The Book of Ancient Bastards: 101 of the Worst Miscreants and Misdeeds From Ancient Sumer to the Enlightenment

by Brian Thornton

  A member of the patrician Claudius family, Publius Claudius Pulcher changed his name to the more plebeian-sounding Clodius to build his political reputation within the ranks of the populares political party, whose power base was with the common people. Unlike so many other populares politicians, Clodius actually led the common people in a work stoppage while campaigning against Mithridates VI (the ruler of the Greek kingdom of Pontus) under the command of his own brother-in-law, Lucius Licinius Lucullus.

  Portraying himself as “the soldier’s friend,” Clodius negotiated terms with a seething Lucullus that ensured his soldiers would receive their due of land, booty, and plunder—and on a timetable, no less! Lucullus sent him back toward Rome just as quickly as he could.

  No-Talent Bastard Pirate Ransom

  The early first century B.C. was something of a golden age for piracy in the eastern Mediterranean. Publius Clodius Pulcher, as had other young Roman nobles before him, fell into the hands of pirates intent on ransoming him. Sending a message to the king of Cyprus (Rome’s closest ally) requesting he ransom him, Clodius expected the standard fee of twenty talents (a little over 1,400 pounds) of gold to be sent for him, since he was a member of one of Rome’s richest families. Much to Clodius’s embarrassment, the king of Cyprus only sent two talents (a little over 140 pounds) of gold in response. It struck his pirate captors as so funny that this arrogant young Roman could not command so much as his own weight in gold that they set him free without taking anything. Tongues wagged around Rome for years afterward that the only price Clodius paid to be free of captivity was his anal virginity. Several years later, Clodius succeeded in getting the Cypriot king who had so undervalued him deposed and Cyprus converted into a outright Roman possession.

  On the way home, Clodius also got himself appointed commander of another brother-in-law’s fleet of Roman ships, which he promptly lost in battle, getting taken prisoner by the aforementioned pirates in the process.

  Back in Rome, Clodius quickly acquired a reputation as a rake, bedding several married women in succession, including the wife of the still-absent Lucullus!

  A longtime foe of the politician Cicero, Clodius succeeded in getting the great orator exiled (and his expensive hilltop mansion demolished) after Cicero had him put on trial for alleged incest with his own sister. Clodius’s friend and benefactor, the wealthy Marcus Crassus, got Pulcher off by bribing the jury.

  Often a precipitator of street gang violence, Pulcher fell victim to it himself at the hands of the slaves of a rival named Milo in 53 B.C., who stabbed him to death in the street. The result: all hell broke loose. Clodius’s supporters took his body straight into the heart of the Senate House, that symbol of conservative optimates patrician power, built a funeral pyre for him within it, and burned the Senate House down in the process. You can’t help but think how much that showboater Clodius would have appreciated such a spectacle!

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  MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS DIVES

  How Rich Is Rich Enough?

  (CA. 115–53 B.C.)

  O vile, worthless man!

  —Marcus Tullius Cicero

  The irony of the phrase quoted above is that the words were written about the wealthiest man in Rome. Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives (“Dives” being a Latin nickname meaning “rich”) was born to money, lost it in the proscriptions that marked the first phase of Rome’s civil wars, and made it all back and more by taking cynical advantage of those same proscriptions to dispossess other wealthy unfortunates.

  Crassus’s father and brother were killed in a purge, and the family’s considerable property was forfeited to the state, which promptly auctioned it off. It was a lesson the young Crassus never forgot. Coming of age as a supporter of the ruthless, ultimately successful dictator Sulla, Crassus was able to profit from exploiting the system that had dispossessed him when his own family’s enemies had held the levers of power. He quickly amassed a considerable fortune, but that was only a start.

  Crassus rapidly branched out into real estate and slave trading, two booming businesses during the late republican era. He was soon the wealthiest man in Rome and, by extension, the entire Mediterranean world.

  But wealth was not an end in itself to a Roman like Crassus. Rather, it was a means to an end: power. It was Crassus who eventually put down Spartacus’s slave revolt, hoping for a triumph in the Forum. It was Crassus who bribed Roman judges and juries in order to ensure his supporters escaped punishment for their crimes, and Crassus who got a piece of damned near every bit of trading action that took place in republican Rome. It was Crassus who bankrolled a young, ambitious, and flat-broke politician named Julius Caesar in order to bind the younger man to him. It was Crassus who served as the banker in the first triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey.

  And it was Crassus who jockeyed for position with the other triumvirs, bargaining with them to be selected to lead a Roman army east to fight the Persians on Rome’s frontier, hoping, even in his early sixties, to win military glory and with it more permanent political power. In 54 B.C., he got his wish. Too bad his army was crushed at a place called Carrhae.

  History Repeats Itself

  When Crassus got himself captured at Carrhae, the Persians, cognizant of how their neighbor Mithridates VI had executed a corrupt Roman governor a few decades earlier, copied his methods. Mindful of the wealth of the man they had captured, they dispatched “Crassus the Rich” by, fittingly, pouring molten gold down his throat.

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  GNAEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS

  If You’re Going to be the “New Alexander,” Better Prepare for a Messy End

  (106–48 B.C.)

  [Pompey] does not know how to win a war.

  —Gaius Julius Caesar, after the battle of Dhyrrachium

  Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (known in English as “Pompey the Great”) dreamed of aping and even exceeding the deeds of celebrated Macedonian bastard Alexander the Great on the battlefield. Unfortunately, he was, in the words of one contemporary, “the vilest man alive.” The kid first made his mark at the tender age of twenty-three in 83 B.C., raising private legions of soldiers, paying them out of his own pocket, and supporting Sulla in his attempts to wipe out the last of his opponents, the supporters of Gaius Marius.

  Bypassing the traditional Roman steps to public greatness (holding offices such as aedile, questor, and consul) and still employing his own private army, Pompey went on to quickly win a string of bloody victories against Marian adherents from Sicily to North Africa, all before he turned twenty-six. So ruthless was the young man that his opponents gave him the nickname “adulescens carnifex”: “teenaged butcher.”

  Next came a ten-year war to suppress a rebellion in Spain; after that, he swept the Mediterranean clean of the pirates who had plagued Roman commerce for the better part of a century.

  For most of his life, Pompey seemed to be in the right place at the right time. But that luck ran out. At the pinnacle of his power, Pompey made an alliance called the “triumvirate” with Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives, and sealed it by marrying Caesar’s daughter Julia. A decade later, after Crassus’s death in the east, and Julia’s death in childbirth, Pompey allowed himself to be drawn by conservative elements into a confrontation with Caesar, recently returned from conquering Gaul and now the wealthiest and most powerful man in the Mediterranean world.

  Pompey, spurred on by senatorial assurances that he was not only Rome’s “best man” but also the savior of the Republic and all of its sacred institutions, met Caesar in battle first at Dhyrrachium, then at Pharsalus, in Greece. Losing both battles, he fled to Egypt, where he was murdered on the orders of the king, who hoped to curry favor with Pompey’s former father-in-law, the aforementioned wealthiest, most powerful man in the Mediterranean world.

  Bad timing.

  More Marriages than Mickey Rooney

  OK, not really. And ancient Romans had a far more sanguine view of divorce than we moderns tend to. But Pompey was married five times! Each ma
rriage seems to have been motivated by his political career (he married into the family of his rival/ally/rival Caesar, for example, and also into that of the dictator Sulla, and finally into the powerful senatorial family of the Metelli). In the end, none of them could help him defeat Caesar on the field of battle.

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  MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

  No Fool Like an Old Fool

  (106–43 B.C.)

  A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country.

  —Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Augustus)

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (his nickname “Cicero” means “chickpea” in Latin, possibly a reference to his bulbous nose) was the foremost orator and most successful lawyer of his time. A complicated man, he was dedicated to the Republic, yet aware that the Republic’s structure was failing under the weight of its territorial ambitions and her expanding military-industrial complex. Cicero frequently hoped for the best for the Republic while at the same time despairing for her future.

  Before his death in 43 B.C., Cicero would become fabulously wealthy, possessing one of the finest houses in Rome and some of the loveliest country villas in Italy. To his peril, he consistently underestimated opponents—such as the two members of the second triumvirate that succeeded the murdered Caesar: that playboy Marcus Antonius and Caesar’s heir Octavian.

  When Caesar’s great-nephew and heir Octavian visited to pay his respects, Cicero developed a seemingly warm relationship with this suddenly wealthy and influential young orphan who came to refer to him as “Pater” (“Father”) in their discussions. Acting on this, Cicero set Octavian against Antonius, and persuaded the senate to name Octavian a praetor (judge/military commander).

  But, Plutarch notes, “Cicero was led on and cheated, an old man by a young man.” Cicero failed to see that Octavian was making common cause with Antonius, and had acquiesced to Antonius’s insistence that Cicero’s name head the list of any political opponents to be killed in the coming purge. In the end, Cicero failed to take into account just how ruthless a twenty-year-old could be. He would not be the last to do so where Octavian was concerned.

  When Antonius’s killers caught up with Cicero, he bared his neck for them that they might more easily cut his throat (a move ancient gladiators made as a final sign of their courage in the face of impending death). Not a man previously renowned for physical courage, Cicero’s last words are reported to have been: “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.”

  The tragedy of Cicero, a calculating political bastard who overplayed his hand one time too many, is also the tragedy of the end of republican Rome.

  Litigious Bastard

  In ancient Rome, any trial lawyer who successfully prosecuted an officeholder for corruption in office was awarded the criminal’s political status as a reward for getting rid of an enemy of the Republic. When Cicero successfully prosecuted Gaius Verres on corruption charges, he received Verres’s status as a praetor (a combination of a civilian judge and a military commander) as his reward. Not a military man himself, Cicero used his praetorian status, and the perks associated with it, to their fullest extent. These included being able to be heard in a senate debate before anyone without praetorian status. Talk about cutting in line!

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  GAIUS (LICINIUS?) VERRES

  One Man’s Thief Is Another Man’s Art Connoisseur

  (CA. 114–43 B.C.)

  Because all the world knows that Verres is distinguished by nothing except his monstrous offenses and his obscene wealth.

  —Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his oration Against Verres

  Gaius Verres (we think his second name was “Licinius,” but aren’t sure) was a career Roman politician who embodied everything that was wrong with politics during the late republican period in ancient Rome. Working his way up through the ranks of the Republic’s governmental offices to become a praetor (a combination of magistrate and provincial governor), Verres was equal parts art lover and thug.

  Verres determined from an early age to do as so many others were doing at the time: use civil service jobs to cash in. His term serving in the provinces under Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella only reinforced his larcenous inclinations. While working for Dolabella, Verres looted paintings, statues, and golden idols from the temples of subject populations. When Dolabella was eventually prosecuted for extortion, Verres turned states’ evidence in exchange for freedom from prosecution himself.

  On his return to Rome, Verres laid out a huge bribe in order to grease election officials and win office as a city magistrate in charge of settling civil cases. He quickly made back the bribe he’d laid out and then some from kickbacks he received from the litigants who appeared before him. While in office, he also manipulated inheritance laws so that the judge overseeing property transfers (in other words, him) received a fee right off the top before the inherited property could be passed to a decedent’s heirs.

  Verres’s criminal career culminated with his appointment as provincial governor of Sicily in 73 B.C. Sicily at the time was a wealthy province, a trading crossroads and possessed of rich farms and ranches along the island’s massive internal plain.

  Verres helped change all that.

  Apprentice Bastard

  Originally a follower of Gaius Marius, Verres, while still a minor government official, stole a bunch of government funds intended for Marius’s troops and joined up with Sulla, Marius’s opponent, helping bankroll Sulla’s bid to triumph in the civil war against the Marians. Once Sulla was firmly ensconced in power, Verres received the plum job of serving as legatus (a combination of tax collector and army general) in the administration of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, governor of the wealthy province of Cilicia (in Armenia). Dolabella later stood trial for extortion related to his time as governor of Macedonia, so Verres learned at the feet of a master!

  So rapacious that no amount of treasure could sate him, Verres took his habitual larceny to new heights, crucifying victims who refused to allow him to seize their property and possessions. When one village elder refused to let him strip the local temple, Verres chained him to a bronze statue in the middle of winter, naked. The old man didn’t hold out for long.

  But Verres finally went too far. After three years in Sicily, Verres returned to Rome and stood trial for bribery and forgery (in addition to everything else, he was notorious for forging works of art and selling them to rich Romans as antiques).

  For someone with his connections, this would not have usually been cause for concern: his allies controlled the judicial process, and they were sympathetic to his case (this kind of looting was so common, prosecution for it was practically a rite of passage). But Verres had drawn as the prosecutor in his case the foremost courtroom lawyer of the era: Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero systematically demolished Verres’s defense (making a name for himself in the process), so much so that Verres accepted exile and fled to Marseille rather than allow the trial to continue. Decades later, he was executed when he wouldn’t surrender his entire collection of ill-gotten art to the Second Triumvirate (they were short of money).

  Fitting end for a profiteering bastard.

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  GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR

  The Gold Standard of Bastardry

  (CA. 100–44 B.C.)

  I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

  —Gaius Julius Caesar

  Gaius Julius Caesar was renowned not just as a general and politician of the Roman Republic but for his clemency. Time and again, Caesar forgave his enemies and allowed them to prosper, as no other Roman strongman before him had done. His magnanimity would eventually cost him his life, victim of assassination by a handful of senators he numbered among his friends, including several former adversaries whom he had pardoned.

  Yet this open-handed great man was personally responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people during the Roman campaign to subjugate Gaul (modern France).

  Appointed governor of Gallia N
arbonensis (modern-day Provence, in southern France) following his term as consul in 59 B.C., Caesar quickly began to take possession of the unconquered territory of central and northern Gaul by playing the independent Gallic tribes against each other. Over the course of the next six years, Caesar received the submission of no less than 800 cities and towns, defeating the Gauls in battle after battle, until he had subjugated Gaul all the way from Narbonensis in the south to the English Channel in the north.

  In 52 B.C., Caesar made plans to return to Rome in triumph. He didn’t get the chance.

  In response to the call of a charismatic young chieftain named Vercingetorix, the Gauls rose up and killed Roman soldiers and citizens—mostly Roman businessmen looking for “opportunity” of the type that had so enriched their countrymen in the “pacification” (read: looting) of Rome’s eastern provinces. Caesar went on the offensive, striking deep into the heart of Gaul and driving Vercingetorix and several thousand of his followers behind the walls of the heavily fortified city of Alesia.

  Caesar settled in to besiege the city. Vercingetorix settled in to wait out his besiegers, expecting a large Gallic army to move into the area and drive the hated Romans out. When this army, numbering nearly 200,000, appeared, Caesar responded not by breaking camp, but by building a wall around his encampments, and in effect settling in to be besieged himself, even as he continued to besiege Alesia.

  Vercingetorix then drove all noncombatants (women, children, and the elderly) out of Alesia, hoping to extend his food supplies. Caesar, showing himself to be a ruthless bastard, refused to allow these thousands of helpless bystanders through his lines or even to take them as slaves. He let all of them die slowly of exposure or starvation within eyesight of their countrymen still in Alesia.