Part 4 of In Cath Catharda: The Civil War of the Romans

Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition

In Cath Catharda: The Civil War of the Romans (Author: [unknown])

chapter 3

The Cause of the Civil War here

It came to pass at that time and season that the lady Julia, Caesar's daughter and Pompey the Great's wife, died,

and after her Pompey wedded another, to wit, the wife that Crassus had when he was in the country. Cornelia was her name.

Thereafter came the end of Caesar's dictatorship, for with the Romans no one remained in that grade for more than five years unless he was reappointed to the same grade by the senate. Now this was necessary for Caesar, at the end of the five years to go to the Roman senate to advise that the grade (should be given) to himself, or that some one else should be appointed thereto.

Thereafter he did not do this at all, save when he found the way and the issue of conquering those lands wherein he was: for he was afraid that after him some one would be appointed by the senate to attack them, and that he should have the credit of conquering Gaul after almost all of it had been conquered by Caesar. Wherefore Caesar delayed, for the space of another five years, to reduce the same nations to obedience, contrary to the decision, and in despite, of the whole Roman senate.

Then great envy and a vast feud grew between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. Thereafter Pompey the Great persuades the Roman senate to proscribe Caesar, and to decide that he was constantly guilty as regards the royal Roman law, for contravening their decisions.

Thence arose in Rome matter of disunion, and a civil war, and a war that was greater than (that) from the decision in the senate. For this is civil war, in the first place, a war in which everyone rises to attack another of the folk of the same city; and it was a war that was greater than (that), for not only did the folk of the same city arise to begin that war, but even gossips and friends, so that son was against father, and (one) brother against another.

Now there were many causes and reasons why the mishaps of civil war were fated to arise at that time in Rome and in the senate. The first of these causes, the cause by which every mighty, powerful people on the globe

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is abated and cast down, to wit, pride and glory and high spirit filled them because of the greatness of their strength and their lordship and the abundance of their treasure: for at that time the wealth of the Romans was immeasurable, because of the abundance of their gold and silver and matchless garments, and the beauty of the ornaments of their resplendent houses, and their covered canopies and their shining sollers, their ships, their galleys, their chariots and their four-horsed carriages, their beakers and horns and cups and abundance of every other good thing, and because of the extravagance of their consumption of food and drink by day or at night. For of all the Romans there was not one man who deemed it honorable to say that any of the people was better than himself; so that for sake of gold and treasure base clans were arranged among them into high clans and into high mighty grades; and neither the laws nor the decisions of the senate were rightly with them, so that everyone in the City had great hatred and ill-will for another; and they all desired that a cause of war should grow among themselves and also among their leaders, so that each of them might attain his ill-will and his evil design on another.

Another cause of the Civil War was the disparting of dominion among three lords; for so long as water remains above earth and air above water, and so long as the restless, fading moon and the pure-radiant, golden sun are on their immoveable, unstaying course, ordering day and night, harmonious fellowship or loyal union will never be found in the world or on earth among sharers of dominion before or after.

Another cause of the Civil War: the killing of Marcus Crassus, for, as the mountain named Isthmus forbids the triumphant

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wave-displaying confluence of the Ionian Sea and the sea of Aegeus, and lets them not (go) against each other, so Marcus Crassus, as long as he was alive hindered the disuniting storm which afterwards arose between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar.

Another cause of the Civil War was the death of the high queen Julia, Caesar's daughter. For so long as she remained with Pompey in wedlock she would hinder the uprising of her father and her husband, so that she would let neither of them (go) against the other.

Another cause of the Civil War: was the great swelling of spirit and the internal glorying which was in the heart of each of the two high kings, Pompey and Caesar. Such was the number of the nations of the world that Pompey had subdued, and such was the amount of fortune that he had found till then, that he did not deign that anyone in the world should equal him. As to Caesar, such was the height of his spirit that he was humiliated that anyone in the world should excel him; and (there were) no means of checking his pride save only by decision of battle.

Still another cause of the Civil War was the great delay of five additional years which Caesar made in the lands of Gaul against the will of the Roman senate. Wherefore almost the whole senate was always united for crowning Pompey and expelling Caesar.

Well, then, when those causes and many reasons of the Civil War arose in Rome itself between the two chief leaders of the royal Roman rule, the kingly Roman dominion was confused and greatly perturbed. The peaceful sway of the Italian empire was severed and swiftly scattered throughout the four airts of the globe, and the whole world became a ‘sod of trembling’ from the point near which the sun rises to the place at which he sets, and from the borders of the

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torrid zone in the south to the edges of the cold, icy frigid zone in the north, so that the like or semblance of the ever-rough disturbance which then moved the Roman senate and the districts and nations of the world was never found, save the confusion and turmoil which sages and authors say the mundane elements will suffer at the completion and end of the world— that is, when the pure stars shall fall from their stations and their proper places, and when a vast and awful sea of wondrous waters shall swiftly spread over the face of the earth, and when there will be a mutual crushing and collision of the contrary elements among themselves at being loosened and severed from the harmonious friendship and from the law of nature wherein they are: so that all will be cast into the common confusion of the unique formless mass wherein they were at first.

After the killing of Marcus Crassus there was nothing comparable to the vehemence and the hastiness with which there arose a storm of nature and a flood of great pride the fury and wrath of Pompey and Caesar, except the mountain of Isthmus were cast out of the place it held between the Ionian and the Aegean seas, and immediately afterwards the strong outburst of flood and the multitude of green-sided waves of either sea (rushed) towards the other.

Woe to the country and tribeland, woe to the people and senate, woe to the kings and chieftains among whom arose that which then arose in Rome, to wit, the Civil War! Woe to the folk of Rome and Italy, for great evils came to them thereby, since many an ancient honourable city they had without habitation, and many a house without household, and rampart razed, and land untilled, and cornfield unreaped. Woe to the human race was the same war, for there was no nation from which men came not to the civil strife to help either Pompey the Great or Julius Caesar. Woe to the people who invited

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the war, for on them defeat was inflicted! Woe to Caesar his undertaking, for through it came his death! As if good would accrue to every one of them from the warfare, so had they all desire and rage for it, so that not one among them was found to hinder it.

As to those two royal, gracious, mighty soldiers, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, there was great inequality and vast distinction between the order of their lordship and the achievement (?) of their nature and their age. Pompey the Great, in the first place, (had been) a man highspirited, mighty, wealthy, pacific, giving good counsel, with excellence of bounty, with loftiness of nature. Howbeit at that time he was a sedate warrior and unfit to respond to a soldier's deeds, but he relied on his own valiant deeds to which he responded on another occasion. Such was the length of his rest and his goodly fortune in Rome till then that he was not fit to act in the service of warfare or battle; but his renown and his great fame made him conspicuous throughout every people. The senate, too, venerated him for their opinion of his nobility and his honourableness, and for the excellence of his bounty; so that there was nothing like him save the stem of a huge oak whereon the spoils of the vanquished were usually hung by heathens to offer them to the gods in guerdon of triumph, so that that huge oak may remain thus for a long space of time, till it withers and decays, barkless, leafless, without rind or fruit, till its roots beneath it were moving. You would think that it would fall at the tumult of the first-coming wind; yet though many a bushy, luxuriant tree be around it at every point, it alone would be venerated by everyone because of its nobility and honourableness. Thus it was with Pompey the Great and the Roman senate.

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