ROME HAS WITNESSED its share of political murders ever since the very first one, committed by Romulus, gave rise to the city itself. Daggers in dark corridors, poison in cups of precious metals, surprise attacks on palace steps, and public executions legitimized by the presence of powerful men—in togas, ermine, and scarlet cardinal’s robes—all of them unmoved, all protected by verdicts, holy texts, or official seals. Christians, slaves, and prisoners of war were torn to pieces by wild beasts at the circus. All the murders perpetrated to hold the government’s line, reinforce the popular appeal of a leader, or distract the people from other, perhaps more pressing concerns, were political killings. Rome’s soil is soaked with that blood. Yet of all these murders there is one that has become the prototype for all other political assassinations, and that, of course, is the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Each time I visit the Roman Forum I wonder if there is any other place like it—any place that for so many centuries represented the umbilicus of the world, and evoked even from a geographic, physical point of view the fact that Rome truly was the center of the universe, and that the Forum was the center of Rome. On this same ground, beneath all the temples and statues, at the foot of two fateful hills—the Palatine and the Capitoline—the great axes of human civilization and the triumph of law intersected. Near the Arch of Septimius Severus there is still the base of a circular column that once supported the umbilicus Urbis, the navel of the city and, therefore, of the entire world. Not far from it was the miliarium aureum, a column sheathed in bronze and referred to as the golden milestone, which marked the start of all the great Imperial roads that radiated from the Forum in all directions—to the frozen forests of the north, the blazing deserts of Africa, and the vast Asian steppes that led into the great unknown—an eternal challenge to the legions that seemed to question even the size of the planet.
Today the Forum is a collection of mangled remains that have survived the destruction of invaders, natural disasters, and the sackings carried out by its own citizens. Its statues have been smashed, its columns knocked down, its streets torn up; its magnificent buildings have been reduced to ruins, their marble burned for lime, and their decorations and ornaments stolen and scattered round the world. All that remains are ashes, the walls’ nude masonry, and miniscule, multicolored debris—a single coin, a pair of dice, a small jewel. The Forum contains not only these simple remains, but also precise signs of time and place, and specific references to the affairs of men, including those who, in the past, held the fate of the world in their hands. Julius Caesar was one such man, and the last day of his life began right here; here he took the first steps toward that fatal appointment with his assassins.
When all is said and done, the Forum is a relatively small place, and its appearance is far from monumental—it’s a low-lying plain, a swamp drained centuries before Christ by means of the impressive hydraulics of the cloaca maxima. The crowds and closely packed monuments, basilicas, and temples impart a feeling of near suffocation, and give us a good sense of what daily life in ancient Rome must have been like, full of clamor and chaos. It was here that most things in Rome eventually converged—its citizens as well as its political, bureaucratic, and commercial machinery. Here democracy was exercised (for as long as it lasted in Rome), business deals were done, friends arranged appointments, and chance meetings were made. Horace described it well in his Satire I.9, “Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus et mos, nescio quid meditans, nugarum, totus in illis,” [I went for a stroll along the Via Sacra, as I always do, totally absorbed in its nonsense]. Solemn religious processions and military triumphs passed along the Via Sacra before ascending to the temple of temples, dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, atop the Capitoline Hill, where it all began. The Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina (today the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda) is, along with the Curia, one of the most imposing buildings belonging to the Forum, and has an interesting history. Antoninus built this magnificent temple to honor his wife, Faustina, whom he had deified after she died. Antoninus himself died in AD 161. He earned the nickname Pius because he had aspired to be just, and had one adoptive son, Marcus Aurelius, who also became a great emperor, and married his daughter. In the seventh century the temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina was transformed into a church, but in 1536 Pope Paul III ordered the Christian revetment removed because he wanted to impress Emperor Charles V with what remained of the glories of ancient Rome. Charles was in Rome on a solemn mission of reconciliation nine years after his troops had sacked the city. Like Mussolini, who built a new train station (Ostiense) to welcome Hitler, Paul III stripped a church, and where there had been little more than a path among the ruins he built the striking Via San Gregorio, all to impress the Holy Roman Emperor.
The grandeur of the impressive Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina is clearly visible from the outside. Perhaps an even better example of the sheer power of Roman architecture can be found on the other side of town, at the Mausoleum of Costanza on the Via Nomentana. Built at the beginning of the fourth century for Helena and Constantina, Emperor Constantine’s daughters, it has preserved the structure (and luminosity) of a Roman temple, even though a few centuries later it was converted into a church. Those entering for the first time are treated to an extraordinarily powerful experience—its circular plan, its dome, and the space itself, which is metered by twelve pairs of granite columns with magnificent capitals. Then there is the ambulatory that encloses the entire interior, its walls and vaults covered with some of the oldest and most beautiful mosaics in Rome, which date back to the fourth century, as does the church. They have a white ground and are filled with decorative motifs, intertwined vines and leaves, figures of small animals and, at each end, images of Constantina and her husband, Hannibalianus. The whole complex is exceptional. A few steps away is the basilica of Sant’Agnese (with extensive catacombs beneath it), an important example of early Christian architecture with Byzantine influences.
Getting back to the Forum, there’s yet another curiosity worth mentioning; there are two key buildings, each with a pair of magnificent bronze doors. The first pair secures the entrance to the Curia (next to the Arch of Septimius Severus), though the one visible there today is a copy of the original, which Francesco Borromini moved to the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, where it can still be seen. The second pair was on the Temple of Romulus, also known as the Temple of the Penates, next to the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina. The Romulus to whom the temple was dedicated is not to be confused with the city’s founder, but was the son of the Emperor Maxentius who died in 307, whose father buried him on the Via Appia in a mausoleum across the road from his circus. It’s amazing to think that these two enormous doors were cast in bronze, decorated, and installed so long ago—and above all to think that they somehow miraculously survived centuries of pillaging and neglect.
Among the many places in the Forum that commemorate Caesar and his death is the so-called altar of Octavian (who later took the title Augustus Caesar) dedicated to him in 29 BC. Built on a terrace in front of the Temple of Romulus, not far from the lovely House of the Vestals, Octavian had it decorated with the prows—rostra—of the Egyptian ships he had captured at Aktion two years earlier. The dictator’s body had been cremated on that site, as the Greek historian Appianus described several centuries later in his Roman History: “… they placed [his body] again in the forum where stands the ancient palace of the kings of Rome. There they collected together pieces of wood and benches, of which there were many in the forum, and anything else they could find of that sort, for a funeral pile … Then they set fire to it, and the entire people remained by the funeral pile throughout the night. There an altar was first erected, but now there stands the temple of Caesar himself, as he was deemed worthy of divine honours.…”1 In his Lives of the Caesars, Suetonius added, “His friends raised … a gilded shrine on the Rostra resembling that of Mother Venus. In it they set an ivory couch, spread with purple and gold cloth, and from a pillar at its head hung the gown in which he had been murdered.”2
Not far from the altar are the ruins of Caesar’s residence, the Domus Publica. After living for many years in a modest house in the Suburra, a neighborhood outside the city center, the dictator moved here and remained until he finally met with destiny. The last days of his life were restless, full of projects and promises (just as his entire existence had been), but also of sinister omens.
The night of March 14–15 Julius Caesar barely slept, and as soon as he arose he had an attack of vertigo, an ailment he had long suffered and that had recently become increasingly frequent and bothersome. That morning he was supposed to preside over the senatorial assembly in the Curia but he had no desire to go, and not just because of the unusual dizzy spell. Over the last few days he’d had strange premonitions, and even though he was not particularly superstitious, the signs had been numerous and strangely unambiguous. As a young man, as he was assiduously climbing the cursus honorum (the ancient Roman political ladder), he had scoffed at omens. Every time some new project was begun, or a new appointment was to be made, the heavens were expected to give some kind of sign—perhaps an unexpected flash of lightning or a flicker of light—and Caesar had somehow seen to it that these signs appeared. Priests and zealous officials did their best to satisfy him. If the sign, for example, was a propitious flash of light, there was always someone afterward who swore to have seen it precisely where it had been predicted.
But now these were different; men were seen engulfed in flames but not burned, a small bird with a laurel branch in its beak was attacked and ripped apart by a bird of prey, and the shields of Mars fell over, creating an ominous bronze clanging throughout the palace where they were kept. And there was more: a few days earlier Spurinna, a soothsayer Caesar detested, had paid him a visit, and this time she had spoken powerfully, as if her words, rather than being dictated by divine inspiration, were instead dictated by concrete information. “Beware, Caesar, the Ides of March,” she had said. As soon as Spurinna left, Cornelius Balbo broached the same topic: “I beseech you, Caesar, when you go to the Curia be sure to have your loyal Spanish guards with you.” At the feet of the statue of Lucius Brutus someone had left a scrap of paper that read, “If you were alive, O Brutus, you would kill the tyrant.” With this the other Brutus, Caesar’s adopted (or perhaps illegitimate) son, was reminded that he was descended from the great Brutus who, for love of the Republic, had assassinated King Tarquinius. Troublesome rumors were heard all over town claiming that Caesar preferred the Barbarians to the Romans, that he was going to concede the political privilege of the Laticlave to the Gauls, and above all that he wanted to attack the institutions of the state and crown himself king. That would constitute a coup d’état punishable by the death. “The people hate even the idea of a monarchy,” his counselors repeated, and he listened patiently to their annoying droning. It would have been an effort made in vain to explain that the Republic was already dead, that only vestiges, its husk, remained, and that these too should be disposed of. And then there was Calpurnia, Caesar’s fourth wife, who humbly loved him and forgave him everything; for several nights her sleep had been restless, punctuated by worrisome moans.
The previous evening Caesar had gone to dinner at the house of Marcus Lepidus. Reclining on the triclinium, he allowed himself the rare luxury of drinking wine. Amongst the other guests was Decimus Brutus Albinus, one of Caesar’s enemies who, had he the courage, would have revealed himself straightway. Instead he raised his calyx in a gesture of greeting, and at the same time posed an oblique, somewhat philosophical question: “What sort of death do you think is the best, Caesar?” He promptly replied, as was his custom, “I read in Xenophon that King Cyrus, when he knew he was gravely ill, made all the arrangements for his own funeral. I do not want a death for which I have time to prepare. The best death is an unexpected one.” All conversation in the room came to a halt, not just because it was Caesar who was talking, but because this brief exchange resounded with a troubling echo. Caesar took advantage of the silence that followed, got up, and left. Now it was morning, the senatorial assembly was approaching, and perhaps it would indeed be best not to go.
Who was this man who tortured himself over such troubling omens? He’s a nearly omnipotent man, lord of Rome and therefore the world, still vigorous for his fifty-six (perhaps fifty-seven) years. He’d spent most of his life in combat, from the frozen wastelands of Britain to the African deserts, on land and on sea, was endowed with an indomitable physical energy, and had a mental agility that allowed him to dictate four or five important letters simultaneously to his scribes. He was bold and defiant, a dandy who loved to spend freely even when there wasn’t any money. He wasn’t handsome, and the soldiers even mocked him for his baldness, but he nevertheless had an aura capable of subjugating any and everyone. He had the style of a great statesman, and emanated a regal charisma. Yet some also wrote (Cicero, for example) that he was capable of trampling all principles, be they human or divine. Cato of Utica wrote that for the sake of his own ambitions he would break any law. Certainly he had trampled the institutions of Rome; he’d conquered Gaul but then, for personal reasons, inspired a civil war there that caused great grief and ruin. In a word, Caesar was a man who, sixteen centuries before Machiavelli theorized any such practice, had successfully separated the great politician from the moral codes of his time.
The moral autonomy of the politician doesn’t mean he can pocket money from the public treasury, but rather that he must establish goals in the general interest and pursue them even at the price of overcoming obstacles along the way. There wasn’t a single provincial governor in all of Rome who hadn’t stolen from those he governed, Caesar included, but he did so with such grandiosity and design that it inspired fear. With an arrogant and absolute serenity he ignored the law and then focused, serious and implacable, on expanding the boundaries of the state by crossing the Rubicon. He became an enemy of the Republic because when he had the choice of bringing about change through reform or revolution, he chose the latter—it was a calculated decision born also of sheer impatience. His immorality consisted of granting himself freedom from the same moral expectations that bound the Roman aristocracy both in the name of law and tradition. Caesar’s greatness lay not in a sense of obedience, but rather in the fact that he was almost always successful in furthering the interests of the state without neglecting his own.
His political career was a succession of skillfully calculated moves that were also often blessed by pure luck. Right from the start he chose to ally himself with the plebeians and the army. He thought what everyone thought about the masses—that they had no more discernment than that of a child, and therefore needed someone to guide them. He was an aristocrat, scion of one of Rome’s most illustrious families, which counted Ascanius, son of Aeneas and Creusa, grandson of Venus, amongst its ancestors. In delivering the funerary oration for his aunt, Julia, Caesar declared, in no uncertain terms, “On my mother’s side my family descends from royalty; my father’s side traces its origins to the immortal gods.” By the time he was thirty he’d already determined that, in political life, the bolder a lie is, the more useful it is, provided it was told with the necessary nerve. In any case, between the patricians and the plebeians he chose the latter, which had become what we would now call the urban proletariat—a restless hoard that had to be distracted by games and held at bay by public gifts within a patronage system.
On his career path Caesar ran across two other influential men, Gnaeus Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus. The first was a high general, as great as Caesar and six years his senior. When pirate raids on grain shipments became bad enough to threaten famine, Pompey was charged with driving them off. These criminals were both daring and provocative; they attacked convoys of ships and raided the coasts, sacked villages, raped and assaulted the inhabitants. Pompey gave them no respite, and within three months he routed them: 10,000 were killed, and 20,000 captured, along with 800 of their ships. He enjoyed the same success in the war he waged against Mithridates, King of Pontus, an ardent enemy of Rome, defeating his army and forcing the king first to flee, and then to commit suicide.
Crassus was an equally impressive man. He was enormously wealthy, having obtained concessions that allowed him to run the public mines, and with those earnings invested in real estate speculation. When Caesar ran for the office of Pontifex Maximus, Crassus almost single-handedly bankrolled his campaign, helping him to a landslide victory. Crassus was also an excellent general, and subdued Spartacus’s slave rebellion, which was no small task. It took two years and between six and eight legions to quell the revolt led by men willing to die for their cause. Crassus defeated them on the battlefield and then crucified the survivors along the Via Appia. Thousands suffered in great agony for days on those terrible crosses, so that no one would again dare to challenge Rome, its social order, or its economy.
Pompey and Crassus were both elected consuls in 70 BC. Crassus was forty-five and wealthy, Pompey thirty-six and laden with glory. Caesar was only thirty then, but was already keeping his eye on them. He knew that, despite their formal alliance, the two of them hated each other, and that the oligarchs were playing one against the other even though they feared both. He liked the possibility of allying himself with them and becoming the balancing factor. Crassus needed Pompey’s enormous popularity, and the other two needed the influence Crassus’s wealth bought in the Senate. Caesar was popular with Rome’s restless plebeians and adored by the soldiers who’d fought under him.
The so-called Catiline conspiracy illuminates both the flavor of Roman public life and Julius Caesar’s complex personality. The event unfolded like a political thriller with protagonists of enormous stature: Caesar; Cicero; Cato; and, playing the part of the villain, Lucius Sergius Catilina. The most mysterious of the four is surely the last, but Caesar played the most ambiguous role. Marcus Porcius Cato of Utica was the great grandson of the other Cato, nicknamed the Censor because of the severity of his wardrobe and stubborn conviction that Carthage must be destroyed (he coined the famous phrase saying just that, “Carthago delenda est”). Marcus Porcius defended republican ideals and the Senate’s role with that same sense of conviction. Anyone who attacked the institutions of the state was his enemy, including Silla, Cataline, and the first triumvirate (Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey). When civil war erupted between Pompey and Caesar, Cato sided with Pompey, believing he was less dangerous to the Republic. Once the battles began he stopped cutting his hair and beard as a sign of mourning for his wounded homeland. When Pompey and his followers were defeated, Cato was exiled to Utica, where he committed suicide.
Cato of Utica is a magnificent figure about whom, unfortunately, little is known. Ezio Raimondi attributed to him the traits “of a Roman hero added to those of a Biblical patriarch.” Dante placed him on the shore outside purgatory, custodian of places, his face illuminated by the “four sacred lights,” the cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance) that he possessed even without the grace of revelation. In introducing him to the poet, Virgil describes him this way:
Now may it please you to approve his coming;
his goal is liberty, and one who has
forfeited life for that knows how dear it is.
You know, for whom death tasted not bitter
In Utica where you laid aside the clothing
That on the great day will give off such shining.3
Dante made Cato into a symbol of moral freedom, strength of character, a sense of justice, and dedication to the common good. In the face of his great morality the fact that he was also a pagan and a suicide could justifiably be overlooked. In his Convivio he wrote:
There were then very ancient philosophers, the first and most important of whom was Zeno, who perceived and believed that the end of human life consisted solely of strict integrity—that is, in strictly, unreservedly following truth and justice … They and their sect were called Stoics, and to them belonged that glorious Cato …4
Yet even Cato could earn a rebuke. It came from Mommsen, who deemed him a conservative, one of those who “wanted to conserve the Republic principally to let it die.”
How and why did this conspiracy come about? Thrice Catiline ran for consul and each time, with excuses and gerrymandering, and in part also due to Cicero’s own astute maneuvering, he was defeated. In the election of 64 BC Cicero was a candidate as well, and was the most likely to win. He ran on what we might today call the aristocrat’s ticket, and he was up against Catiline and Caius Antonius Hybrida, both of whom were supported (officially) by the plebeians and assisted by the important influence exercised by Caesar and the wealthy Crassus. Hybrida was the weaker of the two popular candidates, and for that reason Cicero secretly promised to swing some of his votes to him. He did, and Hybrida was elected. Catiline came in third and was, in contemporary jargon, first among the excluded.
What role did Caesar and Crassus play in this affair? It seems likely that they assisted Hybrida, assuming that, once elected, he would be a more docile instrument than the restless and energetic Catiline, a man of sly charm and broad appeal among the masses. This brings us to the point—who was Catiline, really? Was he an unscrupulous rebel who plotted against the state, or an ardent reformer detested by Cicero and the conservative party? It seems most likely that he was what we might today call a populist demagogue, a figure who was able to simultaneously attract the interest of both progressive and conservative elements. One of his campaign promises was to cancel debts, which would’ve been a popular proposal for a society in which money lending typically entailed usurious interest rates. Rich and poor alike were often heavily in debt, and if you wanted to run for public office—especially for re-election—you could not afford to be stingy. This particular plank in his election platform, as we’d call it today, may have pushed Crassus to oppose Catiline, since Crassus was one of the biggest moneylenders of that period. Catiline’s platform also included the redistribution of land, a proposal that would have impacted large landholders, and the granting of certain rights to women and slaves. These may all have been sorely needed reforms, but in a society as conservative as ancient Rome they could also cause social instability. Catiline used his proposals to seek the support of small businessmen on the verge of bankruptcy, outcasts, and the plebian class. Cicero and Sallust did everything they could to paint his supporters as the dregs of society. Nor is there any doubt that Catiline also attracted adventurers and the kind of hothead who’s always present whenever there’s the promise of a fight. But if they had only been the dregs of Roman society the end of the story would have been different.
Catiline ran for office again in 63 BC on a decidedly leftist platform. He was an aristocrat of minor nobility, but was nonetheless a Roman patrician who sided openly with the plebeians. We mustn’t, however, think of him as an idealist, or prophet of nineteenth-century socialism a bit ahead of his time. Catiline was an ambitious man who was even ready to kill in his quest for power; he was fiercely determined and courageous (as he would demonstrate), but also as capable as anyone else of seeking his own advantage in every possible maneuver. His campaign was probably awkward and conducted with excessive vehemence, without the political and strategic ability Caesar would display a few years later when he played essentially the same electoral game. Catiline was deemed guilty of extremism, and this allowed Cicero some room to maneuver. Taking advantage of his position as Consul, he was once again able to draw away some of Catiline’s supporters.
Naturally the other two candidates, supported by Caesar and Crassus, won the election, and Catiline again found himself relegated to the position of first runner up. His plot started at that moment, and at that moment he decided it was worth risking his own life, thus transforming himself into a revolutionary idealist. In a certain sense this redeemed him, at least in the eyes of the historians who accept this hypothesis of the events. It was a woman, Fulvia, who was the first to reveal the plot. Entrusted with (or perhaps worming out) the secrets of her lover, she thought she might profit from taking the information to Cicero. Sallust wrote in his De coniuratione Catilinae, “She decided that such a serious danger to the state must not be concealed.”5 In reality the reason for the betrayal was much less noble; her lover was short of cash, and to jumpstart a languid relationship he alluded to future riches. Her curiosity aroused, Fulvia badgered him with questions until he confessed everything. Thus she learned that the conspirators were planning a few murders in the city and would be supported by rebellious troops. Caesar was able to furnish additional information, since he operated at the margins of the plot, waiting to see what happened but careful not to be too involved, in case things went badly. Even Crassus helped, and turned over threatening letters that were considered convincing evidence, despite the fact that they were anonymous and likely penned by him or his followers.
Cicero, as Consul, was granted complete authority by the Senate to deal with the crisis. But because he was not a courageous man, he also kept a phalanx of bodyguards so large that according to Plutarch, in his biography of Cicero, “when he came into the Forum it was filled almost entirely by his entourage.” On November 8 the Senate met at the highly fortified Temple of Jupiter Stator, at the foot of the Palatine Hill. Whether as an insolent gesture, or to belie any accusation that he was complicit in the revolt taking place in Etruria, Catiline appeared at this meeting, although he sat apart from the other senators. He was still unaware that Cicero, who would soon take the floor, was prepared to accuse him, in one of the best political and legal orations of all time, of crimes that would be punished by damnatio memoriae, expunging his name from all public records. Cicero asked him, rhetorically, “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?” [When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?]6 Memorable words indeed, but Catiline seemed impervious enough to them that the Consul ordered his arrest, perhaps for breach of the peace. If Sallust is to be believed, the rebel answered this charge with a direct challenge: “Since I am encompassed by foes and hounded to desperation, I will check the fire that threatens to consume me by pulling everything down about your ears.”7 He then left the Senate to join his troops in Fiesole.
In the meantime the conspirators faithful to Catiline set their coup d’état for December 17, first day of the Saturnalia. Catiline behaved as if he were unaware that the Roman legions were marching against his troops and that a plot like his, unveiled so publicly, is no longer of any value—and is no longer even a conspiracy, but merely a prelude to massacre. Why was his behavior so seemingly illogical? We have no answer, and any attempt at one remains speculative, leaving each of us to imagine whatever seems most convincing. One of the possibilities, though, is that the rebel knew that if he stayed in Rome he would certainly be assassinated. Leaving as if he wanted to go into exile may have offered him a greater chance for survival.
The end of this was both pitiful and epic. The five conspirators who stayed in Rome were arrested and strangled in prison after a lively debate in the Senate. A few days later, on a cold morning in January of 62 BC, Catiline confronted the praetorians in Tuscany, near Pistoia. The battle was ruthless and drawn out; at the end the rebel’s body was found, still palpitating, amidst a pile of cadavers, and his decapitation swiftly ordered. According to Sallust, “Only when the battle was over could the daring and ferocity with which Catiline’s troops had fought be fully appreciated. Practically every man lay dead in the battle station which he had occupied while he lived.”8
And what of Caesar? The fact that his behavior was ambiguous was evident as early as December 5, as the Senate was debating what to do with the five conspirators locked up in the Mamertine prison. In his position as Praetor Elect, he took the floor and, according to Sallust, began by condemning Catiline and his followers in no uncertain terms. He then continued by saying that there was no punishment sufficient for their crime, and that in any case the Senate’s decisions were absolute. At that point, and with a subtle sophistry, he suggested that the immortal gods had conceived of death not as a punishment, but as a natural end to life. Thus the lives of Catiline and his co-conspirators should be spared, since death would finish both their lives and their punishments. He drew the assembly’s attention to the very real danger that any executions would be followed by rioting and unrest, and concluded by saying that there was a punishment much harsher than death—life in prison.
His discourse is still thought of as an oratorical masterpiece. Even if there was no certain proof that Caesar was involved in the conspiracy, everyone knew that he was at least watching it with great interest. His position in the chamber that day was difficult; had he supported the death penalty, he would have repudiated members of the party he traditionally relied on for support, and had he opposed it he would have fueled the suspicions already harbored against him. He extricated himself from this difficulty with great skill, avoiding the problem by suggesting, amongst other things, that it was unconstitutional to condemn a Roman citizen to death without guaranteeing him the right to appeal to the people. His skill lay in supporting a penalty so severe that it made death seem inadequate. On one hand he recognized the Senate’s right to condemn the guilty to death, and on the other hand, arguing against it, he stressed the danger of popular uprisings to an audience of timorous men (beginning with Cicero). He was able to confuse their verdict, extinguishing the apparent determination with which the meeting opened. Only he could have succeeded in such a delicate task. Crassus, for example, was also suspected of being sympathetic to the plot, but he didn’t even appear that day. The speech’s effect was extraordinary. Everyone who spoke afterward gave his support to the proposal, and one senator was so moved by his words that he suggested capturing Catiline alive and bringing him back to the Senate for examination.
At this point, however, there was a coup de théâtre. Rising up from one of the back benches, Marcus Cato, Tribune of the Plebians Elect, began to speak. He was thirty-two, five years younger than Caesar, and his discourse had all the greatness of his rival’s. He criticized Caesar and the cowardliness of the Senate, saying that with such a grave conspiracy there could be no hesitation, that death was the only punishment that fit the dimension of the crime, and that any penalty inflicted with a trembling hand would be ruinous for the Republic. Speaking thus, he stirred the conscience of the senators, riling them such that, one by one, they stood up to join him, revealing how they intended to vote. The passion that resonated through the room with his words was broken only when Cato, who noticed that a message had been delivered to Caesar, took the occasion to accuse him of communicating with enemies of the state even in the Senate chambers. This was a misstep that allowed Caesar to score a small point against him as he revealed the note, which turned out to be a love letter from Servilia, his lover as well as Cato’s half-sister.
This was the first time that Caesar and his more important adversary tangled. Despite his gaffe, Cato prevailed, although no one understood that with his victory he had also sealed his own destiny. Sallust put the two rivals on almost the same level of oratorical skill and magnitudo animi, proclaiming their greatness of spirit:
Caesar was esteemed for the many kind services he rendered and for his lavish generosity; Cato, for the consistent uprightness of his life. The former was renowned for his humanity and mercy; the latter had earned respect by his strict austerity. Caesar won fame by his readiness to give, to relieve, to pardon, Cato by never offering presents. The one was a refuge for the unfortunate, and was praised for his good nature; the other was a scourge for the wicked, admired for his firmness.9
A few years later, in 59 BC, Caesar, who had been elected Consul with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, proposed a land reform that would reapportion land in favor of Pompey’s veterans and Rome’s poor. Bibulus, a close friend of Cato’s, tried to oppose him by rallying senators against the proposal. Caesar bypassed his co-consul and took his reform bill directly to the popular assembly. The night before the vote Caesar’s followers occupied the Forum, and the next morning when Bibulus arrived he could just barely make his way through the crowd, amid many insults. He tried to speak but they wouldn’t let him, and the fasces carried by his lictors, symbols of his consular authority, were broken. The next day the Consul went to the Senate to report this violence, but nothing happened. Their indignation was great, but the senators’ fear was even greater. The meeting served only to demonstrate that the old order of the Republic could no longer control the difficult demands of these new times. Infuriated, Bibulus withdrew to his own house and announced he wouldn’t leave it again. His intent was a dramatic gesture to show that law was dead and liberty no longer existed in Rome, but given the circumstances he succeeded only in proving his own impotence. The people asked that the agrarian legislation be approved, and the Senate conceded. Caesar’s enemies spread the cynical joke that the Consuls were no longer Caesar and Bibulus, but rather Julius and Caesar.
Years passed, and things ended as they did with Pompey because not even Rome was large enough for both men. Crassus died fighting the Parthians, and Caesar suffered a moment of weakness after the unsatisfactory result of his British expedition. His old enemy Marcus Porcius Cato insisted that he be charged, at the end of his commission in Gaul, with breaking Roman law for his behavior. Pompey was now quite close to the oligarchs; his wife Julia, who was also Caesar’s daughter, had died, and this further weakened the bonds between them, as if their respective ambitions—now in open conflict—weren’t enough to break all ties. Caesar was in Gaul; he was asked to return, but had no intention of doing so as a simple general. He feared Cato and the Senate, and wanted an elected post that would guarantee him immunity and shelter him from their attacks. There was no solution to this problem, and no one in Rome tried much to find one. As tensions continued to rise, things began to happen, propelled in part by inertia. When the Optimate, the aristocratic party, convinced Pompey to side openly with them against Caesar, the Senate got its resolve back. When all attempts at negotiations failed, it ordered the rebellious general to lay down his arms.
In January of 49 BC, Caesar camped out, awaiting the outcome of the debate, along the banks of a small river, the Rubicon. Though it may have been an insignificant stream, it nevertheless marked the insuperable border of the Republic. The general had to make a decision, and in doing so left us yet another of his striking slogans, “Alea iacta est” (“the die is cast”). The civil war had begun, and it would be fought over a vast territory, first in Spain, then Greece, and finally in Africa. The decisive moment of the war occurred in Thessaly, at the Battle of Pharsalus. Seventy thousand men met in battle, and Caesar won thanks to impeccable military tactics that forced his rival to flee. Pompey requested asylum in Egypt, but the Pharaoh, Ptolemy XIII, instead ordered him assassinated in order to ingratiate himself with the victor. When Caesar arrived in Alexandria on October 2, 48 BC, he found his rival’s body and was not pleased. The treacherous pharaoh had misjudged the situation; he wanted to offer Caesar Pompey’s head, but was unaware of the complex emotions that had bound the two Romans before their final conflict. Nor could he imagine that his sister, Cleopatra, would spark the strongest passions of the general’s life.
Caesar’s physical vigor included an almost insatiable energy for lovemaking. Suetonius attempted a list of all the Roman matrons he had seduced; although far from complete, it includes: Postumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius; Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius; Tertulla, wife of Marcus Crassus; and Mucia, Pompey’s wife. It doesn’t include all the virgins, slaves, and foreign women he bedded, nor the two or perhaps three great loves of his life. First amongst them was Servilia, who, in the twenty years of their relationship, Caesar showered with gifts—including an almost priceless pearl—worth some six million sesterces. Servilia was Marcus Brutus’s mother, and it is not impossible that Caesar was his father, or at least that was the rumor that was whispered around Rome for a long time. When Servilia noticed her lover might be tiring of her, she pushed her young daughter Terzia into his bed, thus doubling his familial ties with Brutus, who had Caesar as both father and a brother-in-law.
Then there was Cleopatra—legend, the East, lust, and politics all mixed with love—a love lived as an explosion of sensuality in which reciprocal ambition and common interests doubled the pleasure of the lovers’ embraces. When Caesar arrived in Alexandria and met Cleopatra, he was already a mature man of fifty-two. She was only twenty, but what she already knew of love could be compared with the knowledge of Venus herself. Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy XIV, were fighting over succession to the throne. The Ptolomies were the exhausted heirs to Pharaonic Egypt, a family that had no scruples about resorting to intermarriage and incest in order to guarantee its hold on power. Ptolemy X married his daughter Berenice after she had been married to his brother, Ptolemy XI. At twenty Cleopatra married her brother when he was just thirteen. Suicide was also common in the family, and Cleopatra died, it seems, by letting an asp bite her after she had been the lover of Caesar and Mark Antony and had tried, in vain, to seduce Octavian as well. It is true that her charms were no longer what they had once been, but it was also true that Octavian Augustus had an ironclad list of priorities and Cleopatra was just not one of them.
When Caesar arrived in Alexandria he found another royal sister, Arsinoe, who was no less power-hungry than the other Ptolomies. He tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the quarrelsome siblings by offering each a share of power. Instead he barely escaped an attempted assassination; his enemies had been able to poison the water in his residence. He was thus forced to confront Ptolemy and rout him from the field. Arsinoe was taken to Rome in chains, and Cleopatra, now sure of the throne, gave her victorious lover the best honeymoon a man has ever enjoyed. According to Suetonius (perhaps spitefully written) Caesar was so enamored of her charms and her inexhaustible ability to inflame his lust that he might have followed her all the way to Ethiopia, had he not noticed that his soldiers wouldn’t follow him. He was limited to sailing on the Nile with her on a ship gently propelled by oarsmen. The whole of its stern had been transformed into a magnificent bridal chamber. It was April of 47 BC, the air stirred with refreshing breezes, and the verdant banks of the great river were dotted with palm trees, wells, small villages and the impressive gilt piers of ancient temples, vestiges of a mysterious religion. A small flotilla of boats escorted the flagship, allowing for periodic replenishments and for its passengers to go ashore for brief hunting trips. Two months passed under the spell of this enchantment, and later Cleopatra would say that her son, whom she named Caesarion, was conceived during those weeks.
This idyll ended, however, with troubling news that required an urgent response from Caesar. King Pharnaces of Pontus (modern Turkey), son of Mithridates and sworn enemy of Rome, had defeated Caesar’s lieutenant on the battlefield. This defeat had to be redressed immediately, as Pontus was a Roman province its loss would be a dangerous sign of weakness—a possibility far worse than the fact that Pharnaces was executing Roman citizens in horrendous ways. Caesar slipped away from Cleopatra’s embraces and marched his army directly to Pontus, where he set up camp less than a mile away from Zela, the stronghold were Pharnaces had barricaded himself. He soon realized that the petty despot was an incompetent strategist whose poorly led troops were easily slaughtered. Caesar promised his soldiers all the city’s plunder, and took Zela in less than five days. Afterward he sent Rome the briefest, proudest dispatch ever issued by a general, “Veni, vidi, vinci” [I came, I saw, I conquered].
This legendary dispatch brings us to another of Caesar’s characteristics, the geniality of his communications and his extraordinary ability to project an ever-positive image of himself, underscoring each favorable circumstance and disguising the negative. His literary works and the accounts of his military campaigns were masterpieces not only for the quality of the writing but also for the ability with which he could bend history to suit his own needs. Only Napoleon could do better—he always offered the most flattering accounts of himself, sending notices to his government of resounding victories even when his armies were devastated by dysentery and the battles were in reality skirmishes with some small band of marauders. Caesar didn’t behave much differently. In 61 BC he left to govern Western Hispania, knowing that such a post would provide him with enough money to pay off his enormous debts. But he wanted something else from the assignment—the military glory that would make him Pompey’s match on the battlefield. He thus began to wage war, sometimes for valid reasons, more often based on mere pretext, as was the case when he ordered the mountain people of the Sierra Estrella to relocate en masse to the lowlands. He had no valid reason, and when they refused he attacked, slaughtering them, and even pursuing them as far as the coast.
Upon Pompey’s death, the war against his followers continued until their final defeat at the Battle of Thapsus (now in Tunisia) in 46 BC. Cato, who was not yet fifty years old, took refuge in Utica, but when he realized that all was lost he committed suicide. Dante’s melancholy verses come to mind:
His goal is liberty, and one who has
forfeited life for that knows how dear it is.
You know, for whom death tasted not bitter
In Utica …10
The Senate granted unprecedented honors to the victor. For days on end ceremonies were held in Rome, and there were at least four triumphal processions put on for Caesar—for his victories in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa. In the first, chained up behind Caesar’s chariot, was Vercingetorix, the young nobleman who had successfully united the Gallic and Averni tribes and then, in 52 BC, engaged Caesar in what would be one of his hardest-won battles. Caesar held him captive for more than six years before putting him on display at his triumph, and had him executed afterward. Cleopatra, official mother of his only son, was invited to the second triumph, and her greatest joy was seeing her sister and rival, Arsinoe, paraded about in chains. The processions left from the Campus Martius, skirted the Circus of Flaminius, crossed the Velabrum, and then followed the Via Sacra up to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. The streets overflowed with a noisy, excited, undulating crowd, and long lines passed by displaying booty and panels painted with scenes from this or that battle, or illustrating the places they were fought (popular tally claimed that Caesar had fought in fifty battles and killed more than a million enemies). The prisoners followed, carrying their own chains. The presence of Arsinoe, a woman, was a scandalous novelty (even if Caesar spared her life, and had Vercingetorix strangled as rebel and traitor). The lictors came next, carrying the fasces decorated with laurel branches, and only then did the victor’s chariot appear, drawn by pairs of white horses and greeted by the joyous shouts of the crowd. The triumphant general wore a scarlet toga and a laurel wreath on his head. His face was painted red because he was meant to represent Jupiter, whose protection was credited for his victory. He held a scepter crowned with a Roman eagle in his right hand, and a slave stood behind him holding a gold crown over his head, whispering constantly in his ear, “Remember that you are a man.” Caesar’s chariot was followed by the legionnaires who fought with him, and who were now briefly allowed to utter comments making fun of their leader.
In Caesar’s case their mocking focused on his baldness, as well as his fame as a womanizer: “Citizens, watch your womenfolk. We’re following the bald-headed lover.” Another taunt, which this time annoyed Caesar enough that he forbade it, regarded a youthful lapse in Bythnia. In one of his first foreign missions, Caesar was sent to Asia Minor as ambassador to Nicomedes III, the cultured king who ruled Bythnia, a strip of land that bordered both the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. His mission was to convince the king to supply ships to assist the Roman blockade of Mytiline. Nicomedes agreed, but he hesitated, and the ships were late to arrive. Caesar was finally able to get them to depart, but in the time he spent in the kingdom he and Nicomedes were lovers. Roman merchants who had been there then spread the news at home that Caesar had become the Queen of Bythnia. The soldiers recited an irreverent and satirical couplet that went, more or less, “Caesar triumphs in subduing the Gauls; Nicomedes did not triumph in subduing Caesar.” Even Cicero reproached him with that.
Magnificent spectacles in the circuses and theaters followed the triumphal processions. Famous gladiators fought in the arenas, while both comedies and tragedies were staged all over town, in every language of the empire. A system of curtains covered the whole of the Via Sacra, shielding the public from the fierce rays of the sun, and twenty thousand tables had been laid out so that everyone would have enough to eat. For five days there were fights to the death amongst prisoners and inmates condemned to the death penalty. The festivities included a thousand men, sixty horsemen, forty elephants, and the greatest curiosity—a giraffe, an animal never before seen in Rome, which inspired screams of admiration and great applause. The Campus Martius was flooded to create an artificial lake on which two groups of ships fought a mock naval battle. Suetonius recounts that so many people came to Rome that many were sleeping in improvised tents or even on the streets, and that “often the pressure of the crowd crushed people to death. The victims included two senators.”11 At the end of all of it, the booty was divvied up, and it’s been estimated that in the two-year period from 46 to 44 BC Caesar had about twenty million gold coins minted from war plunder. Veterans received generous sums, and smaller amounts were distributed to the masses of disinherited people.
In March of 45 BC the last of Pompey’s supporters were crushed in Munda, Spain, and from that time on Caesar had no rivals. The Senate was excessive in its recognitions—Caesar’s person was declared inviolable, and it conferred on him the title of dictator, with the power to nominate candidates for the highest offices, for ten years. Freed from any military responsibilities, he was able to dedicate himself to public life, which he conducted at his usual frenetic pace. The overall goal of his legislative agenda was to reduce or eliminate the disparities created by the oligarchs at the expense of the plebian class. He promulgated one law that forbade overly ostentatious displays of wealth, and had it enforced so rigorously that even tables already set for banquets were commandeered. He strove to find work for his veterans, established that provincial commands were to be limited to two-year periods in order to contain corruption, and at the same time fought the electoral favoritism and corruption that had been useful to him in the past. He commissioned building projects meant to reduce chaos in the capital, championed land reclamation in the swamps south of Rome, began building new roads and bridges, and undertook the planning of an enormous theater. Caesar never saw the last project to completion; it was left to Augustus to finish, and he called it the Theater of Marcellus. Until that time the Romans had followed a lunar calendar, so that every two years they had to add a month in the middle, and often this adjustment was carelessly done with regard to the movement of the heavenly bodies. Caesar instituted a solar year with 365 days and a leap year every fourth year.
One can only imagine what sort of day a man like Caesar had—involved as he was in so many grandiose projects—the sort of atmosphere that must’ve surrounded him, and the pace at which his secretary and chancellor’s office had to work. It is said that he read even at the theater, and that he responded quickly and apparently effortlessly to letter, petitions, and supplications. He was absorbed by his work, and each day grew more aware of the stature he was assuming. He considered the institutions of the Republic to be obstacles. For this reason, probably, he increased the number of senators from six hundred to nine hundred; he wanted them bogged down in debates, leaving him both the task and joy of making decisions and putting them into action. It’s true that he valued some of their advice as individuals; what he found intolerable was the institution as a whole, a body that several times over the course of his life had close brushes with cowardice and uselessness.
Caesar was beset by a single worry—the Parthian Kingdom, beyond the Euphrates River, bordering the province of Syria. In 53 BC Crassus had gone there to fight the Parthians, who defeated and subsequently killed him. Now the situation had worsened, and Syria was in the hands of a Pompeian rebel. It was said that the plan Caesar was hatching was grandiose, and that he wanted an expedition so audacious that it would seem like a dazzling burst of fire capable of overshadowing the fame of Alexander the Great. On January 1, 44 BC, Caesar declared that before he left Rome he would relinquish each of his offices. He was unaware that he had less than eighty days to live.
His final testament was recorded in September of 45 BC. His principal heir was his eighteen-year-old great nephew, who was a very promising lad despite his sickly disposition. His name was Gaius Octavius, and Caesar left him both his name and a good part of his estate. Once again his foresight would prove accurate; this ailing youth would become Caesar Augustus, the first and perhaps greatest of the Roman emperors. At the end of 45 and the beginning of 44 BC, the Senate conferred on Caesar a series of new honors that were now unjustified by any military victories. He was given the right to wear triumphal garb all the time and his lictorial fasces were always to be decorated with laurel leaves. He received the title of pater patriae, “Father of his Country,” his birthday was made a public holiday, and the month of his birth was renamed—Julius, July—in his honor. His statue had to decorate every temple, and during Senate meetings he could sit upon a golden seat and wear the golden crown of the Etruscan kings. Last but not least, his dictatorship was extended for the rest of his lifetime. His rule had become, in effect, a monarchy, and even more than that, a cult. That particular kind of administration, Ceasarism, is named after him.
As a leader he was greater than all other warriors and politicians, and only Napoleon, Augustus, Alexander the Great, and a very few others can be compared to him. The massive scope of his undertakings, his fulminating genius, his gifts as a writer, and the luck that seemed to accompany him throughout his life all helped him reach that height. But his conception of public affairs and power was so flexible and ambiguous that it also took a weighty toll.
It is possible that the accusation that he wanted to be named King of Rome was unjustified. It hardly seems likely that Caesar aspired to the throne, and certainly not because he considered himself unworthy of it; there was, rather, a practical reason. He preferred to keep the title of dictator for life because it allowed him to exercise absolute power without the obligations and encumbrances of a dynasty. Together with his power, he wanted to keep the affection of the people. He liked the skilful interweaving he was able to create between control of the army, mild police repression, and populism—a dangerous form of authority founded on demagoguery and personal charisma that has been imitated in every period, including our own, and which is, at its core, anti-democratic. A so-called democratic dictator does not govern against the people, although he certainly needs a loyal police force, a secret service whose eyes and ears can reach where needed, money to bribe with, and informers to know what is happening. Such a dictator must also be a man capable of appearing in public without fear, sure enough to receive the ovation from the crowd he so enjoys saluting from a tribune, balcony, or TV screen with a broad, calm gesture. The democratic dictator is not the watchful, circumspect tyrant who mercilessly eliminates his adversaries, about whom imprecations are uttered from the corner of men’s mouths, nor the leader who, as he passes, is followed by a chorus of curses. His power lies somewhere between repression and consensus, the imposition of his will and listening to the real concerns of the people, a cult of personality and the total identification (or confusion) of his personal interests with those of the state. The functioning of democracy is complicated, slow, and expensive. The democratic dictator cuts the costs, accelerates decision making by eliminating any balance of powers, and offers certain advantages. In exchange he is free to limit liberties and impose his will as the only legitimate power. He wants to be feared, but won’t give up being loved. The democratic dictator sees himself as the father of his people, and like a father he reserves the right to reward or punish at his discretion. His reign is the exact opposite of democracy.
It’s perfectly understandable that Caesar might have taken pleasure in the extra honors bestowed upon him in the last months of his life. It’s harder to imagine the reasons the Senate prostrated itself in such a way. Was it simply an excess of cowardliness on the part of the senators, or was it an underhanded way to ruin him? In antiquity no one really knew where to draw the line between men and the gods. By making Caesar more like a god than a king, did the senators perhaps hope to push him to such vertiginous heights that a ruinous fall was more than likely? The higher the dictator went, the more frequent were the signs of impatience, not so much among the people, who were kept giddy with generous gifts and spectacles, as among the nobility and intellectuals. It is always a minority who first notice the signs that the state is yielding, and they suffer from it by adding the inevitable problems of the future to the woes of the present. This was also the case with Caesar. Few worried, and most focused on enjoying the lavish beneficence of the democratic dictator. At the height of the Republic, the populus was one of the two pillars—the Senate being the other—of established power. This was no longer true, and there was little left of that conscience and function. The populus was for the most part reduced to the uninformed masses.
Only one title was missing to complete Caesar’s pile of honors—that of king. There were repeated indications that, in one way or another, it would eventually be granted him. One day his statue on the tribune of the orators was decorated with a crown. In January, as he was entering the city on horseback, there were shouts of “Rex, rex!” (“King, king!”) from the crowd that had gathered to greet him. He responded that his name was Caesar not Rex, even though that was, in effect, his grandmother’s family name. Having made the distinction, he also made sure that those people in the crowd who were immediately stopped by the police were not punished. A more significant episode came, however, in the middle of February, a month before his assassination, during the festival of the Lupercalia. The priests of the ancient cult of Faunus Lupercus celebrated rites favoring female fertility that were rooted in the myth of Romulus, Remus, and the legendary she-wolf who suckled them. Caesar presided over the festivities wrapped in a purple mantle. While he sat on a gilded seat, his consular colleague, Mark Antony, who had taken part in the traditional run of the Luperci (priests of the cult), dressed only in a loin cloth made of goatskin, tried twice to place a crown on his head, and twice Caesar pushed away both the symbol and recognition he carried.
What did that gesture mean? And what can be made of Caesar’s refusal of the crown? There have been many different interpretations. Had Mark Antony, one of Caesar’s most loyal confidants, made a spontaneous gesture? Or, sensing the danger, did he want to provoke the dictator to test his will? Or was it Caesar who suggested the gesture to gauge what the reaction might be among the crowd? Perhaps Caesar asked his colleague to play that role so he could publicly refuse the crown and thus allay suspicions of his ambition. We must not forget that in the Republic the death penalty was prescribed for anyone who tried to make himself king. At that moment Caesar already had regal powers, and a formal recognition of them would have made little difference in the reality of his authority. But it would have been important from a dynastic point of view, and this was the issue of particular concern to his allies. Cleopatra was in Rome at that time, staying in Caesar’s gardens across the Tiber, and she had Caesarion with her. He was the only son the dictator would ever have, if we exclude the possibility that he fathered Brutus. This gesture and its refusal were the subject of lively commentary. It was repeated over and over that what happened at the Lupercalia was just a trial run, that the real offer would come a month later, at the meeting of the senators on the Ides of March.
Not all the motivations behind Caesar’s assassination are clear, nor is his behavior in the last days of his life. This is part of the fascination that this murder continues to exercise; crimes with aspects that have never been, nor can ever be, fully explained are always the most intense from a narrative point of view.
Is it plausible that a politician as astute as Caesar, expert in any possible maneuver, would not have understood that the recognitions showered upon him were making him the target of public hate? Even if he did not seek out such recognition, why did he allow it to be given? Does it seem reasonable that a man of his experience, now growing fairly old, would so completely have lost his sense of perspective? Was he intoxicated by all the honors, or did he think that they would bring him a permanent place in the memory of the Roman people, the only real kind of immortality he still believed in? Might not his behavior offer the ultimate proof that the vanity of men knows no bounds?
And what if, of all these possibilities, the real reason was something unconscious in his temperament, a hidden drive or instinct? Was it a completely existential motivation in a man now worn down by a life lived at a pace no one else could have sustained? It seems clear that he was not feeling well, that he was tired. According to Cicero, he, like Crassus, would never have returned from a war against the Parthians. Perhaps he was aware of this, or at least suspected it; in those last days he seemed to behave with an almost Eastern sort of fatalism. He knew he was surrounded by dangers, and yet he dismissed the loyal Spanish guards who escorted him when he moved around in public—unless going out unescorted in a dangerous place was meant as a challenge, a contemptuous gesture aimed at the conspirators, as if he wanted to say to them, “let’s just see if you dare.”
About sixty people took part in the conspiracy. There was, as with any political plot, all sorts of men among them—former followers of Pompey who wanted to avenge their leader, former partisans of Caesar who had abandoned him for personal grudges, professional plotters, and defenders of the Republic. Cassius Longinus and Marcus Brutus had become its leaders. The latter was Cato’s nephew, and perhaps Caesar’s own son. In any case his mother had for years been Caesar’s favorite, and it was his sister’s turn afterward; it’s only understandable that Brutus’s feelings about the dictator must have been complex. Dante confines him to hell (Inferno, Canto XXXIV, 64–65), placing him amongst the worst traitors. Shakespeare, on the other hand, makes him a great hero of freedom. Emotions aside, we can say that the conspirators were all upright men who were moved by a sincere love for the Republic, even if Cicero, in his cynical wisdom, wrote that they acted “with virile spirits but infantile intelligence.” Their idea was that, once the tyrant was dead, the Republic would be restored to its ancient splendor, austere habits, and the intransigent, rustic morality that had made Rome great. Caesar had more foresight; he understood that that Republic could never return, and that there was much to be gained from entrusting Rome to men who were in themselves great—he himself, for example, and his adopted son Gaius Octavian (Caesar Augustus).
The conspirators were not necessarily shortsighted, but they were driven by political as well as military calculations. Caesar’s supporters included Mark Antony, who was Consul, and Lepidus, his representative as dictator. Together they had several legions at their disposal, even without counting the veterans upon whom Caesar had bestowed such lavish gifts of land and money. Because in political calculations only the final result counts, it must be said that the outcome of Caesar’s assassination (which would later be judged more of a mistake than a crime) was another fifteen years of civil war for Rome that ended only in 27 BC, when Octavian was granted the title of Augustus.
Perhaps Caesar foresaw all this on that March morning in 44 BC—certainly not the course of events or even his approaching death, but he probably foresaw his solitude, the weight of his existence, and the tremendous war he was setting off for in a few days. While his slaves were dressing him, Calpurnia came in and embraced him; she held him close, and was upset and trembling. She had dreamed—and not for the first time—that the roof of their house had been blown off in a storm, and she saw her husband’s body covered in blood. Perhaps just then Caesar was considering not going to the Senate, but then Decimus Brutus interrupted, exhorting him not to insult the senators again by ignoring a meeting he himself had called. Then he ordered his litter to be brought, and was gone. Perhaps bumped by a passing slave, his statue next to the door fell over and shattered. Calpurnia screamed; Caesar ignored her and ordered his slaves to continue. For one last time he passed through the streets of Rome that Jérôme Carcopino so vividly evoked in his book Daily Life in Ancient Rome: “The tabernae were crowded as soon as they opened and spread their displays into the street. Here barbers shaved their customers in the middle of the fairway.… Elsewhere the owner of a cook-shop, hoarse with calling to deaf ears, displayed his sausages piping hot in their saucepan.… On the one hand, a money-changer rang his coins on a dirty table … and the quavering voices of beggars rehearsed their adventures and misfortunes to touch the hearts of the passers-by.… In sun or shade, a whole world of people came and went, shouted, squeezed, and thrust through the narrow lanes unworthy of a country village.”12
Caesar glimpsed from behind the curtains of his litter the city he’d had such a large part in shaping. Those who recognized him shouted, “Imperator! Dictator!” A man approached him and thrust a parchment at him, saying that his master, Artemidorus of Cnidos, asked that he read it. When Caesar made a gesture that it should be given to a secretary, the man insisted, “Read it immediately and alone!” It was an exhortation to be vigilant, and went unheeded. Caesar’s route took him across what is today the area of Piazza Venezia, proceeded along a street where the Via delle Botteghe Oscure now runs, and arrived at Largo di Torre Argentina, at the Curia of Pompey (whose statue he had ordered not be removed) at the edge of the piazza where today we can see the excavations with their impressive ruins. He saw Spurinna, the soothsayer who had warned him of the Ides of March in her lugubrious manner, turned toward her, and said jokingly, “You spoke to me of the Ides of March, and as you can see they have arrived.” She replied, in a sinister voice, “But they have not yet passed.”
Senators crowded the hemicycle of the curia dressed in white togas, a fearsome crowd, had they not been so amiable, of nine hundred people, almost all of whom were present for the occasion. While entering solemnly and approaching the statue of Pompey, Tullius Cimber appeared in front of Caesar and kneeled, taking hold of his toga and begging for a pardon for his brother. Caesar turned and was then surrounded by Cassius, Brutus, Casca, Trebonius, and Pontius Aquila. Tullius Cimber grabbed his arms; his act was no longer one of supplication, but one of violence. At first slowly, then with increasing fury, the others drew their blades and began to strike. Caesar attempted to react, but he had only a stylus in his hand. He planted that in someone, but it was not enough. He felt his blood flowing, the pain of the wounds on his back, neck, and groin. He huddled by the statue of Pompey to protect at least one of his flanks, and from there he saw his son, Brutus, as he was raising his knife. He had just enough time to pronounce the last of his messages, which would go down in history with the others: “Tu quoque, fili mi” [You, too, my son]. He then covered his face with his toga and collapsed.
An inspection of his corpse allowed the number of stab wounds to be confirmed—twenty-three in total—and established that only one of them, to the chest, was fatal; he would have survived the rest. Suetonius recorded the scene:
Twenty-three dagger thrusts went home as he stood there. Caesar did not say a word after Casca’s first blow had drawn a groan from him.… The entire Senate then dispersed in confusion, and Caesar was left lying dead for some time until three of his household slaves carried him home in a litter, with one arm hanging over the side.… He was fifty-five years old when he died, and he was deified immediately.… Very few of the assassins outlived Caesar for more than three years, or died naturally … some [used] the very daggers with which they had treacherously murdered Caesar to take their own lives.13
1. Appianus of Alexandria, Roman History, trans. Horace White (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1913), 501.
2. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957), 46–47.
3. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, trans. W. S. Merwin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), canto 7, lines 70–75.
4. Dante Alighieri, Convivio, trans. Richard Lansing, 1988, bk. 4, ch. 6.
5. Sallust, The Jugurthine War and The Conspiracy of Catiline, trans. S. A. Handford (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957), 192.
6. Cicero, Against Catiline, ed. C. D. Yonge (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0019:text=Catil.)
7. Sallust, The Jugurthine War, 198–99.
8. Ibid., 233.
9. Ibid., 226.
10. Extract from Dante’s Purgatory.
11. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 27.
12. Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome. The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, ed. Henry T. Rowell, trans. E. O. Lorimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 48–49.
13. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 46, 48–49.