Cesare, Pompeo e Crasso. Tres faciunt collegium rem publicam invadere (Liv. per. 103): sulla natura giuridica e gli effetti del I Triumvirato e l’iniustum bellum Parthicum

Was the so-called first Triumvirate, of 60 BC, between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, really just a private pact between the three most powerful men of the time? By applying to this private pact some of the principles that regulated the functioning of the collegia, this work tends to demonstrate that, in reality, that pact generated an elite collegium, essentially illicit, because it aimed to seize control of the republican institutions («rem publicam invadere», Liv. per. 103), for the realization of the personal political aims of the triumvirs and, moreover, for the realization of Caesar's power project: Caesar, in fact, by reconciling Pompey and Crassus in a single alliance, managed to exploit their rivalry to his advantage. On the other hand, however, this triumviral alliance ensured a certain stability to the political-constitutional system, avoiding a new civil war between Pompey and Crassus; this new political-constitutional ‘balance’, however, was very precarious, because it had replaced the traditional constitutional principle of concordia ordinum with a new concordia triumvirum, based on the delicate personal balances between the triumvirs, in particular those between Pompey and Crassus, which Caesar had to in fact, reconciled again in Lucca in 56 BC. The death of Crassus at Carrhae, in 53 BC, finally definitively dissolved the I Triumvirate, revealing its strictly personal nature, as an élite collegium. The iniustum bellum Parthicum was, therefore, fatal both for Crassus and for the survival of the I Triumvirate, however, some ideas of this government experience probably survived, leaving traces in Caesar's future political-constitutional reform action. The imperialist intent to conquer the Parthian kingdom, however, will also be taken up again by Caesar who, for this purpose, will probably assume perpetual dictatorship, and on the ides of March, of 44 BC, at the dawn of a new attack on the Parthians, it will contribute to his tragic end.