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XIX. Of the two other competitors for the consulship, Lucius Luceius and Marcus Bibulus, he joined with the former, upon condition that Luceius, being a man of less interest but greater affluence, should promise money to the electors, in their joint names.
He was allured, probably, by the promise of a separate establishment at Athens, whither he was sent to study with Cratippus. We find another proof of Cicero's wealth in the costliness of his son's household at Athens, as premeditated by the father. He is to live as do the sons of other great noblemen. He even names the young noblemen with whom he is to live. Bibulus was of the Calpurnian "gens."
Large numbers were called upon for their opinion, and that, too, with the assent of the consuls: for they wanted the proposal of Bibulus carried. This dispute was protracted till nightfall, and the senate was dismissed.
Cæsar's consulship of B.C. 59 roused his worst fears for the Republic; and, though he thought little of the statesmanship or good sense of Cæsar's hostile colleague Bibulus, he was thoroughly disgusted with the policy of the triumvirs, with the contemptuous treatment of the senate, with the high-handed disregard of the auspices by means of which Bibulus tried to invalidate the laws and other acta of Cæsar and with the armed forces which Pompey brought into the campus, nominally to keep order, but really to overawe the comitia, and secure the passing of Cæsar's laws.
The Senate was now itself suspended. The consul acted directly with the assembly, without obstruction and without remonstrance, Bibulus only from time to time sending out monotonous admonitions from within doors that the season was consecrated, and that Caesar's acts had no validity.
The nobility however left no means untried to frustrate the proposals of Caesar. On each day when Caesar appeared before the people, his colleague Bibulus instituted the well-known political observations of the weather which interrupted all public business; Caesar did not trouble himself about the skies, but continued to prosecute his terrestrial occupation.
Nay, as if a man like Caesar could be stopped by a shadow, he proposed to sanctify the whole remainder of the year, that no further business might be transacted in it. Yells drowned his voice. The mob rushed upon the steps; Bibulus was thrown down, and the rods of the lictors were broken; the tribunes who had betrayed their order were beaten.
So in ignominy the Senate's resistance collapsed: the Caesar whom they had thought to put off with their "woods and forests" had proved stronger than the whole of them; and, prostrate at the first round of the battle, they did not attempt another. They met the following morning. Bibulus told his story and appealed for support. Had the Senate complied, they would probably have ceased to exist.
His friends in the Senate had been less delicate. Bibulus had. been thanked for hiding from the Parthians. When Cicero had hinted his expectations, the Senate had passed to the order of the day. "Cato," he wrote, "treats me scurvily. He gives me praise for justice, clemency, and integrity, which I did not want. What I did want he will not let me have. Caesar promises me everything.
But Cæsar soon had the upper hand in all the affairs of the consulship, so that the people said jokingly that the two consuls for the year were Julius and Cæsar, instead of Cæsar and Bibulus.
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