Julius Caesar (34 page)

As part of the victory celebrations Julius Caesar dedicated a whole new forum, the Forum Julium. As early as 54, while he was in Gaul, he had asked his friend Oppius and some other rich associates to buy a large area east of the forum with a view to building this new addition in honor of his clan. It contained as centerpiece a temple which he intended to dedicate to Venus Victrix, Venus the conquering Goddess. He had vowed this dedication before the battle of Pharsalus, but he now changed it to Venus Genetrix, the Mother-Goddess (the mother of his clan). Venus the Mother-Goddess had also another association for him, and one which would be readily understood by the people, for he Julius Caesar had only one child, and that a son, whose mother was Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. She was living with all her court in a sumptuous villa surrounded by gardens on the far side of the Tiber, where Caesar had established her. The entertainments given by the Egyptian Queen, the presence of Caesarion, and the sophisticated luxury of the Ptolemies which made Rome seem almost provincial, were a major feature of that Roman season in the year of triumphs. Cicero, who clearly met her at this time, recorded with dislike “her pride and haughtiness”—distasteful no doubt to an old republican, but natural enough in one who was “the descendant of so many kings.” In an age when statues, like the emblems on coins, played so important a part in propaganda it was not without considerable political significance that on inauguration of the Forum Julium on 26 September the temple was found to contain not only the image of Venus Genetrix but a golden statue of the Egyptian queen. The symbolism must have been plain enough to Caesar’s contemporaries, although a great many scholars subsequently have turned a blind eye to it:

In the temple of Venus the Mother-Goddess, ancestress of the Julian clan, stands equally a golden statue of the Queen Cleopatra, the mother of Caesar’s son.

As Queen of Egypt Cleopatra was seen by her countrymen as an incarnation of the goddess Isis; Caesar claimed divine ancestry; and Caesarion was their child. The intention was clear enough, but the policy which it implied was never to be carried out because of Caesar’s premature death. It has been argued that monogamy was the custom among Romans and that Caesar was married to Calpurnia. But divorce, as has been seen, was neither uncommon nor difficult, and Calpurnia was childless. Rome recognized Cleopatra as Caesar’s mistress—her boy-husband was of no consequence—and Caesarion as their illegitimate son. Marriage to this Egyptian Queen, even though she was of Greek blood, would have been highly unpopular with the upper classes perhaps, but certainly possible. Caesarion would have been legitimized; and in any case there was every likelihood of Cleopatra bearing him more children (as she did to Antony).

The idea of establishing a dynasty may well have been in Caesar’s mind. But a royal dynasty implied kingship, and Caesar, although he was soon to be made dictator for life, was not king and the very title
Rex
inspired fear and hatred among Romans. Any suggestion that he desired that title was enough to inflame the republicans and provide them with propaganda to inspire almost anything—even the murder of a sacrosanct dictator. It has been maintained that Caesar’s relationship with Cleopatra was no more to him than “a brief chapter in his amours, comparable to Eunoe the wife of the Prince of Mauretania” (Sir Ronald Syme), but this is to contradict the evidence. She was specially brought to Rome for this season of triumphal thanksgiving when only the presence of her sister as a prisoner was required; she was marked out by Caesar with special favor, and she brought with her their son. It was only later, under Augustus, that it was deemed politic to deny that this child was Caesar’s (it was unlikely to have been anyone else’s); at the time no one queried Caesar’s paternity.

After Caesar’s death, when Caesarion was a grown boy, people were to comment on his resemblance to his father; and the speed with which Octavian/Augustus had him murdered after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra is as good an argument as any for Caesar’s paternity. The placing of Cleopatra’s statue next to that of the goddess in the new temple of Venus Genetrix openly associated her with the mother of the Julian clan. But the title
Rex
eluded Caesar, although he would try in the near future to see whether the Roman public would accept it.
 

33

Administrator and General

IN the aftermath of this designed extravagance Caesar rapidly turned to the reorganization of Roman administration. As a first step to tackling the immense problems in Rome and Italy, he had a census taken of the inhabitants of the city. The sight of thousands of unemployed eating at the banquets and festivities must have served as a visual reminder of the number in Rome who were living at the republic’s expense, contributing little or nothing to its welfare. A revision of the list of citizens entitled to free grain was drawn up as the result of this census, and the number was cut drastically—from 320,000 to 150,000. Aware that those who were now the recipients of this bounty would be his firm supporters, he was also well aware that the dispossessed would be equally a danger to him. Something must be done to remove from the capital the burden of useless mouths and hands, and the sensible answer was emigration. To deal with unemployment he arranged for the dispatch of some 80,000 settlers to two new colonies, Carthage and Corinth (both of them once famous cities which had been destroyed by Romans a century earlier and which, because of their geographical position, were ripe for resettlement), as well as to Hispalis (Seville) in Spain. Another source of discontent and, worse, revolutionary intrigues, were the workmen’s clubs and mutual aid societies which had been turned by men such as Caesar’s agent Clodius into political clubs that determined elections by bribery and violence. With the exception of religious associations they were all suppressed, and a special dispensation was made for the Jewish synagogues, for Caesar wished to recognize the help that the Jews had given him during his Egyptian campaign.

To lessen the danger of slave revolts, and to ensure that native-born Italians were not forced to leave the soil by the pressure of slave-labor, a law was passed requiring large landowners to employ one-third freemen among their laborers. While encouraging the urban proletariat to emigrate, Caesar did not want to see a drain of the educated bourgeoisie into the new territories of the empire. No Roman citizen, therefore, between twenty and forty, unless on military duties, was to be absent from the city for more than three years. This gave the young citizen a chance to complete his education in Greece, or the middle-aged merchant to trade in the empire, but ensured that the fruits of his learning and earning came back to the capital. At the same time, to attract brains and talent to the new Rome that he was busy creating and which he hoped to see a center of art and learning (like Alexandria), citizenship would automatically be granted to doctors and artists. As Prefect of Morals he attempted to regulate the ostentatious display of wealth by a sumptuary law regulating everything from the usage of litters (the Roman sedan-chair) to jewelry and even the dishes at table, but these measures proved unenforceable. The criminal code was also tightened up, sentences for murder were increased, and the penalties for other crimes, which the wealthy had been largely able to escape, were made more severe—even to the confiscation of half or more of the criminal’s property. Apart from this revision of the criminal code, a new codification of all the laws was begun. At the same time, to obviate future dangers from ambitious provincial governors, no consuls at the end of their term of office should govern a province for more than two years, and praetors for no more than one. The plebs, too, were curtailed in their political power by excluding their representatives—who formerly had sat on equal terms with knights and senators—from the tribunals. Caesar had thus, by various measures, blocked the roads to power which he himself had used.

If the proletariat had been curbed and encouraged to emigrate, the bourgeoisie to deploy their talents in the city, and foreign skilled professionals to immigrate, the senate still remained to be dealt with. Caesar’s office of Prefect of Morals allowed him to make radical changes in its composition, which he did by increasing the number of senators until, at the time of his death, there were nine hundred of them. The new members were naturally adherents of his, many of them from the provinces and some even former non-commissioned officers in the army. The feelings of the old
Optimate
aristocrats can be imagined! Before all else the settlement of his soldiers engaged his attention, and they had been assigned land in the provinces as well as Italy. Caesar’s view was a global one, and all his measures to improve Rome were at the same time intended to make it the heart from which ran improved arteries to the provincial limbs.

As evidence of this grand design he planned a canal to link the Tiber with the river Anio, which would then run down to Tarracina on the coast, facilitating traffic between the city and the sea. The Pontine marshes were to be drained (not, in fact, achieved until the dictatorship of Mussolini), and a road was contemplated that would run from Rome across the Apennines to the Adriatic. Envisaging that Corinth would one day become a prosperous commercial city (as it had been before the Roman devastation) he proposed to drive a canal through the isthmus, linking the Aegean Sea with the Gulf of Patras and the Ionian. (The Emperor Nero was later to attempt this, but the rocky nature of the terrain proved too hard for the tools of the time, and it was not achieved until the late nineteenth century.) The port of Ostia was to be improved and expanded, as were others throughout the empire, and the city of Rome was to be transformed. He had already given it the magnificent new Forum Julium with its temple of Venus Genetrix, and he now proposed the erection on the Campus Martius of a great temple to the God of War as well as a large theater at the foot of the Tarpeian rock, similar to that at Athens. Public libraries were to be established in Rome that would rival those of Alexandria. Again and again in these new schemes and projects the influence of Alexandria, its scholars and its buildings, its libraries, the Mouseion, and the magnificent canal systems of Egypt can be detected. It seems clear that, after his experience of the gleaming marble town-planned city of Alexander and his architect Deinocrates, Caesar was uncomfortably aware of the muddled provincialism of Rome.

Another area of confusion which Caesar was determined to have cleared up was the all-important one of the calendar. The Roman calendar, which at this time was some two months ahead of the solar seasons, had been based on the lunar year of 355 days instead of the solar 365¼. To correct this, it had been customary to insert an intercalary month as necessary but, with the failure of so many institutions during the recent years of chaos, this had been neglected. The year 46 had already received one additional month. Now, by the insertion of two extra months, this unique year was extended to 445 days. From then on, the solar year of 365 days was followed, the institution of a “leap year” giving an extra day in February every fourth year. The astronomical calculations to perform this very necessary regulation of the calendar were performed by the Greek astronomer and mathematician Sosigenes from Alexandria. Caesar may well have met him in that city when talking with the
savants
in the Mouseion, or he may even have been recommended by Cleopatra. In any case, this new Julian calendar was now promulgated throughout the whole empire. One month, our modern July, was named Julius in honor of Caesar. Even this most beneficial reform found its detractors among the embittered
Optimates,
eager to disparage every new measure of Caesar’s, and when a companion remarked that the constellation Lyra would rise the next morning Cicero replied: “Yes, in accordance with the edict.”

In the midst of all these preoccupations Caesar was still not free from the shadow of war. The Pompeian faction was like the Hydra—as soon as one head was cut off another grew in its place. It was the worst of misfortunes for Caesar that Labienus and Pompey’s two sons had escaped after Thapsus. Moreover he had chosen his governors of the province badly, and the native Spaniards along with many Roman legionaries and fugitives from North Africa had gathered round the elder son, Cnaeus. They held the Balearic islands and almost all of southern Spain (the part known as Baetica south of the Guadalquivir river). It was from this area that Hannibal had first launched the assault that led him to the very walls of Rome, and the Pompeians still had an efficient fleet, something that the great Carthaginian had lacked. By now Cnaeus Pompeius had thirteen legions and six thousand horse behind him.

The legates to whom Caesar had entrusted the command by land against the Pompeians seemed unable to make any headway, and he saw that once again he must go in person to settle the affairs of the empire. He left Rome in November 46, taking with him his great-nephew and adopted son, Octavius, anxious that this seventeen-year-old should see something of warfare and administration at first hand. With them also in Caesar’s carriage went one of his most trusted generals, Decimus Brutus, named by Caesar in his will as one of Octavius’s guardians. As regards troops, Caesar’s position was little better than it had been in North Africa. Most of the legions were in the provinces, and he had only the Tenth and the Fifth of his veterans with him; apart from them he must make do with such troops as were available in Spain. Despite all the triumphs and festivities, titles and honors conferred upon him in Rome, he could still lose everything in one battle.

After his arrival in Spain he soon found that the winter conditions which usually suited him (since his enemies did not expect attack during the hard months) were of no benefit here. Pompey and Labienus, well-established in the country, had the benefit of sheltering their men in the towns, while Caesar and his forces were compelled to live under canvas. Although he very much wanted a quick decision, so that he could return to attend to all the other matters that awaited him, the Pompeians, as in Africa, were inclined to play a waiting game. Since Thapsus the mood of the contestants had changed, the change of mood most marked in Caesar, whose early policy had always been toward clemency; but now both sides adopted the practice of instantly executing any prisoners taken. There was no longer any room for sentiment or the courtesies of war. The Pompeians knew that there was no hope for them if they were defeated, and the Caesarians were weary and embittered at the protraction of the war. The battle finally came at Munda, a place south of the Guadalquivir and within sight of Corduba. It was the most furious and savage of the whole civil war—eclipsing Pharsalus and Thapsus in the number of men killed, and leaving behind it such a taste of fratricidal bloodshed that thereafter the legions and their leaders desired nothing more than peace. It had been preceded by Caesar’s successful siege of the town of Ategua and a further engagement in which the Pompeians suffered so badly that Cnaeus Pompey feared large-scale desertions and even the defection of whole Spanish communities from his arms. Thus provoked to a battle which must be decisive, he finally settled on Munda, standing on a hill that formed the center of his lines, and here on 17 March 45, the armies finally engaged. It was a bitter hand-to-hand battle. The Pompeians having the advantage of the terrain but Caesar’s men the better discipline, the sides were more or less evenly matched, and the struggle went on with charge and counter-charge throughout the day. At one moment, seeing his whole life’s work in the balance, Caesar forced his way through the ranks of his soldiers, calling out to them “Were they not ashamed to deliver him into the hands of boys?” (He later told his friends that he had often fought for victory, but Munda was the first time he fought for his life.) “The battle was won,” says Plutarch, “on the feast of Bacchus, the very day on which Pompey, four years before, had set out for the war.” It had been a harsh four years fought from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, and the convulsions were not yet at an end.