Caesar: Life of a Colossus

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Apart from his formal powers Caesar stood out in many ways. His family claimed descent from the kings of Alba Longa, a city that no longer existed since the Romans had absorbed it early on in their history. On formal occasions he now took to wearing what he claimed was the costume of these monarchs, notably calf-length boots in red leather. The reddish-purple tunic and toga of a triumphing general, which he now wore at festivals and formal meetings, also had regal associations. To this he added a laurel wreath - an honour that he is said to have especially relished because of his growing baldness - and in 44 BC this seems to have been replaced with a gold version. His formal power was massive, and his informal control even greater and sometimes blatant. Probably in late 46 BC Cleopatra, her brother-husband Ptolemy and their court arrived in Rome. They were accommodated in one of Caesar's houses on the far bank of the Tiber and remained there till after his death. It is not known whose idea the visit was, but it does seem unlikely that she would have travelled to Italy and remained so long if Caesar had been opposed to the idea. Cleopatra owed her throne to her Roman lover, and may well have felt safer near him and away from Egypt, hoping that time would help the more hostile elements in Alexandria and elsewhere to grow used to her rule. She may also have felt that there were political advantages and concessions that could only be won from Caesar himself. Perhaps the news of his affair with Queen Eunoe during the African campaign caused her concern that his support for her might prove fickle. From his point of view, it was obvious that Egypt and its rich grain harvests would play an important part in the supply effort required by his projected war against Parthia. Political concerns were rarely far from the mind of either Caesar or Cleopatra, but her arrival less than a year after he had left Egypt, and the length of her subsequent stay, strongly suggest that he wanted her with him and there is no reason to doubt that they resumed their affair. Cleopatra certainly continued to stand high in his affections. The Temple of Venus Genetrix was the centrepiece of his new Forum. Caesar had a gold statue of the Queen made and placed next to that of the goddess. Appian says it was still there in his day, over a century and a half later. Caesar was still married to Calpurnia and Plutarch's account suggests that the couple continued to sleep together. It seems inconceivable that she was not aware of his infidelities, or that the Egyptian Queen living across the river was his mistress. During her time in Rome Cleopatra was often visited by distinguished Romans, eager perhaps for a gift, for a favour concerning one of their clients with business in her realm, or maybe in the hope that she would influence Caesar on their behalf. Cicero seems to have been disappointed and complained of the queen's arrogance, but the main point is that he had visited in the first place.'

  At least one of the honours voted to Caesar was expressly to be handed on to his son and grandson, but as yet he had no son, or at least not a legitimate child. His only daughter was dead and her baby, if indeed it was a boy, had not survived her by more than a few days. When Cleopatra gave birth she named her son Caesarion, apparently with Caesar's permission. His year of birth is not absolutely established, but sometime late in 46 BC seems most likely. Although it is probable that the infant came with her to Rome, Caesarion is not mentioned by any sources written before Caesar's death. This has sometimes led to the suggestion that he was not the dictator's son, but a child produced only when Antony and Cleopatra wanted to diminish the prominence gained by Octavian as Caesar's heir. One argument in favour of this view is the simple fact that Caesar, for all his three marriages and frequent affairs, had not fathered another child since Julia, who had been conceived decades earlier. The claim of at least one Gaulish aristocrat over a century later to be descended from Caesar may or may not have had any basis in fact. However, it is worth remembering that Caesar's marriage to Pompeia ended in divorce and may well have been unhappy, while for the vast majority of the years he was married to Calpurnia he was away on active service. It was not usual for wives to accompany or visit provincial governors in the Republic and so their chances of having a child were severely limited. It does seem unlikely that Antony and Cleopatra could produce a child that had never been heard of during Caesar's lifetime and have expected his claim to be accepted, so it seems probable that the boy was already in Rome before March 44 BC. Whether or not Caesar was actually his father is impossible to say with absolute certainty and would require far more intimate knowledge of the queen's life than we possess. The majority of the ancient sources who comment on the matter seem to have accepted that Caesarion was the dictator's child, but then these authors all wrote considerably later. Suetonius does mention that after Caesar's death his long-time assistant and confidant Caius Oppius wrote a book to refute this claim.'

  On balance, a better case can be made for assuming that Caesar was (or perhaps at least believed that he was) the father of Caesarion, but he was illegitimate, not a Roman citizen and only an infant. The boy was not even mentioned in a will drawn up by the dictator in the last months of his life. The most prominent position was given to the grandson of his sister, the eighteen-year-old Caius Octavius, in whom he had taken some interest in recent years. It seems likely that Caesar discerned some of the great talent in the youth who would become in time Emperor Augustus. His father and namesake had held the praetorship, but had died in 59 BC. Aged only twelve, Octavius had delivered the oration at the funeral of Caesar's daughter. In 47 BC Caesar had admitted him to the college of pontiffs, taking up the vacancy caused by Domitius Ahenobarbus' death at Pharsalus. This was an exceptional honour for one so young. Octavius was to have accompanied him on campaign in Spain, but due to ill health only joined the dictator when the fighting was over. In the will Octavius was his main heir and was formally adopted as Caesar's son, but it would be unwise to exaggerate his importance before the ides of March. He was still very young, the son of a new man, and his public role was minor. Mark Antony and Dolabella were much more prominent as Caesar's favourites. After Antony had met Caesar in Gaul in 45 BC, he rode with the dictator for the rest of the journey, while Octavius travelled in a second carriage alongside Decimus Brutus. Mark Antony was to be Caesar's colleague as consul in 44 BC, but his continuing feud with Dolabella threatened to disrupt the dictator's plan to resign in his favour when he left Rome. The provision for Octavius' adoption in the will does not seem to have been widely known. It seems extremely unlikely that, had the dictator suddenly died of natural causes, the youth would have been able to inherit anything more than his fortune and property. He was not marked out as successor to Caesar's powers and honours, and politically other men seemed much closer to the dictator. Both Antony and Dolabella were in fact technically too young to hold the consulship, but they were well established in public life."

  The Gracchi had been suspected of craving royal rule (regnum) - there was a rumour that Tiberius had been sent a diadem by an Asian king. Since the expulsion of the last king and the creation of the Republic, the Roman aristocracy maintained a deep hatred of monarchy and it was a common aspect of political invective to accuse rivals of seeking kingship. The powers of the dictatorship were effectively monarchical, and to these Caesar had added other rights, so that in practice he ruled as a monarch. He also dressed like the kings of Alba Longa. In the Hellenistic world rulers were both kings and gods, so that some have chosen to see the divine or semi-divine honours voted to him as steps towards establishing a formal monarchy after this model. In the first months of 44 BC the question of whether or not Caesar should take the name of king was brought firmly into the public eye. On 26 January he celebrated the traditional Latin festival on the Alban Hill outside Rome, and the Senate had granted him special permission to celebrate an ovation - the lesser form of triumph - and ride back into Rome accompanied by a grand procession. During the parade some of the crowd hailed him as king. Rex was the Latin for king, but it was also a family name, Marcius Rex, and Caesar turned it into a joke by replying that he was `Not King, but Caesar.' A few days before two of the tribunes, Caius Epidius Marullus and Lucius Caesetius
Flavus, had ordered the removal of a royal diadem or headband from one of his statues in the Forum. Now the same pair ordered the arrest of the man who had first raised the shout. Caesar was annoyed, suspecting that the two tribunes were trying to cause him trouble and deliberately raising the spectre of monarchy to blacken his name. He protested at their action and they responded by issuing a statement that he was preventing the tribunes of the people from carrying out their lawful function. Summoning the Senate, Caesar condemned the men, saying that they had placed him in the impossible position of either accepting an insult or acting harshly against his true nature. Someone seems to have suggested the death penalty, but he did not want this, and was content to have them removed from office following a motion put forward by another tribune. Caesar asked Flavus' father to disinherit his son, who had two more gifted brothers, but when he refused to do this the dictator let the matter drop. Once again the man who had talked of tribunes' rights when he went to war had ridden over opposition from tribunes, although his punishment was far milder than that Sulla had been wont to dispense."

  On 15 February 44 BC Rome celebrated the Lupercalia, an ancient festival whose main associations were with fertility. As part of the rituals the Lupercal priests, naked save for loincloths made of hide, ran through the streets, flicking passers-by with goatskin whips. It was considered lucky to be touched in this way, especially for women hoping to conceive or for those already pregnant who hoped for an easy and successful delivery. The thirty-nineyear-old consul Antony was the leader of these runners, since he was head of the Julian college of priests. Caesar watched, clad in his wreath, the purple robes of a triumphing general, the long-sleeved tunic and high boots of the Alban kings, sitting on his gilded chair of office. Antony ran up to him and presented him with a royal diadem, urging him to take it and become king. At the sight the crowd went silent. When Caesar refused they cheered and, when Antony repeated the offer and the dictator again declined, the acclamation grew even louder. Caesar ordered the diadem to be sent to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, because Rome had only one king. It was - and is - very hard to believe that this episode was not carefully staged, although to what extent Antony added his own touches to the performance is impossible to say. Cynics then and subsequently said that Caesar wanted to accept the crown, and would have done so if only the watching crowd had seemed more enthusiastic. If so, then this was a very clumsy way of going about this, and it should be noted that his earlier honours were all proposed first in the Senate. More probably he wanted the glory of refusing such an offer and perhaps also hoped to put an end to the talk encouraged by the episode of the tribunes. In this he did not succeed, for a rumour soon began to circulate that an oracle had been discovered that revealed that the Parthians could only be defeated by a king. As an augur Cicero later stated that the story was false and no such oracle existed, but many seem to have believed it, which does give some indication of the mood of the times. From this story grew another claiming that it would be proposed in the Senate that Caesar become king everywhere save in Italy. Caesar already had regnum, in the sense of absolute supremacy, and none of the contemporary evidence suggests that he also wanted the name of king. Indeed, even most of the later accounts do not claim that this was true, merely that it was rumoured. He had seen Hellenistic monarchy in his youth in Bithynia, and more recently in the far greater kingdom of Egypt, but there is no good evidence that he wished to impose something similar on Rome, perhaps encouraged by the influence of Cleopatra. His position within the Republic was personal, and as yet he had no real successor to inherit the kingship. 12

  THE CONSPIRACY

  Some sixty senators eventually joined together in the plot to assassinate Caesar. There had been rumours of similar conspiracies for several years, but nothing had come of them. Until early 44 BC Caesar had been protected by a bodyguard of Spanish auxiliaries, but he very publicly dismissed them after the Senate had taken an oath of loyalty to him and had also offered to form a new guard composed of senators and equestrians. Similar bodies had been raised at times of crisis - Cicero had been attended by armed equestrians in 63 BC - but in this case it was never formed. The motives of the conspirators were many and varied, but underlying everything was a sense that to have one man possessing as much permanent power as Caesar was incompatible with a free Republic. The State should be led by elected magistrates holding office for a limited term and guided by a Senate whose debates were open and dominated by the most distinguished former magistrates. Under Caesar many decisions were made behind closed doors by the dictator and his close advisors, and even though they were often good ones, this was not the way the Republic was supposed to work. Tradition permitted the suspension of the normal way of doing things during a crisis, but only for a short time until the danger was over. Sulla's rise had been far more savage than Caesar's, but he had eventually resigned the dictatorship. Caesar was clearly not intending to emulate him and the grant of perpetual dictatorship emphasised the permanence of his power. The Republic had changed and it was not so much what Caesar was doing as the way he was doing it that bred discontent amongst the aristocracy. Caesar did make considerable efforts to maintain at least a facade of the traditional constitution. His magistrates were elected following his recommendation and not appointed. The Senate continued to meet and debate, and it was in the House that most of the honours awarded to him were first proposed. In addition, the courts continued to function in the traditional way and Caesar gained the reputation for a strict application of the law On one occasion he annulled the marriage of a former praetor, who had married his wife only a day after she had been divorced by her previous husband. Juries were now composed solely of senators and equestrians, for he removed the third group, the tribunii aerarii, from which Sulla had decreed that a third of jurors should be drawn.13

  Caesar, although usually charming and mannered, had always been prone to impatience and bursts of temper. For the last fourteen years he had spent the majority of his time in supreme command of an army, never in the company of anyone possessing equal authority. He had constantly been required to exert himself, planning campaigns and leading the army in the field, administering his provinces and, from 49 BC onwards, also an area that grew in size to encompass all of Rome's empire. In addition, he had found that matters often went badly unless he was present to supervise in person. During these years he had taken very little rest and there was no opportunity to do so in the last months of his life. Caesar continued to be very busy and it is more than likely that, long accustomed to command, he became less patient with the often ponderous and inefficient conventions of public life, especially since many had now become more than a little hollow Late in 45 or early in 44 BC the Senate met to vote him many of the honours mentioned already. He was absent, since it was felt better to preserve the illusion that the debate was entirely free. At the end of the meeting the entire body of senators, led by the consul Antony - or Fabius and Trebonius if it occurred in 45 BC - then trooped out to inform Caesar of their decision. They found him sitting on his ceremonial chair conducting business, either near the Rostra or outside the Temple of Venus in his own partially constructed Forum. Caesar did not get to his feet to greet them when they arrived to offer him the new honours. This created a bad feeling, since it seemed that he was contemptuous of the consuls and the dignity of the senatorial order. Technically, as dictator, he was senior to a consul and so was quite at liberty to remain seated, but many senators took offence. It was rumoured that he had begun to rise, but had been stopped by Balbus who thought that it was unfitting for him to show such respect to inferiors. Another source claims that Caesar later explained the incident by claiming to have felt an epileptic attack coming on and was afraid to disgrace himself in public, since these often made him dizzy and caused his bowels to open. This had not actually occurred, and we are told that he walked back to his house without any difficulty once his business was complete. His actual reply to the senators was moderate, for he declined a number
of the honours voted to him as excessive and only accepted a minority. A handful of senators, one of whom was Cassius, had actually spoken or voted against the new powers and honours in the Senate itself, but as usual no direct action was taken against such men. However, now - or perhaps in subsequent days - many of those senators who had supported the motions came to resent Caesar's failure to treat them with sufficient respect and the incident was blown out of all proportion. It is notable that no one seems to have been concerned that Caesar had failed to stand when approached by the consul Antony on the Lupercalia.14

  Most of Caesar's closest associates also disliked the fact that the Republic was now effectively controlled by one man. This was true even of many who continued to declare themselves utterly loyal to him after his murder. Yet for all this general disquiet, it is striking how far most senators went about their business adapting to the new situation. All had obligations to their clients and, since many favours or concessions ultimately depended on Caesar, they went to the dictator - or to friends who were believed to be able to influence him - to gain these. This aspect of senatorial life went on, even if politically there was little freedom. The assassination plot was eventually large, but still involved only some 7 per cent of the Senate. The majority of the conspirators had been Caesareans during the Civil War and a few had held high rank. Caius Trebonius had served for most of the years in Gaul as a legate and had presided over the siege of Massilia during the Civil War. He had been rewarded with a suffect consulship in 45 Bc after Caesar's return from Spain. Decimus Junius Brutus, the son of the Sempronia who was said to have been so heavily involved in Catiline's conspiracy, had also served with distinction in Gaul. Caesar had a great fondness for him and had named him consul for 42 BC. He was also listed amongst the secondary heirs in the dictator's will. Servius Sulpicius Galba was another legate from the Gallic Wars, but he had failed at the consular elections for 49 BC, probably because of his association with Caesar, and seems to have borne him a grudge as a result. Another disappointed man was Lucius Minucius Basilus, whom Caesar had refused a provincial command probably because of justified suspicion over his character. To a greater or lesser extent all of these men had done well as a result of choosing the winning side in the Civil War, as had many of the more obscure conspirators. Yet evidently some felt that they ought to have done even better, and all had now decided that they would prefer to continue their careers in a Republic without Caesar. In some cases they had arrived at this decision some time ago. Almost a year earlier Trebonius had sounded out Mark Antony about joining the conspiracy. This was at the time when the breach between the latter and Caesar still seemed very wide. Even so he declined and remained loyal, but he did not betray the confidence and perhaps expected that the plot would come to nothing in the end."s