1. POMPEIUS’ DOMVS AND THE INFORMAL GATHERING OF SENATORS

In his Bellum Ciuile, Caesar reports the events of 1 January 49 with these words (1.3.1):

This meeting has not attracted much scholarly attention and admittedly for a good reason: other circumstances of the outbreak of the Civil War are, perhaps, more significant for understanding the events as well as the intentions and decisions of the political actors. The importance of this gathering lies, however, not so much in what its role might have been in the developments of the year 49 but rather in the context of the phenomenon of the promagistrates’ interference in the domestic politics of Late Republican Rome.

In her monograph, Amy Russell approached this episode when analysing the social and political role of the massive complex which Pompeius built on the Campus Martius just outside the city, and which included a theatre, temple, gardens, curia and Pompeius’ private house.Footnote ¹ ‘[W]ith the inauguration of his own curia, Pompey ensured that the Senate would never again have an excuse to meet without him.’Footnote ² Russell argued that the meeting in which we are interested probably took place not in Pompeius’ curia but in his house, but the latter was part of the same complex.

Russell refers to two earlier incidents of 52 reported by Asconius (51–2 C). On one occasion, Pompeius convened the Senate in his portico when he demonstrated extreme caution towards the senator T. Annius Milo. Russell notes that ‘Pompey was consul, and perhaps it was in that capacity that he ordered Milo to be detained and searched. But his actions look much more like those of a householder.’ On the second occasion, Pompeius forbade Milo to come to see him in his horti, thus again ‘exercising control over his own space’. It is against the background of these two occurrences that Russell considers Pompeius’ informal gathering of senators in 49. For her, this incident demonstrates that ‘[h]ouse and curia served remarkably similar functions both as display spaces and as locations for political activity.’Footnote ³ But what kind of political activity, exactly?

According to Russell, since our assembly happened after dusk, it could not be official. If it was not official, it must have taken place not in Pompeius’ curia but in his house. ‘What Pompey actually did was to summon the senators individually as his guests to his house on the Campus Martius, where he proceeded to address them as though this was a meeting of the Senate.’Footnote ⁴ It is impossible to prove this hypothesis, but it seems attractive. At least two further considerations may support it.

First, there is other evidence for unofficial senatorial gatherings in private houses. Thus Livy reports that in 473 senators held private gatherings to prevent too many people from learning of their decisions (2.54.7). Under the year 445, he describes the concilia of the senatorial principes in private houses (4.6.6). The reason for these gatherings was the impossibility of making any decisions at the official meeting of the Senate owing to a tribunician veto—something that was also the case in 49. These reports, whatever their value for the history of the Early Republic, must also to some extent depend on Livy's knowledge of the similarly informal meetings of senators at later times.

Harriet Flower has recently analysed two cases of private political consilia in the Late Republic (after Caesar's assassination). Although they did not include wide circles of senators (but instead many non-senators, especially influential women), these consilia are also relevant for us here. Flower points to certain similarities between the procedure in the Senate and the procedure in the consilia, as far as one can tell.Footnote ⁵ However, what dramatically differentiates Pompeius’ gathering from these consilia is that it reportedly included all members of the senatorial order. But even this should not be immediately considered impossible, given Appian's famous report on the meetings of the Senate in the house of the consul M. Calpurnius Bibulus in 59. These gatherings effectively substituted for the formal ones, which no one convened (App. B Ciu. 2.11).

There is one more consideration in favour of Russell's idea that Pompeius’ gathering is better understood as a meeting convened in his private house or, rather, within the space—whatever its formal designation—appropriated by Pompeius for his personal political purposes. Given the nature of his complex as a whole (‘simultaneously coded as public and as private’, so Russell)Footnote ⁶ I suggest that in any case Pompeius’ control over this meeting in the particular circumstances of the year 49 must have been complete, even if senators, in fact, assembled in his curia. Perhaps curia and house as possible venues for our informal gathering are not to be sharply distinguished in the first place, if ‘Pompey's house, from which he could stroll across to meet the Senate assembled in his back garden’, already ‘inserted the private into the public in a truly monumental way’ in any case, and the ‘[s]patial distinctions between house and curia were collapsed’.Footnote ⁷

Thus informal senatorial gatherings in private houses were not impossible in Rome. This and Pompeius’ unusual career with its many violations of political rules already suggest that our passage may be something more than only a product of Caesar's propaganda. What kind of political event might this meeting have been in Caesar's representation? That it was not official is clear. A more difficult question is who attended it. In other words, what is the meaning of Caesar's phrase omnes qui sunt eius ordinis?

2. OMNES OR OMNES <SVI>? CAESAR'S REPRESENTATION OF POMPEIUS’ EVOCATIO OF SENATORS

Some scholars have noted the oddity of Pompeius’ invitation to literally all senators. Jeremiah Markland proposed the supplement <sui> after omnes, so that the text would mean ‘all his own (that is, Pompeius’ friends) who belonged to this order’. Markland argued that, in practical terms, it was not possible for the whole Senate to gather in Pompeius’ house (‘incredibile est, immo falsum, totum Senatum a Pompeio evocatum esse’).Footnote ⁸ But, as already mentioned above, the Senate (as a whole) was reportedly able to assemble at the house of the consul M. Calpurnius Bibulus in 59 (App. B Ciu. 2.11: ἡ βουλὴ δέ … ἐς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Βύβλου συνελθόντες), while, in 52, Pompeius invited the whole panel of 360 jurors to his house (Plut. Vit. Pomp. 55.4).

Most editors and translators have since adopted a reading without sui.Footnote ⁹ However, in his note specifically dedicated to this question, Gregorio Hinojo Andrés attempted to defend the addition of sui.Footnote ¹⁰ The fundamental problem with his argument, however, is that he never specified whom he meant by ‘Pompeius’ supporters’ (‘partidarios de Pompeyo’).Footnote ¹¹ Were they those few who on 1 December 50 voted against both proconsuls’ simultaneous deprivation of command (and, thus, in Pompeius’ interests),Footnote ¹² or were these ‘supporters’ the majority of the Senate who voted against Caesar on 1 January 49?Footnote ¹³ In the latter case, the so-called ‘Pompeius’ supporters’ are effectively almost the whole Senate.Footnote ¹⁴ If so, the actual difference between omnes qui sunt eius ordinis and omnes <sui> qui sunt eius ordinis becomes insignificant. Even if a few Caesarians were not, in fact, invited, the use of omnes by Caesar would not even be a distortion worth mentioning (provided of course that Pompeius’ informal gathering really happened).

On the other hand, omnes (in contrast to something like omnes sui) is crucially important for Caesar's negative portrayal of Pompeius: Caesar's Pompeius reproaches the whole senatorial order and expects them to follow his orders without question or any proper deliberation. In Caesar's text, Pompeius is arrogant to the point that he treats in this way not only his senatorial followers but also all senators, including the neutral majority. Thus, even if we conjectured that, in reality, Pompeius summoned only his adherents to a secret meeting because he needed to prepare them and to encourage them to be more determined and united at the subsequent official meetings (this hypothetical reconstruction cannot be proved anyway), this is still not necessarily what Caesar wanted to demonstrate and, therefore, cannot justify an addition in his text. Given the importance of the argument of dignitas in Caesar's self-justification—which was, perhaps, far more important for him than the controversies over legalityFootnote ¹⁵—his insistence that Pompeius derogated not only his dignity but also that of the whole senatorial order must be taken into account. However, this argument of Caesar only works if we keep the text as it is: all senators were summoned as if they were soldiers, all of them were mentored and humiliated, and not just some friends of Pompeius. What is also striking about the use of omnes by Caesar is that the word in itself makes the addition of sui rather illogical. When it is stressed that not just some but all senators were summoned by Pompeius, this makes sense. But what could be the reason for Caesar to underline that not just some but all supporters of Pompeius were convened?

We always have to bear in mind the possibility that Caesar could represent the parameters of the meeting in such a way that may contradict our general expectations of the rationale behind Pompeius’ actions. In particular, Caesar here creates a narrative where Pompeius dealt with the senatorial order as if they were soldiers, some of them (like bad soldiers) being too sluggish to follow instructions.Footnote ¹⁶ Despite its presentation as an analogue of the formal senatorial meeting (see below), the informal gathering of senators is simultaneously depicted as if it were a military contio, at which a general praises and encourages good soldiers (laudat, confirmat) and rebukes negligent or cowardly ones (castigat, incitat), or, perhaps, praises some actions of his soldiers and criticizes other deeds of theirs. This is not how a normal address to senators should appear.Footnote ¹⁷ Most conspicuous is the use of the verb euocare for the senators’ convocation to the informal gathering.Footnote ¹⁸ The subsequent lines, which mention euocati in the technical sense (legionaries, not senators),Footnote ¹⁹ reinforce this picture of senators being treated as if they were Pompeius’ soldiers, perhaps even implying that senators, too, just like real euocati, received some material preferences in return for their service to Pompeius.

Another serious weakness of Hinojo Andrés's argument is that Caesar used the term ordo for what Hinojo Andrés thought was a group of exclusively Pompeian ‘supporters’ (whatever is implied by this). Hinojo Andrés, of course, recognized that the appearance of ordo was probably the reason why many researchers have not adopted the addition of sui: ordo cannot refer to a political grouping, but it often designates the ordo senatorius as a whole.Footnote ²⁰ As a result, Hinojo Andrés is forced to assume that Caesar did not have a good label for the Pompeians and, therefore, used ordo to designate them faute de mieux.Footnote ²¹ But Caesar famously refers to his resolute opponents as factio or factio paucorum (BCiu. 1.22.5; cf. Hirtius, BGall. 8.50.2; Suet. Iul. 11, 20.5).Footnote ²² That Caesar does not use factio or a similar word to indicate those summoned by Pompeius means that his resolute enemies were not the only ones invited.

A final observation allows me to put together all these various considerations. Caesar very carefully avoids anything which might suggest that Pompeius organized a meeting of the Senate as an institution rather than a meeting of individual senators.Footnote ²³ The direct labelling of Pompeius’ gathering as ‘the Senate’ would have only strengthened Caesar's point that Pompeius effectively appropriated the role of the Senate's convener (on which see below), but, on the other hand, it would have involved a gross distortion. Caesar avoids such a distortion. Instead, he finds another way to convey his idea that Pompeius violated political principles, even if formally he still acted according to legal rules (that is, he did not convene an official meeting of the Senate). It is for this reason that Caesar must underline that what Pompeius did was to summon all senators and not just his friends; this meant that he effectively convened the Senate, but not officially.Footnote ²⁴ If we add sui and reduce the range of participants of this gathering to Pompeius’ staunch supporters, the careful logic of this passage collapses. It simply becomes a report on a gathering of Caesar's enemies. Why should the partisan assemblage, at which Pompeius’ adherents were criticized by their leader, even be mentioned by Caesar, when he narrates how the Pompeians violated the most basic laws and traditions in order to seize control over the Senate?

3. WAS POMPEIUS’ EVOCATIO OF SENATORS POSSIBLE?

That the report about Pompeius’ meeting serves Caesar's aims is beyond doubt: ‘[t]his second (unofficial) gathering of senators, outside the city at night and in response to Pompey's call, can be seen to represent the real nature of Pompeian government as well as its illegitimacy.’Footnote ²⁵ This and the fact that the evidence about this meeting comes exclusively from Caesar compels us to doubt that it even happened, to say nothing of its specific details. Moreover, if the outcome of the Senate's session of 1 January 49 was a success for Pompeius, why would he have even needed one more, this time informal, meeting?

However, Kurt Raaflaub suggested that Pompeius’ success on 1 January 49 did not, in fact, give much to him and his adherents. The Senate confined itself to the ultimatum that gained no legal force because of the intercession of tribunes. Pompeius needed the support of the senatorial ‘moderate’ majority to overcome this.Footnote ²⁶ If Raaflaub is correct, then the necessity to compel the senatorial majority to overcome (rather than simply to discuss) the tribunician veto by means of the senatus consultum ultimum Footnote ²⁷ may have been a good practical reason for Pompeius to address senators directly and to do this precisely after the official meeting of 1 January 49.

For the conclusions presented in this paper, we do not have to accept all aspects of Raaflaub's interpretation.Footnote ²⁸ What already provides the rationale behind the alleged euocatio of senators by Pompeius is that, as Raaflaub argues convincingly, in January 49, just as earlier, the senatorial majority could still consider the proposal to deprive both Caesar and Pompeius of their power as the best way to avoid the war.Footnote ²⁹ Even at this point, the opposition of the ‘moderate’ senators can be observed in the sources.Footnote ³⁰

Admittedly, Raaflaub's reconstruction depends heavily on Caesar's point of view. But Klaus M. Girardet, who has provided an example of a modern interpretation far less favourable to Caesar, nevertheless reaches effectively the same conclusion as Raaflaub does in relation to what interests us here. Girardet believes that, even though the decree of 1 January 49 rejected Caesar's demands, it nevertheless opened a way for Caesar to remain within legal limits and to take part in the consular elections for 48, in spite of his clear violation of the law and his letter with its direct threats to the Senate. One of the aims of the decree was admittedly to win time to prepare for war against Caesar in case he would not cooperate further, but this decision was at the same time a result of the continuing search for a peaceful outcome.Footnote ³¹ If so, the decree of 1 January 49 was what the senatorial majority wanted, rather than what would suffice in the eyes of Caesar's resolute enemies.

Thus it was not so much Caesar's allegedly aggressive letter, read out in the Senate on 1 January 49, that changed the opinions of the senatorial majority and eventually compelled them to adopt the SCV; it was rather some additional factors or events that took place between 1 and 7 January 49. One of these factors could easily be Pompeius’ direct address to senators at the informal meeting. This address was apparently the only one until Pompeius spoke at the official senatorial meetings after the fateful SCV had been already passed.Footnote ³² This has been somewhat overlooked by scholarship, which has underlined the more obvious circumstances that could compel senators to act against Caesar.Footnote ³³

The fact that the first Senate meeting of the year had to be held on the CapitolFootnote ³⁴ provides a further explanation of why it could be so important for Pompeius to summon senators on his own initiative already on 1 January: he simply did not have another opportunity if he wanted to approach them in person before further official meetings. To make this address he had to violate informal rules and to summon what was practically a senatorial meeting in the evening and in his capacity as proconsul (I will return to this below). If Pompeius did, in fact, have an urgent reason to address senators (as the modern scholarly reconstructions mentioned above seem to suggest), then Caesar simply made this inappropriate use of initiative into a further opportunity to criticize Pompeius’ behaviour. That is, Caesar apparently made a great deal out of what essentially could have been a set of private invitations sent by Pompeius to each individual senator, but nothing seems to suggest that he invented the senatorial gathering wholesale. He did not even have to invent additional details to be able to use against Pompeius the negative connotations, deeply rooted in Roman political culture, of night-time political activities.Footnote ³⁵

Thus, even though it is impossible to prove that Pompeius did indeed summon senators in the evening of 1 January 49, this meeting (as described by Caesar) at least made sense. This also corresponds to what we know about the role informal politics in ‘less public’ settings, including private houses, played in Rome.Footnote ³⁶

However, this conclusion does not provide an explanation of why Caesar emphasized this meeting and presented it as a gross violation by Pompeius of Roman political traditions, reporting it alongside seemingly more serious accusations, such as the use of soldiers to deprive the Senate of its freedom of decision.

4. POMPEIUS’ EVOCATIO OF SENATORS AND THE INTERFERENCE OF PROMAGISTRATES IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE (DOMI)

It has not been sufficiently appreciated in the scholarship that Pompeius was a proconsul at the time. The proper meeting had already been closed, and a promagistrate could not legally convene the Senate.

Russell has actually pointed out that (as proconsul) Pompeius ‘had been ritually barred from the official meeting’ and that, as a result, ‘he held his own new meeting’.Footnote ³⁷ This is correct, but why should Caesar even mention this informal gathering in his very dense account of numerous critical events, especially since, at this particular assemblage, no official decisions were made? Were we to suggest that nothing happened here except for some inappropriate censure of the senators by Pompeius, the rationale behind this meeting would remain incomprehensible. But, as I have argued above, the gathering might in fact have been one of the factors that helped to push the senatorial majority in the direction of the SCV.

What is relevant here is not only what Pompeius did but also how he did it. His decision was not simply an attempt to compensate for his inability to come to the Senate in urbe (or intra pomerium). Indeed, very often, as was the case also in early January 49, the Senate convened outside the city boundary to allow Pompeius to participate. Rather, as I have demonstrated above, it must have been important for him to address the senators immediately; therefore, he could not have waited until the next opportunity to be invited to speak at the official meeting outside the city. What Caesar underlines is not just the bare fact that Pompeius addressed the senatorial audience, but rather that the meeting took place at a time and place of his choosing (and under his control, as Russell argued); that he himself convened the senators; and that in so doing he therefore appropriated the role of the Senate's convener, acting as if he were an incumbent consul with such initiative. It is not only his interference that Caesar criticizes, nor indeed merely his address to the senators and his heavy-handed treatment of them, but also Pompeius’ manner of exercizing his political initiative, acting (rather than reacting) as an independent agent domi, in the domestic sphere: extra urbem, yes, but still going beyond the jurisdiction of a proconsul. Choosing the time, defining the place, determining the agenda and exercizing control were all about political initiative.

If this interpretation is correct, then we have here a case when, under the catastrophic circumstances of the beginning of a new civil war, it became possible for a proconsul to interfere in domestic politics in a most explicit and direct way (unlike when Pompeius was acting through Scipio: Caes. BCiu. 1.1–2). We see how Pompeius observed the traditional political regulations, that is, that a proconsul could not participate in senatorial meetings in urbe (within the pomerium). However, in practice he acted as if he were consul. A proconsul took the initiative in civil politics into his own hands.

Even though in reality the position of a promagistrate was much closer to the position of a magistrate rather than to that of a regular citizen, his normative ascription to the ranks of private citizens remained ideologically relevant and is skilfully employed by Caesar. Moreover, in this case, the abstract principle expresses itself in a clear and very real prohibition of any independent activity (such as the convocation of a civil contio or the Senate) by promagistrates even outside the pomerium. Footnote ³⁸ In so far as the domestic sphere (domi) was concerned, a promagistrate was a priuatus in practical terms, not just nominally. Since Pompeius still observed all the formal restrictions, Caesar underlines his violation of the same principle on another, informal level, providing a description of Pompeius’ gathering that, as Russell says, ‘evokes a regular meeting of the Senate’,Footnote ³⁹ but at the same time carefully avoiding its direct labelling as such.

If one goes beyond legal formalities, the fact that Pompeius’ gathering is never defined by Caesar as the official meeting of the Senate does not contradict the essence of Caesar's criticism. Even if it was constitutionally void, unofficial, without proper deliberation, taking place in a privately controlled space or even in a private house, organized through individual invitations and, perhaps, in reality not at all attended by most senators, this gathering is still represented as politically comparable to a formal meeting, because it influenced, at least in Caesar's narrative, the outcome of the subsequent proper meetings of the Senate and, thus, the beginning of the war. Though in itself perhaps not decisive, this informal gathering, together with other means allegedly used by Pompeius, allowed further pressure on the senatorial majority. The very attempt of a proconsul to influence senators in such a way, no matter how effective in reality it was, could be used to criticize Pompeius.

That Caesar does not explicitly underline that here Pompeius did something wrong in his capacity as proconsul is explained by the fact that Caesar himself was proconsul and acted very much like his rival. In April 49 (that is, before his Bellum Ciuile was published), he interfered in senatorial deliberations (Vell. Pat. 2.50.2; Cass. Dio 41.15.2–4; Suet. Iul. 34) and contiones (Vell. Pat. 2.50.2; Cass. Dio 41.16.1). Just as Pompeius, he did not breach formal regulations (the meetings were convened for him by tribunes, and they took place outside the city boundary), but he still acted in violation of the political tradition. A phrase in Suetonius is suggestive here: Suetonius uses the words appellatisque de re publica patribus (Iul. 34), but it was the task of consuls, not of proconsuls, to discuss the general condition of the Republic.Footnote ⁴⁰ Therefore, if Caesar misrepresents something, it is his own actions as proconsul rather than Pompeius’ behaviour. However, Caesar's justification could be that he, unlike Pompeius, at least did not regularize his direct involvement in domestic politics as promagistrate. This is suggested by his more explicit criticism of the fact that, long before 49, Pompeius had controlled warlike provinces while remaining near Rome and interfering in the city affairs.Footnote ⁴¹

Within a few chapters, Caesar twice—in our passage and in Chapter 6—points to Pompeius’ treatment of senators as if they were his soldiers. He also twice alludes to the inappropriate interference of the promagistrates in civil politics in Rome: again in our episode and in Chapter 6, where priuati (certainly, the Pompeian promagistrates) are accused of using lictors in the city. The repetition of the same criticisms compels us to consider them as intentional and carefully designed. Thus Pompeius and his adherents are systematically depicted as the people who destroy the normative and factual distinction between magistracies and promagistracies.