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

by Strauss, Barry

  WHAT CAESAR WANTED

  Even as Dictator for Ten Years, even with an expanded Senate, a redesigned Forum, a frightened silence in the public square, and an enormous ebb and flow of population, Caesar still lacked legitimacy. Most Romans expected the Republic to continue much as it had before. Yet Caesar’s actions spoke louder than any words. They made it clear that the dictator wanted power to flow to him and his friends and away from the traditional institutions of the Senate and the people.

  Caesar could justify his actions by pointing to the need for reform and the unyielding rigidity of the old guard. Such words would fall on deaf ears. Neither the Senate nor the people were ready to give up their ancient liberties. Caesar could not convince them; he could merely accustom them to change as it accumulated. Because Rome was still a republic he could never obtain the appreciation that he considered worthy of his dignitas and his achievements.

  It would take more than one lifetime to change Rome. And Caesar might have wondered just how much lifetime he had left.

  There are those who think he was depressed. “I have lived long enough for nature or glory,” said Caesar repeatedly in 46 B.C. Some of his friends thought that he had no wish to live longer because his health was poorer than it had been. There are accounts of fainting spells and night terrors towards the close of his life—symptoms, perhaps, of his epilepsy.

  Caesar was an epileptic but he was also a politician, so he carefully managed information about his health. He did have occasional seizures, possibly with related dizziness or fainting, but some of the incidents mentioned in the sources look suspicious and might be merely excuses to cover up missteps in the Forum or battlefield lapses. Overall, Caesar’s health was good. Indeed he planned another major military campaign.

  Yet even Caesar knew he was mortal. He also knew that he did not have a legitimate heir, a son to continue his legacy in Rome.

  OCTAVIAN

  In his villa at Labici, Caesar revised his will. It was the Ides of September—September 13, 45 B.C. The key to the document was that, after Caesar’s death, he would adopt Gaius Octavius—Octavian—and give the boy his name—Caesar. He also made Octavian heir to three-quarters of his fortune.

  Earlier that summer Caesar gave Antony a privileged position in the return to Italy and he gave Decimus a position equal to Octavian’s. There may be truth to the rumor that Antony hoped to be adopted by Caesar. Decimus sat in the second carriage and he already was adopted (by another man), but where there’s a will there’s a way and he too might have hoped to get the nod. But Caesar chose Octavian.

  We can reject as slander Antony’s charge that Octavian sold his body to Caesar, but that still leaves the question of why Caesar chose as he did. Perhaps the old fox sensed that Octavian’s blood ran even colder than Antony’s, and if so, surely Caesar approved. As events would soon show, young Octavian was brilliant, shrewd, ambitious, audacious, and utterly ruthless, and so a man after Caesar’s heart. Octavian knew how to turn on the charm and that too surely impressed Caesar, perhaps even worked its magic on him. Besides, Antony, the man Caesar chose to do his financial dirty work, was not the man to be great Caesar’s heir. Or was it also a matter of blood being thicker than water? Antony was a distant cousin of Caesar but Octavian was his grandnephew.

  As for Decimus, he was not Caesar’s kin. Decimus was a heroic battlefield commander but fell short as a strategist. Both Decimus and Antony were more closely tied to the old nobility than Octavian but neither could match his cunning. Antony and Decimus were mature men in their late thirties. Octavian was a month short of his eighteenth birthday. Yet in Caesar’s eyes, Octavian was their equal if not their superior.

  After Hispania, the topic of a son might well have occurred to Caesar. Pompey had been dead for three years and yet he still made war on Caesar via his sons. Caesar had no son except perhaps for Cleopatra’s boy, the illegitimate Caesarion. Adopting Octavian was a solution.

  Both legally and politically, this was complicated. In Rome, adopting an adult was standard practice but adopting by one’s will was not. Octavian was not required to accept. In fact, Caesar left open the possibility of Octavian’s rejection and named substitute heirs. Finally, Caesar was only in his mid-fifties. He might expect to live another two decades, by which point Octavian would be a mature man. Caesar also allowed for the possibility that he might yet have a legitimate son who would take precedence over Octavian. Still, the document was a remarkable vote of confidence in Caesar’s young grandnephew.

  The will was given over to the chief of the Vestal Virgins for safekeeping. Apparently, even in Rome, where little or nothing was sacred, this meant it was kept secret. But we have to wonder if any of the three men who shared the chariots that returned to Italy in 45 B.C.—Antony, Decimus, or Octavian himself—suspected Caesar’s fateful choice.

  4

  CAESAR’S LAST TRIUMPH

  AT THE BEGINNING OF OCTOBER 45 B.C., after a long stay at his villa at Labici, Caesar finally entered Rome. It was his fifth triumph. This one marked his victory in Hispania and its theme was silver, symbol of Hispania’s famous mineral wealth. It was even harder than in 46 B.C. to hide the fact that the war was a civil war—a fight against Romans rather than foreign foes—and so a triumph was offensive if not illegal. Still, Caesar was determined to mark the occasion, but it didn’t go without incident.

  As the dictator rode past the benches of the People’s Tribunes in his triumphal chariot, nine of them stood in salute, but one tribune remained seated. Ten People’s Tribunes were elected each year, in principle to represent ordinary people, but they sometimes came from the Best Men. The seated tribune was Lucius Pontius Aquila, who had supported Pompey in the Civil War. This Pontius was possibly a friend of Cicero. He might have been the same Pontius who lost his estate near Naples (it became Servilia’s property) and if so, he had a personal grudge against Caesar.

  Caesar was furious. “Ask me for the Republic back, Tribune Aquila!” he cried. Nor was that all. For days, whenever Caesar promised something in public, he added sarcastically, “That is, if Pontius Aquila will let me.” Surely, not everyone appreciated the joke. Ordinary Romans considered the People’s Tribunes their champions.

  Caesar capped his Spanish triumph with a public banquet for the people of Rome. Then, four days later, he gave them an unprecedented second feast. He said that he wanted to make up for cutting corners in the first meal. Caesar was a politician, though, and it might be that he felt the public’s anger about the People’s Tribune and he wanted to make amends. Having killed Romans in Hispania, he now fed other Romans.

  Caesar threw open his new estate to the public to hold the banquets. Not to be confused with Caesar’s villa at Labici about twenty miles south of Rome, this estate was called the horti Caesaris—Caesar’s Gardens. The Gardens were located about a mile southeast of the Tiber Island, on the hills overlooking the west bank of the river, near Rome but outside it. It was one of those pleasure palaces that the grandees of Rome built on the hills in and around the city; estates that took in the summer breezes and avoided the bogs where the malarial mosquitos bred. Caesar’s Gardens contained great halls and expansive colonnades as well as a park, all decorated with fine sculpture and paintings. There might have been a shrine to Dionysius—in those days a favorite god of Egypt. There was certainly a stunning view of the great city across the river as well as a dock for private access to it.

  But Caesar’s Gardens were more than just a stately home and its grounds. Caesar planned to use the colonnade as a backdrop for political theater. It worked only too well—it backfired, actually—during one of the posttriumph feasts. Caesar stood in an open space between the columns and took the salute of the crowd. Unfortunately, a man known as Herophilus or Amatius stood practically beside him in the next open space and got almost an equally enthusiastic reception. Herophilus claimed to be the grandson of the great Marius, making him a favorite of the poor. Gaius Marius (ca. 157–86 B.C.), Sulla’s archrival, was a great
general and Populist. He was married to Caesar’s aunt, his father’s sister Julia. Marius impersonators or his alleged descendants kept turning up in Rome.

  Nothing survives of Caesar’s Gardens today and we have only a general sense of their location. Two statues were found in Rome that may well come from them. Both are Roman copies of Greek originals. They illustrate the classical themes of the power of the gods and the fickleness of fate.

  Both are of the highest-quality marble—Pentelic marble—from outside Athens. One shows the god Apollo. He is sitting on a rock in his shrine at Delphi, at the spot that the Greeks thought marked the center of the world. The fragmentary piece shows the god’s imposing body turned toward the viewer. He might originally have held a scepter in his right hand. The second statue shows a son of Niobe. The boy is leaning on the ground in a dramatic pose, his body facing the viewer, his head turned upward and sideways in a look of fear and emotion. According to myth, Niobe had fourteen children, all healthy, but she bragged about them and insulted the gods. In retaliation, the gods sent Apollo and his sister Artemis, who struck the children dead in a matter of minutes. Niobe and her husband soon died as well in grief and anger.

  Did the statues remind Caesar that he too was just human, regardless of what his flatterers said? Or were they just two more beautiful trophies?

  FROM DICTATOR TO GOD

  Caesar spent six months in Rome, from early October 45 B.C. to mid-March 44 B.C. It was his longest stay in the city in fifteen years, but it was less a return than a respite. He already decided to go east at the start of spring to command the war against Parthia just as he went west a year before to command the war in Hispania. What then was the purpose of his time in Rome? To settle things, wrote Cicero, “They say he [Caesar] wouldn’t go against the Parthians unless matters were settled in Rome.” Precisely what “settled” means is unclear, but by the end of 45 B.C., no one could mistake Caesar for a friend of the Republic.

  It was irregular enough that he was sole consul instead of one of the usual two consuls, but then he stepped down in September. He remained dictator for ten years and in fact, the Senate reaffirmed that position. Still, Caesar insisted that two of his staunchest generals be appointed suffect (that is, supplemental) consuls for the rest of the year—Gaius Trebonius and Gaius Fabius. He did not bother with a vote. Later, people booed Fabius when he entered the theater because he lacked the legitimacy of an elected official. It showed that people resented how Caesar took away their power as voters.

  The last straw seemed to come on December 31, 45 B.C.—New Year’s Eve. Fabius died suddenly. Caesar made his old comrade-in-arms, Gaius Caninius Rebilus, suffect consul for the rest of the year—that is, for less than twenty-four hours. Caesar was hurrying along the prizes of Civil War, as the historian Tacitus wrote many years later. At the time, Cicero joked that Caninius was so very vigilant that he never closed his eyes while consul, but this was bitter humor from the pen of a conservative. Cicero also wrote that it was hard to hold back the tears. There were, he said, innumerable other things of this kind going on in those days.

  All this, however, was just a prologue. The main act took place in late January or early February of 44 B.C. when the Senate named Caesar DICTATOR IN PERPETUO—that is, Dictator in Perpetuity. The new title was important both for what it was and what it wasn’t.

  The issue wasn’t power, as Caesar already had massive powers. No one held high office without his approval even if technically he lacked a veto. He controlled the army and the treasury. He could be consul if he chose.

  The issue wasn’t formal monarchy, either. Caesar kept proclaiming that he wasn’t a king. It’s credible enough that he didn’t aspire to the title rex, as he said. The hated title was more trouble than it was worth. But a dictator for life was virtually a king, as people understood in antiquity. Shortly after the Ides of March, Cicero wrote, “We should actually call King the man whom we in fact had as king.” Asinius Pollio, a supporter of Caesar and later a great historian, wrote in 43 B.C. that he loved Caesar but he knew that with him Rome suffered unrestricted rule where everything was in the power of one man.

  The issue was the future. Once Caesar was Dictator in Perpetuity, there was no turning back. Not even Sulla held such a title. On the contrary, Sulla stepped down and ended his life in retirement. Caesar let people know what he thought of that in a witticism, “Sulla didn’t know his ABCs when he laid down his dictatorship,” meaning that Sulla didn’t know the basic rules of politics. The source of the quotation is an enemy of Caesar, it is true, so it might be made up, but it bears the sharp mark of Caesar’s intelligence.

  Another sign that Caesar’s dictatorship was here to stay is the oath that the Senate voted to swear. Every senator promised to maintain Caesar’s safety and to consider him sacrosanct—that is, to threaten the death penalty to anyone who harmed him.

  Kings have heirs. The public did not know that Caesar had chosen his grandnephew Octavian as his heir, but they did learn that Caesar named him as the dictator’s formal second-in-command, the Master of the Horse, for most of the next year. The appointment would begin on March 18, 44 B.C., when both Caesar and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, one of Caesar’s generals and the current Master of the Horse, were scheduled to leave Rome on their respective military campaigns for the rest of 44 B.C. This was an astonishing honor for an eighteen-year-old, especially considering the Romans’ distrust of youth. Combine this with the provisions of Caesar’s will and it becomes clear that the Dictator in Perpetuity planned for a successor. You might as well have tolled all the bells in Rome for the death of the Republic.

  The cascade of new honors, though only details, shows just how low some Romans were willing to bow before the new realities of power.

  The Senate wasted no time in flattering Caesar once news of the victory at Munda reached Rome on April 20, 45 B.C. The senators called for fifty days of Thanksgiving—ten more than they granted the previous year for Caesar’s victory in North Africa. They made April 21 an annual day of commemoration, with races to be held in the circus. They called Caesar Pater Patriae, or “Father of the Fatherland.” They gave Caesar the title of liberator and authorized the building of a Temple of Liberty. They also allowed him to use the title of imperator permanently—previous generals used it only temporarily. Imperator, or “commander,” was a title given to a general by his troops after an especially great victory. The Senate also allowed Caesar to wear the purple and gold of a triumph on all formal occasions as well as a laurel wreath–symbol of the king of the gods, Jupiter. People joked that this was Caesar’s favorite honor because it allowed him to cover up his receding hairline—he was vain about going bald.

  The Senate of Cato and men like him would never sink so low, but those men were gone. The Civil War had killed them. Cicero was the last lion of the Senate and he was in semiretirement. Besides, he was not about to roar at Caesar. There were, it seems, no big senatorial cats left.

  So the flattery sweepstakes now escalated with the commissioning of new statues. Take, for example, Quirinus. He was one of the many obscure gods whom the Romans worshipped. Originally perhaps a local deity, by Caesar’s day Quirinus was taken to represent the hero Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, after Romulus became a god. So it was decided to erect a statue of Caesar in the Temple of Quirinus on the Quirinal Hill with the inscription “To the undefeated god.” Symbolically this made Caesar almost the second founder of Rome. Cicero registered a private protest by writing wittily to a friend that it was better to have Caesar share a temple with the god Quirinus than with the goddess Salvation. Why? If Caesar was like Quirinus there was hope of getting rid of him, since tradition stated that the senators killed the original Quirinus—Romulus—in order to stop him from becoming a tyrant.

  Another statue of Caesar was placed on the Capitoline Hill next to the statues of the seven kings of Rome and an eighth statue, of the man who drove out the last king and established the Roman Republic in the traditional founding date
of 509 B.C. That eighth man was Lucius Junius Brutus, whom Brutus and Decimus each claimed as an ancestor. Yet another statue of Caesar was carried in the procession that opened the games celebrating Munda in July 45 B.C. behind a statue of Victory. This third statue of Caesar was made of ivory, an honor usually reserved for the gods.

  The placement, processional use, and material of the statues—at least one was made of ivory—came close to calling Caesar a god. The inscription on the statue in the Temple of Quirinus made no bones about it. One wonders if Caesar erased it as he erased the inscription calling him a “demigod” the year before. Some people did object. According to Cicero, no one applauded Caesar’s statue in the summer procession—the “odious” procession, as he called it.

  Never mind. By early 44 B.C., the Senate took the final steps. They made Caesar an official god of the Roman state. He would have his own temple, priest, sacred couch for his image, and name—Divus Julius, the Deified Julius. None of this was put into effect while Caesar was alive.

  It’s not clear which, if any of these honors came on Caesar’s initiative. By making Caesar a god, the Senate was possibly trying to win support among the many inhabitants of Rome who came from the Greek East and who might appreciate the gesture.

  CLEOPATRA IN ROME

  Not long after Caesar threw open his gardens across the Tiber to the public, he closed them again for the exclusive use of Cleopatra. It was Cleopatra’s second visit to Rome, which she had visited the previous year as well. It was not unusual for foreign rulers to come to the city on diplomatic business. Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, did so in his day. But, diplomat or not, Cleopatra was also Caesar’s mistress and she had the added incentive of conceiving another child by him.