In 46 BC the Roman Senate formally recognised Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV as rulers and friends of the Roman people. Caesar had arranged for Auletes to be granted the same status in 59 BC for precisely the same reasons. According to Suetonius, he also lavished presents on the queen, but the most important gain she made was this confirmation of her rule. It was not too long ago that prominent Romans, including Caesar, had talked of annexing Egypt as a province. Cyprus had actually been taken, and although Caesar had given this back to her, there was no absolute assurance that he would not change his mind.8
He and the queen had been lovers in Egypt, at a time when both were threatened by forces loyal to her brother. It would have been only natural if she were worried that his support would not necessarily continue more than a year later. If she had heard the stories about Caesar’s other affairs, then Cleopatra’s concern would naturally have grown. Perhaps she felt that Caesarion would help to confirm the bond between them, although if she understood Roman law and society to any extent then this would have been less reassuring. In the event, she must have been more than satisfied with the visit to Rome. On a personal level it was clear that strong affection – perhaps genuine love – remained. This could well have been deeply important to the twenty-three-year-old queen. Yet in the end the most essential thing was the political endorsement and assurance that her rule would continue with the full backing of Rome.
In return, Caesar gained a stable Egypt, unlikely to rebel or to let its resources fall into the hands of a Roman rival. No doubt Caesar also enjoyed having the queen near him again. The months spent with her after the Alexandrian War represented the only real rest he had had for well over a decade. In addition, Cleopatra brought with her specialist assistance for some of his projects. Rome’s lunar-based calendar of 355 days relied on adding an extra month on alternate years, but the system had been neglected and abused for a long time and was now hopelessly out of tune with the natural seasons. Caesar replaced it with the Julian calendar – the month of his birth was renamed July in his honour. Apart from a minor readjustment, this is the calendar of 365 and a quarter days that we still use today. Much of the work on this project was carried out for him by Sosigenes, an astronomer from the Museum at Alexandria. Inspiration, and perhaps actual assistance, came from Alexandria for another project, namely the creation of grand public libraries, one containing Latin and the other Greek literature, in Rome.9
Caesar left in November for the Spanish campaign. Cleopatra and the royal party may already have begun the journey home before this. If not, then they left soon afterwards, for there was no reason for them to stay in Rome in the absence of the dictator. There is no evidence for the frequent assumption that she remained in the city for eighteen months and it seems highly unlikely that she would have been willing to be absent for so long from her own realm. Perhaps the party visited Cyprus on their way back, but this is pure conjecture.
THE IDES OF MARCH
Caesar returned from Spain late in the summer of 45 BC, but did not enter Rome itself until October, when he celebrated a fifth triumph. In the past these ceremonies had at least nominally been over foreign enemies – for instance, the African triumph was over King Juba rather than his Pompeian allies. This time it was blatantly a celebration of the defeat of other Romans. Even so the crowds turned out to cheer. The Senate had decreed no less than fifty days of public thanksgiving, something never before openly given for a victory in a civil war.10
More and more honours were voted to Caesar. He was made dictator for ten years in 46 BC, and for life in 45, and allowed to be consul simultaneously for ten consecutive years. On top of formal powers there were monuments and statues, creating a status that seemed more than human and came close to divinity. Caesar is supposed to have refused some of the most sycophantic awards, but still accepted many others. Most were well within the traditions of honouring successful generals and statesmen, but in combination these were on a massively greater scale. There were also generous rewards to his followers. Two of his legates were granted triumphs for the Spanish campaign, and there was no precedent for anyone apart from the army commander receiving such an honour. In addition, Caesar resigned his sole consulship for 45 BC and had two of his followers elected as replacement or suffect consuls for the remaining months of the year. One of these men died on 31 December and Caesar held a fresh election to elect another replacement for the remaining hours of the day. Cicero joked that this man was so vigilant that he did not even sleep during his term of office. Privately, he and others were outraged at such cavalier treatment of the senior magistracy.11
Caesar had little patience with formality and tradition, in part because of his temperament and the habit of commanding an army and issuing orders, but also because there was so much to do in very little time. There was an enormous programme of land settlement to provide for his discharged veterans and the unemployed and impoverished citizens living in Rome itself. Caesar was determined to carry this out without the confiscation and upheaval of Sulla’s colonisation programme. Few people objected to what Caesar was doing, and most of his reforms were seen to be sensible and for the good of the Republic. Yet they did resent the way he rushed everything through. Cicero found himself being thanked by cities in the provinces whose petitions had been granted in Senate meetings at which he had supposedly been present, but which as far as he could tell had never occurred.12
Caesar once said that the ‘Republic is nothing, merely a name without body or shape’, and his behaviour in these months did show a lack of concern about appearances and convention. He possessed supreme, personal and permanent power. So far he had studiously avoided the name and symbols of Rome’s ancient kings, but he had accepted the right to dress in the manner supposedly adopted by the kings of nearby and long-vanished Alba Longa, from whom he claimed descent. On 26 January 44 BC, he celebrated the festival of the Latin games, much of the ceremony being performed on the Alban Hills outside the city. As he processed back, the crowd hailed him as ‘king’. Rex was a family name as well as a title, so he simply responded by saying that he was, ‘Not king, but Caesar.’13
Yet incidents continued that made many people unsure — especially if they were senators who resented his power. On 15 February came the Lupercalia festival in which his fellow consul Mark Antony played a key role. On that day he acted as the leader of the priests of Lupercal, who according to the ancient rite raced through the heart of the city clad only in a leather loincloth, and flicking a goatskin whip at anyone they passed. This was considered lucky, especially for women, increasing the chances of pregnancy and making a safe and easy birth more likely. Caesar was sitting on a raised platform in the special ornate chair awarded to him by the Senate and at the end of the ceremony Antony ran up to him. The almost naked consul was holding a royal diadem, which he offered to the dictator. Caesar refused, prompting cheers from the watching crowd. Antony offered the crown again and the cheering increased when the dictator once again refused to accept kingship. Afterwards, he had the diadem placed in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, because the god was Rome’s only king.
It was a strange episode, and while almost everyone agrees that it was deliberately staged, there is less consensus over its purpose and inspiration. Most are reluctant to believe that Antony acted on his own initiative and suspect that Caesar knew at least in broad outline what was going to happen. Even at the time, no one seems to have been sure whether the whole thing was intended to reassure people that he did not want to be king or, as cynics would see it, was testing the water to see whether or not public opinion would approve. If it was intended to convince public opinion that Caesar had no ambition to be king, then it certainly failed.14
The year had started well for Antony and his family. His brother Caius was praetor, having survived his captivity during the civil war, and his other brother, Lucius, was tribune. The Antonii were doing well with the promise of more to come. Antony and Caius could both expect to go out to govern provi
nces after their magistracies. It is possible that the dictator had already allocated the important province of Macedonia to his fellow consul. Caesar himself also planned to leave Rome and expected to be away for three years. He would go first to fight the Dacians on the Danube, before going east to lead a grand invasion of Parthia and finally get revenge for the defeat of Crassus.15
Caesar planned to lay down his consulship before he left, allowing a suffect consul to replace him. He had already nominated the consuls and half the praetors for the next two years. Caesar’s choice for suffect consul was Dolabella, showing his renewed faith in him. It was probably also no coincidence that this would mean that two of his most distinguished supporters would hold office after he left. However, to set against this, the consuls for the next year were loyal Caesareans, but by no means distinguished in family or personality. Although the dictator nominated the consular candidates he still went through the formality of letting the people vote for his choices. When the Popular Assembly filed into the saepta to sanction Dolabella’s election, Antony used his powers as augur to see a bad omen in the heavens and halt the proceedings. Caesar could not fully control Antony, who was an important man in his own right, and was determined to continue his vendetta against his adversary from 47 BC.16
Rivalries still continued between Roman senators, but the normal rhythm of public life was suspended. Cicero despaired of a Republic where the courts barely met and the Senate fawned on a dictator who privately made virtually every key decision with his advisers. Many could understand such a suspension of normality if it was temporary. Servilia’s son Brutus had met Caesar on his way back from Spain in 45 BC and had then hoped that ‘he was going over to the good men’. Cicero did not believe this, and Brutus soon changed his mind.17
It did not matter that Caesar ruled well, or that he spared and promoted his opponents – both Brutus and Cassius were praetors for 44 BC and could realistically expect the consulship in a few years’ time. The most fundamental principle of the Republic was that no one individual should hold permanent supreme power. Caesar now blatantly possessed this and showed no sign at all of resigning – in fact, he called Sulla a ‘political illiterate’ for retiring from the dictatorship. His title did not really matter. Many Romans, especially amongst the propertied classes, loathed the name of king, but Caesar had monarchic powers whatever his title and they hated this even more.18
Marcus Junius Brutus – technically, after his adoption by his uncle he was named Quintus Caepio Brutus, but his earlier name is more usually used – was the son of the formidable Servilia and had long been recognised as one of the up and coming men of the new generation of senators. His father had been executed by Pompey in 78 BC as one of the supporters of Lepidus – the father of Caesar’s consular colleague in 46 BC. Brutus refused even to speak to Pompey until he joined him at the start of the civil war. He was much closer to Caesar and was to have married his daughter Julia until the betrothal was severed and the girl married to Pompey instead. Brutus was a year or two older than Antony. His character was sober and overtly respectable, although it is claimed that he also had an affair with Cytheris before she became Antony’s mistress. Caesar said that ‘Whatever Brutus wants, he wants badly’, and an incident during Cicero’s term as governor of Cilicia confirms this. Having loaned money to the city of Salamis on Cyprus at 48 per cent interest – four times the legal rate of 12 per cent – he badgered a succession of governors to give his agent troops and let him extract the payment by force.19
Brutus idolised his mother’s half-brother Cato, pursuing a similar dedication to stern philosophy. Cato not only refused to surrender and accept Caesar’s mercy after the defeat of the Pompeians in Africa, but also took his own life in a spectacularly gruesome manner. He tried and failed to stab himself to death with a sword, and his son brought a surgeon and had his wounds treated and bound up. Left alone to sleep, Cato ripped the stitches apart and pulled out his entrails with his own hands.20
In contrast, Brutus surrendered after Pharsalus, was welcomed by Caesar and subsequently given office. Guilt fuelled his adulation of his uncle. He wrote a book praising Cato and persuaded Cicero to do the same. Caesar made no attempt to restrain them, but did reply with his own Anti Cato, which took the form of a vicious attack on his character in the most scurrilous tradition of Roman invective. Brutus also divorced his wife and married Cato’s daughter – and his cousin – Porcia, the widow of Bibulus. Nagged by the years of gossip about Caesar and his mother, and driven by the stern example of his uncle and the family boast that an ancestor had forced out the last of Rome’s kings almost five hundred years before, Brutus began to want badly’ to remove the dictator.21
He had three sisters, married respectively to Cassius, Lepidus and Servilius Isauricus, Caesar’s colleague in the consulship in 48 BC. This reinforced his mother’s closeness to Caesar and suggested that his future was bright. Cassius was also doing well, although he was said to have been bitter because Brutus was preferred to him for the office of urban praetor in 44 BC. He had been Crassus’ quaestor in the invasion of Parthia and had led the survivors of the disaster back to Syria and then repulsed an enemy raid that reached Antioch. Cassius had made a good deal of his own leadership at this time of crisis.22
Brutus and Cassius were the leaders of a conspiracy of some sixty senators. These included other former Pompeians, but also some disillusioned Caesareans: Caius Trebonius had been suffect consul in 45 BC, and Decimus Brutus – Marcus Brutus’ cousin – was promised the consulship for 42 BC. Both had served Caesar loyally and well in Gaul and the civil war and had been rewarded accordingly. Their motives were mixed, but all of the conspirators had a deep sense that it was wrong for the Republic to be dominated by one man. Most genuinely believed they were acting for the good of Rome. They would not have been Roman senators had they not also been aware that the men who killed the tyrant could expect to be amongst the leaders of the Republic in the immediate future.
Trebonius had cautiously sounded Antony out in the summer of 45 BC when the latter was going to meet Caesar, hoping that he might join the conspiracy. Antony refused, but said nothing to the dictator. Perhaps he misunderstood or felt that it was just an old friend complaining and letting off steam, uttering threats that were never fully serious. Brutus was adamant that no one apart from Caesar should be killed and forced those who wished to murder Antony as well to give in. If only the dictator died, then perhaps everyone would realise that this was necessary for the Republic and no new conflict would result.23
The conspirators knew that they had limited time before Caesar left the city to begin his campaign. He was readily accessible, for early in the year he had dismissed the bodyguard of Spanish soldiers that had protected him since his return from the Munda campaign. Caesar either did not take the reports of plots seriously or no longer cared very much, and most probably felt that showing supreme self-confidence at all times was the best way of preserving his regime.24
After his death rumours would circulate of various things he had planned to do, as the dispute between his supporters and killers escalated into a new civil war. One of the more bizarre was the claim that he wanted to be allowed to marry as many women as he liked for the purpose of producing children. Cleopatra, Caesarion and presumably Ptolemy XIV had come to Rome for a second visit some time late in 45 or early in 44 BC. Caesar had drawn up a new will after returning from Spain, which made no mention of Caesarion, which does not suggest that he was planning such a break with Roman law and tradition. Perhaps he wanted to spend time with his lover, but once again the main reason was doubtless political. For the planned Parthian expedition, grain from Egypt would be a major source of supplies for the Roman army –just as Auletes had helped to support Pompey during his eastern campaigns.25
The presence of the queen, once again installed in Caesar’s villa across the river, may have made the dictator seem even more like a Hellenistic king. It was an extra provocation, but a minor one and, even if she had n
ot been in Rome, the conspirators would surely have acted in the same way. Suggestions that Cleopatra was a major influence on Caesar’s thinking and policies make little sense, and even in the propaganda war after his death were a minor thread. Appian tells us that he had a statue of her placed next to the one of the goddess Venus in the Temple of Venus Genetrix and that it was still there a century and a half later. This building was the centrepiece of the new Forum Julium and Caesar had vowed to build it before the Battle of Pharsalus if his ancestor the goddess brought him victory. The Forum was not actually complete in 44 BC and Dio tells us that Augustus brought at least one statue of the queen back to Rome thirteen years later, so it may be that Appian was confused. On the other hand, the statue may have been one of the goddess, or of Isis, who was often equated with her, and simply been modelled on Cleopatra, rather than formally an image of her.26
While in Rome, Cleopatra seems to have copied her father’s example and cultivated important Romans with gifts. Cicero went to visit her, but never received the books he was promised and bitterly resented having to pay court to a foreign queen. Perhaps senators also felt that they could gain Caesar’s favour through her, although how far this was true is impossible to say.27
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