He passed through the entrance with barely a nod to those who stood around in the gray light, taking his place on a bench close to the central stage. He would speak today. Perhaps he would try once more to make them understand the need to expand the lands under Rome. He would speak even though they seemed deaf to the words he used, blind to the ideas. Rome could never rest on what had been brought to her feet. How many times had he seen small rebellions take fire throughout a country, the strength of the Senate tested from outside? From the Mytilene fort to Syria, he had been witness to the hawks that waited for Rome to nod in sleep, just once.
There were a thousand small kings in the world who bent their knee and still watched for a moment of weakness. Only a fool would give it to them. If Roman generals ever reached a line and said, “This is far enough,” that would be the end of a million lives given to reach that point. That would be the crack that would break the glass.
Julius was so deep in his inner thoughts that he did not notice Tillius Cimber approach him, striding along the curved line of benches. Julius assumed the younger man had stumbled when he felt a hand grip the cloth of his toga, yanking it aside.
In an instant, rage spiked in him as the man held on. Cimber’s face was rigid with effort and Julius gripped his fingers with both hands, twisting at them.
“What are you doing?” Julius shouted at his attacker, struggling to stand.
He saw faces turn toward him from the corners of his eyes and more men rush to his aid. Through his fury, he knew he had only to wait for Cimber to be dragged away. The punishment for daring to lay a hand on him was death, and he would not be merciful.
Cimber was young and strong, but Julius had weathered like an oak on a thousand miles of march. His arms shook with the strain, yet he could not break the deathless fingers that writhed against his neck.
More men clustered around on the benches, crying out as they came closer. Julius saw Suetonius draw a dagger, his face flushed with vicious excitement. The shock strained at his heart as he understood at last what was happening. Cimber smiled as he saw the realization come to the Dictator and he renewed his grip, holding Julius in place for Suetonius to strike.
Julius looked desperately around for anyone he could call. Where was Ciro? Brutus? Where was Octavian or Mark Antony? He bellowed as Suetonius gashed at him, the knife scoring a line of blood on his shoulder. Cimber’s hold was broken by others who swarmed in to kill and Julius struck out blindly, yelling for help. He grunted as a knife sank into his side and was withdrawn to strike again.
A man fell across him, hindering the others. Julius was able to stand for a moment and raised his arm against a dagger slashing toward his neck. It sliced his hand and he cried out in agony, shoved back in his seat by the press of snarling men.
There was blood everywhere, staining their white togas and spattering their faces. Julius thought of his son and was terrified for what they would do to him. In his agony, he shoved one of his attackers backwards with fading strength. More knives punched into his legs as he kicked out in spasm.
He did not stop calling for help, knowing he could survive even the worst of the wounds. If Octavian could be summoned, he would strike fear into the animals that screamed and yelped around him in a frenzy.
Two of them held him by shoulders slippery with blood. Hot liquid bubbled from the corner of his mouth as his strength vanished. He could only look up in despair as they panted into his face, close enough to smell their breath.
“Wait,” he heard a voice say, somewhere close.
The bloody hands shoved Julius against the back of his seat and he turned in an agony of hope to see who had stopped them.
Brutus walked across the central floor of the theater, his hands clasped behind his back. Even as Julius felt relief, he saw his old friend too carried a blade in his hand, and he slumped brokenly. Blood poured from his wounds and his vision seemed to sharpen as every sense screamed to live. He felt the hands of his enemies fall away, but he could not move or fight them any longer.
“You too, Brutus?” he said.
Brutus stepped into the line of benches and raised his knife up to Julius’s face. His eyes held a great sadness and a triumph Julius could not bear to witness.
“Yes,” Brutus replied softly.
“Then kill me quickly. I cannot live and know this,” Julius said, his voice a whisper.
The other men stood back in awe, seeing the blood they had released. Julius did not look at them. Slowly, without dropping his gaze from Brutus, he reached to the twisted folds of his toga and drew it slowly upwards.
Brutus watched in silence as Julius showed his contempt for them all. He bowed his head under the toga, folding his shaking hands into the cloth. Then he sat perfectly still and waited for death.
Brutus showed his teeth for an instant, then shoved his knife through the cloth, finding the heart. The tableau broke as the others joined him, stabbing and stabbing at the small figure until it slumped to the side and the last of life was gone.
The susurration of panting breath was the only sound in the world as Brutus looked around the men in the echoing theater. Every eye was on the body that lay between the benches, limp and slick with blood. The dark liquid stained their faces and arms and rested in tiny droplets in their hair.
“He’s dead at last,” Suetonius murmured, shaking as the draining frenzy left him weak and dazed. “What happens now?”
The men who had come so far looked to Brutus for an answer.
“Now we walk out,” Brutus said. His voice shook. “We walk. We go to the Senate house and we tell them what we have done. We have cut the tyrant out of Rome and we will not go in shame.”
He saw Suetonius begin to wipe his knife clean and Brutus reached out a hand, stopping him.
“We will not hide the marks. Let the blood show the honor of those with courage to stand against a tyrant. This is how we have saved the Republic. Let it show. Now he is gone, Rome can begin to heal.”
His eyes glittered as he looked down at the figure of the man he had known and loved.
“We will honor him in death,” he said, almost too quietly to hear.
Those closest to the doors began to walk away and Brutus went with them. The rest followed, glancing back at the scene, as if to reassure themselves of its reality.
They walked red-handed on the ancient streets of Rome and they walked with pride.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Gaius Julius Caesar is remembered for much more than being an extraordinary general. It is true that there are few military leaders who could have equaled his strategic skill or charismatic leadership, but that is only a part of the tale. Republican Rome may have eased into empire without Julius Caesar, but it could also have torn itself apart. In one of the hardest schools in history, Caesar rose to preeminence, finally crushing Pompey at Pharsalus. His life was the bridge between two eras of history; the catalyst for empire.
Throughout his career, he showed a fine understanding of politics, power, and manipulation. I will not say he invented propaganda, but he must surely be one of its greatest and earliest exponents. Undermining Pompey through public displays of clemency was a deliberate policy. As Julius wrote in a letter, “Let this be a new way of gaining victory; let us secure ourselves through mercy and magnanimity!”
Pompey never understood the technique, though Cicero clearly saw through at least part of it. He referred to the policy as “insidious clemency” and said that “whatever evil he refrains from, arouses the same gratitude as if he had prevented another from inflicting it.”
Pompey was outmatched from the start of the civil war, when he demanded the Gaul general return to Rome without the support of his legions. Caesar spent a night of soul-searching on the river Rubicon where he debated whether the loss of life resulting from a civil war would be worth his own. With characteristic self-belief, he decided it would be and launched a lightning strike south, at such a speed that Pompey was caught completely by surprise. He could no
t defend the city and even forgot to empty the treasury in his haste to leave. Not that it was needed. The vast sums of gold Caesar brought back from Gaul devalued the Roman aureus by an astonishing thirty percent.
The incident on the feast of Bona Dea was as I have described it, including the fact that Publius dressed as a woman to escape detection. Publius was actually found innocent of adultery by a court, but Caesar divorced his wife anyway, saying that “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” Having an heir was no doubt increasingly important to him and he would have understood the need for a son’s legitimacy to be beyond question.
For reasons of plot and length, I have omitted battles in Spain and Africa as Julius and his generals crushed legions loyal to Pompey. When the time came for him to seek Pompey in Greece, he gave control of Italy to Mark Antony and, as a result, Marcus Brutus betrayed him for the first time, joining Pompey against his old friend. Julius gave orders for him to be spared if possible in what, for me, is one of the most poignant scenes in the history. Forgiving Brutus after such a betrayal shows Caesar’s greatness as nothing else.
Julius landed in Oricum on the west coast of Greece. I have not included the fact that he had to return to Italy in a small boat to fetch more men. The boat hit a storm and Caesar is reported to have told the boatmen not to fear, saying that they carried “Caesar and his fortune.” He was a great believer in his own luck and this seems to have been borne out through the events of his life. He did manage to take Dyrrhachium from Pompey’s control, after an exhausting night march.
Though the centurion Decimus is fictional, one of Caesar’s officers did take his own life when captured, saying that he was used to dispensing mercy rather than receiving it. The disdain this shows can only be imagined. Another small change is that Cicero’s wife, Terentia, was in fact in Rome during the civil war. She did not travel to Greece.
Pompey’s failure may have been in part due to an illness, for which there is some evidence, or simply the fact that he was facing a Roman enemy with the most astonishing record of any general alive. It may have been that having the Senate with him was a greater handicap than we can know. Either way, Pompey had twice as many men and at least four times the cavalry. He should not have needed to build fortifications and fight a defensive war.
At one point, Pompey had victory for the taking. The disastrous pincer attack on Pompey’s forces is a real event. One of the sides was held up and Caesar’s cohorts were routed. Caesar grabbed the standard and tried to rally the fleeing men, but they went around him, leaving him alone. Pompey was convinced it was an ambush and did not pursue the fleeing forces, leading Julius to comment, “Today, victory would have gone to our opponents if they had someone who knew how to win.” He lost 960 soldiers in the rout. Those who were captured were executed by Labienus. Pompey had lost the best chance he would ever have. The senators with Pompey were contemptuous of his unwillingness to close with the enemy. They demanded that he wage a more aggressive war and eventually he agreed.
At Pharsalus, Pompey commanded troops from Spain, Gaul, Germany, Syria, and Macedonia as well as Roman legionaries. Caesar gives the numbers of Pompeian cavalry as seven thousand, though it seems likely to have been an exaggeration.
The interesting incident of Pompey holding back his front line is well attested, though different reasons are suggested in various sources. My own feeling, based on Pompey’s ten deep lines, is that morale was appalling amongst his men and he saw nervousness in the ranks as Caesar’s army approached. Needless to say, it is a uniquely poor decision from the general who destroyed Spartacus and cleared the Mediterranean of pirates in forty days. The true state of Pompey’s mind can never now be known. His private papers were left behind after Pharsalus, and Julius had them burnt without looking at them.
I have followed the main events of Pharsalus as far as they are known. Pompey used his cavalry to rout Caesar’s on the right wing. It took time for Pompey’s riders to re-form and turn, and in that period Caesar’s smaller force came back and attacked them from behind, driving their own men into their lines. Caesar’s extraordinarii pushed on to destroy the archers and broke through to hit the flank and rear of Pompey’s lines. A full rout followed quickly after that.
The inescapable conclusion regarding Pharsalus is that Caesar should not have been able to win. Pompey had every advantage, but still his men folded before the veterans. Julius, it should be remembered, was a lawfully elected consul with a record of extraordinary, unprecedented shows of mercy. Corfinium is only one example in the civil war where he pardoned men who fought against him. His policy was intended to undermine Pompey in the field and it seems to have worked. I believe Pharsalus is as much a triumph of propaganda and perception as it is a military victory.
Caesar was indeed given a jar containing Pompey’s head on the docks of Alexandria. The Egyptians did not want a Roman war in their lands, though this attempt to avert one was to prove futile. Julius is recorded as having wept at the death of Pompey, though we can only guess at his reasons.
The Alexandria that Caesar would have seen is lost to the modern world. As well as the Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven ancient wonders that no longer exists, most of the streets and buildings in this book are now underwater. Modern excavations are still finding statues of Cleopatra and the son she had with Caesar, Ptolemy Caesarion.
Perhaps it is not surprising that a Roman consul who had been at war for most of his adult life should suddenly give it all up on meeting the twenty-one-year-old Cleopatra. The story of her being delivered to Caesar by her Greek attendant is well attested, though some sources say it was a long bag rather than a rolled carpet.
Cleopatra was indeed a descendant of Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals. She spoke five languages and was the first of her line to speak Egyptian. In her time, Alexandria was a real blend of cultures, with Greek colonnaded buildings and Egyptian statues in streets such as the Canopic Way.
The eunuch who played such a part in controlling the young Ptolemy was in fact named Pothinus, though I changed it so as not to have too similar a name to Porphiris, which I liked. Panek, in fact, means “snake,” which seemed appropriate. Caesar did give Cyprus back to the Egyptians as part of the negotiations after capturing the boy king. The scene where the young Ptolemy cried and refused to leave the barricaded palace is true. It is also true that on reaching his army and being dressed once again as the king, the thirteen-year-old ordered an immediate attack. He did not survive the struggle for power in Alexandria.
The body of Alexander the Great is also lost, though it rested in Alexandria in Caesar’s time, in a coffin of glass, as I have described. The body was covered in gold leaf and, given his status as a pharaoh and god, had presumably been embalmed.
I have only skated over Caesar’s marriage to Calpurnia, in 59 B.C. Cleopatra too was married to another younger brother by the time she came to Rome. There was clearly a vast difference between formal alliances and real feeling.
Julius Caesar did indeed meet the son of the king of Syria on his grand tour before returning to Rome. Herod would grow to be the man who ordered the death of every firstborn son in an attempt to break a prophecy predicting the birth of Christ.
The famous line “Veni, vidi, vici,” “I came, I saw, I conquered,” comes from the four-hour battle against the son of Mithridates in Greece. If not for that line, it would be one of the forgotten moments of history.
Mark Antony tried three times to crown Julius on the feast of Lupercalia in February rather than the Egyptian Triumph. Julius is recorded as having lost his temper on the third try, perhaps because the crowd did not applaud the sight of a crown on his head.
Despite the lack of a crown, the Senate showered Caesar with unprecedented honors. As well as “Dictator Perpetuus,” “Imperator,” and “Father of His Country,” Julius was accorded the right to divine worship. A statue was raised to him with the words “To the Unconquerable God.” He was given the right to wear the regalia of the old kings.
We cannot know the full reasons for these honors now. Perhaps it was an attempt by men like Cicero to have Julius reach too far and alienate the citizens who loved him. Alternatively, such accolades could have been the only way the Senate was able to remain valuable to Caesar. Cassius is said to have brought Brutus into the conspiracy with the warning that the Senate would make Julius a king. It may even have been true.
The death of Caesar happened on the ides (the fifteenth day) of March in 44 B.C. The Senate was indeed meeting in Pompey’s theater, though how many witnessed the murder is unknown. After a lot of thought, I did not include the fact that Caesar was handed a scroll warning him of the conspiracy. The man who passed it into his hands had once been employed by Brutus, and the suspicion will always be there that Brutus himself was behind the warning, as complex a man as Caesar himself. It was never read and I felt this was an unnecessary complication.
Tillius Cimber held Caesar for the first blow by Casca—the first of twenty-three wounds. Only one was directly fatal, which shows the chaos of the murder. Caesar struggled until he saw Brutus was part of it, then pulled his toga over his head and sat like stone until they had completed their task. The courage of such an act defies description.
The night before, Caesar is said to have expressed a preference for a quick end rather than the agony of disease or weakness. His epilepsy may have troubled him, but a man does not welcome death and plan a campaign in Parthia at the same time. Nor does he give up the struggle for life when he has, at last, a son to follow his line. Suetonius said he was fifty-five years old, though the figure cannot be certain, as his birth date is unknown.
Julius Caesar named Octavian his heir in his will and it is one of the great tragedies that Octavian did not allow Ptolemy Caesarion to reach manhood. Though Cleopatra fled back to Egypt after the murder, it did not save her, or her young son. Perhaps it is true that those who have power do not allow future enemies to grow, but it does seem a particularly pitiless act.
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