Julius Caesar (2 page)

The wagons thundering past

Through those narrow twisting streets, the oaths of draymen

Caught in a traffic jam…

If a business appointment

Summons the tycoon, he gets there fast, by litter,

Tacking above the crowd. There’s plenty of room inside:

He can read, or take notes, or snooze as he jogs along—

Those drawn blinds are most soporific. Even so

He outstrips us: however fast we pedestrians hurry

We’re blocked by the crowds ahead, while those behind us

Tread on our heels. Sharp elbows buffet my ribs,

Poles poke into me; one lout swings a crossbeam

Down on my skull, another scores with a barrel.

My legs are mud-encrusted, big feet kick me, a hobnailed

Soldier’s boot lands squarely on my toe. Do you see

All that steam and bustle? The great man’s hangers-on

Are getting their free dinner, each with his own

Kitchen-boy in attendance. Those outsize dixies,

And all the rest of the gear one poor little slave

Must balance on his head, while he trots along

To keep the charcoal glowing, would tax the strength

Of a muscle-bound general. Here’s the great trunk of a fir-tree

Swaying along its wagon, and look, another dray

Behind it, stacked high with pine-logs, a nodding threat

Over the heads of the crowd.

Juvenal
(Trans. Peter Green)

Politically the peninsula was torn apart during Caesar’s boyhood by what was called the Social War—the war in which many of the allies of Rome
(socii)
rebelled against the city. They were tired of paying taxes and being sacrificed for Rome while denied the vote by the old reactionaries of the senate, as well as the privileges of Roman citizenship. It was the cry (later to become familiar) of “No taxation without representation!” The war lasted from 91-87 BC, while Caesar was a boy, and cost on a rough estimate 300,000 lives, but by its end some 80,000 new citizens were enfranchised. Its hero was the great soldier Marius, a man of obscure origins but one of the outstanding Roman soldiers: victor in Spain and in Gaul, his life was almost as tumultuous as his nephew Caesar’s was to be. Then, hard on the heels of the social war, came a power conflict between what had gradually become the two main political “parties” in Italy. No parties as such existed in name but distinctions, as between Conservative and Labour, Republican and Democrat, have been in evidence since man became a social and city-dwelling animal. They were very evident in ancient Athens, and since the Romans took almost all their thought, art, political science, science itself, poetry, drama, and philosophy from Greece, it would hardly be surprising if they took their political groupings from the same source.

Although not clearly distinguished by simple names, the two main groups were the
Populates (Demos)
and the
Optimates (Aristoi
). These were not organized political parties as are understood today in the western world, but somewhat vague groupings impelled by somewhat dissimilar aims and objectives. Of course, as always with human beings, their principal aim was the same: power and the control of power by their own group. Wealth and all that it brought with it would automatically follow. In the civil strife between the
Populates
and the
Optimates
the
Populates
were headed by Caesar’s uncle by marriage, Marius, and the
Optimates
by the patrician Sulla. During Marius’ absence in the East and after his death in 86 BC the
Populates
were led by L. Cornelius Cinna.

It was almost certainly Caesar’s widowed aunt Julia who now took a hand in the first major development in his life, for, after breaking off his engagement to Cossutia, he immediately married Cornelia, the daughter of the now all-powerful Cinna. Marriages were very much matters of politics in the Roman world, and the patrician Julian clan had doubly allied itself with the popular party. Caesar, now in his seventeenth year, was young to marry but no doubt his aunt Julia saw the opportunity as too good to miss. In any case, as events would show, he seems to have been genuinely fond of Cornelia. She bore him a daughter in the following year who was called Julia after her clan. She too was to play an important part in the politics of his life.

Six years older than Caesar was a man who embraced the policies of the
Optimates
as zealously as Caesar did those of
the Populates.
This was the great orator and politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero. As a man, a citizen and a politician, Cicero was vain and weak; politically he in many respects resembled the celebrated “Vicar of Bray” in the old English ballad. His real genius was with language; in his letters, his oratorical works, his speculative philosophy, he raised the Latin tongue to the peak of its perfection. His political stand is most clearly seen in a speech written in defense of a man called Sextius, who had been arrested for his involvement in one of the innumerable brawls that disfigured the political face of Rome. The orator paints a dream picture of the party he favored, which never existed in the Rome that he knew and can only have existed in his head.

In the Commonwealth there have always been two parties—the
Populates
and the
Optimates.
The
Populates
say and do what will please the mob. The
Optimates
say and do what will please the best men. And who are the best men? They are of all ranks and infinite in number—senators, municipal citizens, farmers, men of business, even freedmen. The type is distinct. They are the well-to-do, the sound, the honest who do no wrong to any man. The object at which they aim is quiet with honor. They are the conservatives of the State. Religion and good government, the Senate’s authority, the laws and customs of our ancestors, public faith, integrity, sound administration—these are the principles on which they rest, and these they will maintain with their lives. Their path is perilous. The enemies of the State are stronger than its defenders; they are bold and desperate, and go with a will to the work of destruction… The people are conservative at heart; the demagogues cannot rouse them, and are forced to pack the Assembly with hired gangs. Take away these gangs, stop corruption at the elections, and we shall all be of one mind. The people will be on our side. The citizens of Rome are not
Populates,
They hate the
Populates
, and prefer honorable men.

But the patricians who supported the
Optimates
had forgotten nothing, learned nothing, and were every whit as violent and unscrupulous as the party that Cicero castigated. If one conceives of Rome as resembling one of the more notorious South American “Republics” of today, it is possible to gain some idea of the world in which Caesar was born and grew up.

2

Beginnings

DURING the seventh and last consulship of Marius, Caesar had been observed by the great man (he was a friend of his uncle’s adopted son) and had been marked out for future advancement.

One of the many victims of the civil war between the
Populates
and the
Optimates
had been the noble L. Cornelius Merula, the
flamen dialis
or priest of Jupiter, who had committed suicide on the victory of the popular party four years before. One of the requirements for filling this office, one of the highest priestly positions in Rome, was patrician birth and the priest must also only marry a patrician; so the decision that Caesar should be
flamen dialis
may have been part of the reason for the breaking of his engagement to Cossutia, for Cinna’s daughter was patrician. However, the office of priest of Jupiter was very ancient, and hedged around by so many traditions and taboos that the man who accepted it was very much a prisoner of his priestly status. He had to wear traditional old-fashioned heavy garments, be “the man of only one woman,” never be absent for more than two consecutive nights from Rome, and, most important of all, never hold any other public office. It is highly unlikely that the austere, peaceful life of a priest would have suited Caesar, and to be debarred from all forms of political or military activity would have effectively castrated his whole career.

He was saved from this by a
volte-face
in Roman affairs, when his father-in-law Cinna was murdered by his own soldiers and the
Optimates
under the leadership of Sulla swept to power after a decisive victory in further civil war. Immediately everything was changed. From being the nephew of the dead Marius, and the son-in-law of the all-powerful Cinna with the expectation of considerable honor, Caesar was now seen as intimately connected with the party that was disgraced and out of power—and Sulla was determined to restore all favors to the aristocrats and the senate. A terrible proscription was organized not only in Rome but throughout Italy. The popular party was to be extirpated, its leading members killed and their property seized. No one, in fact, was safe, as Sulla’s friends were quick to place on the lists of the proscribed the names of their personal enemies. Sulla, appointed dictator so long as he judged necessary, held the whole Roman world in his grasp.

Caesar was soon acquainted with the change of circumstances. His cousin, the young Marius, who had had himself unconstitutionally elected to the consulship in the year of Sulla’s triumph, committed suicide. Caesar, however, had taken no part in politics or the war, being groomed for his future priestly office. But he remained immensely vulnerable, being in the very heart of the Marian-Cinnan network of blood relationships. His youth, his political and military non-involvement, and the very holiness of the office for which he had been intended, may have been the reasons why he was spared when so many others, with no equivalent entanglements, were daily being murdered. Instead of sending orders for Caesar’s execution, the dictator summoned him for an interview, and there seems little doubt that Sulla wished to draw this young patrician into his own party. But there was a condition required for this act of conciliation. He must put away his wife Cornelia and, though this is only guesswork, presumably marry somebody chosen by Sulla.

Few men in Caesar’s position in the Rome of that time would have done anything but renounce their wife and marry any woman that Sulla designated. Caesar’s certainly unexpected reply was to refuse to divorce Cornelia. This may be considered a very brave or a very foolish action, but in any case the effect was the same—he was forced to flee into hiding. At the same time, all the dowry that his wife had brought him and other legacies due to her from her family were confiscated. Caesar became a fugitive in the Sabine country of central Italy. It can hardly have been political wisdom that led to his refusal of the dictator’s offer, and it certainly seems that a young man’s love for his wife put him in such peril. Some evidence of this is that Cornelia was to remain his wife until her death in 69.

Caesar now learned to live as a fugitive. For the first time, in the life of a comfortable, even spoiled young aristocrat, he knew hardship and fear. Suffering from malaria, carried from one hiding place to another, he was captured in the end by one of Sulla’s proscription police, who were combing every district of Italy for those who had been put on the lists of wanted men. As must have happened so many times during that tortured period, he was forced to buy his life from the leader of the patrol who had discovered him with a large bribe. Had he been a poorer man his head would have secured for his captor the bounty hunter’s reward. But Caesar was able to offer more, and resumed his life as a fugitive. No doubt he would have been caught yet again, and this time with no possible redress, but the intercession of his noble relatives at the court of the dictator, and even of the Vestal Virgins, finally prevailed on Sulla to remove him from the death list—although perhaps it was intimated that he would do well to leave Italy. Sulla revealed that he had observed Caesar closely and had disapproved of much that he saw. As Dio Cassius records it, he remarked: “Beware of this youth who wears his girdle so loosely fastened.” This was a comment on the fact that Caesar affected what was considered a rather effeminate style of dressing with a loose belt, and fringed sleeves to his wrists. Then, as always, he paid a great deal of attention to his appearance, having superfluous hair removed with tweezers and the hair on his head elaborately arranged. Possibly apocryphal is Suetonius’ story that Sulla, granting his pardon, remarked to the suppliants: “Keep him since you so wish, but I would have you know that this young man who is so precious to you will one day overthrow the aristocratic party, which you and I have fought so hard to defend. There are many Mariuses in him.”

It was clearly prudent for Caesar to remove himself as far as possible from Rome, and an appointment was found for him on the staff of M. Minucius Thermus, the propraetor of Asia. At that time it was customary for Roman generals stationed away from Italy to have on their staff a number of well-bred young men, without any special military knowledge, who could provide some cultured company while at the same time seeing for themselves something of the world, of action, and the governance of foreign provinces. They were also sometimes used on diplomatic and other missions in connection with the work of Empire. In 81, when Caesar joined his staff, the propraetor was engaged on the task of punishing the citizens of Mitylene, capital of the island of Lesbos, for their rebellion against the Romans in the wars inspired by Mithridates the Great. The aim of this famous king of Pontus, the northeastern district of Asia Minor, was—and was to remain for many years—the expulsion of the Romans from all Asia. (Mithridates was to remain a thorn in the Roman side for much of Caesar’s life.) The young man’s first mission from his general was to travel to the kingdom of Bithynia, part of which bordered on the Black Sea, and ask its ruler to expedite the dispatch of his fleet, which he had promised for the Mitylene blockade.