First Triumvirate (60 BC): Caesar, Pompey and Crassus

The First Triumvirate was the informal alliance formed around 60 BC by three of the most powerful men in Rome: Gaius Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. It was not an office or a legal body but a private pact to combine their influence against the Senate’s leaders. For most of the 50s BC it shaped who held office, who commanded armies and which laws passed, and its collapse led directly to civil war.

Background: three frustrated men

Each partner had a grievance against the senatorial establishment, led by men such as Marcus Porcius Cato and Lucius Licinius Lucullus.

Pompey had returned from the East in 62 BC after defeating Mithridates VI and reorganising much of Anatolia and Syria, following his earlier war against the pirates. To general surprise he disbanded his army on landing in Italy. The Senate then refused for more than a year to ratify his eastern arrangements as a whole or to grant land to his veterans.

Crassus, the richest man in Rome, backed the companies of tax collectors (publicani) who had bid too much for the right to collect taxes in the province of Asia. He wanted the contract reduced, and Cato blocked it.

Caesar returned from governing Further Spain in 60 BC and wished both to celebrate a triumph and to stand for the consulship of 59 BC. The Senate, encouraged by Cato, would not let him do both, since standing required him to enter the city and so give up his claim to a triumph. Caesar abandoned the triumph and stood for election.

The pact

Caesar brought Pompey and Crassus, who disliked each other, into agreement. The exact date is debated: some historians place it before the elections of 60 BC, others early in 59 BC. Suetonius describes it as an agreement that nothing should happen in the state that displeased any one of the three.

Their combined resources were formidable. Pompey had prestige and thousands of veterans, Crassus vast wealth and many debtors among the senators, and Caesar political skill and popularity with the urban crowd. Cicero was invited to join and refused.

Caesar’s consulship of 59 BC

Elected with the conservative Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus as his colleague, Caesar used his year to deliver the partners’ demands. When the Senate obstructed his land law for Pompey’s veterans, he took it directly to the popular assembly, where Pompey’s soldiers ensured it passed amid violence. Bibulus withdrew to his house, claiming to watch the skies for bad omens to make the business invalid; wits called the year the consulship of “Julius and Caesar”.

Laws ratified Pompey’s eastern settlement and cut the Asian tax contract by one third. The tribune Publius Vatinius carried a law giving Caesar the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years, and the Senate added Transalpine Gaul. That command became the basis of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

The pact was sealed by marriage. Pompey married Caesar’s daughter Julia, a match that by all accounts became a genuinely affectionate one.

Strains and the Conference of Luca

With Caesar in Gaul from 58 BC, the alliance came under pressure. The tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher, useful at first in exiling Cicero and removing Cato on a mission to Cyprus, soon turned his gangs against Pompey. Pompey helped bring about Cicero’s return in 57 BC and received a five-year command over Rome’s grain supply.

By early 56 BC Pompey and Crassus were openly at odds, and opponents talked of recalling Caesar. In April Caesar met Crassus at Ravenna and then both met Pompey at Luca (Lucca), just inside Caesar’s province. Many senators travelled there too. The partners agreed that Pompey and Crassus would hold the consulship of 55 BC, after which they would receive five-year commands, Spain for Pompey and Syria for Crassus, and that Caesar’s command in Gaul would be extended by five years.

The plan was carried out. Pompey governed Spain through his deputies while staying near Rome; Crassus left for Syria in late 55 BC, planning a war against Parthia.

The breakdown

Two deaths broke the triangle. Julia died in childbirth in 54 BC, removing the personal link between Caesar and Pompey. In 53 BC Crassus was killed after his army was destroyed at the Battle of Carrhae in northern Mesopotamia.

With Rome paralysed by street violence after Clodius was killed in January 52 BC, the Senate made Pompey sole consul. He moved closer to Cato and the conservatives, married into the family of Metellus Scipio, and eventually backed demands that Caesar give up his army before standing again for consul. The dispute ended in civil war when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in January 49 BC.

Key people

• Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC): The youngest and least established of the three in 60 BC, he gained most from the pact: a consulship, a long provincial command, an army and the wealth of Gaul.
• Pompey (106-48 BC): Rome’s greatest general of the day, victor over the pirates and Mithridates, who needed political allies to secure what he had won abroad.
• Marcus Licinius Crassus (c. 115-53 BC): Financier and politician, conqueror of Spartacus, who used money and loans to build influence and hoped for military glory to match Pompey’s.
• Marcus Porcius Cato (95-46 BC): The most determined opponent of the three, whose obstruction in the Senate helped push them together.
• Julia (c. 76-54 BC): Caesar’s only daughter and Pompey’s wife, whose marriage tied the two men together until her early death.
• Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus: Caesar’s colleague as consul in 59 BC, who tried and failed to block his programme through religious obstruction.

Assessment

Ancient writers, beginning with contemporaries, saw the pact as the moment the Republic fell into the hands of a few. The poet Horace notes that the historian Asinius Pollio began his history of the civil wars with the consulship of Quintus Metellus Celer in 60 BC, treating the pact as the starting point of the conflict. Modern historians are more cautious: the alliance was fragile, its members often worked against each other, and the old institutions continued to function, if under pressure.

What is clear is that the arrangement gave Caesar the command, army and fortune that made him a match for Pompey. It also taught Romans to expect that great decisions would be settled by private bargains between powerful men, a pattern repeated formally in the Second Triumvirate of 43 BC.

Timeline

• 62 BC: Pompey returns from the East and disbands his army.
• 60 BC: Caesar returns from Spain, gives up his triumph and stands for the consulship; the alliance is formed around this time.
• 59 BC: Caesar’s consulship; laws for Pompey and Crassus; Pompey marries Julia; Caesar receives his Gallic command.
• 58 BC: Caesar leaves for Gaul; Clodius has Cicero exiled.
• 56 BC, April: The partners renew their alliance at Ravenna and Luca.
• 55 BC: Pompey and Crassus are consuls; Caesar’s command is extended.
• 54 BC: Julia dies in childbirth.
• 53 BC: Crassus dies after the Battle of Carrhae.
• 49 BC, January: Caesar crosses the Rubicon and civil war begins.

Why it matters

The First Triumvirate showed that three determined men could run the Roman Republic from outside its formal institutions. It handed Caesar the Gallic command that made him powerful, and when it collapsed, nothing stood between him and Pompey but war.