Rome in Times of Cicero and Caesar (Part 2)
Presented on: Tuesday, May 28, 1985
Presented by: Roger Weir
Ancient Rome: Rome, Essenes, Alexandria, and the Book of Enoch
Presentation 24 of 54
Rome in Times of Cicero and Caesar (Part 2)
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, May 28, 1985
Transcript:
The date is May 28th, 1985. This is Roger Weir's Tuesday night lecture at the Whirling Rainbow.
Rome in Times of Cicero and Caesar, part two.
We're still doggedly trying to understand something very important to us. Every time that man has gotten into trouble in the last 2000 years, these events have been the ones that we've fallen back upon to try to understand not only what happened then, but what is happening to us now. In the sixth book of his Republic, rewriting Plato, Cicero notes, "And indeed in civil strife, when virtue is of greater importance than numbers, I think the citizens ought to be weighed rather than counted."
This is good advice. This is what they call timeless wisdom. The difficulty is that when efficacious events, ceremonies, shapes of activity are pursued with intensity they evoke a response. Even a single individual praying in earnest evokes a response. When a whole age is thrown into turmoil, the response is overwhelming, and men get lost. As Black Elk says, in the dark of their eyes. Not by what they see, but in their capacity to see too much. And in the time that we're looking at, all of the capacities of man, all of them were evoked at the same time and it produced an absolute jungle psychological jungle. The first tremors were felt by the Jewish people about 200 BC, tremendous sensitivity, capable of discerning a storm which was not yet even on the horizon for most people. Fifty years later, it seemed as if great events were happening, but they were pulling to a closure.
The terrible troubles that Alexandria, that Ptolemy, known to history as Physcon [Ptolemy VIII Physcon] - the fat, sultry, cruel tyrant finally was set aside. The Punic Wars came to an end, and it seemed, with Carthage out of the way, that Rome would settle down. And for the next 70 years it seemed as if the world was going to mend itself. But we have seen that the sensitive barometer in the Judaean desert had no illusions whatsoever that the catastrophe was yet to come, that these were but simple waves before the tidal wave.
If you've been in a tidal wave situation, you know it's the sixth or seventh wave that is the really big one. When we saw the tidal waves from the 1964 Alaska earthquake in San Francisco, the first three or four only washed over the beach it was the fifth and sixth that came over the road into Playland at the beach. And the seventh wave is the biggest. The Essene communities were like barometers tuned to the future, and they discerned accurately that the Great Cataclysm was yet below the horizon, that the conditions had yet not manifested. But in 80 BC, a sudden turn, development: The Jewish people were ruled by a king whose first name was Alexander. It was incredible. Alexander Jannaeus. The Roman constitution was set aside by the general named Sulla, who became a dictator for a while, reorganized the Roman state according to his own dictates, and then did abdicate, but left a legacy. And the Roman legacy by 80 BC was beginning to infect everyone.
Since the death of Alexander the Great, all of the Hellenistic kingdoms had been more or less evenly matched in the sense that from one generation to another, various combines of them could make war against other combines. No one of them was strong enough to take over the all. None of the Hellenistic kingdoms ever had that strength because they all shared a sibling origin in Alexandria's ecumenical. They all had the Greek phalanx. They all had Greek mercenaries. They all had Greek generals. They all had the Greek sense of individual daring and the fantastic battlefield commander who could, at a moment, rally his troops. And so, there was a kind of an eerie balance between the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Rome never had that origin. Rome was like a plodding monolith, like some giant Kodiak bear that did not win by daring but won by sheer overwhelming stamina. We'll see that. The great battle that decided the Roman world: Pharsalia. Caesar, Julius Caesar, had only 22,000 troops. You don't need a lot of troops when they are trained. And they can fight all day and all night, if need be, and all day the next day. You don't need a lot of troops. They're cumbersome. You just take the hand-picked ones. Pompey's forces were more than two and a half to one. They had no chance at victory. The Roman armies were not based like the Greek armies on strategy. Not that kind of, Alexander. Wonderful strategy of making incredible moves and runs and flank runs. The Roman army grounds you up through the center. You had to come to them. And when you came to them, they ground you up. The Roman legions were not strategic instruments. They were tactical buzzsaws. And all they needed was a field to deploy themselves according to the Legion ranks.
It was rather like in the late 19th century, the British line, three lines of riflemen, one low down, one kneeling, and one standing. An incredible machine for killing. And the Romans were this way. The Roman mind was this way, and where the Hellenistic kingdoms were unable to gain hegemony, Rome, like some glacier, like some historical avalanche, began taking over the whole show. And by 80 BC it was quite visibly evident everywhere that Rome was the inevitable winner. One young lieutenant of Sulla's named Pompey, at 25, he was already called Pompey the Great. A fantastic physique of a man. Tremendous integrity. Old Roman Staunchness. He had a triumph at the age of 25. And a few years later, another young Roman named Gaius Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus. He bribed everybody he could think of to become head of the Roman religion. These two were destined to clash and in their clash to smash the Republic forever. But the central figure still in our story is Cicero and neither Pompey nor Caesar because when these tremendous, evoked powers come up, they're like phantoms, they are haunting energies. They overwhelm one. One needs to have some integrated template that allows for activity to go on, that allows for a sense of coherence. One needs a model. And in the past, there were no models for the Romans. There were only Greek models of daring individuals, and as of yet, Romans could not appreciate in themselves, could not develop in themselves the like of the Greek models. They were to become haunted by this, as many civilizations were to become haunted by this in later times. In fact, the Romans themselves would be haunting models.
One looks at the Renaissance, or one looks at 19th century Germany. One looks at these cultures, and they're absolutely hypnotized by the models of glory and grandeur from the classical past. Cicero was the only living, viable model of a great man, able to integrate his tremendous mental capacities and his capacity to participate in the great affairs of man at the highest levels. And Caesar modeled himself on Cicero, even though Cicero was only four years older than him. Caesar came late in the day. He was over 40 before he began to really make his move. He was no one. Cicero is the most important figure in this transformation because it gives us a chance to see Romans using a Roman model. And then with Caesar, we see him shifting from the Roman to the Greek model. But in the meantime, we will see that the Greek model is shifting and is becoming Hellenized. And the Hellenistic energies are collecting in Alexandria, and the Alexandrian cosmic man will be the only working viable model within another generation.
And this is what we're looking at. We're looking at this phase transformation. It's like an incredible sequence of montages. Where is the working model of the great man who can hold together and do things in a high competent level with this tremendous jungle of archetypal energies inundating everyone? This is the quest of this time. This is what makes the Christos so shatteringly illuminating. Like the beacon of Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the Christos will shine through this incredible haunted nightmare. And without any kind of a sophisticated theology, without any kind of real rooted background, Christianity will win out because of the model effectiveness and basic, uh, fruitfulness of the life of Christ. That will be the deciding factor, that will be the nexus and the focus upon which the whole issue will finally resolve itself. But it is so complex, so difficult to understand, not only in its ramifications, but in the exquisite exactness of how these things work, which we need to know. We, in our time, need to know we're looking for some way to be effective, not just in a retreat, in some hermitage, in some cave, but in an urban, civilized life on a cosmic level. And so, this is a model for us. And strangely enough, it's Cicero who becomes the first little nib in the first bit of taproot for this direction.
Now Cicero had become, of course, embroiled in the great conspiracy that was headed by Catiline to take over the Roman state, and by that to take over the Roman Republic and change it to their own likes. And Cicero had been the man who had foiled this plot, and in foiling the plot he had had the conspirators put to death, which was technically an illegality. They were given no trial, and Pompey never forgave Cicero this fact. Always, in fact, Cicero was on tenterhooks underneath everything with Pompey because of this illegal murder of Roman citizens, even though they were found red-handed in a conspiratorial mode. Caesar noted that Cicero had acted with dispatch and never forgot that he was capable of this kind of direct action, and Caesar's respect for Cicero had its origins in this activity, because the young Caesar was part of the conspiracy, part of the plot, and had admired Catiline no matter that the man was mean and vile, infamous. He was effective at very high levels and was close to seizing the totality of power. And that's what fascinated Julius Caesar. This is how you do it.
And so, the man who put this down became then of great interest to Julius Caesar. There is always a respect for him. Caesar and Cicero. All of the figures around Cicero go to Julius Caesar. His son in law, his informants in Rome, other members of his family, even his best friend Atticus finally joins the ranks of Caesar, and Caesar is always attempting to get these friends to bring Cicero around gently. We need this man. And even after Cicero turns everything down and flees Italy under conditions which are extraordinary, when Caesar comes back from Alexandria with the dictatorship firmly in his hands, he will forgive Cicero at Brundisium. And Cicero will then live quietly, writing some of the great books of the Western world on moral obligations.
They irritate all of the great works which formed the basis, up until our own time, of the political education of the Western world. It's only in this stupid time that we live in now that no one reads these things. Every country, every language for the last 2000 years base themselves on Cicero. That's how you began because he had been there, he had seen the whole show, he had seen the whole carnival, he had been a player and a conscientious one at that. And so, we need to follow him for just a little bit.
The story tonight goes from 62 BC to 48 BC. It's 14 years, if you can imagine. And you get a sense of how events somehow now have caught on to some massive gearing down. They no longer float by centuries at a time, or even decades at a time. Now, one has to slug out history day by day. We're in kind of a slow motion. And this in itself is indicative of archetypal energy. This itself is indicative of a collective upsurging. So that all of the activities now are infused with a scintillating transpersonal quality, which the more sensitive participants are picking up on. And many of the communities, like the Essene communities, are understanding in their own spiritual experience, not psychic experience, but spiritual experience, that the rhythm of transformation has definitely grabbed on to the domain of practical life in history. They are now thoroughly hooked into this, so that the everyday world now is marching to the tune of this universal drummer.
62 BC Rome, in the summer, Cicero writes to Pompey, who is in Asia minor. He says, he writes, "I trust all is well with you and your army. Your official dispatch gave extreme pleasure to all, and to me in particular. It held out high hopes of peace, such as I have always promised to everyone from my complete confidence in you. But I must also tell you that your old enemies lately turned friends, were completely shattered by it, and lie prostrate amid the ruins of their great expectations." He's referring here not only to Caesar, but to Caesar's party. And now we have to apprise ourselves of the fact that what made Caesar so tremendously powerful was that he had two legs to walk on. He had an army, and he had a political party. It was called the People's Party - the People's Party. It's the same technique that Mao Tse-tung would use in China in the 1940s.
You cannot beat a charismatic leader who has both an army and a party. You cannot beat him. The only thing you can hope for is a stalemate, a draw, and hoping that conditions change so that one or the other of these vehicles atrophy. But with a charismatic leader, with these two faculties, you cannot beat him. Cicero is the only man of his time who understands this and understands that the only hope for the Roman people is to keep forestalling the victory of this man. And so, what seems, will seem, like stupidity, naiveté on Cicero's part. Constantly wanting to side with Pompey, even when it's beyond hope, even when Pompey shows himself no longer capable of cutting it. Cicero will write to his friend Atticus and say "Pompey is suffering from a failure of nerve. He will never beat Caesar." And then he goes on in the letter to say - notice how alert he is constantly, he never misses a detail. He's always not only prepared for the moment, but he's prepared months ahead of time for moments that other people haven't even realized are going to happen. And then he makes those moments happen. Cicero is full of admiration for Caesar's astuteness.
Now, here's a letter which I think will be quite surprising to you. This is from two years later, the summer of 60 [BC]. And he is writing to his friend Atticus, and he tells Atticus, "But I have not the heart to write any more about politics. I am not at all pleased with myself, and it hurts me a great deal to write. I keep my end up not discreditably, considering the general servility, but not courageously considering my distinguished past. Caesar has most handsomely offered me a place on his personal staff as his deputy, and I have also been offered a titular embassy, but the latter would involve a far from safe trust in the tender mercies of our little beauty, as well as my absence at the time of my brother's return. And so, I will not take this." This was a tremendous opportunity for Cicero. He was 57 years old. He was mature. He understood what it would be to place his intelligence, his political sagacity, just underneath the tremendous driving élan of Julius Caesar. We know from history that this is a tremendously effective duo.
We mentioned the Chinese experience. The reason that the Chinese were so tremendously successful was because, besides Mao Tse tung, there was Jo Enlai, who was very much like Cicero, tremendous sagacity, and a strategic sense. And when you have a tactical genius with power and charismatic leadership, with an army and a party, such a combination is always victorious in historical models. And Cicero could see that this was so. He refused it; he refused it because he was sensitive to even deeper issues. He realized that the character of the Roman people was in jeopardy of being permanently impaired, that the old Republican character of the Roman people, which was founded upon the sense of working together to produce an activity which then would generate the physical structures in the world to permit that activity to continue. The Roman nobility always worked together. They produced out of this consensus the ability to lay out the roads and the cities and the legions and the laws, so that the Republic could function.
That was being jeopardized now because instead of expressing power by a consensus, the consensus was imploding power into a single individual. And as far as Cicero was concerned, man was not ready to become a god by any means. It was Caesar's daring to want to become a God that drove him on. And this vision comes directly from Alexander the Great, and we'll see what tremendous affinities Caesar has with Alexander. In fact, in Plutarch's Lives, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar are paired together. You know, Plutarch was a master of the mysteries, and the use of Parallel Lives is one of the most esoteric procedures that we have in our human repertoire. In order to see a form, you have to have a background which is complex enough to allow for detailed nuance and perceiving that form. And you can't use a blank background. Any kind of a dynamic form, like a complex human being needs a kind of background which only another human being can provide.
This, when it is done in a cosmic fashion, is the sacred marriage two people able to understand themselves against the complexity of the other. This energized our friend no end at this time. Constantly sees her, then is attempting to wean away individuals to his side, and he is acting with a sort of a supreme flair. He takes himself out of Italy, out of Rome. He takes himself into a Transalpine Gaul, and for ten years he is the daring military commander who writes down his campaigns in impeccable Latin prose. It's a model. Caesar's language is a model, and all this time he is portraying himself as an unbeatable gentleman who epitomizes the best of the Roman tradition. The reason why he is always victorious against the barbarians is because he epitomizes the Roman character, and his men understanding that the army then fights as a single unit under this head. Of course, the message that he wants the state to understand if they will only cooperate with him, letting him be the head, he will run the state as well as he runs the army, and the Roman people will be instantly transformed from a consensus, which is sputtered down to almost a limbo, to a driving force.
Now, this vision is an interpenetration of the Hellenistic god-king and the Roman block community. And Caesar is the first individual who puts that together and says, this fits well. This is what I want to do. And Cicero constantly is seeing that the fruitfulness is the polarity, the control passed between the Greek model and the Roman practicality, that one's mind should be schooled in Greek education, but one's government should be founded upon Roman practicality, and that that's the working model, that they should not be brought together, that this is an electrocuting junction. This is the vision that Cicero has, and it is related to the vision that Caesar has, but quite distinct. Pompey, on the other hand, is thoroughly Roman - thoroughly. He does not see, does not have this insight that Cicero and Caesar have. In fact, Pompey considers almost up until the last moment that Caesar is yet just another Roman rival. And it's only when Caesar crosses the Rubicon with his army. This is an archetypal event. Many people think that archetypes are just like grandfathers and grandmothers. There are events, and one of the really powerful events in man's mind is the ford. Jung talks about this sometimes in his work. The crossing of a river, going over Jordan, crossing the Mississippi, on the other side of the Nile. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was like a spark of occult power that hit Pompey, and he realized that he was completely outclassed, completely outmatched, not as a general, but because the man facing him now was energized by a level which Pompey had no contact with, and that's why he never offered to fight.
The first thing that Pompey does when he senses that, is he orders the evacuation of Rome. It's a panic move. We've got to evacuate the city. Well, one gives up then the very prize at the beginning. And Cicero says, why do we evacuate the mother city, the metropolis? And he says to his friend Atticus, you see what Caesar is doing to the Roman people. Meaning, of course, that he understands quite well. Here comes the terrible father, Julius Caesar. The children are no longer safe in the mother city because the father, the terrible father, has the keys to that kingdom. He writes, when sweetness did not work the other side, of course, besides the carrot, is the stick, he writes to Atticus, 57 BC, "On November 3rd, the workmen were driven off my building site by armed gangsters. My porch Catulus', which was being repaired under a contract made by the councils in accordance with the decree of the Senate and had got nearly as high as the roof was knocked down again."
Armed thugs in groups, in bands were starting to not only terrorize Rome, but on the outskirts of Rome the villas and so forth and Cicero's was destroyed. He says here that this sent all of the senators in a panic, including all the ex-counsels, were willing to grant Pompey anything he asked. In other words, we're trying to defend ourselves against a man who wants everything. We're willing to give this other man everything in order to defend us ourselves.
Can you see the insanity of it? The structural insanity of it. Cicero writes, "in asking for a committee of fifteen, he named me first and said that for all purposes I should be his alter ego." This is Pompey. He named Cicero first, as Cicero says, to be his alter ego. You see his greater self. He doesn't trust himself in this ocean of events. Greatest Pompey is he is not capable of operating on these electrified cosmic levels. Cicero is. He's a very, very great man. The councils drew up a bill appointing him sole director for five years of corn supplies all over the world. But [C.] Messius proposed an amendment giving him complete control of the exchequer with a fleet, an army thrown in, and authority overriding that of governors in their own provinces. My bill as proposed by the councils now appears quite moderate, and so the developments continue. Caesar is a tough man. He's a tough guy. He's. He's like, the toughest of the Chicago mobsters in their heyday. But he is all the time wanting to portray himself as the man to whom all Romans may come for all things. So, he does not participate in some of the cutting activities.
In fact, Caesar always lets go any captives from the competing groups that come into capture in his environs, but he hires by bribery a man named Claudius. And Claudius becomes the terror of Rome. And in particular Claudius' job is to terrorize Cicero by gangs with clubs and various accusations in the city. His job, his number one job, is to terrorize Cicero, so that Cicero will realize that even with his tremendous insight, he can be exed out at any time he wants. So it seems to me that big events are now brewing, for Pompey has gathered and confided to me that there is a plot against his life, that Cato is backed by Crassus, while money is being supplied to Claudius, that each is being supported not only by Crassus but also by Curio, Bibulus and the rest of his critics, and that he must take energetic steps to avoid being struck down with the Commons in the Assembly. Generally unsympathetic, the aristocracy hostile, the Senate biased, and the younger generation out for mischief.
So, he is making his preparations and has sent for men from the country districts. Claudius, too, is reinforcing his gang. A storm detachment is being got ready for the 17th in all this. Cicero is realizing that more and more strings are being pulled by Caesar. The string that finally will sway the balance will be when Caesar buys, literally buys, for enormous sums - millions and millions and millions of dollars. They had Tribune, who's a man named Curio. Now the tribunes were of the people. They were supposed to be tribunes. And what the tribunes had was a veto power. That is, the Senate could pass a certain law, but the tribunes could veto it, any one of the tribunes. So, if you owned a tribune, that meant that you effectively neutralize the Senate. Now, the neutrality becomes exceedingly important when it comes time for regular shifts of consular power. Every year there were two consuls who held supreme power, had armies in the field, were supported by the Roman state, and Caesar's time would be up.
As we will see in a certain year, and there would be a space of about three or four months before he could stand for another councilor election. And in this time Caesar technically would be without constitutional power. That is to say, if he used his army or his party, he could be demonstrably shown to be a renegade, somebody who was clearly against everybody's interest. So, in order to forestall this, Caesar buys Curio, and Curio will throw his veto in the way every time the Senate will seek to do something to Caesar. And this will give Caesar plenty of time to again regain at least a modicum of consular power. And it is this event that in later Roman history was seen as the straw that broke the back of the Republic such a thing.
By the spring of 54 BC, Cicero is writing to Julius Caesar, who is in Gaul, who is still fighting the Gallic Wars. Here's how Cicero writes to him in 54 BC - this is only four years away from the crisis. You will see from this letter how convinced I am that you are a second self to me. How tremendously subtle Cicero is. You are a second self to me. He knows damn well he is a second self to this man. So, he begins his letter this way to show him. Oh, I know what's going on, but let's talk nice - that sort of thing. Not only in my own concerns, but in those of my friends. I had intended to take Gaius Trebatius with me whenever I went abroad, so as to bring him home, enriched with every benefit that my care and attention could bestow. But now that Pompey has delayed starting for longer than I expected, and also that a certain hesitation, for reasons not unknown to you, seems likely to prevent, or at least hold up, my own departure. Here is what I have taken upon myself.
And so, he sends yet another promising young man, Trebatius in this case, to Caesar, and within a few months Trebatius is pro-Caesar, right. Caesar was tremendously charismatic. We have to understand this. Almost anybody in his [Ken?] was sort of fair game. Not because the man was subtle, but because the man was energized, charismatic, unbeatable. So, he writes here, Cicero writing: And I trust, my dear Caesar, that you will welcome him with all your usual kindness and concentrate on him all the goodwill I could induce you to display to friends of mine. And he goes on with this, then he says my best wishes for your good health. Please continue to think kindly of me all this time. Caesar was in a fairly stable relationship vis-a-vis Pompey. He had married Pompey's daughter so that their child was actually a grandson of Pompey. He had made, in fact, a triumvirate of himself and Pompey and the wealthy industrialist Crassus. And this triumvirate had issued an invitation to Cicero to join them so that the four of them could run the Roman state and Cicero had declined. Characteristically, he was always trying to preserve the individual from getting co-opted into these trans-personal figures that were beginning to emerge again and again in the not only in the civilization, but out of the air, as it were. If you remember last time, the reason that Cicero was so able to detect this was that his background was truly occult. He was trained by the great stoic cosmologist Posidonius. But Cicero always was of a religious nature. And in fact, because of this, was admitted to the highest esoteric office in the Roman state, the college of augurs. I think about three months ago, we talked about augury and how augury was the most important religious function. It was the divination of the Roman people, and that there were three different stages that, classically, augury had to be seen by certain individuals who were trained to see exactly there what we might call now a fair witness, an individual who sees exactly what happens does not interpret the interpretation is done by someone completely other.
So that the college of augurs had two distinct types in them. They had those who witnessed the occasion, then they had those that interpreted. Cicero was an interpreter. He was an interpreter. Understanding what this means. And then, of course, the third function is the messenger. One has to take the augury to whomever it concerns. Otherwise, there is no validity to it. Divination in the classical world was thus a three-part operation. It had to be seen exactly, it had to be interpreted correctly, and it had to be communicated immediately to those to whom it was concerned. And without all that, nothing happened, nothing was effective. It was the combination of those three that made the event real, made the event real.
Crassus unfortunately was killed and when he died, he was killed in Parthia. The Parthians were great archers, and the Roman legions were really fair pickings for these great archers. They would just shoot over the legions and Crassus was killed. This meant that the polarity between Caesar and Pompey was getting hotter and hotter and hotter, because there was no third person to keep it in shape. Both Pompey and Caesar realized that they were on a conveyor belt of ultimate clash, and they needed Cicero, who was the only individual who could balance them out. And so, constantly, the appeal here is to Cicero from both sides after Crassus' death.
But the Roman state had been severely weakened by the massacre of the nobility by Sulla some thirty years before, and in fact, the skittishness of the Roman Republic at this time passed a law saying that governors of provinces had to have been out of consular office for at least five years, so that they couldn't set up their own bribery pattern in these provinces. But there was a shortage of individuals who fulfilled these requirements. And so, Cicero was pressed into service in 51 BC, and he was made at this time governor of the province of Cilicia. Cilicia is on the lower side of Turkey, the province that arcs over, adjacent to Syria. The capital of this province at that time would have... the large city would have been Antioch. And two of the smaller but still large cities would have been Palmyra, which was the end of the caravan route that went all the way to India. And the other city there was Tarsus, where Paul was from, where Cicero set up a Stoic academy which educated Paul eventually in Greek.
And Paul's mind is a Stoic Greek mind infused with cosmic vision because of the shape of Cicero's skull, so that he will see the events in a theological structure. The disciples will not see the events in a theological structure, but Paul will, and that's the difference. Christianity is not made by the disciples, is made by Paul, is a different mind, is a Greek mind. Cicero refuses to be brought into the structure. He is not afraid, as a man would be afraid. But he is afraid as a visionary, is afraid that something enormous is looming, and he keeps not wanting to get involved on a level which would zap him of his individual command, of his personal sense of what is right. He keeps not wanting to choose sides. So, he writes to his great friend Atticus - we have over 900 letters of Cicero to Atticus - May 51st BC. It's only about a year till the final break comes.
"I did indeed see how you felt at our parting, and I can vouch for my own feelings. So, you must make doubly sure that no new decree is passed, which would make our unhappy separation last for more than a year." And he says that he is going to have to take care of himself a great deal, because going off to Cilicia, he will be out of contact with Rome. And because of all the march of events there, he will need eyewitnesses to report to him by letter. And he asked Atticus and a number of other friends then to be the eyes and ears for him.
Here is a letter from one of his eyes in Rome, August 1st, 51 BC. This man's name is Caelius, who later on joins Caesar's People's Party. You have to understand that the People's Party and the army were two sides of the same coin for Caesar. In his vision, he electrified the Roman people. The people that would finally kill him, killed him because they were afraid of the combine which he had made. It was a curious thing here. Caesar is the central focus of a balanced, archetypal relationship here. Julius Caesar is the nephew of Marius, and Marius is the great general who was the man who fought against Sulla. So, Julius Caesar is his nephew, and Julius Caesar's nephew will be Augustus Caesar, who will make the whole thing work. He will take the combine that Caesar finally puts together and will make it work. But in Caesar, Julius Caesar's time this is too shocking, too new, for the Roman people. But in Augustus's time, the conditions will be so attenuated that everybody will be fearful for any other condition, except for a strong man who is almost like a God-man.
This is how fast it deteriorates from roughly 50 BC, 48 BC until 31 BC. In that generation, the deterioration of the Roman mind is just like an avalanche. It's tremendous. The deterioration is not an intelligence. It's not in the so-called faculties that we usually prize. It's in what is called a failure of spiritual nerve, the inability to act as an individual in the cosmos, the inability to face life. One needs to have a strong man. In order to do this, one needs to have a strong cause. In order to do this the Roman people will become "true believers," in Eric Hoffer's terms, by 30 BC.
And this is the story that we're seeing because we will observe that the important axes in this are all in Alexandria, and that when none of the Romans are able to hold this power and keep it together, Alexandrian visionaries will do that, and they'll be the only ones who do. It seems strange to us, but it's an incredibly true story. Here's one of Cicero's informants in Rome, 51 BC Caelius. In the political sphere, we had ceased to expect any fresh developments. But when the Senate met on July 22nd in the Temple of Apollo and the question of pay for Pompey's troops came up, reference was made to that legion he lent to Caesar, and it was asked whose strength it belonged to, and how long Pompey was letting it stay in Gaul. Pompey was obliged to say that he would take it back, but not until sometime after the question arose and he had been heckled by his critics. Then he was asked about the appointment of Caesar's successor, who was going to succeed Caesar and, of course, Caesar wanted himself to succeed. Who can succeed me? Me? So, they ask Pompey in front of the Senate about Caesar's successor. And on this the vote was that Pompey should return to the capital as soon as possible, so that the matter of the assignment of provinces could be dealt with in his presence. I think the matter will come up on August 13th, and then something will be decided, and it will be a case of scandalous obstruction by a tribune's veto.
And this is the process I told you about before. Every time the Senate came up with some plan of action at this time, Caesar's tribune Curio would veto it. So, nothing happened and over the months, this inertia began to occur with almost a forceful disease like palpability, that the whole Roman Republic was no longer able to do anything. And you see, this is the kind of event that Caesar is creating. The Republic can do nothing, while I am free to do anything I choose. Let me make this world work for you. I think that's what the Allstate ad now is, right? Let us put it together for you. We'll make it work for you. You just sit back and relax and let us take care of the market and the world and a few other things like that. This is the way they talk. I'm going to skip over here so that...
I had outlined a procedure here October 16, 50 BC, writing to Atticus, he says, "do you realize that it was on your advice I got involved with both Pompey and Caesar. I only wish I had listened from the outset to your most kind advice. At last, however, you persuaded me to take up with Pompey because he had done so much for me and with Caesar because he was so powerful. So, I did this and did it so well by every kind of consideration that I took an unrivaled place in the affections of each. My idea was that by attaching myself to Pompey, I should never be forced to do anything unconstitutional, and by agreeing with Caesar, I should avoid any clash with Pompey. They were so closely allied, but now, on your own showing, and in my view as well, they are approaching a head-on collision. Each of them is counting on me. Caesar may be only pretending. Pompey at least has no doubts rightly supposing that his present political attitude has my warm approval. At any rate, each of them have sent me a letter which arrived the same time that yours did. Incredible synchronicity from which it appeared that neither set more store by anyone than me."
The whole focus of the fate of the Republic had come down to Cicero's hands. October 16th, 50 BC, he was forced to choose. Because he realized by this time that the true course of action that he should take would have probably been something like this, that Cicero take charge of the city of Rome, and that neither Caesar nor Pompey, according to Roman tradition, bring their armies into Italy to keep them out into the provinces, and that all political parties be disbanded, so that the only effective political tool would be the Senate, so that the Roman Constitution could then work so that the Republic could flourish. But it had gone too far. This was no longer possible, and it was no longer possible because Caesar had overweighed the balance already by the fall of 50 BC, his charismatic electric energy had disrupted the entire flow of the mentality of the Roman people, so that the trigger was set. And in January of 49 BC, just three months later, less than three months later, he crossed the Rubicon with his full army into Italy, and it was against every Roman law for a general in the field.
Caesar had eleven legions, which was a pretty huge army that's unbelievably formidable. A Roman legion was 6000 infantrymen, with about 2000 auxiliaries as replacements, plus cavalry of maybe 1000 to 2000 horses. So, he's bringing 100,000 battle trained men in a black mass into Italy. But he prepared his way because he had sent a lightning like strike down the Adriatic Coast of Italy, Ancona, Rimini and so forth. So, he had taken this whole flank simply to show that he was in the field to win. It's what a commander would do to the opposing commander. You show him that by your strategy that while there may be negotiations, you are playing to win as long as you are playing, therefore negotiation should be serious.
Well, finally Cicero realized that almost all is lost. Now, Cicero, when he had come back from Cilicia because he had been a military hero there, had wanted to have a triumph in the city of Rome. He wanted to lead the captives with all of his troops holding up the booty through the city of Rome. It's called the triumph. In order to have this triumph, according to Roman law, the council, the general, had to temporarily hold what was called the Imperium, and the Imperium was indicated by what they called the fasces, the rods with the ceremonial axe bundled up in the middle of them, and they were carried by individuals which are called lictors. And the lictors - I think they were by this time 24 in number - the lictors with the bodyguard of the Republic to protect them, because these are the insignias of the Imperium, had been sent to Cicero when he had come back from Cilicia. So, he was going to go to Rome, and they had gone as far as some of the southern outskirts of Rome, and all the lictors were sent to him, so that temporarily, at just this moment in history, Cicero was the man who held the power of the Republic, technically.
It's an incredible synchronicity that the right man at the right place, right outside the outskirts of Rome, should hold the Imperium at just the moment when Caesar crosses the Rubicon. And he knew, he understood that he had been set up and maneuvered, as it were, by the Lord of history, by the gods of Olympus, to take charge of the event. And he couldn't do it; he could not act. He had acted thirteen years before to save the Roman Republic. He had led the senators by torchlight to break the conspiracy, and they had on the podium, even put the hands of one of the conspirators in the middle of the night, two in the morning, to show that the spirit of the Republic was still alive and strong, and at this exact moment he couldn't do it.
Here is Cicero, writing near Rome, January 12th, 49 BC, to a friend named Tiro. "I arrived outside Rome on January 4th. Nothing could have been a greater compliment than the way people came out to meet me, but I found the city inflamed with discord, or rather, with civil war. And when I wanted to heal the wounds as I think I could have done, I came up against the ambitions of particular individuals. For on both sides there are people who actually want to fight. The situation is that Caesar himself, our old friend, has sent a bitter and threatening letter to the Senate and is still so insolent as to retain his army and province against its will, backed up by my friend Curio. Mark Antony and Quintus Cassius, expelled from the house but expelled without violence, went off with Curio to join Caesar after the Senate called upon councils, praetors, tribunes, and us ex-consuls to deal with the proclaimed state of national emergency."
Caesar had appointed Mark Antony as his deputy. The place that Cicero would have had now Mark Antony has, and he's getting an education. Never has the state been in such danger; never have disaffected persons had so well prepared a leader. On the whole, however, our side too are making great efforts to prepare. This is due to the influence and energy of our Pompey, who is beginning now. It is too late to be afraid of Caesar. The thing that swayed Cicero from taking command... and he could have, he should have morally, he should have... was that there was nothing to take command of, that the Republic had already been lost, because the people were no longer capable of rallying themselves around anything except a dictator. This was the shock of recognition for Cicero outside of Rome, January 4th, 49 BC. He realized that the only energizing, integrating person was a dictator for the quality of the Roman character that had evolved, that had developed, that somehow the Roman people had lost the capacity to work with a consensus, to work with each other in the old Republican way, that they were no longer able to form communities of equals, that they only could form working units under the direction of a strongman, and that there was no republic to save.
And of course, it was the recognition by Cicero that Caesar was conniving, but it was a recognition, as he says by Pompey, that Caesar was to be feared because, from Pompey's view, Caesar could do what he could not do. He could touch not only the army, but the people. Pompey, on the other hand, had his troops, but he had only contact with the aristocratic elements. Caesar's revolution, which is what it was, was to thrust the power of the mob over the power of inherited aristocracy. His People's Party brought not just the little guys, but the mob into world politics, so that in the largest strategic appraisal of the world of that time, in order to effectively make a revolution in human consciousness, a leader would have to transform the mob. This is why the ministry of Jesus was to the poor because it was realistically the only viable true path at that time.
We're going to go into Caesar more next week, but I want to close with this.
March 28th, 49 BC, about three months later to Atticus. "I followed your advice on both points. I spoke in such a way to earn Caesar's respect rather than his gratitude. I had a personal meeting with Caesar, and Caesar had delivered to Cicero not only the verbal understanding but had written it out in a text which was then published all over Rome."
And this was the text that Julius Caesar handed to Cicero. "You divine correctly from your intimate knowledge of my character, that nothing is further from my nature than cruelty. And while I derive great satisfaction simply from having acted as I did, I am jubilant at your approval of it. Nor am I shaken by the fact that those I set free are said to have gone off to make war on me again. It suits me perfectly that I should be true to my character and they to theirs. I hope you will be near at hand when I am in Rome, so that I may, as usual, avail myself of your advice and resources on every occasion. I should like you to know how delighted I am with your son-in-law, Dolabella, and I shall feel that I owe this to him. He is sure to arrange it if I know his kindness and his feelings of goodwill towards me."
With this we witness an occasion of the student becoming the master. Caesar has served notice on Cicero that he now is the model not only for Cicero, but for the whole Roman people. And as this insistence in 49 BC, that will create a quirk in the Roman character which will never be repaired - it is still there today. It is still there in the Roman Church today. The infallibility of the leader is created at just this time.
Well, let's take a break until next week.
END OF RECORDING