period, Pompey remarried.He invited his new father-in-law, a leading Conservative,
to serve with him as consul for the remainder of the year.
Again, no election was held, they were just making it up as they went along.
Together, Pompey and his father-in-law passed a string of Conservative reforms, such as
a prohibition on candidates standing for election in absentia.
This was an indirect attack on Caesar, of all people, since it would force him to give
up his command early and get dragged into court over his illegal actions during his
term as consul.
Pompey and Caesar's alliance was broken.
The Triumvirate was dead.
Pompey achieved his dream of becoming the most powerful man in Rome by openly abandoning
Caesar's Reform faction and transforming himself into the champion of the Conservative cause.