First Triumvirate

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The First Triumvirate became visible to Rome in a single dramatic moment in 59 BC. Standing before the people, Caesar summoned Pompey and Crassus to declare their backing for his land bill. Pompey's answer was direct: he would provide a shield if anyone dared to raise a sword in opposition.

  Their alliance had been secret until that moment. Its three members came from different political bases and had, in several respects, clashing interests. Yet each had made a private commitment. Each would use his influence to help the others push through legislation none could achieve alone.

  What drove men of such conflicting interests into this secret arrangement? How did a private amicitia bend Rome's republican machinery? And why did its collapse unfold the way it did? The ancient historian Gaius Asinius Pollio chose to open his entire history of Rome's civil wars at this exact moment.

• 2. A Name Never Used

  ›

  Boards of officials called decemviri were a recognized feature of Roman administration, but an official board of three men was not. The term "triumvirate" referred to formal magistracies, and the alliance between Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar was not one of them. Yet the name stuck. The irony is that no ancient source ever actually used it.

  The term "First Triumvirate" was first attested in 1681. It gained wide circulation during the 18th century. For over a century, the label was assumed to be ancient. Its status as a modern coinage went unrealized until 1807. By the 19th century, English and French scholarship used it fairly regularly, though German scholarship generally did not. The fourth edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary addressed the matter directly. The coalition, it states, was "wholly unofficial and never described at the time as a triumvirate."

  Contemporary Romans used other vocabulary. Cicero, writing during the events themselves, described "three men" exercising a regnum. The satirist Marcus Terentius Varro called it a "three-headed monster." Later historians, including Suetonius and Livy, used the terms societas or conspiratio. The allies themselves would presumably have called the arrangement amicitia, a friendship.

  Harriet Flower, in Roman Republics, prefers "alliance" and "Big Three." She argues the term misleads by equating the 50s BC arrangement with the official triumvirate of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian. Robert Morstein-Marx, in his 2021 book Julius Caesar and the Roman People, chose to abandon it entirely. "Nomenclature matters," he wrote, adding that he would "eschew the traditional 'First Triumvirate' altogether." Mary Beard, writing for a broader audience in her 2015 book SPQR, settled on "Gang of Three." Adrian Goldsworthy kept the traditional label but explained its inaccuracy.

  Amy Russell, writing in the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, focused on how often the alliance failed electorally. Elections, she noted, sometimes "got the better of them and someone quite different, not at all to their liking, was voted in."

• 3. Three Blocked Men

  ›

  Pompey returned to Rome from the Third Mithridatic War in the early 60s BC with two concrete needs. He required ratification of his eastern peace settlements. He also needed land grants for his veterans. Neither request proved easy to obtain. Cato the Younger and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer led an obstructive coalition against him. Lucullus, recalled from semi-retirement, demanded an in-depth review of every aspect of Pompey's eastern arrangements. After the Sertorian War, Pompey had successfully distributed land to veterans in 71 BC. This time, the same coalition blocked him in both 62 and 60 BC.

  Crassus was one of the richest men in Rome. He had made his fortune during the Sullan proscriptions. He had also become the principal patron of Rome's equestrian businessmen, the contractors who collected taxes for the state. Those contractors had massively over-bid on tax contracts for the province of Asia, failing to account for the devastation of the Third Mithridatic War. By December 61 BC, they needed their contracts renegotiated. Cato and Celer blocked that too. Cicero personally thought the request absurd, believing it ridiculous for the tax farmers to demand renegotiation because they had overestimated their profits. Even so, the senate had been close to approving the legislation before Celer's intervention. For Crassus, the stakes were high: "his reputation and influence depended on his ability to act as a champion for the powerful equestrian order."

  Caesar, in June 60 BC, returned early from his governorship in Hispania Ulterior. He faced an immediate choice. He could enter the city to declare his candidacy for the consulship, forfeiting his military command and any eligibility for a triumph. Or he could wait outside the walls. Cato filibustered Caesar's request to stand for office in absentia. Shockingly, Caesar gave up the triumph and declared his candidacy. He was the clear favourite for the consulship, which was precisely why Cato's circle worked to neutralize him. Cato's allies assigned the consuls of 59 BC to home defence, eliminating any useful military command. They also secured the election of Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, Cato's own son-in-law, as Caesar's co-consul.

  A letter Caesar wrote to Cicero in late 60 BC offers a clue about the alliance's timing. He was asking Cicero to join a broad coalition, not specifically planning a three-way pact. Scholars generally place the formation between July 60 and January 59 BC. For Crassus, the arrangement offered something beyond the tax contract fix. As one of the administrators of Pompey's land grants, "the preeminence which Crassus could not quite attain on his own came within his grasp."

• 4. Caesar's Consulship

  ›

  Caesar opened his consulship of 59 BC with a gesture toward conciliation. He ordered that the senate's debates be published for the first time. He drafted a land bill, set it on the senate's agenda, and read it out line-by-line. He promised to make any changes needed to receive the senate's assent. Little reasoned opposition emerged. The bill had been written to address every criticism previously raised against similar legislation.

  Only when the speaking order reached Cato did real opposition materialize. Cato immediately began a filibuster, arguing that Caesar would gain too much personal credit from the bill. Caesar, seeking to break the obstruction, threatened to have Cato sent to the carcer, Rome's small prison. This triggered mass indignation among the senators. Recognizing the mistake, Caesar quickly had Cato released. He then took the bill directly to the people without senatorial consent.

  Bibulus had one answer when summoned to the public meeting: "you will not have this law this year, not even should you all want it!" This violation of popular sovereignty damaged him more than Caesar's pressure had. Caesar then exposed the alliance, summoning Pompey and Crassus before the crowd. A mob threw Bibulus from the rostra and broke his fasces. The senate the next day refused to annul the law. Caesar, pressing further, "provocatively demanded from the senate an oath of obedience to the law and got it" after resistance from Cato and his allies.

  Bibulus retreated to his home and spent the rest of the year declaring unfavorable omens on every voting day. This left Caesar apparently governing alone, which Cato used as propaganda against him. Amid Bibulus' seclusion, Caesar passed two more laws. One ratified a one-third write-down of the tax contracts owed by Crassus' clients. The other ratified Pompey's eastern settlement. Lucullus, who had attempted to oppose the second law, was "forced into public humiliation on his knees before Caesar."

  Caesar also secured a five-year command covering Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul through legislation passed by his ally, the plebeian tribune Publius Vatinius. Pompey marked the alliance publicly by marrying Caesar's daughter Julia. The senate later assigned Caesar Transalpine Gaul as well. A broad anti-corruption law, the lex Julia de repetundis, also passed that year.

  Over the summer of 59 BC, popular opinion turned against the alliance's methods. Bibulus' self-imposed seclusion had presented Rome with the image of one man exercising unchecked sole power. One of Caesar's less predictable moves that year was enabling Publius Clodius Pulcher's transition to a plebeian clan. This cleared the way for Clodius to stand for the tribunate of 58 BC. He would prove a destabilizing force that the alliance was not prepared to handle.

• 5. The Luca Conference

  ›

  In 57 BC, the senate voted Caesar fifteen days of thanksgiving for his victory over the Belgae, a new record for such honors. But in Rome, the alliance was under strain. The demagogue Clodius had broken with Caesar and Pompey and driven Cicero into exile, despite earlier promises of protection. He had also pushed Pompey into self-imposed seclusion at home. All four consuls of 57 and 56 BC were indifferent or hostile to Caesar and Pompey's interests. Without control over the magistracies, the alliance could accomplish little in the senate.

  By early 56 BC, the threat to Caesar was direct. A tribune tried to recall him for trial; the attempt was vetoed. Domitius Ahenobarbus had declared his intention to terminate Caesar's Gallic command as soon as possible. Caesar's land bills were under legal attack. He needed his allies more than he had since his consulship.

  In the summer of 56 BC, Caesar held meetings across Cisalpine Gaul. He met Crassus at Ravenna and Pompey at the town of Luca, the southernmost city in Cisalpine Gaul. About two hundred senators, mostly of lower rank, attended to ingratiate themselves with the three men. The agreement that emerged covered three compatible aims. Pompey and Crassus wanted a joint consulship and good provincial commands. Caesar needed an extension of his command to preclude usurpation by Ahenobarbus. The alliance was renewed, and expanded: the Claudii, including both Appius and Publius Clodius, switched back to the dynasts' side.

  Pompey and Crassus had announced their candidacies for 55 BC too late; the sitting consul refused to accept them after the deadline. The alliance then chose to prevent elections from being held at all in 56 BC. They used a permanent tribunician veto, courtesy of Clodius' ally Gaius Cato, and mob violence to block proceedings. When elections were finally held in early 55 BC, Caesar's soldiers from Gaul were on winter furlough in the city. Their presence, combined with a distribution of bribes, secured Pompey and Crassus the consulship. They then extended Caesar's command in Gaul for another five years.

  In September 55 BC, Pompey threw lavish games as part of his dedication of the Theatre of Pompey. The senate voted Caesar twenty days of thanksgiving for his expedition beyond the Rhine and into Britain. When Crassus left the city in November to take command in Syria, opponents gathered at the gates to curse him. His critics in Cato's circle argued that the Parthians had given no justification for war.

• 6. Sole Consul and Civil War

  ›

  At the Battle of Carrhae in early 53 BC, Crassus and much of his army were destroyed by the Parthians. His death converted a three-person balance into a direct rivalry between two remaining men, neither of whom had adequate incentive to remain cooperative. Caesar's daughter Julia had also died in childbirth in 54 BC. She had been Pompey's wife, and her death removed the family bond between the two men. Caesar offered Pompey his grand-niece Octavia in marriage; Pompey declined.

  The political crisis of 52 BC brought the underlying tensions into the open. On the 18th of January, Milo's henchmen killed Clodius during a chance encounter on a road near a suburb outside Rome. The following day, Clodius' supporters brought his body into the city. They stormed the senate house and burned it down, along with the Basilica Porcia, as his funeral pyre. For the first eighteen days of the year, tribunes had vetoed every attempt to elect an interrex. For fifty-eight days after Clodius' death, no magistrate was able to hold elections. On the motion of Bibulus and with Cato's support, the senate directed that only Pompey's candidacy be accepted. He was elected sole consul, without a colleague.

  Pompey's sole consulship imposed order by force and then by law. He immediately prosecuted Milo for public violence, won a conviction, and sent Milo into exile. He supported the "Law of the Ten Tribunes," granting Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia. Cato opposed it. Pompey also passed legislation requiring a five-year gap between holding office and assuming a provincial command. He then applied for and received an exemption from his own law, taking a five-year command in Spain.

  Through 50 BC, the trust between Caesar and Pompey collapsed. Curio, Caesar's tribune, proposed that both men simultaneously lay down their commands. The senate approved overwhelmingly. Pompey rejected the proposal, viewing it as a personal insult. Two of Caesar's legions were then transferred to Italy, nominally for use against Parthia; the threat never materialized. Each side grew confident it held the stronger position and expected the other to yield. In January 49 BC, neither did.

  Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, writing in the 2014 Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, identified what made the alliance genuinely novel. No three men before had possessed the combined resources and power needed to attempt this. He wrote that there had never been three men who could impose the notion that their private arrangements should regulate what happened in Rome. The republic had assumed such a thing was impossible.