First Triumvirate - History

History

Crassus and Pompey had been colleagues in the consulship in 70 BC, when they had legislated the full restoration of the tribunate of the people (the dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla had stripped the office of all its rights except the ius auxiliandi, the right to rescue a plebeian from the clutches of a patrician magistrate). However, since that time, the two men had entertained considerable antipathy for one another, each believing the other to have gone out of his way to increase his own reputation at his colleague's expense.

Caesar contrived to reconcile the two men, and then combined their clout with his own to have himself elected consul in 59 BC; he and Crassus were already friends (modern consensus as to the beginning of the friendship to be as early as 65 where a young Caesar supported Crassus's proposal to make Egypt tributary to Rome), and he solidified his alliance with Pompey by giving him his own daughter, Julia, in marriage. The alliance combined Caesar's enormous popularity and legal reputation with Crassus's fantastic wealth and influence within the plutocratic Equestrian order (ordo equester) and Pompey's equally spectacular wealth and military reputation.

The Triumvirate was kept secret until the Senate obstructed Caesar's proposed agrarian law establishing colonies of Roman citizens and distributing portions of the public lands (ager publicus). He promptly brought the law before the Council of the People in a speech that found him flanked by Crassus and Pompey, thus revealing the alliance. Caesar's agrarian law was carried through, and the Triumviri then proceeded to allow the demagogue Publius Clodius Pulcher's election as tribune of the people, successfully ridding themselves both of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Cato the Younger, both adamant opponents of the Triumviri.

The Triumvirate proceeded to make further arrangements for itself. The senate awarded Caesar, as a snub to his dealings in the Triumvirate, "the woods and paths of Italy" as his proconsul territory. Caesar passed, through a tribune, his own ruling on the matter, and became proconsul of both Gauls (Gallia Cisalpina and Gallia Transalpina) and of Illyricum, with command of four legions, for five years; Caesar's new father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, was made consul for 58 BC.

By 56 BC, the bonds between the three men were fraying. Caesar first invited Crassus, then Pompey, to a secret meeting, the Lucca Conference, to rethink their joint strategy. The meeting renewed their political alliance. They agreed that Pompey and Crassus would again stand for the consulship in 55 BC. Once elected, they would extend Caesar's command in Gaul by five years. At the end of their joint consular year, Crassus would have the influential and lucrative governorship of Syria, and use this as a base to conquer Parthia. Pompey would keep Hispania in absentia.

The alliance had allowed the Triumvirs to dominate Roman politics completely, but it would not last indefinitely due to the ambitions, egos, and jealousies of the three; Caesar and Crassus were implicitly hand-in-glove, but Pompey disliked Crassus and grew increasingly envious of Caesar's spectacular successes in the Gallic War, whereby he annexed the whole of the Three Gauls to Rome.