First Triumvirate
Caesar, Pompey and Crassus agreed in 60 BC that nothing should be done in the state of which any of them disapproved. It was a private arrangement rather than an office, unpublished and without legal standing, and the name the first triumvirate was applied by later historians to distinguish it from the formal one of 43 BC. Each brought something the others needed. Pompey had conquered the east and had veterans awaiting land and a settlement awaiting ratification, both of which the senate had been obstructing for two years. Crassus was the richest man in Rome and represented the tax-farming companies, who wanted their Asian contract renegotiated. Caesar wanted the consulship, and then a province worth having. The senate's obstruction is what made it. Cato in particular had blocked each of them separately on principle, and drove them into an alliance that none could have imposed alone. Caesar took the consulship of 59 BC and passed everything by going over the senate's head to the assembly, ignoring his colleague Bibulus, who shut himself in his house and declared the omens unfavourable — a year Romans joked was the consulship of Julius and Caesar. He got Gaul for five years. The compact was sealed by Pompey's marriage to Caesar's daughter Julia, renewed at Luca in 56 BC, and broken by Julia's death in childbirth in 54 and Crassus's at Carrhae in 53. Pompey went over to the senate, and Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC. Cato had blocked each of them to preserve the republic, and drove them together into the arrangement that ended it.
- Category: Political
