I
Julius Caesar
THE IDEA that there was something contradictory, inexplicable, and elusive about Gaius Julius Caesar's behavior on the last morning of his life haunts us still as it haunted his contemporaries. Surely the most powerful and feared man in Rome had been fully informed of the conspirators' plans to kill him. We know the secret had not been kept and many people were aware that something was afoot. Why then had he gone to the Senate meeting ? Why did he expose himself so recklessly? Had he gone because he had wanted to die that day ? Did the Republic, to which he had given so many victories, owe him this last benefit too, his own death, the death of the tyrant who had extinguished the ancient liberties ? Had he tried to rob the conspirators of their glory ?
And, if his secret decision was to die, how had he come to it? Like many others in Rome at the time, he knew that all problems were tied up in one inextricable knot; there was no solution, peace was maintained only by the threat of his invincible armies camping outside the walls, and pressure was mounting daily. "He could not see a way out," Cicero wrote after his death, "and if a man of his intelligence could not see a way out, who could?" Disenchanted and embittered, was Caesar also too tired to fend off his own death when it seemed inevitableāeven necessary? "Some of his friends", Suetonius relates, "suspected that, having no wish to live longer, he had not desired to take any precautions."
Surely no murder in history was more clearly and more insistently predicted by supernatural and natural signs. No murder of a great man could have been more easily prevented. The presages were so many and so evident that Plutarch, listing some of them, felt insecure without the backing of an authoritative contemporary witness : he quoted Strabo. The Greek Strabo was an 11-year-old schoolboy in Rome when Caesar died; presumably what details he related in his History (which has been lost) he had seen with his own eyes or learned first-hand and were indelibly etched in his memory like all dramatic events in children's lives. These are some of them : "On the day preceding the death of Caesar, men were seen looking as if they were heated through by fire, contending with each other; a quantity of flames issued from the hands of a soldier's servant, so that who saw it thought he must be burned ..." Plutarch, who knew that similar prodigies had also appeared in the past to warn the public at large of indeterminate catastrophes, advised the reader to ignore most of them. "As to the lights in heaven," he says warily, "the noises in the night, and the wild birds perched in the Forum, these are perhaps not worth noticing . . ."Only the omens clearly concerning one man, Caesar, and pointing to one possible event, his death, were to be considered.
The meaning of some was unmistakable. A few months before, the veterans who had been sent to settle on land near Capua were breaking up ancient tombs to gather stones to build their farmhouses. One tomb turned out to be that of Capys, the legendary founder of the city, and there the men found a bronze tablet with a Greek inscription to this effect: "Disturb the tomb of Capys and a man of Trojan stock will be murdered by his kindred, and later avenged at great cost to Italy." (Caesar believed he was the descendant of Aeneas, the fugitive Trojan prince who found refuge in Italy.) A few days before his death, news reached him about a herd of horses which he had freed, after fording the river Rubiconāthey were beginning to show a repugnance for the pasture and were shedding bucketsful of tears. On the very day before the Ides of March a little bird called a "king wren" flew into the hall of Pompey's theater (which the Senate used at the time for their meeting) with a sprig of laurel in its beak. Pursued by a swarm of hostile different birds it was torn to pieces there and then.
All these signs were obviously aimed at Caesar, as direct as arrows from a bow. The veterans looking for stones were his own soldiers; they wanted to build farmhouses on land granted to them by the "Julian Law", the law he himself had proposed to reward them. The weeping horses were his own, sacred to the fateful river he had to cross to start the civil war. The bird had been killed where the Senate met and not anywhere else, and was called "king".
Other omens were, if possible, even more personal and specific. When Caesar was at a sacrifice a few days before his death, the animal's heart could not be found. The night before his death, as he was in bed with his wife, all the doors and windows of the house suddenly flew open at once. He was startled at the noise and the light that broke into the room; he sat up in his bed ; by the moonlight he saw Calpurnia asleep, and heard her utter indistinct words and inarticulate groans. She had dreamed she was weeping over Caesar, holding his body, harried with wounds, in her arms. Suetonius adds this most explicit omen of all: "During a sacrifice, the augur Spurinna warned him that the danger threatening him would not pass until the Ides of March.'Beware of the Ides of March!'he said. . . ."
IT is IMPORTANT to describe these portents, obviously not because we believe that future events can be read in the entrails of slaughtered animals, lights in the sky, or nightmares, but because such omens were considered at the time clear and awe-inspiring warnings which the bravest man could not easily bring himself to disregard. That Caesar himself knew what they meant is suggested by something he said the night before his murder. He was dining at the camp of Marcus Aemilius Lepi-dus, outside Rome, where an army was being outfitted and trained for an expedition. He signed a few letters, reclined on his triclinium, and chatted with his old comrades during the long meal. Somebody asked idly what kind of death was the best. Before anyone else could speak, as if the thought had been in his mind for days, Caesar said: "A sudden one."
He was certainly also warned of his fate by more down-to-earth means. Like all dictators, he too had a network of spies in important households and government offices in Rome and the provinces. He too must have received anonymous letters and informers' tips. (Anonymous letters have always been a curse of Roman life : even today they descend like autumn leaves on the desk of every high official.) An ordinary tip was probably concealed in Spurinna's words, "Beware of the Ides of March!" Information had surely come from at least one of the many conspirators : how irresistible must have been, for the weakest of them, the temptation to assure himself a future of immense power and wealth by betraying his friends and saving the life of Caesar! Surely slaves had noticed and gossiped about their masters' mysterious meetings in strange places at night, the masked-ball disguises they wore, the preposterous orders they gave to ensure secrecy. Wives probably complained about the behavior of their husbands, so similar to their behavior when falling in love with other women, their abrupt replies to civil questions, the anxious expression always on their pale faces.
We know that there were leaks. Only minutes before the assassination, one senator, Popilius Laenas, approached Brutus and Cassius and said: "My wishes are with you, that you may accomplish what you design, and I advise you to make no delay, for the thing is now no secret . . ." We also know that one man who had learned about the plot tried to warn Caesar at the last moment. He was the Greek scholar Artemidorous, a former tutor of Brutus who had remained his friend; he was also an old acquaintance of Caesar who had met him in Greece many years before. He reached the dictator's house just as the litter started, ran after it and caught up with it in front of Pompey's theater. He gave Caesar a written message, containing the list of conspirators and their plans, and besought him to read it immediately, for it was a matter of life and death. Caesar had no time to open it. Petitioners were crowding around him, giving him written requests, and these he did not read either and handed them to his followers.
NEVERTHELESS, Caesar disregarded everything: the supernatural omens, the prophecies, the informers' tips, his wife's entreaties, his own premonitions. He did even more. He walked alone into the meeting, having dismissed the armed Spanish bodyguard who usually escorted him, as if he had taken at its face value the Senators' recent oath of loyalty and granted their request henceforth to entrust his safety to them when in their midst. This he did on a morning when gladiatorial contests were scheduled in Pompey's theater, and the place was teeming with unknown armed ruffians. He carried no weapons. He did not keep a short poignard (or pugio) concealed under the elegant folds of his crimson bordered toga, as he had often done; did not even wear a breastplate or a coat of mail, as the conspirators immediately discovered when they pressed close to him, before striking.
And yet he knew (even if he had known nothing more) that he was walking into a partly hostile assembly, to be surrounded by men who had fought valiantly against him in open battles during the Civil War and had been forgiven. Some he had even elevated to the highest positions: Brutus became governor of Gaul and Cassius one of his legates. Caesar was too wise not to know that, if forgiveness makes of many defeated opponents irreconcilable enemies, magnanimity and generosity make some of them ruthless and full of hatred. Can there be any doubt, then, when all this is considered, that Caesar contributed to his own death, and even collaborated with his murderers ? Without his help they would not have succeeded.
He might, to be sure, have been unaware of doing so. He was never the kind of man who would be awed by omens or prophecies. "No regard for religion," Suetonius wrote, "ever turned him from any undertaking." Once, in Africa, he had even made irreverent use of a hallowed prediction. He was facing the remnants of Pompey's army commanded by Metellus Scipio, and (according to Plutarch) "was informed that his enemies relied much upon an ancient oracle, that the family of the Scipios should always be victorious in Africa. There was in his army a man, otherwise mean and contemptible but of the house of
Africanus, and his name was Scipio Sallutio. This man Caesar put at the head of his troops as if he were the general." Caesar won, of course.
He had been too much pursued by bad omens all his life to pay much attention to them. Not many months before, as he was riding through the Velabrum on the day of his Gallic triumph, one of the four he celebrated after he had become the sole master of the Roman world, the axle of his chariot broke and he was almost flung out. He calmly straightened the crown on his head, rearranged his clothes, and went on with the show. The very last omens of his life, drawn from the innards of the chickens sacrificed on the very steps of Pompey's theater a few minutes before his death, were appalling. Yet they did not stop him from walking on.
WE KNOW, on the other hand, that he had habitually disregarded warnings, friends' pleas and informers' tips many times in the past. He had a low opinion of ordinary men's fortitude and determination to undertake dangerous projects. He often said he doubted there was anybody in Rome great enough to kill Caesar. It was not only a practically impossible undertakingā and a sacrilegious one, now that he had been proclaimed Divus Julius, a god among the godsābut also, above all, a pointless one. Who would gain by his death? He had come to think of himself as an immovable pivot of the world's equilibrium, the keystone without which everything would crumble, an indispensable tool of history.
This delusion sometimes overtakes old and tired leaders who mingle with dangerous crowds, shake off their escorts, and announce their itineraries beforehand, as if everybody was as aware as they were that their death would solve no problem but only create new ones. A few days before the Ides of March Caesar had said disdainfully: "It is more important for Rome than for myself that I should survive. I have long been sated with power and glory. But should anything happen to me, Rome will enjoy no peace. A new civil war will break out under far worse conditions than the last ..." He, of course, should have known that some men at least, irresponsible fools or great heroes, start civil wars lightly and plunge the world into chaos without knowing how it will end or who will win. Had he himself not done just that only a few years before ?
Perhaps it was simply impossible for Caesar not to take risks. He had never lived prudently, even as a disreputable debt-ridden young playboy dabbling in rabble-rousing oratory and dubious politics, sleeping with the bored wives of powerful men. His nature irresistibly drove him to face the greatest dangers. They attracted him like a magnet. In his military campaigns, he rarely played for safety except when he faced an inferior and weaker enemy: he did not want to waste his own men's lives to achieve a practically certain victory. But when he found himself on unfavorable groundāwith a small army worn out by marches, without supplies and far from their base, facing a superior, confident and well-entrenched enemyāhe had always attacked. He attacked also because, at such times, the enemy least expected him to do so. "He joined battle," Suetonius records, "not only after planning his movements but on a sudden opportunity as well, often immediately at the end of a march, and sometimes in the foulest weather, when one would least imagine him to make a move."
He surely did so the day he crossed the Rubicon, his biggest gamble. On one side of the river he was a loyal and victorious general in command of legions whose mission was to pacify the Gauls. On the other side, he formally became a rebel, at the head of a seditious army which had to be destroyed by the forces of law and order. People who knew him well, as Pompey did (and Pompey was the general facing him, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic, his son-in-law and his partner for years), were certain that he could not resist the temptation to cross the river but thought he would have to wait at Ravenna for the arrival of his full army. With only one legion at hand Caesar spurred his horse over the little bridge, explaining: "If I do not cross this river my holding back will be the source of my misfortunes. If I cross it, it will bring misfortunes to the whole of the human race. The die is cast . . ."He was not a man who would prefer his own to the world's ruin.
A few months later, trying to pursue Pompey and his army across the Adriatic Sea, he arrived in Brindisi with a handful of men. Even as a youth he loved to rush ahead practically alone at great speed, without stopping for rest and food ; he was pleased to be able to arrive somewhere even before the news of his departure from Rome had gotten through. His army would not be in Brindisi for days or weeks. The winter weather was forbidding, the sea was rough, he had few ships and no supplies. He said to his staff: "I consider rapidity of movement the best substitute for all the things I want . . . The most potent thing in war is the unexpected." And so he crossed the Adriatic.
Above all he believed in himself. He believed that his very presence would dominate men's wills, still passions, and deflect history. He had fully employed his mesmeric charm in both politics and war, and he owed his rise largely to it. Centuries before Clausewitz, Caesar had understood that politics and war were closely connectedāalmost inseparableāand governed roughly by the same rules. He could arouse or persuade the common people of Rome, the senators, enemy sovereigns, or his legionaries at will, with a well-studied and ornate speech, a few angry sentences, or his silent presence. He once quelled a mutiny of his best men, the veterans of the Tenth Legion, with a single word. He addressed them contemptuously as "Citizens". "We are your soldiers, Caesar," they shouted, "not citizens." And, being his soldiers, they suddenly realized they had to obey him.
He also overawed men who did not know who he was, and this even before he had become great and famous. Once, in his youth, while on his way to Rhodes to study literature and oratory, he was captured by pirates. He treated them disdainfully as his servants; when he wanted to sleep he sent orders to them to keep quiet; and for the best part of six weeks joined in their games, practiced his rhetoric on them, called them illiterate barbarians to their faces, and in raillery threatened to have them crucified. Somehow sensing the leader in him, they admired and obeyed him meekly. Six weeks later, when his ransom arrived and he was freed, he hired several galleys, returned to surprise the pirates in their lair, and crucified the lot as he had promised.
Men were eager to die for him for no other apparent reason than that he was he. "Those who in ordinary expeditions were but ordinary men displayed a courage past defeating . . . where Caesar's glory was concerned," wrote Plutarch, who goes on to cite examples of his gift to inspire in others an unnatural contempt for life. "One time in Africa, Scipio, having taken a ship of Caesar's in which Granius Petro, lately appointed quaestor, was sailing, gave the other passengers as free prizes to his soldiers, but thought fit to offer the quaestor his life. Granius Petro said it was not for Caesar's soldiers to take but give mercy, and, having said so, fell upon his sword and killed himself."
Many times, in one of those desperately uneven battles in which Caesar liked to stake his luck, he saved the day by rushing where his men were being beaten back. During one of his early campaigns in Gaul, his troops were surprised, while they were busy building trenches, by an overwhelming army of Nervii. Caesar says in his Commentaries that "he himself had everything to do at one moment": raise the red battle-ensign, sound the alarm, bring in the men who were digging trenches and felling timber, and give orders. He then rushed over to the Twelfth Legion, which was being massacred and was falling back in disorder. He seized a shield from one of the soldiers in the rear ranks, pushed his way to the front, called upon the centurions by name, then sounded the charge. The mere gesture revived his men and made them surge forward. At the end of the day the Nervii were hacked to pieces. "This engagement," Caesar drily noted in his memoirs, "brought the name and nation of the Nervii almost to utter destruction."
Caesar's presence had saved the last battle he ever fought, near Munda, in 45 B.C. in Spain, against Pompey's son Gnaeus. Caesar's men were frightened and had started to run away. When he saw the confusion and panic in their ranks, he felt helpless for the first time in his life and cried out against Fortune "who had reserved him so unworthy an end". "The thought of death could be read in his face," writes Florus. He was so desperate he even tried to appeal to the gods: he raised his hands to heaven and implored them "not to make him lose the fruits of so many victories in one single battle." Then he rallied. He sent away his horse, dropped his shield, removed his helmet and sword which hindered him, and ran "like a madman" to the front line, where he insulted, exhorted and threatened his men.
As this did not check their panic, he once again seized a shield from a soldier, and, running forward, cried : "It is here that I am going to die, killed by the enemy, and that you see the end of your military service ..." (Defeated soldiers could scarcely enjoy slaves and estates in their retirement.) "With these words," Appian relates, "he dashed from the ranks and advanced toward the enemy until he was no more than ten feet away. A hailstorm of two hundred arrows descended upon him ; some passed without touching him, his shield protected him from the others. Then each of the tribunes came running towards him and fought at his side. This movement led the entire army to turn wich vehemence against the enemy."
The fighting ended in the evening. "Never had Caesar waged a more bloody and more perilous battle," says Velleius Pater-culus. As he entered his tent he told his men: "I have often fought for victory, but today, for the first time, I have fought for my life."
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