In 62 bc, Caesar was elected as one of eight praetors, Rome’s second-highest office, and subsequently assumed the governorship of the province of Farther Spain for two years. During the next year, Caesar sharpened his military skills fighting Spanish tribes and pirates, using the taxes and the loot his men collected to repay his massive debts back home.

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On the strength of his victories in Spain, Caesar was elected to one of Rome’s two consul seats for the year 59 bc. As consul, Caesar bribed officials and used armed gangs to stifle his conservative opponents as he passed legislation that set aside public farmlands in Campania for Pompey’s veterans and Rome’s resettled poor. Caesar also passed economic reform legislation and ratified Pompey’s eastern treaties.

Around this time Caesar entered into a pact with Pompey and the wealthy Crassus. Under their agreement, the triumvirs pledged to support each other’s political agendas. The bargain, sealed with Pompey’s marriage to Caesar’s daughter Julia, contained one critical provision for Caesar’s postconsular governorship. As consul, Caesar was immune from prosecution by his political enemies for illegalities committed during his tenure.

After his term expired, however, he needed a post as governor of a wealthy province to extend his immunity and extort the wealth necessary to bribe key officials when he returned. Caesar therefore was given Illyricum (western Balkans) and Cisalpine Gaul (present-day northern Italy) to govern for the extraordinary term of five years. Three legions, totaling some 18,000 men, were also allocated to Caesar. Additionally, when the governor of Transalpine Gaul (Mediterranean France) died unexpectedly, Pompey sponsored legislation that gave Caesar that province as well, plus a fourth legion.

Caesar’s appointments launched nearly 10 years of war against Rome’s northern neighbors. With his chief lieutenant, Titus Labienus, Caesar campaigned against the Helvetii from Switzerland and coalitions of Gallic, Belgic and Germanic tribes in France and the Rhineland. From 55 to 52 bc, with his term as governor extended, Caesar continued his conquest of Gaul, fighting the seagoing Venetii of present-day Brittany, invading Britain twice and subduing a host of tribes led by the great Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix. Throughout his campaigns, Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars kept his name in front of the Roman public. In 52 bc, Caesar prepared to resume his political career in Rome, only to find Rome’s political landscape very different from the one he had left. While Caesar was fighting in Gaul, Pompey served as both consul of Rome and governor of Spain. Although he enacted many liberal reforms, Pompey gradually drifted into the patrician camp. The death of his wife Julia severed his family ties to Caesar (who had previously divorced Pompey’s cousin Pompeia), and his relations with Crassus, now governor of Syria, began to sour. As Roman politics gradually devolved into mob rule, Pompey was elected sole consul–virtual dictator–in 52 bc, and began supporting the patricians’ agenda.

Caesar, noting the fate of other returning governors who made enemies during their tenure in Italy, believed that the patricians would try to trick him into giving up his provinces–and his armies–before he could win a consulate election. If so, he would be left vulnerable to civil and criminal prosecution for official acts of corruption. Furthermore, with no military leverage against the Senate, he would be unlikely to win for his veterans the bonuses and farmlands they expected. He therefore refused to set a fixed date for relinquishing his command, setting the stage for a political confrontation with the Senate.

In 50 bc, the intrigue was complicated further when the Parthians of what is now Iran threatened Rome’s eastern province of Syria. The Senate decreed that Caesar and Pompey must each contribute one legion to Syria’s defense; Pompey’s contribution, however, would come from the one legion he had lent Caesar some years earlier during the Gallic Wars. Faced with this mandate, Caesar had no choice but to send two of his veteran legions, Legiones VI and XV, to Italy, while Pompey’s army was left intact. Ultimately, Pompey did not send the two legions to Syria, but instead held them in Capua as a brace against the coming confrontation.

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