Rome Must Fall

During Sulla's previous tenure as dictator, in order to consolidate his rule and suppress the plebeians, Sulla issued an important decree: tribunes were prohibited from entering the Senate after leaving office, and those who had served as plebeians could no longer hold other important positions. In addition, the tribunes' veto power over proposals passed by the Senate and the citizens' assembly was restricted.

This decree greatly weakened the political prospects and promotion opportunities of the tribunes, making them no longer attractive to the Roman aristocracy, and completely cut off the opportunity for the plebeians to enter the Senate through political channels, greatly enhancing the interests of the conservatives.

However, after Sulla's death, the decrees he issued during his lifetime were gradually removed, and this key decree that violated Roman traditions aroused the dissatisfaction of the Roman people and disputes among various factions in the Senate over time.

Pompey, who constantly pursued glory, vigorously promoted the passage of a bill shortly after he became consul - to revoke Sulla's ban on the position of tribune and restore its various rights.

At this point, the cornerstone of Sulla's legislation was completely removed, and Rome's long-standing traditions returned to the political life of the Republic.

The Roman people were jubilant. They had been looking forward to this day for almost 10 years, and they shouted Pompey's name.

In the process, Crassus, who provided a little help, also shared the public's applause.

Pompey wrote a brilliant stroke in his consulship, but then he found that the senators were not friendly to him.

Pompey's glorious military exploits and the irregularity of the consulship (Pompey became consul at the age of 36 and had never held any administrative office before)... all made the elders in the Senate feel resentful and wary, including Catullus.

Crassus was their fellow traveler, and his consulship was completely legal.

Crassus had long realized this, and he took a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, he frequently funded and held large public banquets to distribute food to the poor for free in order to win the hearts of the people; on the other hand, he constantly whispered in the ears of the senators, slandering Pompey, saying that "he is a politician who seduces the people's hearts", and tried his best to prevent Pompey from passing any proposals that would make him more popular.

Pompey soon fell into trouble. In the Senate, any of his proposals were difficult to pass; in public debates, facing the attacks of political opponents, he was clumsy in speech and laughed at by the people.

Pompey certainly knew who was the culprit for all this.

Soon, the relationship between Pompey and Crassus deteriorated, and they attacked each other in public many times.

Such practices frightened the Roman people, because the two were very powerful, and once a conflict broke out, they would probably repeat the mistakes of Sulla and Marius.

So, at the end of the term of the Roman consuls that year, the two presided over a public meeting in the forum.

A citizen suddenly interrupted their speech and asked to tell a dream he had just had.

The request was accepted.

The citizen said: Jupiter came to him and asked him to announce something in the forum, that the two consuls were not allowed to leave their posts before they became friends.

The forum suddenly became quiet.

After a long time, Crassus walked towards Pompey, took his hand, and praised his opponent.

So the two hugged and reconciled.

The people cheered.

The reconciliation performed by Pompey and Crassus at this public gathering could not resolve the growing resentment between the two. But for the Roman people, this year started and ended with cheers, which was undoubtedly gratifying.

When the eyes of the people were focused on the radiant Pompey, few people paid attention to Caesar, one of the thousands of young Roman nobles. Although he was marked as the son-in-law of the former leader of the plebeian faction, Cinna, the dictator Sulla was almost forgotten from the memory of the people, not to mention his defeated generals, so the plebeian aura attached to Caesar was already dim, and occasionally when people mentioned him, they were more about his romantic affairs.

But the year when Pompey became the Roman consul was also very important for Caesar, because he was 30 years old, which just met the minimum age for running for the quaestor stipulated by the Roman political tradition.

The quaestor was the only official position that Roman citizens could hold when they first entered politics. Although it was the lowest among all Roman administrative positions, it was the starting point for becoming a Roman consul. It was almost impossible for a Roman citizen who had not been a quaestor to become a consul in the end, of course Pompey was an exception.

Caesar did not have the good fortune that Pompey had, so he could only follow the tradition of Roman politics and start his political career in a disciplined manner like countless Roman citizens who had just turned 30.

Although the position of quaestor was low, it was also subject to election. Only 20 people were elected each year, but there were countless applicants. It was not easy to be elected. Therefore, if a Roman citizen could be elected in the year when he just reached the minimum age for election, it was a particularly glorious thing.

The election of quaestors was in the autumn, and was elected by the tribal council (that is, the assembly of the 35 tribes of Roman citizens).

The meeting was held at the Forum of the Gods of War, an open area outside the formal borders of the northwest of Rome. It used to be a tidal flat of the Tiber Bay, but now it has become a garden and a drill ground. The terrain here is flat and wide, and can accommodate more voters.

On the day of the election, Roman citizens gathered at the Forum of Mars, and candidates on the platform in front of the forum took the opportunity to give speeches to the voters present.

When the chief executive presiding over the election issued an order: Citizens, take your positions.

So the members of each tribe gathered in their own temporary enclosures.

After the voting began, each member of each tribe would leave the enclosure of his tribe in turn, walk through a narrow and high aisle, come to the scrutineer responsible for supervising the voting of each tribe, and put the handwritten ballot into a basket.

Officials called "guardians" would supervise the voters, and then be responsible for counting the votes and reporting the results to the chief executive who presided over the election.

Among the 35 tribes in Rome, only four tribes were located in the city of Rome. Even if the members of these tribes were poor, they could easily participate in the election without much hindrance.

As for the other tribes far away from Rome, only the richest people were able or willing to go to Rome to participate in the election, so the votes of these people were very important, of course, the votes of the poor who currently lived in Rome but still belonged to the rural tribes were also important.

This led to a large difference in the number of people from each tribe who could vote, but the weight of each tribe's vote was the same. Therefore, it was very important for candidates to win the support of their own tribe first, so they would try their best to win over their fellow tribesmen, and the members of these tribes would usually choose their own tribe's candidates first, and then consider other candidates.

In such a situation, the reputation of the candidate played an important role, and voters would often vote for candidates they had heard of (as long as they were not notorious) rather than completely unfamiliar candidates.

Caesar had a great chance of winning.

After returning to Italy, he had been working as a part-time lawyer and performed well in court. He had also made military achievements in the East before, and had a warrior's crown as proof. In addition, rumors about his scandal with Nicomedes IV and other romantic affairs, as well as his love of wearing strange clothes... etc. made him famous among the Roman people.

In the eyes of those aristocratic voters, although Ulysses Caesar's family did not belong to the inner aristocratic circle of the Senate, it had also produced some chief executives in recent years, making the name of the Caesar family always appear in the vision of the Roman aristocracy. More importantly, Caesar's mother's relatives were very successful in politics, and two consuls were elected in the past five years.

Therefore, even after the entire Italian people obtained citizenship, many rich children from Italian city-states came to Rome, hoping to enter politics and participate in the annual election of 20 quaestors. However, Caesar, a member of a well-established Roman aristocratic family, was not afraid of the competition from these people. Candidates could be elected as quaestors as long as they won the support of 18 tribes, and he was successfully elected with unanimous votes.

For Caesar, this was an important moment, because according to the decree issued by Sulla, all quaestors automatically obtained the status of senators, although this was only the lowest level of senators, and they only attended the Senate meetings and made up the numbers.

In the same year, Cicero ushered in his most critical moment.

Six years ago, he was 30 years old. Like Caesar, he was elected as quaestor at the legal minimum age, and then sent to Sicily as a provincial quaestor. During his tenure, he was fair and did not over-exploit the people of the province, thus winning the respect of the Sicilians. He also efficiently organized a shipload of Sicilian grain to be shipped to Rome, solving Rome's food shortage problem.

He thought that his outstanding achievements in Sicily would be spread among the Roman people, but he found that the Roman people had never paid attention to him, and did not even know that he had left Rome to take office in Sicily.

This hit Cicero hard, and coupled with the glory of Pompey, who was the same age as him, at the triumphal ceremony last year, this further strengthened his determination to step over the benchmark of low-level administrators and enter the inner circle usually controlled by the nobles.

The opportunity came soon.

At the beginning of this year, a group of Sicilians came to Rome and found Cicero, begging him to act as a prosecutor to accuse the former Governor of Sicily, Gaius Valles.

This man was known for his greed and rebellion. He initially stood on the side of the plebeians, and later joined Sulla. From then on, he was like a fish in water, and obtained one lucrative overseas position after another.

During his tenure, he plundered and exploited the people of the province and committed numerous crimes, but he used the huge wealth he earned to make friends with Roman nobles and built a huge network of relationships. Many senators in important positions supported him, so no one had ever been able to bring him down over the years, which made him even more arrogant.