Caesar’s generation had essentially the same ambitions as the senators of earlier periods, craving high office, wealth and glory to enhance their own and their families’ position. From the second century BC onwards, the profits of empire meant that there was ever more money around, and spending on monuments, entertainments, and other means of buying fame and popularity grew at a staggering rate. By the first century BC it cost far more to have a successful public career. Like many others, Caesar plunged himself into debt in pursuit of his career, trusting to future success to meet the demands of his creditors. Had he failed at any stage, then his ruin would have been complete and irrevocable – hence his comment to his mother on the day of the election to the post of Pontifex Maximus, that he would return as a winner or not at all (see p.125). Caesar kept on winning, but other men were not so lucky and failed, losing everything. Some succeeded for a while, until their rivals were able to secure their public condemnation in the courts or elsewhere. In 63 BC Cicero executed the former consul Lentulus, who had already been expelled from the Senate and had had to start his career afresh. Just a few years later the orator was himself forced into exile by Clodius and only the changing balance of politics allowed his subsequent recall. The risks of public life were greater than they had ever been before and very few men could ever feel entirely secure from attack. Those who failed swelled the ranks of the desperate, willing to join any enterprise led by a man promising to restore their funds and prospects. Many such men joined Catiline and died. Others rallied to Caesar in 49 BC and prospered, so long as they survived the Civil War. The violence of the times ensured that failure might not simply bring political and financial ruin, but death. Yet the new dangers of public life were set against the far fewer limits on success. It was possible, at least for a few men, to bend or break the rules and conventions supposed to regulate office-holding, and it was also possible to gain unprecedentedly large and long provincial commands. So many men had prospered by fighting for Sulla to make it clear that fortune and position could be won in civil war. Caesar’s opponents in the Civil War presented themselves as the defenders of a traditional Republic, but the majority had done rather well out of Sulla’s victory.
The combination of high risks and the potential for almost limitless success fuelled both ambition and fear amongst Caesar’s generation. All had seen some men rise spectacularly high and others fall to ruin or death. Most men had neither the inclination nor favourable opportunity to advance their career through intimidation or open violence, but no one could ever be sure that his rivals would not choose such methods. Senators were very ready to believe rumours of revolution or assassination plots. Once civil war actually broke out even remaining neutral was not always a safe option as the proscriptions had shown. The higher a man rose and the greater the risks he took, the harder his fall was likely to be, and the more he worried that his enemies would turn savagely on any sign of weakness. The overweaning ambition of so many of the famous figures in the Late Republic is obvious, but it is all too easy to forget the nervous climate in which they lived and struggled for power. Each success made it harder for a man to turn back and the only real safety lay in more successes. Caesar has gone down in history as the man who crossed the Rubicon, plunging the Roman world into chaos in a gamble whereby he would either win or lose all. It is a mistake to see him as all that different from his opponents or most of the other prominent Romans of the first century BC.It is equally unwise to see the key players in this and other crises as acting only on rational considerations. All were gamblers in their way, and all certainly were afraid of the consequences of defeat and reluctant to trust personal enemies. The spectre of military dictatorship and the proscriptions was always there, as was the memory of other less well – organised massacres and executions. Nor was there much within the mentality of the Roman elite to encourage compromise. Young aristocrats were raised to aspire to virtus, an important part of which was the absolute resolution never to give in even in the face of defeat. In foreign wars this had served the Republic well, baffling Pyrrhus and Hannibal, neither of whom could understand why the Romans would not give in when they were obviously beaten. In the age of civil wars it made sure that these internal conflicts were waged with relentless ruthlessness. Once the struggle began the men on both sides knew that they must win or die. It was exceptionally rare for Roman aristocrats to commit suicide when defeated in a foreign war, for it was their job to rally the troops and rebuild their strength until they were ready to fight with greater success. In civil wars the ordinary soldiers could usually expect mercy, but the leaders could not, and so killed themselves in great numbers, whether in despair or defiance.
Caesar tried to change this. In 49 BC he feared falling into the hands of his rivals, just as they were terrified of his returning at the head of an army. In each case the fears may have been ungrounded, but that did not make them less real. Once the war began Caesar paraded his clemency, sparing defeated enemies and in time allowing them to resume their careers. This was calculated policy, intended to win over the uncertain and deter the enemy from fighting to the death, but that does not reduce the contrast with his opponents or earlier victors. After he had won, the pardoned Pompeians were allowed back into public life and some treated very well indeed. Once again he clearly felt that this was more likely to persuade them and others to accept his dictatorship. Regardless of his motives, there was a generosity about Caesar’s behaviour that was matched by no other Roman who came to power in similar circumstances. In the same way, while his lifelong backing for popular causes was intended to win support, at the same time he did implement a number of measures that were in the interest of a wide part of the population.
Caesar was determined to rise to the top. Shakespeare’s Mark Antony said of Caesar that ‘ambition should be made of sterner stuff’. In truth there can rarely have been a sterner or more determined ambition than Caesar’s. At times he was utterly ruthless, although this was far more marked in Gaul than in the Civil War. He seems to have had few scruples and was coldly pragmatic in his willingness to order atrocities. Yet he was never wantonly cruel and used victory for a wider good as well as his own. Ultimately we return to the essential ambiguity of Caesar and his career with which we began. He was an exceptionally talented individual, but he was also a product of his age. Roman politics in the Late Republic was precarious, with increasingly few restraints on behaviour. The Republican system relied heavily on precedent and convention, but these were breaking down, not helped by the readiness with which the authorities employed the senatus consultum ultimum with its temporary suspension of law. The rules of the political game had changed and it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to return to the old system. Caesar’s ambition, talent, determination and his much vaunted good fortune led him on as he rose to supremacy, and prevented him from ever giving up or backing down. Had he been born in another, less troubled age, his reputation might easily have been far less controversial. He could have been another Scipio Africanus, winning unambiguous glory by saving Rome from defeat by a foreign foe. (Perhaps then he would have ended like Africanus, bitter and disappointed living in self-imposed exile after being forced out of public life.) For all his faults, Caesar was undoubtedly a patriot and a very able man. Instead, Caesar fought and won the Civil War, became dictator and was stabbed to death by conspirators. Whatever the rights and wrongs of his actions, it is hard to imagine that in any way his life could have been more dramatic.
‘ALWAYS I AM CAESAR’ – CAESAR THROUGH THE AGES
Caesar the general has been widely admired down the ages. His Commentaries were rediscovered and began to be published again in the late fifteenth century. In the coming centuries as more organised states began to develop increasingly sophisticated professional armies, military thinkers often turned to Caesar’s writing for inspiration. Perceptions of the Greek and Roman art of war had a profound influence on the theory and practice of European warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centur
ies. Until comparatively recently the Commentaries, along with other ancient texts, continued to play a significant part in the education of officers in Western countries. Napoleon often claimed to have been inspired by Caesar and even during his exile on St Helena produced a critique of the latter’s campaigns. His emulation of the Romans was obviously not just confined to generalship, for he modelled himself on such great men in his own rise to consul and then emperor in a French Republic that had from the beginning drawn much inspiration from Republican Rome. Much of the iconography and language of Napoleon’s empire was overtly Roman, and drew particular inspiration from Caesar and his heirs. Later, Napoleon III sponsored the first major archaeological programme examining the sites associated with Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. Admiration for Caesar combined with a romanticism for the Gauls-children in French schools are still taught to think of these Iron Age tribes as ‘their ancestors’. In the nineteenth century the association was strengthened because the great rival and potential enemy was Prussia, later Germany, mirroring Caesar’s depiction of Gaulish peoples separated by the Rhine from hostile Germans.
As a military leader Caesar has been widely admired, though sometimes with some critical reservations, but attitudes to him as a statesman have been far more mixed from the very beginning. Octavian rose to power as Caesar’s heir, rallying his veterans and supporters to avenge the dictator’s murder. After Caesar’s deification, he styled himself ‘son of the divine Julius’. He did not emulate his adopted father’s clemency and, whilst he could not also match the latter’s military skill, he was an extremely gifted political operator. When the civil wars were over and his rule unchallenged Octavian – Augustus also shielded the reality of his supremacy from the public gaze in a way very different to Caesar. His divine father was now less useful and appears little in the propaganda of the new regime. Authors such as Livy seem to have been very uncertain about how to view Caesar and his deeds, and certainly did not eulogise him. Given that many of his contemporaries had struggled to make up their mind about Caesar this is perhaps unsurprising. It is likely that Asinius Pollio’s lost history was at the very least not entirely uncritical of Caesar. Under Augustus and his successors, Cato, and to some extent Brutus and Cassius, were more often the objects of praise, idealised as noble defenders of the Republic. During the reign of Nero the poet Lucan produced his epic Pharsalia about the struggle between Pompey and Caesar, and the latter is most definitely not the hero of the piece. Yet nor is he quite an undoubted villain and at times comes across more as some mysterious elemental force than anything entirely human. Later in the century Suetonius began his biographies of the first twelve rulers of Rome with Caesar. Of the twelve men Augustus was clearly held up as closest to the ideal ruler, but in some ways the biography of Caesar stands apart from the rest, since although dictator he was not an emperor or princeps in the style created by his adopted son. Suetonius does criticise Caesar, but also reports in detail his many achievements. In many ways the uncertainty about Caesar and how to judge him began with the Romans, who admired his great conquests, but deplored other aspects of his life and career and continued to revere some of his opponents.
This uncertainty continued and has allowed many different Caesars to be depicted over the centuries. The most famous is probably the Caesar of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Despite its title, the focus is far more on Marcus Brutus, and Caesar appears relatively briefly before being murdered early on in the third act. Shakespeare’s Caesar has few obvious traces of greatness, being somewhat pompous, boastful and readily flattered, but is certainly no tyrant. A greater sense of his power and dominance comes from the attitudes of the other characters, both before and, in many respects, after his death. Shakespeare was not the first playwright to take Caesar as a subject, and he was certainly not the last, many, including Voltaire, writing plays or operas looking at some or all of his life. The assassination has probably attracted most attention due to its inherent drama, and after that the affair with Cleopatra with all the hints of the exotic East and eroticism. However, the latter aspect is wholly absent from Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. This is a gentler, more obviously benevolent Caesar, and his relationship with the queen-made to be a ‘child’ of sixteen rather than the woman she actually was in 48 BC — is essentially avuncular. More recently there have been a number of cinematic portrayals of Caesar, of which probably the most memorable comes from Rex Harrison’s performance in Cleopatra (1963).1 His Caesar has more of the man of action about him, with the quiet but firm authority of a proven leader. He also has something of the quick intelligence and, in that actor’s practised and precise delivery, a strong hint of the powerful orator. The relationship with Cleopatra – Elizabeth Taylor looking very beautiful, even if, for all we know, little or nothing like the actual queen-perhaps has more of politics than passion about it. Television has also had a go, with the film Julius Caesar (2002) starring Jeremy Sisto in the title role. This presented another largely sympathetic Caesar, but faced the massive problem of compressing his life’s story into a little more than two and a half hours. Crassus is not mentioned at all, and matters of chronology are left extremely vague, with Cato already in the Senate at the time of Sulla’s dictatorship, but it did try to give a broader view than simply Egypt and the Ides of March.
Caesar did a lot in his life, and the period in which he lived was very eventful and well documented, so that such attempts to cover all of his career have been almost as rare in novels as on celluloid. In recent years the largest and most detailed version has come from Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, the six novels of which tend to weigh in around the 700 – 800 page mark. These are detailed, racy accounts that begin with Marius and Sulla and go through to the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination. The author did her research well on these and sticks closely to the real events. Inevitably, given the scale of the books and the interest in the personal lives of the protagonists, the vacuums left by the many gaps in our evidence have been filled by invention. The novelist does not possess the historian’s luxury of being able to state that we simply do not know something. Rather lighter – in sheer physical size if nothing else – is Conn Iggulden’s Emperor series, adventure stories in which Caesar is the hero. These are fast paced with the emphasis on action, and with these priorities the author plays rather fast and loose with the facts. Both McCullough and especially Iggulden present Caesar in a favourable light, although still showing his ruthless streak. Alan Massie’s Caesar is a much more critical and more serious novel. Its main character and narrator is Decimus Brutus and to a great extent it is a subversion of Shakespeare, with Marcus Brutus as a pompous fool rather than noble hero. Caesar is a great man, but his cynicism and ambition are far more to the fore. Caesar also appears in a number of Steven Saylor’s Roma sub rosa mystery novels, and these also present him as a less admirable figure, more selfish destroyer of the Republic than hero. That the Republic in these stories is flawed and tottering does not reduce his responsibility for speeding its end.
Historical facts are only one concern to dramatists, scriptwriters and novelists alike, and have to be balanced against the demands of storytelling. Some have been far more faithful than others, but it would be unreasonable for an historian to criticise too much any deviations from the recorded fact (which itself is problematic at times) in works of fiction. Between them they have presented many different views of Caesar, but then it should also be noted that over the last two centuries serious historians have depicted his character, aims and importance in very different ways. In this book I have attempted to look at the evidence we have and to try and reconstruct his life. There are some things we do not know and are unlikely ever to know. The aim has been to treat each episode in his life without assuming the inevitability of subsequent events. Some aspects of his character, for instance his emotions in public and private life, his beliefs and particularly his ambitions in his final years, remain mysterious. They can be guessed at, but not known, and each person will inevi
tably shape their own Caesar, in admiration or condemnation-often perhaps a mixture of both. Over two thousand years later his story still fascinates. One thing is certain – these will most certainly not be the last words written about Caius Julius Caesar.
CHRONOLOGY
753 BC Traditional date for foundation of Rome by Romulus.
509 Expulsion of Rome’s last king, Tarquinius Superbus.
201 Rome wins the Second Punic War with Carthage.
146 Third Punic War ends with destruction of Carthage.
133 Tribunate and death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.
123 – 122 Tribunates and death of Caius Sempronius Gracchus.
c.112 Birth of Crassus.
106 Birth of Pompey.
105 Cimbri and Teutones destroy a large Roman army at Arausio.
102 – 101 Marius defeats the Cimbri and Teutones.
c.100 Birth of Julius Caesar.
91 – 88 The Social War, the last great rebellion by Rome’s Italian allies.
The socii are defeated only after a hard struggle.
88 Sulla marches on Rome when Marius takes the command against Mithridates from him.
86 Death of Marius.
c.85 Death of Caesar’s father.
84 Caesar marries Cornelia.
82 – 79 Dictatorship of Sulla.
81 Caesar refuses Sulla’s order to divorce Cornelia and goes on the run. He is subsequently pardoned following appeals from his mother’s relatives.
80 – 78 Caesar undergoes military service in Asia and wins the corona civica at Mytilene.
77 Caesar appears in the courts at Rome, unsuccessfully prosecuting Cnaeus Cornelius Dolabella.
76 Caesar unsuccessfully prosecutes Caius Antonius.
75 Caesar travels to Rhodes to study and is captured and ransomed by pirates.
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