A Biography of Caesar and Rome

Not until later in history than Caesar's day, did Roman portrait busts add defined pupils. The
effect is remarkable when, as in this reconstruction, they do.

For I have not associated with you in former time under a disguise, while possessing in reality some different nature, only to become emboldened in security now that that is possible; nor I have become so elated or puffed up by my great good fortune as to desire also to play the tyrant over you...No, I am in nature the same sort of man as you have always found me..." Cassius Dio, quoting Caesar, Roman History, XLIII.

The nature of Julius Caesar, as described by various sources, is so contradictory that he sometimes appears a precursor to Jekyll and Hyde. Reconciling the contradictions has occupied historians for millennia. An additional problem in trying to tease out Caesar's true nature from historians past and present is that their own agendas often intrude. From the idolatry of Mommsen to the reverence of popular writers like Colleen McCullough, the prejudices of Tacitus or the piques of Cicero, from the cold-blooded viper in the Republic's bosom to the admiration of later ages, Caesar is a fascinating quarry to seek. Yet the original Roman sources do provide some insights of the man who originated the myth and the qualities that, from childhood, made other people notice him.

Occasional comments appear to contain some truth. On Caesar's physical appearance, Suetonius writes

	" Caesar is said to have been tall, fair, and well-built, with a rather broad face and keen, dark-brown eyes. His health was sound, apart from sudden comas and a tendency to nightmares which troubled him during the end of his life; but he twice had epileptic fits while on campaign. He was something of a dandy, always keeping his head carefully trimmed and shaved; and has been accused of having certain other hairy parts of his body depilated with tweezers. His baldness was a disfigurement which his enemies harped upon, much to his exasperation; but he used to comb the thin strands of hair forward from his poll, and of all the honors voted him by the Senate and People, none pleased him so much as the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath on all occasions - he constantly took advantage of it. . . Contemporary literature contains frequent references to his fondness for luxurious living.. . Fresh-water pearls seem to have been the lure that prompted his invasion of Britain; he would sometimes weigh them in the palm of his hand to judge their value, and was also a keen collector of gems, carvings, statues, and Old Masters. "
	Suetonius Life.

From the multitude of busts of Julius Caesar that have survived from his own time, he was apparently a handsome man, with the distinctive quirks around his mouth suggesting charm and humor. His eyes were deep set, his forehead broad (particularly as he grew older and developed a receding hairline), his nose finely bridged, and his cheekbones so sharp that they gave his face a striking distinction. Boy and man, he apparently enjoyed excellent health until his last years, when the rumors of possibly epilepsy made the rounds. A superb rider, he would, like most cavalry officers of his time, have developed the strong muscles in legs, back and arms not only to control horses but to fight with the sword, shield and lance of the army. He must have been both extremely hardy and naturally healthy to have led the life of his commonest soldiers, sharing their hardships and travels, for the last 20 years of his life. He would have learned the strengths of a soldier since his childhood years.

SELF-CONTROL

The culture of Caesar's time had no patience for children, as children: they were viewed, almost from the moment they could walk, as small adults who had to be forced into the self-reliant, self-denying, toughness that Roman tradition demanded for both sexes. Since Caesar's father was apparently often away on political postings while he was growing up, few sources refer to him but concentrate on Caesar's mother, Aurelia:

	"Caesar's upbringing was famously strict, and his mother, Aurelia, was accordingly remembered by subsequent generations of Romans as a model parent, so model, in fact, that it was said she had breast fed her children. This, notoriously, was something that upper-class women rarely chose to do...no sooner had she weaned her children than she set about the business of their education. . . Physical and well as intellectual exercises were prescribed for both. A boy trained his body for warfare, a girl for childbirth, but both were pushed to the point of exhaustion. To the Romans, self-knowledge came from appreciating the limits of one's endurance. It was only by testing what these might be that a child could be prepared for adult life.
	Holland, Rubicon, p. 12S.

Even without the official influence of Roman Stoic teachings, Caesar would have been raised, as all boys in his time, to despise weakness and emotionality which were considered feminine attributes, to learn to accept both the rewards and the punishments of the goddess Fortuna with equal lack of emotion. To push oneself to the point of pain in physical endurance, to deny or despise feelings, to maintain self-control at all times, to drink and eat moderately, to revere Rome and its traditions, and to focus all of one's mental and emotional energy on getting ahead in the constant competition with one's peers, were all concepts Caesar probably imbibed with mother's milk.

AMBITION

Caesar was brought up in a culture where family, and the achievements of past family, was everything, at the very time when his own family - one of the noblest in Roman history - had been losing its prominence for some decades. Again, Tom Holland notes that "To an extent that was regarded as excessive even by Roman standards, Caesar never let slip a chance to insist on the respect due to his ancestry. His descent from Venus had been drummed into him from his earlier years." (Holland, 115). His other ancestor was the famous Aeneas, who fled from Troy and escaped to Italy; and the father of Aeneas was the god Mars. Thus, he had an immortal ancestor on each side. Caesar would have believed in his own genes and sought to make his own achievements as similar to those great ancestors as possible. He would not accept being second in any field of endeavor.

As Suetonius notes, Caesar lost his father at 15; a teenager, he was forced to hide from Sulla's secret police, searching to destroy him. Captured by pirates, he "smilingly swore" he would hunt them down and crucify them when released - which he did. As a quaestor in Spain, he saw a statue of Alexander. He "...was overheard to sigh impatiently: vexed, it seems, that at an age when Alexander had already conquered the whole world, he himself had done nothing in the least epoch-making. Moreover, when on the following night, much to his dismay, he had a dream of raping his own mother, the soothsayers greatly encouraged him by the interpretation of it: namely, that he was destined to conquer the earth, our Universal Mother."

Suetonius also claims Caesar was a part of at least two plots to destroy the Republic in the '60's, including a plot with Crassus (who would become dictator, with Caesar his second in command); later, he was allegedly involved with Cataline's failed plot in 63 BC. His magnificent public entertainments as an aedile nearly bankrupted Caesar and earned him all the credit, to the dismay of his aedile colleague, the ever-unfortunate Bibulus: "The Temple of the Heavenly Twins in the Forum is always simply called 'Castor's'; and I always play Pollux to Caesar's Castor when we give a public entertainment together."

In seeking the office of Pontifex Maximus in 63 BC, "The story goes that, reckoning up the enormous debts thus contracted, he told his mother, as she kissed him goodbye on the morning of the poll, that if he did not return to her as Chief Pontiff he would not return at all." Suetonius gleefully recounts Caesar's utter ruthlessness when, in the teeth of opposition from the Senate, he finally won the Consulship for 59 BC. He accuses him of bribing witnesses, ordering violent popular demonstrations to sway public opinion, imprisoning Cato when he spoke against Caesar's legislation, bribing informers to make allegations against his enemies (and poisoning them when they had done so); trading his teenage daughter in marriage to the middle-aged Pompey for political advantage; and operating illegally to achieve his own ends

Caesar early acquired a reputation for sexual license, although the famous story that he was the sexual partner of King Nicomedes of Bithynia can never be proved. Caesar's famous sense of humor shines through Suetonius' account of Caesar in the Senate, after achieving his wish of being awarded the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul after his consulate:

"His elation was such that he could not refrain from boasting to a packed House, some days later, that having now gained his dearest wish, to the annoyance and grief of his opponents, he would proceed to 'stamp upon their persons' [NOTE: for this, read a graphic sexual innuendo]. When someone interjected with a sneer that a woman would not find this an easy feat [another reference to Caesar's supposed homosexual experiences when young], he answered amicably: 'Why not? Semiramis was supreme in Syria, and the Amazons once ruled over a large part of Asia.'

In spite of the rumor about Nicomedes, Caesar never again throughout his life gave the slightest indication that he was a lover of men; nor, given the political hostility of his enemies, would any second instance go untrumpeted. His soldiers were known to sing mocking songs about his sexual prowess with the wives of other men; it is hard not to wonder how much the hostility of men like Cato and Bibulus may have derived from suffering that prowess at second hand.

Even his enemies concede Caesar's troops adored him; otherwise, they would never have mocked him. In the quadruple triumphs following Caesar's victories in the Civil War, Suetonius quotes two of his legions' marching songs, caroled happily throughout the triumphal parade: one suggesting his reputation for homosexuality, one its opposite:

Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar:By King Nicomedes, he.
Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph For his Gallic victory!
Nicomedes wears no laurels Though the greatest of the three.

Yet nothing in Caesar's life suggests that, with the possible exception of his first wife, Cornelia, that he was interested in women at any deep level. His wives were taken out for practical political considerations, upper-class women who were the daughters or sisters of men he wished to ally himself with. His third wife, Calpurnia, probably saw him for a total of months in a marriage of 15 years, as he was also abroad on campaign. Although the sources suggest he was very fond of his daughter, he had no hesitation at marrying her to Pompey for his own advantage, nor in attempting to find another Julian wife for Pompey once that marital link had been snapped (Pompey refused).

Similarly, one wonders (with the tales of sexual promiscuity) whether any living bastards joined his daughter, Julia. Caesar's last will made provision for the fact - or the hope - that Calpurnia might still bear him a son, but no other children are even rumored during Caesar's life other than his son, Caesarion, by Cleopatra. Although historians love to speculate, it is almost certain that Caesar had no plans for Caesarion. The fact that his will was made when Caesarion was a healthy three-year-old suggests that at no point did Caesar consider him a suitable heir for his own people.

All early sources agree that Caesar consistently and wildly outspent his means for political aims (and for private pleasure) until finally, in his '40s, the loot from Gaul released him from financial care. If money was what it took to make a splash in Rome, he spent with impeccable taste and totally without responsibility. One can only hope that his private convictions included that his luck would hold until the creditors could be paid. From an early age, war was a great way to improve his finances.

Seeking reputation and treasure in Gaul, Caesar "...lost no opportunity of picking quarrels - however flimsy the pretext - with allies as well as hostile and barbarous tribes, and marching against them; the danger of this policy never occurred to him. . . briefly, his nine years' governorship produced the following results. He reduced to the form of a province the whole of Gaul enclosed by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Cevennes, the Rhine, and the Rhone - about 640,000 square miles - except for certain allied states which had given him useful support; and exacted an annual tribute of 400,000 gold pieces." While racking up an incalculable personal fortune himself, Caesar also spent millions bribing clients back in Rome as an investment in his post-Gallic future. According to Suetonius, he bought and sold politicians wholesale:

	" Caesar thus became the one reliable source of help to all who were in legal difficulties, or in debt, or living beyond their means; and refused help only to those whose criminal record was so black, or whose purse was so empty, or whose tastes were so expensive, that even he could do nothing for them. He frankly told such people: 'What you need is a civil war. "
	Suetonius, Life.

This is also the man described as extorting money through bribery and plunder, paying his armies "by open extortion and sacrilege." Given the record of ruthlessness in Italy, Spain, Gaul, and (indeed) everywhere recorded by Suetonius, Caesar's mercy to his opponents is a surprisingly consistent thread running through most of his life. In the ultimate example, his assassins had, almost to a man, fought against him at various points in the Civil War. All had been later forgiven and given positions in Caesar's government at its highest levels. Cicero betrayed him at every turn; yet it was Antony, not Caesar, who stopped Cicero's mouth. Brutus and Cassius were both given positions of trust, as was Decimus Brutus. Caesar's mercy became proverbial; his heir, Augustus, given the result, learned that mercy was undependable and death more sure.

As for Caesar's motives in the Civil War, Suetonius accepts the proposition that, from first to last, Caesar sought supreme power. "It has been suggested that constant exercise of power gave Caesar a love of it; and that, after weighing his enemies' strength against his own, he took this chance of fulfilling his youthful dreams by making a bid for the monarchy. Cicero seems to have come to a similar conclusion; in the third book of his Essay on Duty, he records that Caesar quoted the following lines from Euripides' "Phoenician Women" on several occasions:

Is crime consonant with nobility?
Then noblest is the crime of tyranny
In all things else obey the laws of Heaven."

During the Civil War, Caesar apparently had a low opinion of Pompey's military skills. He once referred to Pompey's armies in Spain as an "army without a leader" and the rest as "a leader without an army." When Caesar rapidly destroyed the armies of Pharnaces at Zela, he commented dryly that Pompey's reputation after fighting Pharnaces' father, Mithridates, was definitely overblown.

Caesar sought power throughout his life with single-minded application, yet when he finally held supreme power he used it carefully. It is difficult to find any action of Caesar's after 49 BC which reflects overt tyranny; while not tactful with the Senate, he confined himself to the usual, legal forms to get the legislation he wanted. Is it as if the personal self-identification of an insecure man who seeks power to make himself feel bigger, did not apply to whatever motives underlay Caesar's pursuit of it. Power vindicated, but did not create, his own self-confidence.

Although he had a reputation for vice enthusiastically encouraged by his opponents, Caesar had his puritanical streak. He ate and drank abstemiously; Cato (himself a notoriously heavy drinker) allegedly said that "Caesar was the only sober man who ever tried to wreck the Constitution." It was said that he cared so little for good food that, attending a dinner party where rancid oil had been mistakenly served, Caesar ate it in politeness to his host. However personally indifferent to fine food or wine, he was demanding about his servants, presumably because their performance reflected to others the kind of image he wished to present, and was embarrassed enough at the high prices he paid for them to keep the facts secret.

When he had to for political reasons, however, Caesar could be as lavish as any man in Rome. Macrobius supposedly lists the menu of an elegant banquet that Caesar and other pontifices (priests) attended in 63 BC, the year of Cataline's conspiracy. It suggests the kind of conspicuous display that Caesar used throughout his career to win votes:

This is also the man renowned not only for the elegance and clarity of his rhetorical speeches, but for his fine appreciation on the intellectual issues of rhetoric, literature and philosophy in his own day. By the mid-second century, the study of rhetoric, with its related ability to take an argument to pieces and to argue either side with equal brilliance, was a necessary tool of any Roman politician. Cicero, in his own time, was hailed as the supreme rhetorician among many, and it is Cicero who is said to have written of Caesar, "Do you know any man who, even if he has concentrated on the art of oratory to the exclusion of all else, can speak better than Caesar" Or anyone who makes so many witty remarks? Or whose vocabulary is so varied and yet so exact?" Cicero had the highest praise for Caesar's war commentaries, stating that, in their clarity and "faultless grace" of style, they are incapable of being improved upon. From Cicero (ever jealous of his own rhetorical skills), this was remarkable commendation. Several of Caesar's well-regarded works on rhetoric and poetry are, sadly, lost: it would be fascinating to see what type of poem this warrior prince could produce.

Caesar was also known for his exquisite taste in art and architecture; if not interrupted by his death, he would possibly have done as much as his heir, Augustus, in turning a brick Rome into marble. The great building projects - Caesar's Forum, the rebuilding of the Basilica Julia, the new Curia - were only a few of many projects left unfinished at his death. Currently in Rome, much of Caesar's old Forum is newly excavated and it is clear that it was far bigger, more luxurious and beautiful than originally thought. One only has to see the exquisitely colored marble columns to feel that, here again, Caesar was clearly involved in the minutiae of his legacy to Rome. He was as meticulous in choosing art work for his homes and gardens as he was in building temples for Rome itself. As noted earlier, a mixture of his extravagance and his taste is the claim that he pulled down a newly-built villa when he found it insufficiently beautiful.

Caesar's discernment in literary matters was also a matter of record, even when it involved him in the awkward situation of being pilloried by satirists, including the poet Catullus. Catullus, notorious for his lifestyle in the Rome of his time, has left several searing poems directed against Caesar, Pompey, and one of Caesar's aides, Mamurra. At some point Caesar let it his displeasure be known; yet, he apparently was willing to overlook the poems (considering their content and his dignitas, this is somewhat surprising). "Caesar did not hide the fact that a permanent blot had been put on his name by the verses that Valerius Catullus had made about Mamurra. But when Catullus apologized, Caesar invited him to dinner that very day. And Caesar kept up his old friendship with Catullus' father." Suetonius, 73. Perhaps Catullus' verses rang in Caesar's head during that interesting dinner:

Caesar was well known for intellectual wit and charm and, in addition to his own sense of humor, he enjoyed wit in others. Gellius notes that Caesar detested a contemporary mime [comedian], Laberius, but loved Publilius; Gellius quotes some of Publilius' sayings that Caesar knew and appreciated. Some of them seem eerily pertinent:

Bad is the plan which cannot bear a change.
He gains by giving who has given to worth.
Endure and don't deplore what can't be helped.
Frugality is misery in disguise.
Patience too oft provoked is turned to rage.
He wrongly Neptune blames, who suffers shipwreck twice.
Regard a friend as one who may be a foe.
Gellius, Attic Nights, XVII.XV.

The well-known rumor that Caesar suffered from epilepsy is possibly just that: mentioned briefly in Suetonius, there are also hints in other sources. If his epilepsy was either severe or life-long, it is probable that it would have elicited far more comment. What suggestions there are appear to agree that this was a condition - whether epilepsy or another ailment - which grew on Caesar only toward the end of his life and did not significantly affect his plans. It is hard to imagine the indefatigable warrior of Gaul or Pharsalus taking frequent breaks to deal with his infirmity. Doctors have suggested that the occasional seizures may have derived either from a late-developing hypoglycemia or from an incipient brain tumor. Caesar's own words and attitudes in the last year of his life, however, including his comments that he had "lived long enough" makes it possible that his health was finally beginning to limit his activities.