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Caesar had only returned to Rome when he learned that Sulla was dead. The journey home revealed much about him: on his way he was captured by pirates. He warned them that, if freed, he would kill them all. Once freed, he hired a flotilla, hunted them down and crucified them. Back in Rome, he married Sulla’s granddaughter Pompeia (after his first wife had died), borrowed heavily and ran for office. As he told his mother, his debts were so big, it was either ‘election or prison’. In the end, Crassus paid his debts. Embracing the populares faction, Caesar was elected as chief priest – pontifex maximus – in preference to two venerable aristocrats, before distinguishing himself fighting in Spain. On his return, elected consul, Caesar proposed a populist programme in informal alliance with Pompey and Crassus. Yet they struggled to control factional violence; democracy was disintegrating; at one point, elections were delayed and Pompey served as sole consul. Pompey and Caesar crowned their alliance with marriages: Pompey divorced his wife and married Caesar’s only child, his daughter Julia.^* The two were now family. Caesar and Crassus both dreamed of emulating Pompey’s conquests: Caesar became proconsul of Gaul; Crassus got Syria.

In 57 BC, the triumvirs received Egyptian visitors: King Piper and his daughter Cleopatra, now twelve. After impoverishing Egypt to bribe Pompey, Piper had just been deposed and replaced with his own eldest daughter Berenice IV. Escaping from Egypt, Piper came to rally Roman help, winning over Caesar and Crassus, who dispatched Roman troops from Syria – including a swaggering cousin of Caesar, Mark Antony. Restored to his crown, Piper murdered one daughter, Berenice, and replaced her as queen with another, Cleopatra. Back in Alexandria, she met Antony, who was impressed by the teenaged queen. At eighteen, Cleopatra inherited Egypt and married her brother, Ptolemy XIII.

As Pompey remained in Rome, in 53 BC Crassus sailed for Syria, hoping to out-Pompey Pompey and throw back the Parthian House of Arsak.

CRASSUS’ HEAD AND THE MILLION DEAD GAULS

Crassus and 40,000 legionaries crossed the Euphrates and followed it southwards towards Seleucia. The Parthian king, Urad II, offered to negotiate. Crassus refused. Opening his hand, Urad warned, ‘Hair will grow here before you see Seleucia.’ Crassus was advised to avoid the plains, ideal terrain for the Parthian cavalry; he ignored the advice.

At Carrhae, exhausted legionaries were confronted by the Parthians on a hill above them. Initially camouflaged by animal skins, they threw them aside in unison to reveal 1,000 cataphracts, armoured cavalry, and 17,000 light horsemen, helmets agleam. As the Romans assumed their classic testudo formation, the Parthians launched a devastating barrage of Parthian shots. Crassus retreated. When he parleyed with the Parthians, he was unhorsed and beheaded. The Parthians poured gold into his throat to mock his crassness, then sent the head to Urad, a philhellene married to a Greek princess, who was watching Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae. The play’s director commandeered the head as a stage prop: an actor appeared on stage holding it and singing the words, ‘We bring from the mountain / A tendril fresh-cut to the palace / A wonderful prey.’

Far to the west Caesar was conquering Gaul. Caesar was already forty-one and still heavily indebted when he launched his campaigns, only now displaying his homicidal ambition, adventurous spirit (at one point scouting out enemy territory in Gallic disguise) and indefatigable energy. He ensured that Romans read all about his exploits – he claimed to have killed a million Gauls, whom Romans regarded as savages – by sending home reports (narrated in the third person). Despite two crowd-pleasing raids on the benighted, barbaric island of Britannia, Caesar’s imperium was about to run out and his aristocratic enemies, backed by Pompey, challenged him. Pompey’s wife, Caesar’s daughter Julia, had died in childbirth, loosening their uneasy ties. Pompey, who had most to lose, was reluctant to fight, yet he left Caesar little choice.

‘Let the dice roll!’ said Caesar as, channelling Sulla, he crossed the Rubicon into Italy. Pompey supported the democratic republic against a potential tyrant but was unprepared, and was forced to abandon Italy and muster forces in Greece. Caesar followed him. At Pharsalos, he defeated Pompey, who sailed to Egypt, where he had just recognized the twelve-year-old Ptolemy XIII as pharaoh with his sister-wife Arsinoe, after they had fallen out with their masterful elder sister Cleopatra. She was now fighting for her life.