LECTURE 1 Julius Caesar, villain or victim? http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/modules/aug/ Some key people/terms Gaius Marius L. Cornelius Sulla Triumvirate Pompey Crassus Popularis Cicero Cassius Brutus Marc Antony Lepidus Cicero Decimus Brutus 1. Julia s funeral (69 BC) a. When quaestor, he pronounced the customary orations from the rostra in praise of his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia, who had both died. And in the eulogy of his aunt he spoke in the following terms of her paternal and maternal ancestry and that of his own father: "The family of my aunt Julia is descended by her mother from the kings, and on her father's side is akin to the immortal Gods; for the Marcii Reges (her mother's family name) go back to Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, the family of which ours is a branch, to Venus. Our stock therefore has at once the sanctity of kings, whose power is supreme among mortal men, and the claim to reverence which attaches to the Gods, who hold sway over kings themselves." (Suet, Div Iul 6) b. A second and clearer instance of their favour appeared upon his making a magnificent oration in praise of his aunt Julia, wife to Marius, publicly in the forum, at whose funeral he was so bold as to bring forth the images of Marius, which nobody had dared to produce since the government came into Sulla's hands, Marius's party having from that time been declared enemies of the State. When some who were present had begun to raise a cry against Caesar, the people answered with loud shouts and clapping in his favour, expressing their joyful surprise and satisfaction at his having, as it were, brought up again from the grave those honours of Marius, which for so long a time had been lost to the city. It had always been the custom at Rome to make funeral orations in praise of elderly matrons, but there was no precedent of any upon young women till Caesar first made one upon the death of his own wife. This also procured him favour, and by this show of affection he won upon the feelings of the people, who looked upon him as a man of great tenderness and kindness of heart. (Plutarch, Life of Caesar 5) 2. Honours of 46 BC He himself returned to Rome, priding himself particularly upon the brilliance of his achievements, but also upon the decrees of the senate as well. For they had voted that sacrifices should be offered for his victory during 40 days, and had granted him permission to ride, in the triumph already voted him, in a chariot drawn by white horses and to be accompanied by all the lictors who were then with him, and by as many others as he had employed in his first dictatorship, together with as many more as he had had in his second. Furthermore, they elected him overseer of every man s conduct (for some such name was given him, as if the title of censor were not worthy of him) for 3 years, and dictator for 10 in succession. They moreover voted that he should sit in the senate upon the curule chair with the successive consuls, and should always state his opinion first, that he should give the signal at all the games in the Circus, and that he should have the appointment of the magistrates and what-
ever honours the people were previously accustomed to assign. And they decreed that a chariot of his should be placed on the Capitol facing the statue of Jupiter, that his statue in bronze should be mounted upon a likeness of the inhabited world, with an inscription to the effect that he was a demigod, and that his name should be inscribed upon the Capitol in place of that of Catulus on the ground that he had completed this temple after undertaking to call Catulus to account for his building of it. These are the only measures I have recorded, not because they were the only ones voted, - for a great many measures were proposed and of course passed, - but because he declined the rest, whereas he accepted these. (Dio 43.14) 3. Honours of 45 BC In honour of his victory the senate passed all those decrees that I have mentioned, and further called him Liberator, entering it also in the records, and voted for a public temple of Liberty. Moreover, they now applied to him first and for the first time, as a kind of proper name, the title of imperator, no longer merely following the ancient custom by which others as well as Caesar had often been saluted as a result of their wars, nor even as those who received some independent command or other authority were called by this name, but giving him once for all the same title that is now granted to those who hold successively the supreme power. (Dio 43.44) 4. Honours of 44 BC And finally they addressed him outright as Jupiter Julius and ordered a temple to be consecrated to him and to his Clemency, electing Antony as their priest like some flamen Dialis. (Dio 44.6) 5. The crowns To an insult which so plainly showed his contempt for the Senate he added an act of even greater insolence; for at the Latin Festival, as he was returning to the city, amid the extravagant and unprecedented demonstrations of the populace, someone in the press placed on his statue a laurel wreath with a white fillet tied to it [an emblem of royalty]; and when Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the plebeians, gave orders that the ribbon be removed from the wreath and the man taken off to prison, Caesar sharply rebuked and deposed them, either offended that the hint at regal power had been received with so little favour, or, as he asserted, that he had been robbed of the glory of refusing it. But from that time on he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to the title of monarch, although he replied to the plebeians, when they hailed him as king, "I am Caesar and no king" [with a pun on rex ('king') as a Roman name], and at the Lupercalia, when the consul Marcus Antonius several times attempted to place a crown upon his head as he spoke from the rostra, he put it aside and at last sent it to the Capitol, to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. (Suet, Div Iul 79) 6. Offending the Senate Indeed, when once they had voted to him on a single day an unusually large number of these honours of especial importance, which had been granted unanimously by all except Cassius and a few others, who became famous for this action, yet suffered no harm, whereby Caesar's clemency was conspicuously revealed, they then approached him as he was sitting in the vestibule of the temple of Venus in order to announce to him in a body their decisions; for they transacted such business in his absence, in order to have the appearance of doing it, not under compulsion, but voluntarily. And either by some heaven-sent fatuity or even through excess of joy he received them sitting, which aroused so great indignation among them all, not only the senators but all the rest, that it afforded his slayers one of their chief excuses for their plot against him. (Dio 44.8.1-2) Cf. Temple of Venus Genetrix
7. False decrees? While I am at Rome and actually haunting the forum, senatorial decrees are written out in the house of your admirer, my intimate friend. And whenever it occurs to him, I am put down as backing a decree, and am informed of its having reached Armenia and Syria, professing to have been made in accordance with my vote, before any mention has been made of the business at all. And, indeed, I would not have you think that I am joking about this; for I assure you I have had letters from kings at the other end of the earth, thanking me for having voted for giving them the royal title, as to whom I was not only ignorant of their having been called kings, but of their very existence even. What, then, am I to do? After all, as long as this friend of ours--this guardian of morals--is here, I will follow your advice. (Cic, Fam 9.15) 8. Assessments a. Yet after all, his other actions and words so turn the scale, that it is thought that he abused his power and was justly slain. For not only did he accept excessive honours, such as an uninterrupted consulship, the dictatorship for life, and the censorship of public morals, as well as the forename Imperator, the surname of 'Father of his Country', a statue among those of the kings, and a raised couch in the orchestra [at the theatre]; but he also allowed honours to be bestowed on him which were too great for mortal man: a golden throne in the Senate and on the judgement seat; a chariot and litter [for carrying his statues among those of the gods] in the procession at the circus; temples, altars, and statues beside those of the gods; a special priest, an additional college of the Luperci, and the calling of one of the months by his name. In fact, there were no honours which he did not receive or confer at pleasure. He held his third and fourth consulships in name only, content with the power of the dictatorship conferred on him at the same time as the consulships. Moreover, in both years he substituted two consuls for himself for the last three months, in the meantime holding no elections except for tribunes and plebeian aediles, and appointing praefects instead of the praetors, to manage the affairs of the city during his absence. When one of the consuls suddenly died the day before the Kalends of January, he gave the vacant office for a few hours to a man who asked for it. With the same disregard of law and precedent he named magistrates for several years to come, bestowed the emblems of consular rank on ten ex-praetors, and admitted to the Senate men who had been given citizenship, and in some cases half-civilized Gauls. He assigned the charge of the mint and of the public revenues to his own slaves, and gave the oversight and command of the three legions which he had left at Alexandria to a favourite of his called Rufo, son of one of his freedmen. No less arrogant were his public utterances, which Titus Ampius records: that the state was nothing, a mere name without body or form; that Sulla did not know his ABC's when he laid down his dictatorship; that men ought now to be more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word as law. (Suetonius, Divus Iulius 76-77) b. But the chiefest cause that made him mortally hated was the covetous desire he had to be called king (Plutarch, Caesar 60) 9. The Bequest No injury was inflicted or expected [on the assassins], but instead the majority were glad to be rid of Caesar's rule, some of them even conceiving the idea of casting his body out unburied, and the conspirators, well pleased at being called liberators and tyrannicides, did not busy themselves with any further undertaking. But later, when Caesar's will was read and the people learned that he had adopted Octavius as his son and had left Antony along with Decimus and some of the other assassins to be the young man's guardians and heirs to the property in case it should not come to him, and, furthermore, that he not only had made various bequests to individuals but had also given his gardens along the Ti-
ber to the city and one hundred and twenty sesterces, according to the record of Octavius himself, or three hundred, according to some others, to each of the citizens, at this the people became excited. And Antony aroused them still more by bringing the body most inconsiderately into the Forum, exposing it all covered with blood as it was and with gaping wounds, and then delivering over it a speech, which was very ornate and brilliant, to be sure, but out of place on that occasion. (Dio 44.35) 10. Heroes or public enemies? The Athenians gave them [Brutus and Cassius) a splendid reception; for, though they were honoured by nearly everybody else for what they had done, the inhabitants of this city voted them bronze images by the side of those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, thus intimating that Brutus and Cassius had emulated their example. (Dio 47.20.4) 11. The Rise of Octavian On the evening of the 1st I got a letter from Octavian. He is entering upon a serious undertaking. He has won over to his views all the veterans at Casilinum and Calatia. And no wonder: he gives a bounty of 500 denarii apiece. Clearly, his view is a war with Antony under his leadership. So I perceive that before many days are over we shall be in arms. But whom are we to follow? Consider his name, consider his age! (Cic, Att 16.8.1) 12. Cicero and Octavian That Caesar himself had no complaint to make against you, except as to an epigram which he said that you uttered: "that the young man must be complimented, honoured, and raised up/gotten rid of (tollendum)." He said that he did not mean to give them the chance of getting rid of him. (Cic, Fam 11.20.1) 13. Octavian after Mutina And when the Senate learned the outcome of the struggle, although they rejoiced at Antony's defeat, and not only changed their attire, but also celebrated a thanksgiving for sixty days, and, regarding all those who had been on Antony's side as enemies, took away their property, as they did in the case of Antony also, yet as regards Caesar, they not only did not consider him any longer as deserving of any great reward, but even undertook to overthrow him by giving to Decimus all the prizes for which Caesar was hoping. For they voted in Decimus' honour not only sacrifices but also a triumph, and gave him charge of the rest of the war and of the legions, including those of Vibius... In a word, all that had been done for Caesar to thwart Antony was now voted to others to thwart Caesar himself. And to the end that, no matter how much he might wish it, he should not be able to do any harm, they arrayed all his personal enemies against him... They did not even then appoint Caesar consul, the honour which he especially coveted, but granted him the distinction of consular honours, so that he might now give his vote along with the ex-consuls. When he showed his contempt for this, they voted that he should be chosen a praetor of the first rank and later consul as well. In this way they thought they had handled Caesar cleverly, as if he were in reality a mere youth or boy, as indeed they were always repeating. He, however, was exceedingly vexed, not only at their general behaviour, but especially at this very fact that he was called a boy; so he made no further delay, but turned against their arms and their power. And he secretly arranged a truce with Antony, and proceeded to assemble the men who had escaped from the battle, whom he himself had conquered and the senate had voted to be enemies, and in their presence made many accusations against both the senate and the people. (Dio 46.39)
[Later, in Rome...]...All the soldiers were openly angry, and one of them went out of the senatechamber and getting his sword, for they had gone in unarmed touched it and said: "If you do not grant the consulship to Caesar, this shall grant it." (Dio 46.43)