Senate, magistrates and people · 元老院、官员与人民
reported-in-source
The opening Civil War scene shows a letter read in the Senate, rival consular interventions and disputes over whether to deliberate on it.
Evidence limit: Caesar narrates the meeting as part of his explanation of the crisis. The Senate’s authority should not be equated with modern parliamentary sovereignty.
bc 1.1
Julius Caesar. The Civil Wars. Peskett, Arthur George, translator. London, UK: William Heinemann; New York, NY, 1914.
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When Caesar’s dispatch had been handed to the consuls, the tribunes, with difficulty and after much wrangling, gained their permission for it to be read in the senate, but they could not obtain consent for a motion to be brought before the senate on the subject of the dispatch. The consuls bring forward a motion on the state of public affairs. The consul L. Lentulus puts pressure on the senate, and promises that he will not fail the republic if the senators are willing to express their opinions with boldness and resolution; but if they pay regard to Caesar and try to win favour with him as they have done on previous occasions, he says that he will consider his own interests and will not obey their authority. I too, said he, can shelter myself under the favour and friendship of Caesar. Scipio expresses himself in similar terms—that Pompeius is inclined not to desert the republic if the senate follows him; but if it delays and acts remissly, it will in vain solicit his aid should it wish to do so in the future.
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This speech of Scipio appeared to come from the mouth of Pompeius himself, since the senate was meeting in the city and Pompeius was close at hand. Some had expressed less rigorous views, such as M. Marcellus, who at first embarked on a speech to the effect that the question ought not to be referred to the senate till levies had been held throughout Italy and armies enrolled under whose protection the senate might venture to make such decrees as it wished safely and freely; such, too, as M. Calidius, who expressed the opinion that Pompeius should go to his own provinces in order that there might be no motive for hostilities: Caesar, he said, was afraid lest it should be thought that Pompeius, having extorted two legions from him, was holding them back and retaining them near Rome with a view to imperilling him; such also as M. Rufus, who with a few modifications followed the opinion of Calidius. All these speakers were assailed with vehement invective by the consul L. Lentulus. He absolutely refused to put the motion of Calidius, and Marcellus, alarmed by the invectives, abandoned his proposal. Thus most of the senators, compelled by the language of the consul, intimidated by the presence of the army and by the threats of the friends of Pompeius, against their will and yielding to pressure, adopt the proposal of Scipio that Caesar should disband his army before a fixed date, and that, if he failed to do so, he should be considered to be meditating treason against the republic. The tribunes M. Antonius and Q. Cassius intervene. The question of their intervention is immediately brought before the senate. Opinions of weighty import are expressed, and the more harsh and cruel the speech the more it is applauded by the personal enemies of Caesar.
Marianne Coudry, “The Senate,” in Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag (eds.), A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic (2022), p. 206. Publisher record
Tim Cornell, “Roman Political Assemblies,” in Arena and Prag (2022), p. 220. Publisher record