Augustus showed a certain fear and a healthy respect for the Roman nobility. He remembered what had happened on the Ides of March and he knew that it could happen again. Nor was he the only person in power who thought so.
Early in A.D. 23, on a winter’s day in the reign of Emperor Tiberius Caesar, a magnificent funeral was held in the Roman Forum with all the splendor that the old nobility could still muster. A funeral oration from the Speaker’s Platform was given for the deceased, who had lived into her eighties. She was a great lady and a wealthy widow with a vast fortune. There was the traditional parade of mourners and musicians. Twenty men marched wearing beeswax masks of her noble ancestors, boasting such famous names as Manlius and Quinctius. The only thing missing were the masks of her late husband and her late brother. The emperor forbade them. Tiberius forgave the deceased for not mentioning him in her will although she rewarded many other noble Romans. He would not forgive her family for resurrecting memories better left dead.
The deceased was Junia Tertia, daughter of Servilia, niece of Cato the Younger, half sister of Brutus, and widow of Cassius. Long ago, rumor had linked Tertia to Julius Caesar, claiming she was his mistress. She died on December 31, A.D. 22. With her gone, Rome’s last living link to the men who killed Julius Caesar was cut. By leaving the emperor out of her will, Tertia was not just insulting Tiberius. By saying no to Caesar, she was giving a final salute to the generation that fought to the death rather than surrender the Republic to one-man rule.
That their images were too controversial to display in the Forum says it all about the passion that Brutus and Cassius still inspired, sixty-six years after the Ides of March. They were legends now. Their petty personal motives—their greed, their brutality, and their ambition, their partnership with a turncoat whose act of betrayal dwarfed their own, and their murderous mistreatment of the civilian inhabitants of the provinces were all forgotten. They had been transformed, rendered powerful reminders that as long as men and women remember the names of those who killed Julius Caesar, dictators will not sleep safely.
Acknowledgments
The word gratitude doesn’t begin to express my feelings toward the many people whom I begged, bothered, or buttonholed for help. Thanks to them the book is infinitely better. The faults, of course, remain my own.
I’m deeply indebted to the friends, students, and colleagues who read all or part of the manuscript: David Blome, Judith Dupré, Michael Fontaine, Christopher Harper, Adrienne Mayor, J. Kimball McKnight, Adam Mogelonsky, Jacob Nabel, Iddo Netanyahu, Joel Rudin, Matthew Sears, Timothy Sorg, and Jacob Vaughan. Their advice proved invaluable.
Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Timothy Wilson RA (Royal Artillery) provided expert military advice, which he modestly described as “playing Watson to my Holmes.” It was far more than that.
Of the many scholars who graciously took time from their busy schedules to meet with me and discuss in detail aspects of their work, I would like particularly to thank Annetta Alexandridis, Margaret Andrews, Elizabeth Bartman, Arthur Eckstein, Harriet Flower, Kathryn Gleason, Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, Sturt Manning, Josiah Ober, James Packer, and Barry Weingast. Professor Antonio Monterroso, University of Córdoba, was kind enough to meet with me in Rome and to discuss his work on the place where Caesar was assassinated. Dr. Carl Bazil, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Division of Epilepsy and Sleep, Columbia University, graciously answered my questions about epilepsy and Caesar’s possible medical condition. Brook Manville took part in many stimulating conversations about leadership, ancient and modern. David Blome offered expert advice about battle blades. I am very grateful to Professor Mark Toher, Union College, for sharing unpublished material.
Jacob Nabel and Serhan Güngör were stout-hearted traveling companions to Caesar’s battle sites in France, where we also had the assistance of André Bigotte, and in Turkey. Lorenzo Gasperoni, Giancarlo Brighi, and the Terre Centuriate association of Cesena, Italy kindly arranged a visit to three possible sites of the Rubicon River (whose identification is still debated) as well as to the square grid of territory laid out by Roman surveys outside today’s Cesena which—who knows?—might just be the place where Caesar lost his way in the night before crossing the Rubicon (Suetonius, Julius Caesar 31.2). Steven Ellis joined me on a visit to the basement of Rome’s Teatro Argentina and, thanks to his archaeological expertise, helped make sense of the foundations of the Portico of Pompey. John Guare, Daniel P. Jacobson, and his wife, Lou Jacobson, took part in a memorable visit to the ruins of the Largo Argentina. Carol Warshawsky offered generous hospitality.
Over coffee, on the phone, in emails and even in letters, many friends, students, and colleagues shared their expertise and wisdom, in particular: Stephen Ashley, Patrick Baker, Sandra Bernstein, Emma Blake, Jeffrey Blanchard, Nikki Bonanni, Giovanni Brizzi, Michela De Benardin, Anna Celenza, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, Christopher Christoff, David DesRosiers, Rabbi Mordechai Dinerman, Laurent Ferri, Giovanni Giorgini, Shawn Goldsmith, Stephen Greenblatt, Elizabeth Harper, Richard Hodges, Allegra Iafrate, Donald Kagan, Karl Kirchwey, Eric Kondratieff, Brenda Longfellow, Dwight McLemore, Kathryn Milne, Ian Morris, Claudia Moser, Waller and Jackie Newell, Jan Parker, Catherine Penner, Eric Rebillard, Andrew Roberts, Courtney Roby, Claudia Rosett, Robert Schon, Elizabeth and Jeff Shulte, Rabbi Eli Silberstein, Ramie Targoff, David Teegarden, Rob Tempio, Christian Wendt, Lila Yawn, Bill Zeiser, and M. Theodora Zemek.
I am fortunate to work with wonderful students, colleagues, and staff in the Departments of History and Classics at Cornell University. I gratefully acknowledge the help of Cornell’s John M. Olin Library.
I am deeply grateful to the American Academy in Rome and, in particular, to its current and former directors, Kimberly Bowes and Christopher Celenza, for hosting me as a resident and visiting scholar in 2012 and 2013. The Academy was an ideal community in which to work on this book. With the help of the Academy and thanks to the Soprintendenza Speciale per i beni archeologici di Roma, the Vatican Museums, and Rome’s Teatro Argentina, I was able to visit sites and see objects that would otherwise have been closed to me. I would also like to thank the J. Paul Getty Museum for making various items available for my inspection.
Suzanne Lang helped with logistics and bibliographical support. Sam Mogelonsky redesigned my website and Larry Mogelonsky hosts it.
At Simon & Schuster, I thank my editor, Bob Bender, whose wisdom, judgment, and good sense are matched only by his support, generosity, and sense of humor. I am also grateful to his assistant, Johanna Li, for once again shepherding a project through to completion. My literary agent, Cathy Hemming, has been there every step of the way, with sound counsel, expert knowledge, and friendship.
As always, I thank my family for their help and support. I appreciate their patience over the years measured by successive Ides of March.
And finally, I thank my wife, Marcia. At every point along the way she has shared the journey so completely that this seems to me as much her book as mine.
JULIUS CAESAR. This marble bust shows something of the man’s force and intelligence as well as his wrinkles and sunken cheeks. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
COIN OF JULIUS CAESAR, 44 B.C. The dictator is shown in profile with wreathed head and identified as CAESAR IMPERATOR, that is, as conquering general. (© BnF, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY)
POMPEY THE GREAT. Caesar’s great rival. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
MARK ANTONY. This marble bust shows the soldier-statesman who supported Caesar in all his vigor. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
OCTAVIAN. The man who would later become the emperor Augustus is shown with a beard as a sign of mourning for Julius Caesar. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
BRUTUS. This marble bust is identified by some as a portrait of Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar’s best-known assassin. (Photo, 56.938, DAI–Rom)
CICERO. Rome’s greatest orator was a leading opponent of Caesar. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
ROMAN WOMAN OF THE UPPER CLASSES. Notice her elaborately fold
ed clothing, carefully groomed hair, and calm expression. Gilded Bronze Statue of an unidentified person, late first century B.C., from the Cartoceto Group from Pergola. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
RELIEF OF CLEOPATRA AND CAESARION. Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt. Elsewhere Cleopatra is depicted as a Greek, but here she and her son by Caesar are shown as Egyptians. (HIP/Art Resource, NY)
FORUM OF JULIUS CAESAR. Temple of Venus Genetrix (Venus the Mother) and statue of Caesar on horseback, conception of the artist Olindo Grossi (1909–2002). (© American Academy in Rome 2014)
CASSIUS. A marble bust identified by some as Gaius Cassius Longinus, one of Caesar’s leading assassins as well as Brutus’s brother-in-law. (Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts)
GARDENS AND PORTICO OF POMPEY. As conceived by the Italian artist Augusto Trabacchi (d. 1975). (© American Academy in Rome 2014)
EID MAR. The Ides of March on a silver denarius of Marcus Junius Brutus, who is depicted in profile on one side, with two daggers and a liberty cap on the other side. (© The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY)
THE DEATH OF CAESAR. The legend as depicted in an oil painting from 1867 by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)
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A Note on Sources
I include the main works in English as well as a few essential foreign-language texts. Additional bibliography is available on my website, barrystrauss.com.
INTRODUCTORY
Students of classics and ancient history should have The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) by their side. Excellent maps of the ancient world can be found in Richard J. A. Talbert, ed., The Barrington Atlas of the Ancient Greco-Roman World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Another exceptionally valuable source is Hubert Cancik and Helmut Schneider, eds., Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, English ed., managing editor, Christine F. Salazar; assistant editor, David E. Orton (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002–2010), with an excellent online edition.
For Roman history without tears, see Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (n.p.: BBC Books, 2007). For an introduction to the turbulent era of the Late Roman Republic, see Tom Holland, Rubicon (New York: Doubleday, 2003) or Mary Beard and Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (London: Duckworth, 2009). For a detailed account, see Christopher S. Mackay, The Breakdown of the Roman Republic: From Oligarchy to Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) or J. A. Crook, Andrew Lintott, and Elizabeth Rawson, eds., The Last Age of the Roman Republic, vol. 9 of The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). P. A. Brunt offers an introduction to the societal struggles of the era in Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (New York: Norton, 1971), esp. 1–41 and 112–47.
For the Roman army, see Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003); Kate Gilliver, Adrian Goldsworthy, and Michael Whitby, Rome at War (Oxford: Osprey, 2005); L. J. F. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
The most influential modern book, at least in English, on the transition from the Late Republic to the Early Empire is Sir Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939). The focus is on Augustus but there are also important chapters on Caesar’s last years and on the conspiracy against him. Some of Syme’s themes are the use of personal politics to build power, the irresponsibility of the Late Roman nobility, the key role that Octavian played in stirring up Caesar’s troops against the Senate in 44 and 43 B.C., and the reality of monarchy behind Augustus’s rhetoric of restoring the Republic. For Syme, the end of the Republic was inevitable. Erich Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), argues powerfully for the contrary: that the Republic was thriving and could have continued.
ANCIENT SOURCES
What we make of the conspiracy that killed Caesar depends in large part on what we make of the ancient sources. Robert Etienne brings this point out nicely in his fine book, Les Ides de Mars: la fin de César ou de la dictature? (The Ides of March: The End of Caesar or of the Dictatorship?) (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1973). There are five main ancient sources, in chronological order: Nicolaus of Damascus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. They agree about the overall picture of events but disagree both about certain points of detail and about the motives and relative significance of the various conspirators. Plutarch, who was Shakespeare’s main source, emphasizes the role of Brutus and his idealism. Nicolaus, whom Shakespeare did not read, accentuates the cold-blooded and even cynical motives of the plotters; he also makes Decimus a key character. Earlier scholars tended to discount Nicolaus because he worked for Augustus and so appeared biased. Recently, the work of scholars like Malitz and Toher has rehabilitated Nicolaus as a contemporary and shrewd source, if indeed one who sometimes offers Augustus’s version of events. As Toher argues, Nicolaus was a student of the writings of Aristotle and Thucydides, two of the ancient world’s finest minds when it comes to political analysis. I am convinced that Nicolaus offers information essential to making sense of the assassination.
The five major ancient sources on the conspiracy, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and the aftermath are all available in English translation. Appian, The Civil Wars is translated with an introduction by J. M. Carter (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1996). For the relevant books of Cassius Dio’s History of Rome, consult the Loeb Classical Library edition, Dio’s Roman History, with an English translation by Earnest Cary on the basis of the translation of Herbert Baldwin Foster (London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914–27). Nicolaus of Damascus’s Life of Caesar Augustus will soon be available in a new translation with scholarly commentary by Mark Toher, ΒΙОΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡОΣ (Bios Kaisaros) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Until then, the best English version is Jane Bellemore, edited with introduction, translation and commentary, Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Augustus (Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 1984). Plutarch’s Lives of Pompey and Caesar can be found in Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic, rev. ed., translated with introduction and notes by Rex Warner, revised with translations of Comparisons and a preface by Robin Seager, with series preface by Christopher Pelling (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005); Plutarch’s Lives of Brutus and Mark Antony can be found in Plutarch, Makers of Rome, translated with an introduction by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Younger can be found in Bernadotte Perrin, trans., Plutarch Lives VIII: Sertorius and Eumenes, Phocion and Cato the Younger (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919). Suetonius’s Lives of Caesar and Augustus are available in Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves, revised with an introduction by Michael Grant (London and New York: Penguin, 2003).
A good collection of translated selections from the ancient sources, along with s
cholarly commentary, for the rise and fall of Caesar, 60–42 B.C., is found in Naphtali Lewis, The Ides of March (Sanibel and Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1984). A valuable selection of the sources through the Ides of March, with commentary and bibliography, can be found in Matthew Dillon and Lynda Garland, eds., Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
I benefited greatly from scholarly commentaries on ancient texts. Mark Toher was kind enough to share with me the relevant manuscript sections of his excellent commentary on Nicolaus of Damascus, ΒΙОΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡОΣ (Bios Kaisaros) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). I learned much from Bellemore, Nicolaus of Damascus, and from Jürgen Malitz, Nikolaos von Damaskus, Leben des Kaisers Augustus, edited, translated, with a commentary (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003). Christopher Pelling, Plutarch Caesar, translated with an introduction and commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), is excellent and extraordinarily valuable. Also very useful is the same author’s Life of Antony/Plutarch (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and J. L. Moles, The Life of Cicero/Plutarch (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1988). For Suetonius’s Julius Caesar, H. E. Butler, and M. Cary, Suetoni Tranquilli Divus Iulius, edited with an introduction and commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927) is old but still very useful. Carlotta Scantamburlo, Suetonio, Vita di Cesare, Introduzione, traduzione e commento (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Pisa University Press, 2011) is helpful.
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