Caesar

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Our sources are filled with prodigies warning of the death of Rome’s most powerful man. One of the most famous claims that on the night of 14 March Calpurnia suffered a nightmare in which she is variously claimed to have seen either the pediment of the house collapsing or that she was holding his murdered body in her arms. Then the morning sacrifices on the 15th were repeated several times, but the omens were always unfavourable. Caesar is supposed to have been surprised because his wife was not normally given to superstition and eventually Calpurnia persuaded him to remain at home. He sent word to inform the Senate that ill health prevented him from leaving his house to perform any public business. It is possible that there was some truth in this and that he was unwell. Antony was to have carried the message to the Senate, but before he left Decimus Brutus arrived-it was normal for friends to greet an important senator early in the morning so there was nothing unusual in that. Both men had dined on the previous night at the house of Lepidus, where after the meal the question of what was the best death is supposed to have been raised. Caesar had been taking little part in the discussion, but quickly looked up to say that the answer was an end that was sudden and unexpected. On the following morning Brutus was able to convince Caesar to reverse his decision. Plutarch says that he mocked the warnings of the soothsayers and lured Caesar with the claim that the Senate was going to offer him kingship outside Italy, but this is probably a later invention. There were plenty of reasons why Caesar should wish to attend the Senate when he was due to leave the city in three days. Whatever the details, eventually the dictator got into a litter and was carried through the Forum to where the Senate was meeting in one of the temples that formed part of Pompey’s theatre complex. A few months before Caesar had won praise for ordering the restoration of the public statues of and monuments to Sulla and Pompey, and so a statue of his former son-in-law would look on during the debate. After he left his house, a slave arrived claiming to have vital news for the dictator. The man was given permission to stay and await his return.19

  It was late morning by the time Caesar arrived and the time had passed nervously for the conspirators, prey to fears that their plot had been exposed. Apart from Decimus Brutus, the conspirators had gathered early using the pretext that Cassius’ son was formally becoming a man by publicly assuming the toga virilis. Then they went to the temple and waited outside for Caesar’s arrival. Their daggers were concealed within the cases in which senators habitually kept their long stylus pens. In Pompey’s theatre itself was a troop of gladiators owned by Decimus Brutus, who were armed and ready, but had reason to be there since it was to be the venue for some fights to be staged in the near future. One man greeted Brutus and Cassius in a rather cryptic manner, which they first interpreted as a sign that someone had given them away. Their tension increased when the same man went up to the dictator as he arrived and spoke to him for some time, but they soon realised that he was presenting a petition. En route Caesar had been handed a scroll by the Greek teacher Artemidorus, who had spent time in Brutus’ household and seems to have known of the conspiracy. Through choice or lack of opportunity the dictator did not read it. None of the sources suggest that he was in any way suspicious and he cheerfully called out to a soothsayer, who had previously warned him to fear the Ides of March, in an exchange so familiar from Shakespeare – ‘The Ides of March are Come.’ ‘Aye, Caesar, but not gone.’ The conspirators greeted him as he stepped down from the litter. Trebonius – or in Plutarch’s version Decimus Brutus-took Antony aside and kept him talking while Caesar and the remainder went in. They were aware that Caesar’s fellow consul was both loyal and a burly individual, and would normally have sat beside the dictator, close enough to aid him. The senators already inside the hall rose when Caesar entered. The dictator then went to his golden chair, which presumably was next to Antony’s curule chair since he was the only consul apart from Caesar.20

  Before the meeting could formally begin the conspirators clustered around the dictator. Lucius Tillius Cimber, who had served under Caesar in the past, asked for the recall of his brother, who presumably had been an ardent Pompeian. The others pressed round to implore Caesar to grant the plea, touching and kissing his hands. Publius Servilius Casca Longus moved round to stand behind Caesar’s chair. The dictator refused to be moved by the pleas, replying calmly to refute their arguments. Suddenly Cimber grabbed Caesar’s toga and pulled it down from his shoulder. This was the agreed signal and Casca now drew his dagger and stabbed, but in his nervousness only managed to graze the dictator’s shoulder or neck. Caesar turned and seems to have said something like, ‘Bloody Casca, what are you playing at!’ In some accounts he grabbed Casca’s arms and tried to wrench his dagger away, although in Suetonius’ version he used his own pen as a weapon and stabbed his assailant. Casca – Plutarch says specifically using Greek and not the Latin Caesar had employed-called out to his brother for help. The other conspirators stabbed and slashed at Caesar. Several, including Brutus, were accidentally wounded by the others in the confused mêlée that developed around the dictator. Only two senators tried to help Caesar, but they could not break through to him. The dictator struggled with them to the end, trying to fight or force his way out. Marcus Brutus stabbed him once in the groin, and some claimed that when he saw Servilia’s son he stopped struggling and spoke one last time, saying ‘You too, my son’-sadly there is no direct evidence for Shakespeare’s version of et tu Brute. Then the dictator covered his head with his toga and collapsed, falling next to the pedestal of Pompey’s statue. There were twenty-three wounds on his body.21

  The attack had been so sudden and unexpected that the hundreds of watching senators had first been too shocked to react. When the deed was done and the conspirators stood, their clothes dishevelled, some wounded and all spattered with blood, Brutus called on Cicero, who had not been privy to the secret, to take the lead. Even as he did so panic spread throughout the hall and all of the other senators, including the famous orator, fled away as fast as they could. This was not quite the reception they had wanted, but still full of the success of their enterprise, the conspirators trooped out and walked up to the Capitol, carrying on a pole one of the caps that a freed slave traditionally wore, symbolising the liberty they had brought to the State. Antony for the moment was in hiding, and a little later three of Caesar’s slaves dared to enter the hall, lifted the body and put it in his litter, then carried it back to his house. For a while all of Rome was stunned and an uneasy truce developed. Cicero eventually went to the Capitol and congratulated the assassins, but when Brutus and Cassius went down and spoke from the Rostra in the Forum, the crowd that gathered showed no sign of enthusiasm. Antony was alive, as was Lepidus, who held command of the troops camped just outside the city. For a while they seemed conciliatory, Antony met the conspirators privately and then on the next day in the Senate. The House passed a motion to recognise all of Caesar’s acts and appointments, since too many people, including a number of the conspirators, had benefited from these to desire their repeal.

  In the mood of reconciliation, the Senate voted to give Caesar a public funeral, which was held in the Forum on 18 March. Antony ordered a herald to read out the text of the honours so recently voted to the dictator by the Senate and the oath taken by every senator to preserve his life, and then gave a short speech – Shakespeare’s famous version probably gives the best modern reflection of the power of Roman oratory. He also read out Caesar’s will, which included the gift of extensive gardens near the Tiber to the people of Rome, and an additional award of 300 sestertii (75 denarii) to each citizen. His purple robe, rent and bloodstained from his wounds, was put on display, and some sources also claim that there was a wax effigy of Caesar showing his injuries. A large crowd had gathered – Cicero later dismissed them as the rabble of the city, but this was no more than conventional abuse of opponents, and it seems to have consisted of a broad range of different groups. A group of magistrates and former magistrates began to lift the byre on which the body
was laid, for it was intended to carry it to a spot next to his daughter’s tomb on the Campus Martius and cremate it there. The angry crowd would have none of this. Just as their hero Clodius had been burnt in the Senate House, so Caesar would also be cremated inside the city, in the Forum at its very heart. The seats and benches used by the magistrates and the courts were smashed and used to feed the fire. The mood was hysterical. The actors hired to dress in the triumphal and magisterial regalia of Caesar and his ancestors now tore these off, ripped them into pieces and tossed them into the flames. His veteran soldiers threw their weapons and armour into the blaze, while women added their finest jewellery. Occasionally crowds had protested against Caesar, but this had always been over a specific grievance. Their affection for him, as a man who throughout his career had consistently advocated measures for the benefit of the wider population and not simply the narrow elite, had never seriously wavered. In 49 BC the vast bulk of the wider population of Italy had not been inclined to take up arms against Caesar. Then and now they had found it much harder than his senatorial opponents to see Caesar as an enemy of the Republic, a term that anyway meant different things to different people. After the funeral came rioting and attacks on the houses of the conspirators and those who had supported them. The dictator’s loyal supporter Helvius Cinna was murdered by a mob who mistook him for one Cornelius Cinna, who was a prominent critic of Caesar. It was not just Roman citizens who lamented Caesar. At the funeral, and for a number of nights afterwards, Suetonius tells us that there were many foreigners joining in the lamentation after the fashion of their culture. Especially prominent were members of Rome’s Jewish population.22

  A few weeks after the assassination one of Caesar’s still loyal associates gloomily concluded that if Caesar ‘with all his genius could not find a way out, then who will find a way?’ The same man’s predictions of immediate rebellion as soon as the news reached Gaul proved utterly unfounded, but he was correct in assuming that civil war would soon erupt again. Antony chose to fight against the conspirators. Octavius, now, since the will, formally adopted and thus named Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, would show truly remarkable initiative and confidence for a youth of eighteen, rallying Caesar’s veterans to his cause and making himself an important figure who, no one could afford to ignore. First he fought for the Senate against Antony, and then, guessing rightly that they would discard him as soon as victory was secured, he joined with Antony and Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate. In its brutality the ensuing war kept no hint of Caesar’s clemency and resembled more the struggle between Marius, Cinna and Sulla. Within three years virtually all of the conspirators had been defeated and were dead, often by their own hands. The senatorial and equestrian orders were purged by proscriptions on a larger scale even than Sulla had enforced. In time Lepidus was marginalised and left to live out his life as an obscure exile, while Antony and Octavian fought for supremacy. The latter was only thirty-two when the defeated Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves and left him unchallenged ruler of the Roman world. Rome became a monarchy once again, although the hated name of king was not employed, and this time the change proved permanent. Octavian became Augustus and showed more skill in veiling his power than his adopted father had done. This was part of the reason for his success, but his ruthlessness in disposing of enemies and the fatigue of a population that had endured over a decade more years of bloodshed helped to convince Rome’s elite that it was better to accept his rule than return to civil war.23

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Blood and destruction shall be so in use, and dreadful objects so familiar’

  – Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III Scene 1.

  Caesar was born into a Republic already prone to sudden outbreaks of savage political violence. The scale of the bloodshed grew worse during his life and his own murder was just one episode in an extremely turbulent period of Rome’s history. Caesar’s death was gruesome and spectacular, but very few of the men who have figured prominently in his story died of natural causes. The women fared rather better, although Cleopatra was an exception in this respect as in so many other ways. Saturninus’ followers were massacred when Caesar was a baby, the Social War erupted when he was a child, followed by the civil war that raged as he matured into a man. Between them Sulla and his enemies caused losses to the Roman elite on a scale not seen since the darkest days of the war with Hannibal. It did not stop there. Lepidus soon rebelled in Italy and was swiftly suppressed, while Sertorius waged war with grim efficiency in Spain and was only defeated after years of struggle. Later there was Catiline, then Clodius and Milo, and many lesser figures willing to employ violence in pursuit of their ambitions, even before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. All the time foreign wars remained common, while the staggering initial successes of Spartacus awoke deep fears in a society so dependent on slave labour. However, far more senators and equestrians fell in disputes between Romans, and the bloodletting was probably even greater when Antony and Octavian first hunted down the conspirators and then turned against each other.

  Caesar lived in a brutal and dangerous era. This should be an obvious truth, but it is sometimes easy to forget because it was also an extremely civilised age. Caesar’s own Commentaries, Cicero’s vast output of letters, speeches and philosophical treatises, along with Sallust’s histories and the poetry of Catullus, represent some of the greatest works of Latin literature. Combined with the later sources they also ensure that these years are better known that any other period of the Roman Republic’s history. Indeed, it is extremely difficult today to avoid looking at the earlier periods of the Republic through the prism of the first century BC, and especially the copious writings and ideas of Cicero. The wealth of detailed information for these years, the day-to-day gossip or detailed discussions of elections and debates – once again so much of all this comes from Cicero-can lend an air of normality and stability that is deeply misleading. Roman public life in the first century BC was anything but stable. Violence was not ever present, but it was always a possibility, lurking just beneath the surface. The constraints that had restricted competition between earlier generations of senators no longer functioned as well. In most years the round of public life proceeded properly enough, with meetings of the Senate and Assemblies occurring, courts convening and dispensing verdicts, magistrates going about their business, and elections being held. Sometimes jurors were bribed or otherwise persuaded to change their view, or the voters manipulated, but on the whole the life of the res publica continued in a way that was acceptable, if not ideal. Rioting, orchestrated violence, murder – and still more open warfare – remained occasional exceptions that interrupted this pattern. The Republican system was remarkably resilient and sprang back into something like overt normality after each crisis. Yet none of these things was now unimaginable, as they had been to generations before the Gracchi. Men like Marius, Cinna and Sulla had shown that supreme power could be seized by force, while the early career of Pompey demonstrated that an able commander with his own army could force his way into the forefront of public life in a way never possible before.