In the summer of the year 46 B.C.E., Julius Caesar returned to the city of Rome as a victorious
general.
All of his military opposition had been squashed, and all of his enemies, save for Labienus
and a couple of Pompey's sons, had either been killed or forced into submission.
This precise moment, when Caesar returned to the city, was a major turning point in
Roman history.
For years, Roman politics had been getting weirder and more dysfunctional, but now was
when things really go off the deep end.
Before Caesar could even make it back to the city, the Senate took it upon itself to offer
him unprecedented political power.
His Dictatorship, which was due to expire in a few months, was extended for an additional
10 years.
This was unheard of, as the Dictatorship was supposed to be a 6 month emergency measure.
Why did the Senate do this?
If Caesar made a power grab, many in the Senate feared the worst.
By preempting him, the Senate believed that they could keep Caesar within the bounds of
the law, and by attaching a time limit to their offer, they would be able to revisit
this whole arrangement in 10 years time.
By then, Caesar would probably be in a weaker position than he was right now, and with a
little luck they might be able to push him into retirement.
The Senate also gave Caesar permission to serve as Consul consecutively for the next
5 years, which, when paired with the Dictatorship, would give him a free hand to push through
pretty much whatever legislation he wished.
Alongside this, Caesar was also handed a bunch of new powers.
I'm not going to go down the laundry list, but they included the power to declare war
and issue pardons whenever he wished.
This was some real authoritarian stuff.
The Senate still held onto some legislative authority, but they were making one hell of
a gamble.
When Caesar returned to Rome, he asked the Senate to meet him outside the pomerium.
He told them that he had conquered new territory for Rome, and that he had been hailed as Imperator
by his armies.
He formally asked their permission to cross the pomerium under Triumph.
In fact, he said that he qualified for four Triumphs.
One for Gaul, one for Egypt, one for Asia Minor, and one for North Africa.
It's worth briefly examining each of these claims.
In Gaul, he had annexed a bunch of territory and been hailed as Imperator.
Gaul was totally legit.
In Egypt, it gets more complicated.
If you remember, Caesar lost a battle, then won a battle, then negotiated a settlement
where he handed a Roman province over to the Queen of Egypt.
Giving away a province is kinda the opposite of conquering territory.
The Egyptian campaign should not have qualified for a Triumph.
In Asia Minor, Caesar won a decisive battle, but all he really did was restore the status
quo.
That doesn't really count as "conquering new territory," although I guess it's debatable.
As for North Africa, this one is really complicated.
Caesar won a decisive battle, but in this case it was against his own countrymen!
For the sake of public relations Caesar argued that King Juba of Numidia was the brains behind
the North African campaign, but this was not true.
After Caesar's victory, he shifted some of the Numidian client kingdom into one of Rome's
existing provinces, which is kind of just an administrative thing but I guess technically
counts as conquering new territory.
Of Caesar's 4 proposed Triumphs, 3 were questionable.
Nevertheless, the Senate signed off on all of them.
I'm going to spend a few minutes going through each of Caesar's four triumphs, but if this
piques your interest at all you should know that I made a video where I break down each
step of the Roman Triumph in excruciating detail.
Learning about the Roman Triumph ruins every parade you see for the rest of your life.
Caesar's four triumphs would be celebrated on four separate days in the order in which
they occurred.
Gaul, then Egypt, then Asia Minor, then North Africa.
The conquest of Gaul was Caesar's greatest achievement, and the Gallic Triumph would
serve as its living monument.
Remember Vercingetorix?
The so-called King of the Gauls?
Six years ago, Vercingetorix lead a united Gallic army that almost succeeded in pushing
the Romans out of Gaul.
Caesar eventually captured Vercingetorix and defeated the united Gallic army, after which
Rome would to establish a permanent presence in Gaul.
For the intervening six years, which included the entirety of the Roman Civil War, Vercingetorix
had been rotting in a Roman jail.
Why didn't they just kill him?
Well, for the Romans, few things were more prestigious than having a foreign king walk
in one's Triumph.
This Roman tendency towards humiliation and cruelty extended Vercingetorix's life six
years.
Caesar's Gallic Triumph kicked off with wagons carrying paintings depicting Caesar's various
victories over the Gauls.
These were followed by even more wagons hauling captured Gallic treasure.
Walking alongside these wagons were an assortment of Gallic prisoners, including the so-called
King of the Gauls, Vercingetorix.
After this, Caesar made his entrance by crossing the pomerium and making his way up the Via
Sacra before cheering crowds.
As the name would imply, the Via Sacra was home to Rome's largest temples.
As Caesar was passing the Temple to Fortuna the goddess of luck, one of the wheels on
his chariot snapped and he was thrown onto the street.
To the superstitious Romans, it appeared that the goddess of luck had finally abandoned
Caesar.
After a brief delay, another chariot was found and the Triumph continued.
As Caesar approached the Gallic Triumph's grand finale, he decided to climb the steps
to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on his knees in an act of penance.
Hopefully the goddess of luck would find this pleasing.
After this bit of public humiliation, Vercingetorix, the so-called King of the Gauls, having played
his part, was strangled to death.
The rest of the Gallic prisoners met the same fate.
An important part of the Triumph was that Caesar's soldiers were permitted to cross
the pomerium and follow behind him along the Triumphal route.
By the end of the Triumph everybody was pretty loose, if you know what I mean, and it was
customary for the soldiers to entertain the crowd by singing rude songs.
Suetonius, writing 150 years after the fact, had access to sources that are now lost to
us, and went to the trouble of transcribing one of the songs that Caesar's army sang during
the Gallic Triumph.
It went a little something like this:
"Romans, watch your wives, here's the bald adulterous whore / We pissed away your gold
in Gaul and come to borrow more."
A few days later, after the partying had settled down a bit, it was time for the Egyptian Triumph.
As part of a negotiated settlement with Egypt, Caesar had taken Cleopatra's sister and former
rival Arsinoe captive.
Arsinoe was a former Queen herself, and as such she would become the second monarch to
walk in one of Caesar's Triumphs.
By all accounts Arsinoe was young, charming, attractive, and probably fluent in both Greek
and Latin.
We don't know what she said or did, but whatever it was the crowd immediately took a liking
to her.
Before too long, people were calling on Caesar to spare her life.
Caesar, sensing the mood of the crowd, gave in to popular demand and allowed Arsinoe to
take up residence in a Roman temple.
There's no doubt that this move annoyed Cleopatra, but when you think about it geopolitically,
Rome having a potential heir to the Egyptian throne in their back pocket seems like a pretty
smart move.
A few days later, it was time for the Asia Minor Triumph, which celebrated Caesar's 5
day campaign that ended with the Battle of Zela.
This would have been the weakest of the four Triumphs, and it's probably no coincidence
that none of the ancient sources have anything to say about it.
And then, a few days later, it was time for the grand finale, the North African Triumph.
This Triumph was pitched as a celebration of Caesar's victory over King Juba and the
Numidians in North Africa.
As usual, the Triumph kicked off with a bunch of giant paintings.
One of the first paintings depicted the Pompeian general Scipio stabbing himself in the stomach
and tossing himself into the sea.
Many in the crowd understandably found the painting offensive.
Why were they being shown the deaths of Romans?
Where were the Numidians?
Minutes later, another painting came into view.
This one depicted the last moments of Cato's life, with the Senator laying in bed ripping
out his own intestines with his bare hands.
This was disgusting, even by Roman standards.
It was now crystal clear that Caesar was much more concerned with celebrating the deaths
of his fellow Romans than he was with the defeat of the Numidians.
The crowd turned against the Triumph.
Minutes later, the prisoners came into view.
The most prominent person here was the new King of Numidia, a young child, probably under
the age of 6.
This child would be the third monarch to walk in one of Caesar's Triumphs, which was an
incredible accomplishment, and a record would never be broken.
But the crowd had no interest in this achievement.
They were in a sour mood, and found the idea of putting an innocent child to death repulsive.
The crowd started to get rowdy, and when Caesar came into view they angrily demanded that
he spare the boy's life.
Caesar didn't have much of a choice.
He enrolled the young king in a prestigious school and left it at that.
When you add together each of Caesar's four Triumphs, he hauled 2,000 tonnes of silver
across the pomerium.
Currency conversion across two millennia is pretty much impossible, but just so you get
a proper sense of scale that much silver would be worth a billion dollars today.
The scale of Caesar's personal wealth had grown to that of a small country, and it was
time to use that wealth to begin meeting some of his obligations.
At the top of his list were his legions, who in return for sacrificing so much, had received
nothing but a bunch of promises.
Caesar gifted each of his soldiers 1 silver talent, which, bearing in mind that currency
conversion is pretty much impossible, would have been equal to like 10 or 15 year's wages.
Centurions were given two silver talents, and officers and command staff were given
four silver talents.
This was extremely generous, and everybody knew full well that this was coming right
out of Caesar's pocket.
But the spending spree was just getting started, because Caesar then turned around and gifted
every Roman citizen the equivalent of like 4 month's wages.
This was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.
The Roman aristocracy looked down their noses at this blatant political pandering, but since
it was a private donation, they were in no position to do anything about it.
Despite this flurry of generosity, Caesar's full debt to his soldiers had not yet been
paid.
This is a rough estimate, but something on the order of 22,000 soldiers were currently
up for retirement, and that number would only grow in the years to come.
The Roman state owed every one of these men a plot of farmland and a cash bonus, and it
was Caesar's responsibility to make sure that happened.
But 22,000 was a big number, and even with unlimited funds, coming up with that much
farmland would be tough.
This would require a political solution.
Luckily, Caesar was at the height of his political power.
He had just been appointed Dictator for an additional 10 years, and was at the very beginning
of a 5 year run as Consul.
His first move was to push a bill through the Senate setting up a mechanism through
which farmers could sell their land to the government at inflated prices.
This meant that Rome's failing farmers would be eligible for a little cash bailout.
Of course, since this was a voluntary program, the full redistribution of 22,000 farms would
take many, many years.
Now that Caesar's veterans were being dealt with, some important political decisions needed
to be made.
The chaos of the Civil War had devastated the Senate.
The size of the Senate tended to fluctuate year to year, but if you assumed perfect health
and attendance it could top out at like 800 members, although in practice 300 was pretty
typical.
As you might imagine, the Civil War had pushed a lot of Senators into early retirement, and,
well, death, and by the year 46 Senate membership was down in the danger zone.
Some back of the envelope calculations said that there would not be enough qualified Senators
to properly staff Rome's provinces.
Caesar would do three things to solve this problem.
He would expand the pool of available candidates, he would widen the filter that produced qualified
candidates, and he would temporarily lower the qualifications themselves.
This whole thing was super consequential and it would ruffle a lot of feathers, so let's
get into it.
Caesar widened the pool of available candidates by using his dictatorial powers to unilaterally
appoint hundreds and hundreds of new Senators.
Who were these new Senators?
They were basically everybody that Caesar had come into contact with over the last 15
years.
A bunch of these new Senators were retired centurions from his legions.
It goes without saying that these guys were loyalists.
He also appointed a bunch of aristocrats from the small and medium sized cities that dotted
the Italian countryside.
Caesar had turned to this group for financial support during the Civil War, and this political
kickback only strengthened their loyalty to him.
It was a canny move, since these aristocrats were a pretty influential.
And some of these new Senators came from outside Italy.
During the Gallic Wars, Caesar had made commitments to some Gallic aristocrats in exchange for
their support.
Appointing these Gauls to the Roman Senate was a way of finally making good on these
commitments.
Let's make a few things clear about these Gauls.
For starters, these people had been given Roman citizenship ages ago.
They were fluent in Latin.
They wore Roman clothing.
Their children got Roman educations.
Nevertheless, the appointment of ethnic Gauls to the Roman Senate caused an uproar.
On the streets of Rome, people started telling a joke that went something like this: "The
Gauls have crossed the pomerium!
They're asking for directions to the Senate House!"
There was a lot of loose talk at the time about Senators showing up unable to speak
Latin, sporting Gallic facial hair, wearing Gallic clothing, practicing Gallic religion,
but none of this was true.
It was all just wild paranoia.
By the time Caesar had finished making all of his appointments, the Senate had quadrupled
in size.
Over time the Senate would shrink back down to normal, but this would take at least a
generation.
As I said before, Caesar had good reasons for packing the Senate, but we shouldn't lose
sight of the fact that at its heart, it was a power grab.
The vast majority of the Roman Senate were now personally loyal to Caesar.
But the Senate packing thing wouldn't entirely solve the problem at hand.
The only Senators that were allowed to serve as governors were the ones who had been elected
to one of Rome's two highest offices, Consul and Praetor.
Because of the Civil War, many of Rome's former Consuls and Praetors were either dead or retired.
It would take quite a long time to filter this expanded pool of politicians up the cursus
honorum, so Caesar widened the filter by increasing the number of annually elected Praetors from
8 to 10.
But widening the filter wouldn't entirely solve the problem either.
As a stopgap measure, Caesar used his dictatorial authority to appoint a bunch of under-qualified
politicians to the provinces.
Caesar's old job as governor of Cisalpine Gaul went to one of the Senate's lowest ranked
Senators, Marcus Brutus.
Fifteen years his junior, Brutus was the son of Caesar's favourite mistress, and despite
the fact that Brutus had sided with the Pompeians during the Civil War, Caesar was happy to
take him under his wing.
Caesar also singled out 10 loyal former Praetors and awarded them with something called "the
dignity of an former Consul."
This was a totally made up thing, but Caesar argued that it would be improper for certain
provinces to be governed by anybody lacking the dignity of an former Consul.
In truth, it just a way for Caesar to reward his allies for their years of service.
Whatever.
Caesar packaged these power-grabby political reforms with some more general anti-corruption
stuff.
This included a provision that said that any governor convicted on corruption charges would
be automatically expelled from the Senate.
This fight against corruption was one of Caesar's hobby horses.
He believed that corrupt governors needlessly antagonized the locals which put Rome at risk.
The corrupt aristocracy didn't much like these reforms, but they weren't in a position to
do anything about it.
Taken as a whole, this was a staggering number of reforms to come down all at once.
That's how it felt at the time, too!
Most of these bills were conceived and written up in Caesar's home, and would only see the
light of day when it was time for the Senate to provide their rubber stamp.
Cicero even notes that a few of these proposals showed up with his own name attached to them,
which was quite the surprise!
Now that the immediate political problems were out of the way, Caesar turned his eye
to the public.
Rome had a tonne of systemic issues that had been in a state of neglect since before the
Civil War.
The largest of these, and the one that had the most direct impact on the lives of everyday
citizens, was the Grain Dole.
Quite simply, the Grain Dole provided free or subsidized grain to Rome's poorest citizens
at the state's expense.
The significance of the Grain Dole is kinda hard to wrap your head around, so think of
it like this.
For most of world history, most people spent most of their money on food.
The Grain Dole took 320,000 of Rome's poorest citizens and eliminated their largest household
expense.
This was one of the most effective government run anti-poverty programs in world history,
and frankly nobody would improve on it until the basically modern welfare state.
But after years of neglect, cracks were beginning to show.
Poor citizens were having a hard time getting onto the Grain Dole without bribing bureaucrats.
This was made worse by the fact that families who maybe a generation earlier had qualified
for the Grain Dole were able to keep their names on the lists long after rising out of
poverty.
Rich people were collecting benefits that were intended for poor people.
This was leading to a lot of social resentment.
Caesar dramatically restructured the Grain Dole.
He cut the number of eligible recipients in half, from 320,000 down to 150,000, but he
also implemented political stronger oversight so that these 150,000 people were legitimately
Rome's poorest citizens.
This restored a basic sense of fairness to the system, and despite the fact that a lot
less people would qualify for the benefit, the reforms turned out to be quite popular.
When Brutus learned of Caesar's cuts, he excitedly wrote to a friend saying that "Caesar appears
to be joining the Conservative Faction!"
That friend conveyed Brutus's thoughts to Cicero, who responded, "join the Conservative
Faction?
Is he planning on killing himself?"
Now that Caesar's major reforms were up and running, he was free to take on a brand new
super secret project.
This would be an utterly boring and thankless job, but it was something that had captured
Caesar's imagination a while back and for whatever reason he was hell-bent on tackling
it now.
We're talkin' about the Roman calendar.
The Roman calendar sucked.
We don't need to go into all the details, but for starters it was a lunar calendar,
as in it followed the phases of the moon.
The phases of the moon do not line up with the solar year, which means that lunar calendars
always drift out of sync with the seasons.
It was the job of the Pontifex Maximus and his College of Pontiffs to monitor this drift
and to manually add extra days to the calendar as needed.
The current Pontifex Maximus happened to be Julius Caesar, and as we know, Caesar had
been indisposed for like... a decade and a half.
As a consequence, the Roman calendar was a good 3 months out of sync, which as far as
calendars go is kind of a catastrophic failure.
But Caesar had just spent the better part of a year in Egypt, where he learned that
the Egyptians used a nearly perfect 365 day solar calendar.
Caesar enlisted the help of an Egyptian astronomer named Sosigenes of Alexandria, and together
they designed new Roman calendar loosely modeled on the Egyptian system.
Like the Egyptian calendar, the new Roman calendar would be 365 days.
Good start.
But the Egyptian calendar did have some flaws.
They evenly divided the year into 12 months of 30 days each, which added up to 360, and
then they manually added in 5 extra days at the end of the year to make the math work.
Those 5 extra days were a problem.
Under the Roman system these days would be administered by the Pontifex Maximus, and
if administered incorrectly the calendar would begin to drift again.
That would not do.
Caesar and Sosigenes wanted this new calendar run on autopilot, so they took those 5 extra
days and peppered them throughout the year creating a bunch of 31 day months.
The month of February was considered unlucky, and so they bumped it back down to 28 days
as it had been under the old system, and offset this with even more 31 day months.
But according to Sosigenes, even the nearly perfect Egyptian calendar was slightly out
of alignment since it did not take into account the actual length of the year, which was 365
and 1/4 days.
Under the old Roman calendar the traditional place to insert extra days had been during
the month of February, and so Caesar and Sosigenes invented a system where an additional day
would be automatically inserted into that month on every 4th year.
They made it very clear that this was not one of those special days that the Pontifex
Maximus could tinker with.
This would be an automatic process, out of the hands of the politicians.
With that, the new Roman calendar was complete.
But there was still a problem.
The current date was still 3 months out of alignment.
So here's a trivia question that you can bore your friends with: "what was the longest year
in human history?"
Seems like a trick, but it's not.
In order to bring the Roman year back into alignment, Caesar inserted 90 extra days into
the year 46 B.C.E., making it a 445 day year, which was 25% longer than a normal.
On January 1st of the year 45, the new Roman calendar, which is known to us as the Julian
calendar, came into effect.
Automating the calendar and getting it out of the hands of politicians was a great human
achievement.
Aside from some minor upgrades in the 16th century, the system devised by Caesar and
Sosigenes survives more or less intact to this day.
While Caesar was busy in Rome, something was happening out in the provinces.
Without warning, the Spanish governors began writing in requesting reinforcements.
Before Caesar could even act, Rome's two Spanish provinces had fallen to the enemy.
What enemy?
Caesar's old right hand man Labienus had joined forces with two of Pompey's sons.
Rome's disgruntled Spanish legions had eagerly gone over to their side.
Caesar had been caught entirely flat footed.
Apparently the Roman Civil War wasn't over yet.