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ALWAYS I AM CAESAR
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Always I am Caesar
For Angela Aslanska and Robin Seager
ALWAYS I AM CAESAR
W. Jeffrey Tatum
© 2008 by W. Jeffrey Tatum
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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1
2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tatum, W. Jeffrey.
Always I am Caesar / W. Jeffrey Tatum.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical refrences and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-7525-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-7526-5 (hardcover :
alk. paper) 1. Caesar, Julius. 2. Rome–History–Republic, 265–30 B.C. 3. Heads of
state–Rome–Biography. 4. Generals–Rome–Biography. I. Title.
DG261.T38 2008
937′.05092–dc22
2007036296
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Contents
List of Charts, Maps, and Figures
Acknowledgements
Charts
Maps
vi
viii
ix
xii
Introduction
1
1
Caesar the Politician: Power and the People in Republican
Rome
18
2 Conquests and Glories, Triumphs and Spoils: Caesar and the
Ideology of Roman Imperialism
42
3
Pontifex Maximus: Caesar and the Manipulation of Civic
Religion
61
4 The Stones of Rome: Caesar and the Sociology of Roman
Public Building
80
5 My True and Honourable Wife: Cornelia and Pompeia,
Calpurnia and Cleopatra
99
6 Great Men and Impersonal Groundswells: The Civil War
122
7 Great Caesar Fell: Philosophy, Politics, and Assassination
145
8 The Evil that Men Do: Caesar and Augustus
167
Important Dates
Bibliography
Index
189
190
194
v
Lists of Charts, Maps, and Figures
Charts
1 The family of Julius Caesar
2 Caesar and the Aurelii Cottae
3 Cato and his connections
ix
x
xi
Maps
1 The Mediterranean in the time of Caesar
2 The city of Rome during the republic
3 The Roman Forum during the republic
xii
xiii
xiv
Figures
1 Colossal portrait head of Caesar, from the 2nd century ad
2 Portrait of Pompey, a first century ad copy of an original
dating to the fifties bc
3 Portrait of Cicero, an imperial copy of a late republican
original
4 Portrait of Cato in bronze, from the 1st century ad
5 Caesar, a contemporary portrait
6 Funerary procession in a relief from Amiternum,
1st century ad
7 Obverse of a denarius of 44 bc representing Caesar as
Pontifex Maximus and as Parens Patriae (Father of his
Country)
vi
2
7
9
10
19
34
36
lists of charts, maps, and figures
8 Lionel Royer’s Vercingetorix throws his arms at the feet of
Caesar
9 Obverse and reverse of a denarius of 32 bc. The obverse
depicts Mark Antony, the reverse Cleopatra
10 Portrait of Cleopatra, probably (in large degree) a replica
of Cleopatra’s statue in the Temple of Venus Genetrix
11 Cleopatra and Caesarion as Isis and Osiris making sacrifice
to the goddess Hathor. South wall of the Temple of Hathor,
Dendera, Egypt
12 Reverse of a denarius of 43–42 bc depicting a pileus (a cap
indicating freedman status and so an emblem of freedom)
between two daggers resting above the phase “Ides of
March.” The obverse of this coin depicts Brutus
13 Obverse of a denarius of 44 bc depicting Caesar as Dictator
for the Fourth Time
14 Vincenzo Camuccini’s Assassination of Julius Caesar
15 Obverse and reverse of a bronze coin of approximately 38 bc.
The obverse depicts Octavian described as “Caesar, son of
god.” The reverse depicts Caesar as Divus Iulius
16 Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, a contemporary portrait
vii
58
116
118
119
142
150
166
177
179
Acknowledgements
It is my pleasure to thank Tricia Smith, at Art Resource, Jenni Adam and
Axellle Russo at The British Museum, Luisa Veneziano at the German
Archaeological Institute, Rome, and Heidie Philipsen and Claus Grønne at
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek for their helpfulness. I also owe thanks to Indiana
University Press for permission to quote from R. Humphries, Ovid.
Metamorphoses, and to Penguin Press for permission to quote from D. West,
The Aeneid by Virgil. I am grateful to Otago University for appointing
me its De Carle Distinguished Lecturer in 2005 and to the university’s
Department of Classics for its unexcelled hospitality during my stay. I am
indebted to Al Bertrand, Nancy de Grummond, John Marincola, Marjorie
and Keith Maslen, and (especially) Jon Hall. My debts to Robin Seager
run deeper, and it is my pleasure to acknowledge that reality in the
dedication, a billing he shares, for different (but also profound) reasons,
with Angela Aslanska.
viii
CHART 1
THE FAMILY OF JULIUS CAESAR
Q. Marcius Rex
(pr. 144)
Sex. Julius Caesar
(cos. 157)
L. Julius
Caesar
(pr. by 129)
Sex. Julius
Caesar
(pr. 123)
C. Julius Caesar = Marcia
?
Sex. Julius
Caesar
(cos. 91)
JULIA = GAIUS
MARIUS
CAESAR
C. Julius Caesar = Aurelia
(pr. ca. 93)
Julia = M. Atius Balbus
? = (1) L. Marcius Philippus (2) = (2) Atia (1) = C. Octavius
(cos. 56)
(pr. 61)
CATO = Marcia GAIUS OCTAVIUS/AUGUSTUS
Octavia
CHART 2
CAESAR AND THE AURELII COTTAE
L. Aurelius Cotta
(cos. 144)
L. Aurelius Cotta
(cos. 119)
L. Aurelius
Cotta
(pr. 95)
P. Rutilius Rufus
(tr. pl. 169)
M. Aurelius Cotta = Rutilia
C. Livius Drusus
(cos. 147)
P. Rutilius Rufus = Livia
(cos. 105)
AURELIA = C. Julius Caesar
(pr. c. 92)
Mam. Aemilius Lepidus
Livianus
(cos. 77)
JULIUS CAESAR
C. Aurelius Cotta
(cos. 75)
M. Aurelius Cotta
(cos. 74)
M. Livius
Drusus
(cos. 112)
L. Aurelius Cotta
(cos. 65)
CHART 3
CATO AND HIS CONNECTIONS
Q. Servilius Caepio
(cos. 140)
Q. Servilius Caepio
(cos. 106)
M. Livius Drusus
(cos. 112)
Servilia = Q. Lutatius Catulus
(cos. 102)
Q. LUTATIUS CATULUS
(cos. 78)
Q. Servilius Caepio = (1) Livia (2) = M.Porcius Cato
(pr. 91)
D. Junius = (2) SERVILIA (1) = M. Junius
Silanus
Brutus
(cos. 62)
(tr. pl. 83)
Mam. Aemilius Lepidus
Livianus
(cos. 77)
Atilia = (1) CATO (2) = Marcia Porcia = DOMITIUS
AHENOBARBUS
(cos. 54)
BRUTUS (2) = (2) Porcia (1) M. CALPURNIUS BIBULUS
(cos. 59)
Junia
Junia
Junia
=LEPIDUS =P. Servilius =CASSIUS
Isauricus
(cos. 48)
BRITAIN
ine
Rh
Atlantic
Ocean
GERMANY
Dan
Alesia
TRANSALPINE
GAUL
CISALPINE
GAUL
CORSICA
Rome
IL
LY
R
Black Sea
IC
UM
H
BIT
Phillipi
Munda FURTHER
SPAIN
SARDINIA
PONTUS
Zela
Pharsalus
SICILY
M A U
R E T A N I A
YNIA
Mytilene
Actium
ASIA
Utica
CILICIA
Carthage
Thapsus
AFRICA
MALTA
Mediterranean Sea
CYPRUS
CRETE
Alexandria
EGYPT
Map 1 The Mediterranean in the time of Caesar.
Nile
500 km
SYRIA
NEARER
SPAIN
Verona
PARTHIA
Rhône
ube
0
3000 feet
0
Porta Collina
800 metres
Se
rvia
nW
all
Lata
Via
a
M
ar
cia
Anio Vetus
r
Tibe
Aq
u
4
3
Saepta
5
Campus
Martius
Theatre of
Pompey
(55 BC)
Area Sacra
di Largo
Argentina
Porticus Octavia
Temples of Apollo
and Bellona
Temple of Jupiter
Optimus Maximus
6
Temple of Hercules of the Muses
House of
Temples of Fortuna Aemilius Scaurus
and Mater Matuta
1
Forum
Temple of
Boarium
Magna Mater
Forum Holitorium
Porta Carmentalis
and Porta Triumphalis
Temple of Hercules
Olivarius or Victor
Temple of Ceres
Ara
Maxima
Hills of Rome
1 Palatine
2 Capitol
3 Quirinal
4 Viminal
5 Esquiline
6 Oppian
7 Caelian
8 Aventine
an
Wa
ll
Circus Flaminius
Temple of Concord (121 BC)
Forum Temple of Castor (Dioscuri)
Se
r vi
2
Porticus Metelli
Ci
rc
us
M
ax
im
us
Appia
Aqua
7
Porta
Capena
Temple
of Mercury
Tib
er
s
cu
rti
Po
a
Ap
p
ia
ilia
m
Ae
ll
Wa
an
Via
La
tin
a
Ap
pia
Horrea
Galbana
r vi
Se
a
Vi
Emporium
Vi
8
Tomb of
the Scipios
Map 2 The city of Rome during the republic. Source: Rosenstein, N., and
Morstein-Marx, R. (eds.), A Companion to the Roman Republic (Oxford, 2006).
N
Argiletum
Curia Hostilia /
Cornelia
Basilica
Porcia
Fabian Arch
(Fornix Fabianus)
ilia /
/Aem
lvia
u
F
ilica Pauli
Bas
e
ova
eN
erna
Tab
ra
Vi a
S ac
ica
us
Dom
l
Pub
Regia
Comitium
Capitol
Carcer
Rostra
Temple of
Vesta
Forum
Romanum
Temple of
Concord
(121 BC)
Lacus
Iuturnae
Vic
r na
s Ca p
Bas
ili
e
eV
pro
em
ca S
nia
us
Clivu
Tabularium
(78 BC)
e
Tab
usc
us T
Temple
of Saturn
s
tere
Palatine
Hill
Temple
of
Castor
itolinu
Vicus Iugarius
s
Area
Capitolina
Cloaca Maxima
(Great Drain)
0
0
100 metres
100 yards
Map 3 The Roman Forum during the republic. Source: Rosenstein, N., and Morstein-Marx, R. (eds.),
A Companion to the Roman Republic (Oxford, 2006).
Introduction
“The one debt we owe to history,” as Oscar Wilde insisted, “is to rewrite it.”
In the case of Julius Caesar, even if we are not quite prepared to declare
ourselves fully paid up, we can hardly be described as falling into arrears.
From antiquity to the present day Caesar has remained a favorite subject
of biographers, scholarly and amateur alike. And it would be as difficult as
it would be remiss to investigate Roman history – or for that matter European history – without at least acknowledging his lasting influence. Caesar
abides in all the arts, as a versatile topic and symbol in products of high
as well as popular culture, and he remains a potent platform for political
discourse about militarism or power or ambitions of an autocratic or
hegemonic quality. He is evocative and useful because he is so instantly
available to everyone.
Even a legend can be stretched too thin, however. Less accessible than
Caesar’s reputation is the man himself and the society he both challenged
and transformed. Merely to mention Rome, in most circumstances, is to
conjure empire – and emperors, of which species Caesar is routinely deemed
the author. Hence the familiar transformation of his name into a title:
Kaiser and Czar. This is a reality that does not so much enlarge Caesar as
it urges his reduction, making him into an uncomplicated figure – the
tyrant who gets his way by force of arms, a representation of Caesar that
inescapably diminishes his actual merits as a soldier or a general or a politician. It was this very simplification that made possible the purposes to
which Caesar was put in the American Revolution, when every patriot was
a Brutus striving to free the colonies from the imperial oppression of a
British king who could by no stretch of the imagination be likened to
Caesar in any but the most tenuous symbolic terms. By then, however, and
long before, Caesar had been diluted to Caesarism, which rendered him
available to political polemic in nearly any context. This same impulse
1
always i am caesar
Figure 1 Colossal portrait head of Caesar, from the 2nd century ad. Museo
Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
allowed Caesar to cross the Atlantic, where the opponents of Andrew
Jackson could attack Old Hickory as a nineteenth-century Caesar whose
personal arrogance, contempt for political restraint and imperialist ambitions threatened the American republic with ruin. In our own century,
similar complaints, again invoking the image of Caesar, have been aimed
at George W. Bush in publications like the Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine and, in an instance of luscious and timely revenge for King George,
the Guardian. Caesar was a man of great capacity and talent, but not a hint
of that is operative when Caesar or his reputation is deployed as a term of
abuse. Caesar, there can be no missing it, still stands for imperialism and
autocracy.
And also for personal decadence. Here the evidence is all too abundant,
from casinos to toga parties to popular television programming. The historical evidence for Caesar’s sensuality and prodigality and womanizing is
not hard to come by. His political rivals emphasized Caesar’s perversities
2
introduction
in lip-smacking detail – and the poet Catullus scored multiple successes by
lampooning the great general’s disgusting license and licentiousness. This
Caesar, however, does not always sit comfortably with his imperial reputation. It is as if the ambitious conqueror of the Gauls and or of the Roman
republic seems too busy, too efficient or perhaps too valorous to luxuriate
in the company of wanton eastern queens or of immoral young men. Even
Cicero once said of Caesar that the man was too dissolute to represent a
genuine danger to Rome.
Yet this is the same Caesar who was not merely a brilliant military
commander but a skillful politician, an eloquent orator, a gifted writer
and an inspired reformer. In his own day many saw in Caesar Rome’s
final opportunity to eliminate its factionalism, to repair its economy, to
give lasting order and stability to its empire – in short, they saw in Caesar
a statesman blessed with the talent and the will to usher in the fulfillment
of Rome’s true destiny. This was especially the expectation of the masses.
After his death, the common people of Rome began to worship Caesar as
a god, idolatry that their betters could do nothing to suppress. On the
contrary, the idea of Caesar’s divinity caught on and was passed on to
his political heirs, becoming one of the essential emblems of the empire
and subsisting until Christianity elbowed it out of the way. Christianity
hardly spelled the end for the idea of Caesar as something superhuman,
however, even if did shunt this article of faith away from the multitude
and into the ranks of the elite. Indeed, there has been no shortage of
intellectuals for whom Caesar represented nothing less than the perfection
of the Roman spirit, the very embodiment of natural superiority, the
ultimate Great Man – which are all merely more in the way of simplifications for all their grand and banging formulations. And so we get
multiple Caesars: conqueror, autocrat, libertine, god – and Übermensch.
Not an easy figure to take in all at once. He is instantly available only in
smaller bits.
One of the purposes of this book is to examine Caesar’s career by way
of a selection of different perspectives, such as his professional rise, his
political success, his conquest of Gaul, his relationships with women,
his elevation to supreme power and beyond that to the condition of a god.
Although I begin at Caesar’s beginnings and I conclude with the state of
affairs established by his heir and successor, Augustus, this is neither a
biography nor a linear historical narrative. Instead, in each chapter there is
an attempt to understand central aspects of Caesar’s life within a pertinent
slice of Roman habits, concepts and expectations. There is a reason for this
approach. One of the greatest challenges in comprehending Caesar lies in
3
always i am caesar
the difficulty of distinguishing the singular qualities of the man from the
typical attributes and instincts of his time and class. It is all too easy to
regard Caesar as unique, a superman or at the very least a new stage in the
evolution of Roman aristocratic politicians, in which case Caesar’s historical role more or less explains itself without any reference to its situation.
Caesar triumphed because, being Caesar, what else could he do? It is no
improvement on this to let Caesar be subsumed entirely by his context, that
is, to regard Caesar as little more than a symptom of all that was characteristic, for good or for ill, of aristocratic Roman society in the first century
BC. Matters are more elusive than that, and it is hoped that the following
chapters will offer some introduction to the problems of sorting out
Caesar’s individuality and the circumstances in which he asserted it with
such enduring consequences.
Caesar matters in the first instance because he was the agent of a cataclysmic political transformation that forever altered the politics, and the
society, of Europe and the Mediterranean. From end of the sixth century
bc until Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Rome was a republic. Each year magistrates were elected by the people, and all legislation in Rome was enacted
by popular vote. Government relied on the executive capacities of magistrates and on the guidance of the Roman senate, a body composed of all
former magistrates. The senate, the magistrates and the people, in their
dynamic combination, constituted the Roman republic – and it was this
state that dominated Italy and soon thereafter gained mastery of much of
the Mediterranean world. And it was this state that Caesar overthrew.
Caesar made himself master of Rome and dictator for life. He gathered into
his hands all meaningful sources of power and prestige, which he held until
he was slain on the Ides of March in 44 bc. It is for this reason that later
generations designated him the first of Rome’s emperors, though in actuality that distinction belongs to his heir, Augustus, who, like his predecessor,
emerged from another civil war as a permanent autocrat. Augustus, unlike
Caesar, was not assassinated, and on the occasion of his death imperial
power passed seamlessly to his adopted son, Tiberius. Thereafter Rome was
the Roman empire, the durable imprint of which persists in Europe and,
by extension, everywhere in the world that has been shaped by a European
presence. This shift from republic to empire is one of the very few historical
episodes that can fairly be called epoch making, and, although the event
was not entirely of Caesar’s doing, it was certainly Caesar who was the
essential catalyst of this upheaval, a reality that was understood immediately in Rome. Since that time, Caesar has not dropped from the discourse
of political theory or of political polemic.
4
introduction
Caesar and Roman Society: A Very Brief Introduction
Inasmuch as what follows is not a biography of Caesar, it will be useful to
offer here a very concise summation of Caesar’s life and career, if only
to give us a framework on which to hang the chapters to come. Specifics
and their dates are recapitulated, in tabular form, at the end of this
book. I should also explain a few of the more conspicuous peculiarities of
Roman culture that will recur in almost every chapter. The most obvious
of these is that the Romans employed Latin (and Greek): exhibits of either
language are translated whenever they are alien to our own usage (and most
are listed in the book’s index along with any other technical terms necessary
for describing Roman society). I will not often refer to dates in accordance
with Roman practice, the sole exception being the Ides of March, which
is simply March fifteenth. More frequently, however, I will discuss money
in terms of Roman currency. The Romans in our period, although they
employed coins in a variety of weights, tended to rely on the sesterce
(sestertius) as their basic unit of reckoning. It is not really possible to
convert ancient currency into modern amounts, owing to the deep differences between their economic systems and our own. For our purposes it
will perhaps be enough to observe that in Rome an ordinary laborer could
be expected to earn three to six sesterces for a day’s effort, on the basis of
which income he could only just barely scrape by, that Roman soldiers were
paid a salary of 1,200 sesterces each year (of course this does not include
their share of the spoils of war and other depredations), that a fortune of
40,000 sesterces sufficed to make one eligible for the First Class in Rome,
which comprised Rome’s most prosperous citizens, and that the super
rich in Rome were the Knights, whose minimal worth was set at 400,000
sesterces (though many were vastly wealthier than that), and the senators, whose wealth was expected to (and regularly did) exceed a million
sesterces.
Roman names require some explanation, not simply because their
system of nomenclature was different from ours, but also because it was so
unimaginative that Romans are easy to confuse (this was true even for the
Romans themselves). Every Roman man bore at least two names, his first
name (praenomen) and the name of his clan (nomen). The Romans had
very few first names, many of which were simply based on numerals, and
so this name was infrequently used on its own (when it was so used, it
usually indicated a degree of intimacy). Many Romans also had a third
name, called a cognomen, some of which were hereditary, others of which
5
always i am caesar
were honorific. Unlike the first name, the cognomen was often used on its
own to indicate a specific Roman. Naturally, there were various protocols
for particular situations. In the case of Caesar, his name was Gaius Julius
Caesar. We call him Caesar, as did his contemporaries, but his family were
the Julii, the Julians. In practice, Romans are sometimes referred to by their
nomen, sometimes by cognomen, sometimes more fulsomely. Some Roman
names have been anglicized by custom. Consequently, instead of describing
Caesar’s great rival as Gnaeus Pompeius we usually refer to him as Pompey,
or as Pompey the Great, inasmuch as he immodestly gave himself the cognomen Magnus (‘the great’). Similarly, Marcus Antonius (who did not have
a cognomen) is more familiar in English as Mark Antony. Because Roman
families recycled the same names, including first names, so routinely, we
sometimes distinguish individual Romans by referring to the highest office
they reached in politics (e.g. Sextus Julius Caesar (cos. 157) indicates the
man who was consul in 157 bc and not any other Sextus Julius Caesar).
This is the practice observed in the genealogical tables that appear in this
book. Women in Rome generally had only one name, the clan name in its
feminine form: consequently, Caesar’s daughter was named simply Julia.
For the sake of ease and clarity, in the index to this book all Romans are
listed both by nomen and by their more familiar designation (if they have
one): for instance, Marcus Porcius Cato can be found under the heading
Cato as well as under Porcius.
Let me turn now to a very rapid and entirely basic run through Caesar’s
life. Caesar was born in 100 bc to an ancient patrician family. Romans were
unevenly divided between plebeians (the bulk of all Romans) and patricians. In early Rome, the patricians had been a privileged caste. By the late
republic, however, although patrician status carried a degree of social
cachet, not least because by then there were fewer than twenty patrician
families who subsisted, it carried nothing like its original importance. More
important, as we shall see, was nobility, descent (and especially recent
descent) from a forebear who had won the consulship, Rome’s highest
magistracy. This was a category that included plebeians, and it outshone
patrician rank. Caesar’s family had in any case not distinguished itself in
recent generations. Never the less, as we shall see in the first chapter, Caesar
enjoyed important family connections, and they helped to see him through
the first great crisis of his life, the civil war between Gaius Marius and
Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
Marius, who was Caesar’s uncle, was a great military hero. He had triumphed after his victory in North Africa and, far more important, he had
saved Italy from invasion by powerful Germanic tribes, in recognition of
6