Death of Caesar : The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination (9781451668827)

by Strauss, Barry

  On what Caesar said to Brutus, see P. Arnaud, “Toi aussi, mons fils, tu mangeras ta part de notre pouvoir—Brutus le Tyran?,” Latomus 57 (1998): 61–71; F. Brenk, “Caesar and the Evil Eye or What to Do with ‘кαι συ, τέκυоυ’,” in Gareth Schmeling and Jon D. Mikalson, eds., Qui miscuit utile dulci: Festschrift Essays for Paul Lachlan (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy Carducci, 1998), 31–49; M. Dubuisson, “Toi Aussi, Mon Fils,” Latomus 39 (1980): 881–90; J. Russell, “Julius Caesar’s Last Words: A Reinterpretation,” in Bruce Marshall, ed., Vindex Humanitatis: Essays in Honor of John Huntly Bishop (Armidale, New South Wales: University of New England, 1980), 123–28.

  On Spurrina and soothsayers, see E. Rawson, “Caesar, Etruria and the Disciplina Etrusca,” Journal of Roman Studies 68 (1978): 132–52; J. T. Ramsey, “Beware the Ides of March!: An Astrological Prediction?” Classical Quarterly, New Series, 50, 2 (2000): 440–54.

  J. T. Ramsey offers a tour de force leading to a reevaluation of the morning’s chronology in “At What Hour Did the Murderers of Julius Caesar Gather on the Ides of March 44 B.C.?,” in Stephan Heilen et al., In Pursuit of Wissenschaft: Festschrift für William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag (Hildesheim and Zurich: Olms, 2008), 351–63.

  On Late Republican Roman military daggers, begin with an excellent and broader cultural history of Roman weapons, Simon James, Rome and the Sword: How Warriors and Weapons Shaped Roman History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011) and then even more general considerations in G. Walker, Battle Blades: a Professional’s Guide to Combat/Fighting Knives. (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1993).

  On the use of gladiators as bodyguards see A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 83–85.

  On Pompey’s Portico and Senate House, the site of Caesar’s assassination, see K. L. Gleason, “The Garden Portico of Pompey the Great: An Ancient Public Park Preserved in the Layers of Rome,” Expedition 32.2 (1990): 3–13, and “Porticus Pompeiana: A New Perspective on the First Public Park of Ancient Rome,” Journal of Garden History 14.1 (January–March 1994): 13–27.

  FROM THE IDES OF MARCH TO OCTAVIAN’S TRIUMPH IN 29 B.C.

  Syme, The Roman Revolution is a classic account of this period. Now Josiah Osgood offers an excellent narrative and analysis, with an emphasis on the experience of ordinary people, in Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), is another fine introduction, prudent in its judgments and especially good on military events.

  Kathryn Welch highlights the often overlooked factors of Sextus Pompey and sea power in the conflict in the decade after the Ides of March in Magnus Pius—Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012). On the role of soldiers on the Ides of March and its aftermath, see Helga Boterman, Die Soldaten und die roemische Politik in der Zeit von Caesars Tod bis zur Begruendung des zweiten Triumvirats (Munich: Beck, 1968). I found much of value in Don Sutton, “The Associates of Brutus: A Prosopographical Study,” (1986), Open Access Dissertations and Theses, Paper 6910, http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/6910.

  Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power, 150–58, demonstrates how Roman public opinion was up for grabs in the days following the Ides of March. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People, 216–28, disagrees.

  On Caesar’s funeral, see Weinstock, Divus Julius, 346–55; G. S. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005); G. S. Sumi, “Impersonating the Dead: Mimes at Roman Funerals,” The American Journal of Philology 123. 4 (2002): 559–85; George Kennedy, “Antony’s Speech at Caesar’s Funeral,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 54.2 (1968): 99–106; D. Noy, “Half-Burnt on an Emergency Pyre: Roman Creations Which Went Wrong,” Greece & Rome, 2nd ser. 47. 2 (2000): 186–96; Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People, 228–33.

  There is much of value on Roman funerary customs and especially the mysterious beeswax masks in H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2000.

  Ulrich Gotter, Der Diktator ist tot! Politik in Rom zwischen den Iden des März und der Begründung des Zweiten Triumvirats (The Dictator is Dead! Politics in Rome Between the Ides of March and the Founding of the Second Triumvirate) Historia Einzelschrift 110 (Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner, 1996), is detailed and useful on the events from March 44 B.C. to November 43 B.C. Some valuable studies on the events of 44 B.C. are L. Hayne. “Lepidus’s Role After the Ides of March,” Antiquité Classique 14 (1971): 108–17; Mark Toher, “Octavian’s Arrival in Rome, 44 B.C.,” Classical Quarterly, New Series 54. 1 (2004): 174–84; J. T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997); J. T. Ramsey, “Did Mark Antony Contemplate an Alliance with His Political Enemies in July 44 B.C.E.?,” Classical Philology 96. 3 (2001): 253–68; A. E. Raubitschek, “Brutus in Athens,” Phoenix 11 (1957): 1–11.

  Good studies of Brutus and Cassius’s strategy in 43–42 B.C. include Martin Drum, “Cicero’s Tenth and Eleventh Philippics: The Republican Advance in the East,” in Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, eds., Cicero’s Philippics (Auckland, New Zealand: Polygraphia, 2008), 82–94; Arthur Keaveney, “Cassius’ Parthian Allies,” Hommages à Carl Deroux, vol. 3 (Brussels: Latomus, 2003), 232–34.

  Anthony Everitt, The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (New York: Random House, 2003), offers a good introduction to Augustus—as Octavian was eventually known. Two fine essays by Walter Eder (“Augustus and the Power of Tradition”) and Erich S. Gruen (“Augustus and the Making of the Principate”) explain how he bridged the gap between Republic and Empire, in Karl Galinsky, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 13–32, 33–51.

  THE WOMEN

  Richard A. Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London and New York, Routledge: 1992) is a good introduction. See also Judith Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

  On Cleopatra, see Stacey Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2010); Duane Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Diana E. E. Kleiner, Cleopatra and Rome (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).

  SHAKESPEARE

  S. Wells, ed., The Oxford Shakespeare Julius Caesar (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), is a fine edition with a good introduction and notes. Ernest Schanzer, ed., Shakespeare’s Appian: A Selection from the Tudor Translation of Appian’s Civil Wars (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1956), includes a sensible discussion of Shakespeare’s use of the ancient sources; Gary Wills, Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), is a lively introduction to the subject.

  THE ANCIENT CITY OF ROME

  Eva Margareta Steinby, ed., Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae [Topographical Lexicon of the City of Rome], 6 vols. (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1993–2000) is a fundamental encyclopedia, replacing the earlier Samuel Ball Platner, completed and revised by Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1929). An excellent, shorter book is Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Filippo Coarelli, Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide, translated by James J. Clauss and Daniel P. Harmon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), is detailed and scholarly. Amanda Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), is very useful, not least as a walking guide.

  Several websites are valuable, among them: “Rome Reborn: A Digital Model of Ancient Rome,” retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.romerebor
n.virginia.edu/; “Digital Augustan Rome,” retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://digitalaugustanrome.org/; “The Theatre of Pompey,” retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.pompey.cch.kcl.ac.uk/index.htm.

  On ancient Rome as an urban space, see S. L. Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Jon Coulston and Hazel Dodge, Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000); Grant Heiken, Renato Funiciello, and Donatella De Rita, The Seven Hills of Rome: A Geological Tour of the Eternal City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  On daily life in ancient Rome, see the classic by Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003 [1940]). See also John E. Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); F. Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); and the very accessible Alberto Angela, A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, translated by Gregory Conti (New York: Europa Editions, 2011).

  On Roman parks and gardens, see Pierre Grimal, Les jardins romains à la fin de la république et aux deux premiers siècles de l’empire; essai sur le naturalisme romain, 3rd ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1984); Maddalena Cima and Emilia Talamo, Gli Horti di Roma Antica (Milan: Electa, 2008); John D’Arms, “Between Public and Private: The epulum publicum and Caesar’s horti trans Tiberim,” in Maddalena Cima and Eugenio La Rocca, eds., Horti romani: atti del convegno internazionale: Roma, 4–6 maggio 1995 (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1998), 33–43.

  The sources for the Temple of the Deified Julius and its dedication are conveniently available in English translation at “Rome Reborn: The Temple of Caesar,” http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/ge/TS-020.html.

  MISCELLANEOUS

  On clothing, see L. M. Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924).

  There are many novels on the subject of this book. Allan Massie, Caesar (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993) makes Decimus the narrator, looking back on Caesar’s assassination from his last days in a Gallic prison. Colleen McCullough, The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007) gives Decimus a major role in the story of the assassination. Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s, 2004) and idem, The Triumph of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008) are detective stories that marvelously evoke the conspiratorial atmosphere of Rome. Saylor’s A Murder on the Appian Way: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) is set against the backdrop of the murder of Clodius in 52 B.C. Decimus is an important character in Ben Kane’s The Road to Rome (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012). Conn Iggulden’s Emperor: The Gods of War (New York: Delacorte Press, 2006) paints a stirring picture of the Civil War and of Caesar’s assassination. Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003 [1948]) is a subtle delight. Riccardo Bacchelli, I tre Schiavi di Giulio Cesare (The Three Slaves of Julius Caesar) (Milan: Mondadori, 1957) picks up on a detail in Suetonius, that after Caesar’s assassination, only three slaves were left to carry his litter awkwardly back home. Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004) vividly tells Cleopatra’s story in a historical novel narrated by the queen herself.

  PHOTOGRAPH © OLIVIERO OLIVIERI

  BARRY STRAUSS is professor of history and classics at Cornell University. He is a leading expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited several books, among them The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, The Spartacus War, and Masters of Command.

  Visit him at www.BarryStrauss.com.

  Follow Barry Strauss on Twitter: @BarryStrauss

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  Notes

  CHAPTER 1. RIDING WITH CAESAR

  August 45 B.C. On the chronology of Caesar’s return from Hispania, see Lily Ross Taylor, “On the Chronology of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, Book XIII,” Classical Philology 32.3 (1937): 238–40.

  a procession entered the city of Mediolanum Plutarch, Antony 11.2. Plutarch refers only to the four men traveling “through Italy” and not any specific city but Mediolanum seems likely because it was one of the major cities of Italian Gaul.

  The four men had met in southern Gaul and traveled together See Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, trans. Peter Needham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 299; Bernard Camillus Bondurant, Decimus Brutus Albinus: A Historical Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), 36.

  a close friend of Caesar Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar Augustus 23.84; Velleius Paterculus, The Roman History 2.64.2; Plutarch, Brutus 13; Appian, Civil Wars 2.111; Cassius Dio, Roman History 44.18.1.

  a great historian suggested that Decimus was Caesar’s illegitimate son Ronald Syme, “Bastards in the Roman Aristocracy,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104.3 (1960): 323–27, and “No Son for Caesar?,” Historia 29 (1980): 422–37, esp. 426–30. For a convincing reply, see Georges Michel Duval, “D. Junius Brutus: mari ou fils de Sempronia?,” Latomus 50.3 (1991): 608–15.

  young Decimus found his way to Caesar’s staff Although we first hear of him in Gaul in 56 B.C. there is good reason to think that he had already served with Caesar in Hispania in 61 B.C. See the arguments in R. Schulz, “Caesar und das Meer,” Historische Zeitschrift 271.2 (2000): 288–90.

  In 50 B.C. Decimus was back in Rome for his first elective office G. V. Sumner, “The Lex Annalis Under Caesar (Continued),” Phoenix 24.4 (1971): 358–59.

  she divorced her previous husband, a prominent man His name is unknown. Cicero, Letters to Friends 8.7.2.

  Sewer of Romulus faex Romuli, Cicero, Letters to Atticus 2.1.8.

  Decimus issued coins The coins also commemorated Decimus’s adoptive family, the Postumii Albini. See M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), vol. 1: 92, 466, 547, 711; vol. 2: 736.

  He gave Caesar’s cause a propaganda boost As a Roman poet later wrote, Decimus was the first man to add victory at sea to Caesar’s honors in the Civil War. Lucan (A.D. 39–65), Pharsalia 3.761–62.

  Bellovaci Livy, Periochae 114.9; Caesar, Gallic War 2.4.5; Strabo, Geography 4.4.3. They lived in Picardy in north
ern France.

  Italian Gaul That is, Cisalpine Gaul.

  “Venus’s Girl” Plutarch, Antony 9; Cicero, Letters to Atticus 10.10.5; Cicero, Philippics 2.58.

  She alone once wore a sword and recruited an army In the Perusine War in 41 B.C.

  her enemy’s sling bullets From the siege of Perusia (modern Perugia) in 40 B.C. See Corey Brennan, “Perceptions of Women’s Power in the Late Republic: Terentia, Fulvia, and the Generation of 63 BCE,” in Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon James, eds., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 358; Judith P. Hallett, “Perusinae Glandes and the Changing Image of Augustus,” American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977): 151–71.

  Octavian was a short-statured Apollo Suetonius, Augustus 79.

  the honor of sharing his carriage. Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.59.3.

  wearing an officer’s insignia, even though Octavian Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar 18.17.

  an assassination attempt on Caesar in 46 B.C. Cicero, Philippics 2.74.

  According to Cicero Cicero, Philippics 2.34; Plutarch, Antony 13.

  CHAPTER 2. THE BEST MEN

  Caesar met in the city of Mediolanum with Marcus Junius Brutus The sources say only that they met in Italian Gaul, without citing the city (Cicero, Letters to Atticus 13.40.1; Plutarch, Brutus 6.12) but Mediolanum is likely enough since it was a regional center and the town that later put up a statue to Brutus (see below). Although Plutarch, Brutus 6.12, seems to put the meeting in 46 B.C., he sometimes compresses chronology and 45 B.C. is a more likely date. See Taylor, “On the Chronology of Cicero’s Letters,” 239 n. 24.