His Year: Julius Caesar (59 BCE) PDF

His Year: Julius Caesar (59 B.C.E.) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsK4nX0tCGQ Transcript: (00:02) In the summer of the year 60 BCE, Julius Caesar, approaching the end of his term as the governor of Hispania Ulterior, returned to Italy. He had spent his time campaigning against the hill p...

His Year: Julius Caesar (59 B.C.E.) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsK4nX0tCGQ Transcript: (00:02) In the summer of the year 60 BCE, Julius Caesar, approaching the end of his term as the governor of Hispania Ulterior, returned to Italy. He had spent his time campaigning against the hill people of Northern Spain, and for his efforts had been awarded a triumph by the Senate. This was a great honor, but Caesar had even higher ambitions. (00:19) It took some arm twisting, but he was able to secure a special dispensation from the Senate allowing him to run for Consul two years before he was technically old enough to run. This was, strictly speaking against the rules, but more common in the Late Republic. So, here is Caesar, sitting outside the city of Rome, waiting for the Senate to decide on the date for his triumph. (00:40) This is when the Conservative bloc in the Senate threw him a curveball. They lobbied, successfully, for Caesar's triumph to be pushed back until after the deadline to announce your candidacy for Consul. Why does this matter? Because triumphs were for active generals and active generals were forbidden from entering the city. (00:57) And if you couldn't enter the city, you couldn't run for consul. Why did they do this? Because Caesar was a Radical Reformer and they didn't like his stupid face. Caesar sent a letter to the Senate being like "Okay it looks like you guys made a scheduling mistake?" But here's the thing. (01:11) Everybody had to know that he intended to run. Why did they think he got that special dispensation to run early? He had been openly preparing for this campaign. He had actually left Spain early just so he could be back before the deadline. If they had a problem with him running, they shouldn't have given him the dispensation to run early. (01:26) But if this was simply a scheduling mistake, Caesar was open to working it out. He suggested: "How about you just let me declare my candidacy in absentia?" The Senate heard his request and harrumphed many harrumphs. Such a thing just wasn't done, and they had already gone out of their way to bend the rules for Caesar. (01:43) The Conservatives, led by a Senator named Cato, had a field day with this. Cato filibustered, meaning he just spoke and spoke until the Senate was forced to adjourn for the day. No decision was taken on Caesar's request. Okay. Message received. Obviously, it wasn't a mistake. This was sabotage. "Coincidentally" Cato's son-in-law, Bibulus, was running for Consul as well with the full support of the Conservatives bloc. (02:07) Okay, now it was making more sense. In response to this, Caesar did something insane. He renounced his command. By doing this, he also renounced his triumph, which, I can't stress enough, was an unthinkable thing for a politician to do. But by doing this, he gained access to the city. People watched, astonished, as he marched right down to the forum and officially declared his candidacy for Consul. (02:32) Caesar already had a strategy in place. He had arranged to run on a joint ticket with a man called Lucceius. Since there were two consuls this was sometimes done, but it was the exception rather than the norm. Caesar was a young and popular politician running as a reformer. Lucceius was a wealthy, more moderate Senator with no name recognition or, let's be honest, charisma. (02:52) Lucceius financed the campaign and paid the bribes, while Caesar made the speeches and rallied the people. Unlike Caesar, Lucceius was by no means a radical. He was a close friend to Cicero, an extremely influential slightly Conservative but ultimately pragmatic Senator. Caesar was desperately seeking Cicero's support, not only for this campaign but for the year to come. (03:13) In this respect Lucceius served not only as a piggy bank but as an olive branch to the more moderate Senators. As the campaign was drawing to a close it began to dawn on the Conservatives that Caesar was the clear front-runner. Before every Consular election, the Senate decided where the next two consuls would serve as governors after their term was up. (03:32) This was done before the election so the winners weren't subjected to any political shenanigans. Since the Conservatives couldn't do anything about the fact that Caesar looked like he was going to win this thing, they decided to hijack this process. They started to make a big stink in the Senate about the physical degradation of rural Italy. (03:48) This was kind of true, so they got some support from their fellow Senators. As a solution, they proposed that instead of assigning a province to the next consuls, they should instead spend their time restoring the "woodland and country lanes of Italy." Incredibly, the Senate fell for this. The motion passed. (04:05) To many outside observers, including Caesar, this was another act of sabotage. But Caesar was powerless to do anything about it. Yet. When election day rolled around everyone figured that Caesar was going to win. The real question became who else would serve as Consul? It was a race for second place between Bibulus, Cato's Conservative son-in-law, and Lucceius, Caesar's uncharismatic ally. (04:28) In the end, Bibulus won. This must have come as a surprise to Caesar, since the plan was for poor old Lucceius to ride in on his coattails. Meanwhile, this was a huge coup for the hard-line Conservatives. Bibulus had pledged to put a halt to all new reforms during his term. It was going to be an interesting year. (04:45) The election for Consul took place in July, and incoming consuls didn't actually take power until January 1st, so Caesar had a tonne of time to prepare. And he did. Now, this hasn't come up yet but it's important to know: Caesar was in a secret alliance with two other Senators. Pompey and Crassus. (05:02) This is known by historians as the First Triumvirate. As consuls, Pompey and Crassus had had a terrible time getting any significant legislation past the Conservative bloc in the Senate. They each came in making big promises to their supporters, but neither was able to deliver. Pompey had come back from the East a conquering hero, and had promised to set up colonies for tens of thousands of veterans in the newly conquered territory. (05:25) This was expensive, and he couldn't get the bill through the Senate. Crassus had promised to bail out the tax collectors, which, as you can imagine, was pretty unpopular. It didn't help matters that on top of this, there was a personal animosity between the two. As a remedy, these two men secretly backed this young populist named Julius Caesar. (05:43) If Caesar could pass these bills for them, they promised to back the rest of his legislative agenda. The group also agreed to pull any bill if one of the three found it objectionable. January 1st of 59 BCE rolled around, and Caesar and Bibulus began their term. It was customary for the Consul who got the most votes in the election to take the lead during the first month, with the second-place Consul taking the lead during the second month, swapping back and forth for the entire year. (06:09) This act of "taking the lead" was called holding fasces. Caesar held fasces first. He immediately ordered scribes to take down all Senate business and to post it in the forum outside for the public to read. Forever the populist, Caesar knew that he had the people on his side, and wanted to increase the public pressure on some of his more Conservative colleagues. (06:29) His next move - and we're still talking about like the first day of his term - was to put forward an ambitious Land Reform Bill. Let's go into detail on this. At this time radical land redistribution had been a goal of Reformers for over 70 years. Over the last century, Italy's agricultural sector had been hollowed out. (06:48) The huge influx of slaves and wealth meant that smaller landowners were being bought up by huge mega plantations, with hordes of slaves doing the actual work. This had pushed entire generations of poor farmers into the cities. These urban poor were now eligible for heavily subsidized bread, so this was a huge drain on the public coffers. (07:07) Over the decades, these mega plantations neglected their land, and much of it was just sitting there uncultivated. Domestic grain production dropped, while its demand continued to rise. This was a recipe for economic disaster, and the Reformers had taken up the cause for generations, with some limited success. (07:25) Caesar's first bill, on his first day, was meant to address this. He proposed that they set up a Land Commission responsible for buying up land from willing mega plantations and redistributing it to the urban poor through a lottery. The expectation was that this would allow for thousands of urban poor to leave the city and set up small profitable farms on previously unproductive land. (07:46) In order to maximize the number of people affected, applicants were required to be married men with 3 or more kids, and as a friendly gesture to Pompey, veterans were also allowed to apply. These new farmers were also forbidden from selling their land for 20 years, in order to prevent the megaplantations from just going around and buying it all up again. (08:05) Many Senators were concerned with the cost of this plan. As a concession to them, Caesar allowed for a region in central Italy called Campania to be exempted from the bill, since much of the land here was actually owned by the government and provided a steady source of income. The land commission was to be made up of 20 prominent Romans appointed by the Consul, who would then be responsible for the land purchases. (08:26) After some Senators raised objections, Caesar added a line to the bill that barred him from serving as a commissioner. The thing is, before the Public Assembly could approve any bill, it had to be posted publicly for 24 days. Normally this wouldn't really matter, but Caesar had to hold fasces when the law went into effect. (08:43) He needed the 20 men on the commission to be answerable to him. If the law went into effect when Bibulus held fasces, he could stack the commission with a bunch of guys that could just reject every land sale. Caesar only had a few days to get his bill through the Senate if he wanted to get it passed by the Public Assembly before February. (09:01) After the initial compromises were made, Caesar painstakingly went line by line and read the entire bill in front Senate, stopping after each sentence asking if there were objections. There were none. After he was done, debate opened up, and Cato rose to comment. He spoke about how it was a very fine bill, but this year was just a bad time to do any major land reform. (09:22) And then he kept talking. And kept talking. The dude was filibustering the bill. Caesar was beside himself. He had held the Senate's hand through this entire process, and made compromises left and right, and yet Cato was still trying to torpedo the bill for no specific reason. Caesar snapped. He ordered Cato arrested. (09:41) He had the authority to do this as Consul, but the Senate erupted into chaos. A bunch of Senators stormed out, with one telling Caesar to his face that he'd rather be in prison with Cato than in the Senate with Caesar. The whole thing was a major misstep. Not only did Caesar alienate the entire Senate by trampling on its prerogatives, but he gave ammunition to his enemies. (10:01) This is when they started to call him a tyrant.