Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus

We tend to picture a single gamble at a riverbank in 49 BC, and that picture puts the decisive moment years too late.

The damage came in the consulship of 59, when Caesar forced his laws through and treated his colleague's lawful obstruction as if it didn't exist, and then in Gaul, where a provincial command turned into his own private supply of soldiers and money.

The record leaves us a consul standing in the Forum with dung dumped over his head, and his rods of office broken, a timber bridge across the Rhine that Caesar says his men built in 10 days, and a double ring of siege walls closing in around Alesia.

We'll follow him from the young man that hid from Sulla's purges and borrowed his way upward, to 50 BC, when giving up his command meant facing prosecution for everything he did in 59.

Around the end of 60 BC, he made the private arrangement with Pompey and Crassus that historians call the First Triumvirate, which is gonna be covered in The Men Who Bought the Republic.

Each of the three wanted something from the Senate had refused him, and Caesar's consulship was going to be how they'd get it.

Caesar was elected consul for 59 BC, and his colleague was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, a conservative and a close ally of Cato.

The Roman consulship was built for two, and each consul could block the other, so the system assumed that if one of them tried something, something dangerous, the other one would be there to stop him, and that year the assumption got tested in front of the entire city.

But Cato and Caesar's other enemies made sure that his fellow consul that year would be one of their own men who'd act as an anchor on his ambitions.

They chose Cato's son-in-law, Bibulus, which was a bit like pairing Ken Livingstone with Norman Tebbit and expecting them to work together.

This kind of pettiness made Caesar vow that he'd never compromise with his opponents again.

From now on, he'd bypass them.

Here in the Senate, there was a set order of speaking, but Caesar always invited his chums Pompey and Crassus to speak first.

He had his archenemy Cato arrested for speaking for too long, and he intimidated the opposition with hired thugs.

But number one on his hit list was his fellow consul Bibulus.

When he tried to interrupt while Caesar was speaking, the hired thugs burst in and tipped a bucket of dung over his head.

But Cato and Caesar's other enemies made sure that his fellow consul that year would be one of their own men who'd act as an anchor on his ambitions.

They chose Cato's son-in-law, Bibulus, which was a bit like pairing Ken Livingstone with Norman Tebbit and expecting them to work together.

This kind of pettiness made Caesar vow that he'd never compromise with his opponents again.

From now on, he'd bypass them.

It was merely the key to unlock everything that would follow.

He shared the consulship with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, a bitter opponent and puppet of the Senate.

From the very beginning, the two clashed.

Bibulus tried to block Caesar's reforms to halt his new laws for land distribution and citizenship.

Caesar's enemies, however, knowing that they probably could not prevent his election, determined to concentrate their strength in the effort to prevent his having the colleague he desired.

They made choice, therefore, of a certain Bibulus as their candidate.

Bibulus had always been a political opponent of Caesar's, and they thought that by associating him with Caesar in the supreme magistracy, the pride and ambition of their great adversary might be held somewhat in check.

They accordingly made a contribution among themselves to enable Bibulus to expend as much money in bribery as Lucius, and the canvas went on.

It resulted in the election of Caesar and Bibulus.

They entered upon the duties of their office, but Caesar, almost entirely disregarding his colleague, began to assume the whole power, and proposed and carried measure after measure of the most extraordinary character, all aiming at the gratification of the populace.

He was at first opposed violently, both by Bibulus and by many leading members of the Senate, especially by Cato, a stern and inflexible patriot, whom neither fear of danger nor hope of reward could move from what he regarded his duty.

But Caesar was now getting strong enough to put down the opposition which he encountered without much scruple as to the means he ordered cato on one occasion to be arrested in the senate and sent to prison another influential member of the senate rose and was going out with him caesar asked him where he was going he said he was going with cato he would rather he said be with cato in prison than in the senate with caesar caesar treated bibulus also with so much neglect and assumed so entirely the whole control of the consular power to the utter exclusion of his colleague that bibulus at last completely discouraged and chagrined abandoned all pretension to official authority retired to his house and shut himself up in perfect seclusion leaving caesar to his own way it was customary among the romans in their historical and narrative writings to designate the successive years not by a numerical date as with us but by the names of the consuls who held office in them thus in the time of caesar's consulship the phrase would have been in the year of caesar and bibulus consuls according to the ordinary usage, but the wags of the city, in order to make sport of the assumptions of Caesar and the insignificance of Bibulus, used to say, in the year of Julius and Caesar, Consuls, rejecting the name of Bibulus altogether, and taking the two names of Caesar to make out the necessary duality.

Caesar's enemies, however, knowing that they probably could not prevent his election, determined to concentrate their strength in the effort to prevent his having the colleague he desired.

They made choice, therefore, of a certain Bibulus as their candidate.

Bibulus had always been a political opponent of Caesar's, and they thought that by associating him with Caesar in the supreme magistracy, the pride and ambition of their great adversary might be held somewhat in check.

They accordingly made a contribution among themselves to enable Bibulus to expend as much money in bribery as Lucius, and the canvas went on.

It resulted in the election of Caesar and Bibulus.

They entered upon the duties of their office, but Caesar, almost entirely disregarding his colleague, began to assume the whole power, and proposed and carried measure after measure of the most extraordinary character, all aiming at the gratification of the populace.

He was at first opposed violently both by Bibulus and by many leading members of the Senate, especially by Cato, a stern and inflexible patriot, whom neither fear of danger nor hope of reward could move from what he regarded his duty.

But Caesar was now getting strong enough to put down the opposition which he encountered without much scruple as to the means.