Julius Caesar (8 page)

Caesar showed his long memory early in January that year when he mounted an attack in the senate on the “most venerated of Romans,” Catulus, for the latter’s neglect in failing to restore the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The whole story need not concern us here, but it reveals something more of Caesar’s nature: he made a bad enemy. Cato was the next to feel his animosity and, in what seems from this distance in time a storm in the political teacup, Caesar managed to see that he was humiliated and had to take refuge in one of the temples for safety. As praetor, Caesar was always conscious not only of his
dignitas,
that essential ingredient of the Roman aristocrat’s life, but of the powers that he now enjoyed, and would act sharply in defense of his position. A Roman knight Vettius, who may at one time have been part of the Catiline conspiracy, but who had certainly turned informer and may even have been in the pay of Cicero, produced a long list of others who had been involved in the plot. He gave this to the president of the special court which dealt with such matters, adding that he had other names yet to furnish—and among them was Caesar’s. Another one of the known friends of Cicero, a senator Quintus Curius, said publicly that he had information from Catiline that Caesar was involved. Against Vettius, Caesar had fairly easy redress, denying the accusation in the senate and calling Cicero as a witness that he, Caesar, had early passed on to him all the information that he had acquired about the conspiracy. It was easy, because of Caesar’s distinguished position, to deal with a man like Vettius: “his goods were seized, he was man-handled,” and Caesar “had him thrown into prison.”

As for Curius, he was deprived of the honors that he had hoped to gain by a denouncement of conspirators. Nor did Caesar stop there, but immediately used his rank and position against a man called Novius Niger who had been president of the court which had heard the charge against him. Novius had overstepped himself, for Caesar was a magistrate of higher rank. In the protection of his dignity and rank Caesar was as fierce as a wildcat and determined to be treated with respect.

In that same year of plot and violence and intrigue there occurred an even stranger affair. This was the matter of Publius Clodius, an aristocrat of old family who has been described as “one of the most profligate characters of a profligate age.” His fierce opposition to Cicero and his “rake hell” character may well have endeared him to Caesar but he stepped beyond the acceptable mark—even in Rome—at the festival of
the Bona Dea.
The Good Goddess was above all the goddess of women, and was one of those many manifestations of the Great Earth Mother who had once dominated much of the Mediterranean for millennia. She had reemerged disguised in many forms but her chief characteristics were always the same: she represented the female principle, those areas of the female cycle, of childbirth, of all that side of life from which men were automatically debarred. She was described by Cicero as “a goddess whose very name is a mystery beyond the power of man to know,” and her worship was conducted by the Vestal Virgins. Every year on the occasion of her festival, which was always held in the house of a magistrate, all the men of the house were compelled to leave and the mysteries attaching to the Good Goddess were conducted by the women.

In the year 62 the house chosen for this celebration was that of Caesar, and his wife Pompeia was, as it were, the hostess. Now Pompeia herself—and who can blame her knowing Caesar’s sexual conduct—was not noted for her faithfulness, while Clodius had a reputation that even in Rome was considered scandalous: he was believed among much else to have had incestuous relations with his sister Clodia whom the poet Catullus loved. On this occasion, possibly because he wished to prosecute a love affair with Pompeia or, equally likely, because it seemed amusing to invade a sacred festival, Clodius had himself disguised as a woman and slipped into the house of Caesar. The story, based on Plutarch’s account, has often been told but it seems worth including since it gives so much of the atmosphere of the Rome that Caesar knew:

As Pompeia was at that time celebrating this feast, Clodius, who as yet had no beard, and so thought to pass undiscovered, took upon him the dress and ornaments of a singing woman, and so came thither, having the air of a young girl. Finding the doors open, he was without any stop introduced by the maid, who was in the intrigue. She presently went to tell Pompeia, but as she was away a long time, he grew uneasy in waiting for her, and left his post and traversed the house from one room to another, still taking care to avoid the lights, till at last Aurelia’s woman met him, and invited him to play with her, as the women did among themselves. He refused to comply, and she presently pulled him forward, and asked him who he was, and whence he came. Clodius told her he was waiting for Pompeia’s own maid, Abra, being in fact her own name also, and as he said so, betrayed himself by his voice. Upon which the woman shrieking, ran into the company where there were lights, and cried out, she had discovered a man. The women were all in fright. Aurelia covered up the sacred things and stopped the proceedings, and having ordered the doors to be shut, went about with lights to find Clodius, who was got into the maid’s room that he had come in with, and was seized there. The women knew him, and drove him out of doors, and at once, that same night, went home and told their husbands the story.

The scandal, which rocked Rome (inured to scandal as that city was), became transformed into a matter of politics, revolving around the question as to which court should be responsible for trying Clodius. Caesar’s position was an awkward one, and if Clodius (as some have suggested) had been acting at the instigation of Caesar’s enemies he could hardly have embarrassed him more. It was not the matter of his being perhaps the Cuckolded husband—such were common enough, and Caesar often responsible—but the fact that the attempted adultery and the sacrilegious intrusion into the rites of the Bona Dea had taken place in the house of the Pontifex Maximus. Because of his position Caesar’s wife was herself playing the role of a priestess at this gathering.

What would Caesar do? The answer was, curiously enough as it then seemed, relatively nothing. True, he divorced his wife Pompeia, on the grounds that members of his household must be above suspicion: a remark that has often laughingly been quoted against him, but which was completely justified because of his status as the high priest of the Roman religion. At the trial of Clodius, Cicero, as defendant of Roman morality, very naturally spoke vehemently against the accused. Caesar, the injured husband—to most people’s astonishment—said that he had no knowledge of the affair. The fact was that he and Crassus had come to the conclusion that the rake Clodius was exactly the kind of man they needed to replace Catiline in working upon the passions of the Roman mob. Where Catiline had failed them, Clodius might succeed. Crassus, in fact, seems to have advanced Clodius enough money to bribe the majority of the jurors so that, despite his own feeble defense (which Cicero demolished), thirty-one of the jurors voted for his acquittal as against twenty-five who, true to their consciences or responding to Cicero’s oratory, pronounced him guilty. Despite the scandal, Caesar came out of the affair quite well, for he had probably long wanted to divorce Pompeia since she was childless. Also Clodius was now beholden to both Crassus and Caesar, Crassus for money and Caesar for his denial of any knowledge of the background for the charge.

For some reason or other—perhaps because of the trial of Clodius—the allotment of the praetorial provinces was delayed until March that year. Caesar could now look forward to the rewards of his position, for he had drawn the governorship of Farther Spain—where he had served before as quaestor. His troubles were far from over, however, for his creditors in Rome began to press him so hard that it was even doubtful whether he would be able to get away to the province where he hoped to restore his finances. Once again Crassus came to his rescue, enabling Caesar to escape his most urgent creditors and assume his command. The province comprised Baetica, the Romanized and peaceful southern part of the peninsula, and Lusitania, western Spain and the mountainous spine of Portugal. The latter was scarcely settled and was a constant source of trouble to both the governors and the governed in the south. Caesar looked to it with anticipation as possibly providing him with the type of military success that could make a governor’s fame and fortune. He badly needed some military glory to counterbalance the great sun of Pompey that had risen in the East.

9

Pompey and Caesar

OVERSHADOWING all these events in Rome, dwarfing the intrigues of Crassus and Caesar and the Clodius scandal, loomed the immense figure of Pompey the Great. Pompeius Magnus seemed at that time so much more distinguished than any other Roman. Yet, in fact, as any study of his life reveals, his career was hardly different from that of any conspicuous Roman of the time. It was only his outstanding successes, first in Africa against the last of the Marians, then against Sertorius in Spain and next in his sweeping command of the sea against the pirates, which gave this impression. In all other respects he had shown himself as unrepresentative of the old conception of republican virtues as any other who wished to overturn Cicero’s dream of the republic. As Sir Ronald Syme puts it: “The career of Pompeius opened in fraud and violence. It was prosecuted, in war and in peace, through illegality and treachery.”

Now, early in 61, before Caesar had left for Spain, Pompey returned to Italy triumphant with his 40,000 legionaries. He had not only settled all the troubles of Asia Minor, thus enriching Rome with immense and increasing wealth, but he brought back—a gift, as it were, to the empire—the rich and important province of Syria. Mithridates was dead, Roman influence extended as far as the Caucasus, and the sea was pirate-free. In the course of the past three years and more he had not only enriched his country immeasurably but, of course, himself as well. Such was to be expected, for the rewards enjoyed by victorious Roman generals were not just the medals, titles and retirement pensions that their successors in our century may consider their simple due. Pompey the Great was now almost certainly richer than Crassus: what is more he had hundreds of indebted clients in the territories that he had subdued and thousands of devoted legionaries whom he had also benefited, and to whom he had promised land on a very large scale. On arriving in Italy he had dis-missed his soldiers, though many senators had feared he might use them to impose a dictatorship, and advanced on Rome in total confidence. Caesar was among the first to propose massive new honors to the returning conqueror, for he saw that Pompey as well as Crassus might make a more than useful ally.

J. A. Froude in his
Caesar—a Sketch
conveys the atmosphere of Pompey’s reception as well as the subsequent disillusionment with him:

He was received as he advanced with the shouts of applauding multitudes. He entered Rome in a galaxy of glory. A splendid column commemorated the cities which he had taken, the twelve million human beings whom he had slain or subjected. His triumph was the most magnificent which the Roman citizens had ever witnessed, and by special vote he was permitted to wear his triumphal robe in the senate as often and as long as might please him. The fireworks over, and with the aureole of glory about his brow, the great Pompey, like another Samson shorn of his locks, dropped into impotence and insignificance.

The fact was—and Caesar in the remaining weeks before he left for Spain will have had time to discern it—Pompey was no orator, and a poor politician. He might shine on distant fields of battle and in military organization but he did not distinguish himself in the senate. Like many another returning warrior who has been years away from home (MacArthur springs to mind), during his long residence in other climates and among his soldiers or the prostrate conquered he had lost touch with the seat of power and the tortuous maze of manipulation. Caesar, as has been observed, was always, even as a youth in the East, accustomed to hear regularly from correspondents in Rome and to return there whenever opportunity offered. He knew—as Pompey perhaps did not, or had forgotten—that it was in the capital that the alliances were made and the political maneuvers engendered. Cicero, in a letter to his friend Atticus, reported with evident satisfaction, after listening to a speech by Pompey: “He gave no pleasure to the wretched; to the bad he seemed vapid and spineless; he was not pleasing to the well-to-do; to the good he seemed without any weight; and so he was looked on coldly.” He had also made the grave error—in the eyes of the senate—of settling affairs abroad in a high-handed manner without bothering to consult them, and he had made extravagant promises of land to his soldiers which the senators were determined he should not keep.

But all this was in the future and Caesar, after first taking the measure of his man, had now set off for Spain. The journey from Rome to Corduba took him three weeks, the standard time for that day, but Caesar was never the man to relax on this or other similar rounds of travel. On one journey which took twenty-seven days from Rome to southern Spain he composed a long poem called “The Journey,” while during a crossing of the Alps he wrote, or dictated, a two-volume work
On Analogy.
The elder Pliny recorded that he had heard how “Caesar was accustomed to write or dictate and read at the same time, simultaneously dictating to his secretaries four letters on the most important subjects or, if he had nothing else to do, as many as seven.” On this occasion Plutarch provides the somewhat unconvincing tale that, as they were passing through a squalid Alpine village, and the conversation turned jokingly to the question of what political offices were competed for there, Caesar remarked seriously: “For my part I would rather be first among these wretches than second in Rome.”