Caesar now had an empire on his hands. He knew that, though he thought himself a God, he could not do it alone. So he called together a crew of people perfectly suited to this.
Mark Antony, loyal general from the Gallic wars.
Marcus Brutus, once leader of the assassins, now leader of armies.
Marcus Lepidus, Pontifex Maximus and man who thought Caesar a living God.
Octavian Caesar, adopted son of Caesar and heir to his fortune.
Yes, it was a motley crew. One might dare say nonsensical. But they were all great commanders, and great leaders.
Caesar first split his massive empire into smaller districts, which he called Rex's (King in Latin). Augur Caesar created five of them.
Greece and Anatolia, ruled by Brutus
Gaul, ruled by Octavian
Africa, ruled by Antony
Hispania, ruled by Lepidus
Italia, ruled by Caesar himself.
These five were the first blocks of the puzzle to the new Roman government the Augur hoped to construct. However, there were three levels to the new system of Roman government. From smallest to largest, it went:
Comitatus, a small district usually centered around a city or town ruled by a Numerare.
Regio, several Comitatus' grouped together into a larger bit of land, ruled usually but not always from a local fort. These were run by Procurators.
Rex, which was all the Regio in one of the five places grouped together, run by a Governor.
Comitatus, Regio, Rex. The new levels of Roman government. And unlike previous positions, which were not hereditary (at least not legally), these were inherited titles that could be passed down or given out by the Augur.
Then, Caesar gave the ability for extra-state wars, or wars that were fought against outside combatants, to the leaders of each Rex. They had the ability to go on separate campaigns, so that they may expand the domain of the great and growing empire and bring in wealth.
Now, this all smelled of monarchy. It also looked like it, tasted like it, sounded like. It was monarchy, in a new and sleek form. Why were the people of Roman, known for overthrowing Tarquenius Superbus, now just letting a King walk in and rule the place?
As said before, Rome had been in constant strife for a century now. The people wanted bread, money and peace. Caesar handed all of those, other then peace, out in droves. Peace wasn't needed if you had bread and money.
So the people of Rome were loyal, and happy to have a competent leader at their helm. And make no mistake, for the first ten years, all the way up to 34 B.C.E, he was not only an effective leader but a brilliant one. In the first two years, Caesar set about codifying Roman law, and changing it, so that his lawmakers would all work from the same book. Set about to the task was a young Roman lawyer by the name of Virgil.
Virgil was a prodigy. Originally a poet of sorts, he chose to head into law instead when he saw the desperate legal state of the empire. He became a brilliant lawyer, even teaching the future historian Titus Livy, who would catalog the last days of Rome.
Livy was the greatest legal mind in all of Rome at the time, so when Caesar called upon him to help untangle Roman law, he jumped into it. Over the course of two years, he was able to create a far better code of laws for Rome to follow. Called The Lawbook, The Lex Liber, it was a canon of new Roman laws that would apply to all Romans. Notably, it fully outlined the punishments of bribery, adultery (ironic, considering Caesar was a fan of this), treason, desertion. Many things were outlined in this. However, some of the stranger and odder things came through as well.
For example, while women already enjoyed close to no freedom in the Roman world, Lex Liber codified it. Divorce was illegal, unless started by a man. Women could no longer own property, vote, be in senate, control their own money. Women had few social abilities, could not participate in open debates, and could not enter in too many of the legal professions. They were regulated to the role of birthing the next generation, and to the role of mothers.
It should be noted, that most of these were not laws before Lex Liber. Women, while not even being close to equal, did enjoy a few more little abilities then this. First of all, they could divorce. They could theoretically own property, though I wouldn't say it was real ownership. Before this, they could inherit property, just not run it. Lex Liber forbade female inheritance. While voting was never open to women, the Lex Liber seemed to put forward that Roman women were not even citizens. Caesar himself found the laws on women to be slightly weird and a bit horrendous, but in need of a new law book, he passed the Lex Liber into effect around 41, 40 B.C.E. It had wide ranging effects on the empire, stabilizing it and also drawing massive criticism from women in Gaul, Germania and Hispania. They were simply ignored, as was supposed to be done now, but many Roman men saw these new laws as strange.
And one woman in particular found them horrid, evil and insane.
Cleopatra was the Pharaoh of Egypt during this time, and it is documented that she had a fling with Caesar. However, different from his other flings, Cleopatra was someone he always spoke highly of, physically and mentally. Not only did he see her as beautiful, he saw her as clever, smart, a great talker and listener, and a great queen and friend (with benefits). They most likely had a fling of some kind until Caesars death, but this is just the tip of Cleopatra Radea, or Cleopatra the Living Ra. During this time, she oversaw a rebirth of both Egyptian culture and religion. She strengthened the state of Egypt in most ways, though the economy faltered here and there, and she put Egypt back on the map. Not that it had fallen off.
Cleopatra was also a dominant personality. To Romans, she was a beautiful seductress, who used her stunning beauty to wrap men around her finger and enslave them. She was a snake, who used the powers of strange desert deities to strangle Roman armies, destroy Roman towns, kill Roman babies, and eat Jewish children (no one is sure why this last one was so prominent, but Brutus even once wrote about it to Lepidus).
Of course, reality immediately clashes with this, and also supports it somewhat sometimes. First, Cleopatra was not especially beautiful by what iconography we have of her. She was a fairly normal looking Greco-Egyptian woman, with slightly tanned but pale skin. She even looked somewhat homely, by the standards of the time. Now, it was true that she drew men who knew her, to her.
Caesar higher praise for no other woman. Cleopatra, as described previously, sounded like a perfect friend (with benefits) to the Augur, who found her to be a truly incredible partner. Such high praise from a man who thought himself a god is quite incredible. She was also a fairly good ruler, though an iron fisted absolute monarch in all ways.
Cleopatra was probably not a womanist, as later Christian Priestess' would paint her, but she was outraged at the new Roman laws. She said so, to the Augur, who was quite angry but not surprised. In the end, he valued her relationship so much that Caesar gave special exemptions to Egyptian women, who would operate under the social law of Egypt.
Either way, with one foreign power satiated, Caesar had to turn to another. The Parthians. Foes of Rome since before Caesar had conquered Gaul, they were constantly harassing the Roman Rex of Greekatolia (the combination of Greek and Anatolia used by Caesar himself as a shorthand). Not only that, but the King of the Parthians, Arsaces XXI, was a devout Zoroastrian who believed it was part of his mission to spread the good word all across the world. However, he was against a cunning foe.
Brutus was a good general, who started to defeat and conquer parts of the empire. His success was short, but good. Arsaces XXI backed up and away, waiting to strike.
Of course, the ten year Pax Romana, in which peace was held across the empire, could not last. All four of the Governors were going on fairly large campaigns outside of their domain, and the fist to falter was Octavian. Though a brilliant military leader, he was told by the Augur himself to go and sail to the island of Britannia, so as to conquer and bring the island under Roman rule.
Why would Caesar want to conquer such a remote island? Well, Caesar had effectively failed to take very much of the island. He invaded in 54 B.C.E, attempting to take as much of the island as he could. This was an unmitigated failure, and saw him gain a beachhead near Kert*. He tried again in 53 B.C.E, and while he made more progress, advancing all the way to the Tamyse River*, he didn't make that much, with his lasting legacy now being what is called Roman-Albion, which is only the city of Londinium*.
Caesar hated losing. He hated it more then anything on this earth, and if anything made him lose, he would go out and rectify it. Usually through war. But now as Augur, Caesar had to stay home and keep an eye out on the city, and Italy. So, he demanded that his adopted son Octavian go out to Britannia (this is what the Romans called Albion* before the collapse of the empire. We will refer to it as it's name of Albion from here on out.) and conquer the tribes of the island.
This would be a massive undertaking, one that Octavian was not exactly excited about. Octavian saw the island as holding no real strategic advantage, and he thought (privately) that Caesar was just obsessed with his inability to please the crowds back home in a way he wanted, and his inability to conquer the people. First of all, Octavian knew that it would require a fairly large army. Octavian had read about the ferocity of the Albans*, and had heard of their ferocious and somewhat bloody nature from Gauls and Germanics in his armies. At minimum, Octavian estimated that he would require about ten legions to pacify even a suitable portion of the island.
Octavian had to raise those legions himself. He ruled over the most sparsely populated section of the empire. Before the Gallic Wars, Gaul had about 5 million souls living and breathing there, free of Roman rule. However, after Caesar conducted a brutal campaign, about 1 million had died, and 1 million had been enslaved. Octavian had to somehow create an army of 50,000 from a core population of about 1.5 million eligible men, and many of them might refuse service, since many still actively remembered the Gallic Wars. To say little of the young, fit and ready to fight men. They were dead set on not fighting, and Octavian knew that many had already formed small resistance groups to oppose Roman rule.
Octavian also knew that forced conscription was an incredibly bad idea, but with nobody wanting to join and not wanting to disappoint his adopted father (records show Octavian genuinely loved Caesar and looked up to him, and that Caesar loved Octavian), Octavian took his three Roman legions, and sent them about trying to raise seven more. It took a whole three years to gather the army necessary, and while this was happening, we must not forget another important aspect.
No it isn't the navy. Contrary to popular belief, the navy part just required time, money and a little bit of hard work, all of which Octavian had.
No, Octavian had a bigger problem. The disparate religious foundations that made Gaul made it near impossible to unify them under one pantheon, and it made it actually impossible for any of them to want to unify under Romes pantheon. These people had no concept of Hellenization, though they probably knew what Greece was, in a more esoteric sense. They didn't care about the Hellenized Gods, nor did they see them as Gods at all. Not that the Celts of Gaul had no care for Romes pantheon. Evidence points out that some gods, like Jupiter and Apollo, made their way into Gaul.
But the non uniformity of these tribes meant that no real religious call could be made. Plus, many of them had female war gods, something the Romans found strange and frightening. Though Gaul was not as known for this as Albion was, warrior women appeared in all Celtic cultures, and this was a serious no-no in Rome.
So, Octavian had to raise an army, build a fleet, and unite a people who hated him for existing. Tall order, but brilliant in all fashions, Octavian took a page from the book of Caesar. Not that it worked.
He tried to style himself a God among them, but the Gauls were far more angry then he thought. Something would have to give, eventually.
Yet, a new crisis was about to grip the empire. All thanks to the Lex Liber.
The Crisis of the Patricians.
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