Heraklia, if you have access to Shackleton-Bailey's translations of Cicero's Letters to Friends, Volume I, you will find an illuminating exchange of letters between Cicero and his young friend Rufus Caelius. Cicero was governing Cilicia, at the time, and Caelius was in Rome.

Included in one of the letters are transcripts of Senate resolutions relating to Caesar's expiring term in the Gauls and Illyricum. Moreover, Caeilius explains the impasse and looks ahead to the likelihood of war. The legislative impasse had begun in 51 when efforts to reallocate provinces in toto were vetoed by tribunes in Caesar's pocket. As a result, no provinces received new governors. Naturally, Cicero was especially interested in when a new governor would be posted to Cilicia. Cicero was, to the say the least, a reluctant governor. He preferred being in Rome. Caelius explains that the impasse will repeat itself without resolution. Someone will propose reallocation of all the provinces, only to have the proposal vetoed by a tribune in the pay of Caesar. Indeed, this is what happened. Caelius also reports Senate debate, quoting Pompey and others.

So what we have in these letters is almost a transcript of Senate proceedings. Interestingly, Caelius went to Caesar's camp when the Civil War began, leaving with the tribunes Antony and Trebatius when they fled Rome. In any event, I highly recommend that you read these letters and decide for yourself whether Caesar was negotiating in good faith or in bad.

I do wholly agree with Demetrios, by the way, about the likelihood of any law remaining law for long, especially as it related to Caesar. There is no question that Caesar faced enemies who were ready to go to any length in order to decapitate his career. So it is quite possible that Caesar's enemies would sally forth with pretexts for postponing elections or reinterpreteting the Law of the Ten Tribunes. On the other hand, we must recognize that Caesar, himself, was desperately searching for pretexts for extending his commands, reserving his legions and escaping prosecutions.

We should also take note that Caesar probably bribed politicians more lavishly in 51 and 50 than ever before. The consul Paullus was able to build a forum with the bribe that Caesar paid him, and Curio paid off all of his sizable debts. Why Caesar would have feared losing the election or being found guilty at trial is beyond me. He had plenty of money, distributed it generously from the lowest levels to the highest and had demonstrated already that his paid politicians were among the best.

On a similar note, Caesar paid each soldier in his legions more than a year's pay when two were recalled to Rome at the time of the Parthian threat. This was in 52 or 51, but it does show that Caesar was busily buying loyalties, if not for his campaign for consul then surely for his march on Rome, which was first rumoured in 51, I believe (or possibly in 50). So again, I believe the facts, as we can determine them, point toward a mental or psychological Rubicon for Caesar months before he stood on the banks of the actual river.

Finally, I really don't subscribe to either of the schools of thought that Heraklia summarised. Either can be supported by available evidence, I suppose, but I find it highly unlikely that Caesar was contemplating the Republic's overthrow when he was a young man. I think of Caesar as an opportunist, and rather an ignoble one. He did have a hand in destroying the Republic, which was an extraordinary political system for its time, and it may well have survived if either Caesar had been defeated or had never lived.