It was the ‘expansion’ of the dictatorship that led to the crisis. Caesar's decision to identify his own real power (unprecedented in its extent) indefinitely with the traditional, constitutional dictatorship was not in reality a matter of choice. The dictatorship was the only instrument that allowed him freedom of action with respect to his followers. Here we shall review the stages through which the ‘revitalisation’ of the dictatorship had been achieved by the beginning of the civil war.

In an aside in the second book of his Commentaries on the civil war, in admirably modest and impersonal style, Caesar reports his own nomination as dictator. Returning home from Spain (August–September 49 bc) he passes through Tarragona, then Narbonne, and finally Marseilles. ‘There he learns that a law had been passed about a dictator, and that he himself had been nominated dictator by the praetor M. Lepidus.’ Apart from the pleasant ‘surprise’ with which Caesar learns that he himself has been nominated to the dictatorship, we should note the constitutional difficulty. According to the current regulations, the dictator had to be nominated by a consul: but in 49 both the consuls, Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Cornelius Lentulus Crus, had fled from Italy with Pompey.