Cleopatra and Antony Read online

  Among the latter were two brothers from the family of the Gracchi. The first, Tiberius, was murdered by a mob of senators and their henchmen after proposing land reforms in favor of the poor. The second, Gaius, tried to stem the corruption of juries and hence to increase the accountability of senators for their misconduct. He also proposed an increase in the scope of Roman citizenship to encompass the Latins, Rome’s long-term allies who, like many Italian communities, were becoming increasingly restive at being excluded from the perquisites of the new empire they had helped to found. (Roman citizens were, for example, exempt from direct taxation.) Gaius’ proposals aroused violent opposition and in 121 he was forced to commit suicide while numerous of his supporters were executed.

  In the last decade of the century, when rebellion broke out in Africa, the Senate gave the command of the Roman army to a general named Marius who, unusually, did not belong to one of the noble families. After securing victory in Africa he defeated Teutonic tribes invading from the north of Italy. He grew so powerful that by 100, the year of Caesar’s birth, he was embarking on his sixth consulate. The aristocratic Julian clan had early seen the utility of a political and matrimonial alliance with the rising “new man” or novus homo, as those outside the patrician ranks were known—Marius was Caesar’s uncle by marriage and the Julians were firmly allied to the popular party.

  It is unlikely that Caesar was born by Caesarean section. Although the operation was performed and sometimes saved the child, the mother usually died, and Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, lived to be a major influence in his life. The accounts tell us little of Caesar’s early years other than that he wrote a poem about Hercules and a tragedy about Oedipus. They do, however, reveal much about the further career of his uncle Marius and the creation of the political tensions that would dominate the remainder of the new century and fashion the backdrop against which the lives—and deaths—of Caesar, Cleopatra and Antony would be played out.

  Discontent among the other Italian peoples about their inferior status was undiminished. By 90, rebellions broke out across Italy. Marius and his fellow Roman generals were eventually victorious but the fighting would not have ended so quickly had the Romans not offered citizenship to all people living south of the river Po.

  The conflict had thrown up another claimant to power, one of Marius’ former junior officers, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Patrician but poor, he had a large birthmark on his face that the unkind said resembled mulberries with oatmeal sprinkled on top, and had reveled away his early years. Such was his charisma, however, that one of Rome’s wealthiest and most celebrated courtesans had left him her fortune. With the backing of this money, he had gone into politics and in 89, fresh from his victories, he stood for and won a consulship. He was almost immediately appointed Rome’s commander against Mithridates, king of Pontus, a kingdom bordering the southeastern shores of the Black Sea, who had attacked some of Rome’s new Asian possessions.

  A successful campaign promised Sulla wealth and fame, but his victory in the consular elections, and in particular his appointment to command in the east, had much displeased his old general, Marius. Though now in his late sixties and more than a little stout, Marius was still both vigorous and ambitious and had had his eye on that potentially lucrative command, judging it to be his by right by virtue of his services to Rome. Embittered, Marius lent his considerable weight to rivals of the conservative Sulla who were, like him, members of the popular party. Tensions between the two quickly spiraled beyond the control of the Senate. Sulla led six legions into Rome and after a few hours of street fighting expelled Marius and his allies. Significantly, this was the first time a Roman leader had broken the traditional ban on armed troops entering the city. Marius fled through Rome’s burning streets, eventually to reach Africa. The twelve-year-old Caesar, lying low with his family, was exposed to a valuable lesson—that access to loyal legions was becoming as large a factor in politics as citizens’ votes or senatorial approval.

  Sulla did his best to rearrange affairs in Rome in favor of his conservative supporters, but he allowed the consular elections for the following year to proceed. One of those elected—Cinna—was no friend to Sulla but all the latter did, before departing to the east and the war against Mithridates, was to make Cinna swear not to disturb his arrangements. On taking his oath, Cinna picked up a stone and hurled it away, asserting vehemently that if he broke his word he should be cast from Rome just as violently as he had thrown the stone.

  Swiftly breaking his political promises, Cinna tried to undo Sulla’s republican measures and was indeed expelled from Rome. Marius returned from Africa and together with Cinna attacked Rome, capturing the city easily at the end of 87 and allowing their men to plunder, rape and murder at will. Marius’ own bodyguard, recruited from runaway slaves, generated such terror that Cinna, who had himself paraded the head of his rival consul on a spike, felt compelled to have them killed as they slept, in the interests of public safety.

  Master of Rome once more, but unsure of what to do beyond avenging his grievances, Marius fell prey to nightmares, drank heavily to banish them and died just seventeen days after taking up his seventh consulship. Cinna ruled Rome for nearly three years until messengers brought news that Sulla was victorious in the east and would soon return. Cinna knew better than to expect mercy and decided to take the fight to Sulla in Greece, but his troops mutinied and killed him. Sulla crossed to Brundisium on the southeastern Italian coast and, as he marched north on Rome, two young commanders joined him.

  The first was the blond Pompey, then twenty-three years old and far removed from the middle-aged man who more than thirty years later would seek sanctuary in Egypt after his defeat by Caesar at Pharsalus. Plutarch writes that Pompey bore a resemblance to Alexander through “the slight quiff of his hair and the mobility of his features about the eyes”—a resemblance “which contributed quite a bit towards his popularity.” He had already won several victories over Sulla’s opponents, some by arms and some by words, while marching to join Sulla. So pretty, so precocious and so successful was he that he began to be called, with a hint of irony, “Pompey the Great.”

  The other commander was the twenty-eight-year-old Marcus Licinius Crassus, the son of a rich patrician whose wealth Marius had seized. He had raised his own private army to support Sulla, achieve vengeance and rebuild his patrimony.

  By the end of 82, with the help of these two young leaders, Sulla took possession of Rome and the capital’s public places once more ran red with blood. Sulla decreed lists—proscriptions—of public enemies, opponents summarily to be killed and to have their property confiscated. Many names were added at least as much for their wealth as for their deeds. All the republican leaders and their clients profited hugely—Crassus so flagrantly that Sulla felt forced to disclaim his actions.

  Crassus and Pompey were two of three men who would, within a few decades, come to dominate Rome. The family of the third—Julius Caesar—had been wedded to the defeated Marius’ cause. After Marius’ death and probably under the guidance of his widow, Caesar’s aunt, and of his own strict but loving mother, Aurelia, now also a widow, Caesar had married Cinna’s daughter Cornelia in 84 in an arranged marriage of the kind patrician families found so useful in cementing their web of constantly but subtly changing alliances. A year later she bore him a daughter, Julia. At around this same time Cinna had appointed Caesar a priest of Jupiter.

  Romans believed that all important events in life were divinely instigated and that different gods were responsible for particular activities. Perhaps symptomatic of Rome’s materialistic society, Roman religion was concerned with success, not with sin or moral judgments. “Jupiter is called best and greatest,” Cicero commented, “because he does not make us just or sober or wise but healthy and rich and prosperous.” In worship the Romans sought, with the aid of their priests, to appease the gods and to persuade them to look kindly on their activities by offering gifts, pouring libations or, on special occasions, performing an
imal sacrifices. The Romans had no holy scriptures and like the Greeks, but unlike the Egyptians, their concept of an afterlife was indistinct and shadowy.

  In addition to their reliance on the Sibylline Books, the Romans did, however, believe strongly in portents and prodigies of all sorts. Before important events, specially appointed augurs or, in their absence, magistrates and generals looked for signs of the gods’ wishes manifested by the pattern of birds’ flight (auspices originally meant “signs from birds”), the weather or cloud formations. If the signs were unfavorable, meetings or even battles would be postponed. The appearance of comets or of alleged showers of blood, deformed animals or animals acting against their own nature (for example, by devoring their own young) were given automatic credence as omens.

  As a priest of Jupiter, Caesar would have been required to perform ceremonies and to inspect the entrails of sacrificed animals to interpret any messages they conveyed for the future. His position allowed him a measure of political power through his ability to manipulate omens. It attracted many privileges but also much regulation. Some rules were bizarre, such as that the priest’s home should contain no knots and that his hair could be cut only by a freeman using a bronze knife and the clippings, together with those from his nails, buried in a special place. Others were theoretically more serious, such as a prohibition against holding a magistracy.

  Sulla’s arrival changed everything for Caesar, even though, fortunately for him, the eighteen-year-old had taken no active part in the opposition. While others were killing themselves to avoid a worse death, Sulla summoned Caesar and offered him amnesty if he divorced Cornelia. Alone among his contemporaries, Caesar refused Sulla’s terms and so lost his priestly office, Cornelia’s dowry and his family fortune, as well as being compelled to flee Rome. Such a stiff-necked refusal to bow to the authority of others, especially when his honor was at stake, would typify his future career.

  Eventually some hard lobbying and even an intervention from the Vestal Virgins secured his rehabilitation.* On bestowing it, Sulla is said to have commented, “Keep him since you so wish, but I would have you know that this young man who is so precious to you will one day overthrow the aristocratic party which you and I have fought so hard to defend. There are many Mariuses in him.” He told others to beware of “this youth who wears his toga so loosely girdled.” The latter was a reference to a modish, some said effeminate, way of dressing affected by Caesar and some other young bloods of which the conservative Sulla clearly strongly disapproved. Certainly, as the historian Suetonius wrote, “Caesar was something of a dandy, always keeping his head carefully trimmed and shaved; and he has been accused of having certain other hairy parts of his body depilitated with tweezers.” He was also tall with a somewhat large mouth and dark, lively eyes.

  After his pardon, Caesar wisely took himself abroad, finding a place on the staff of one of Rome’s high officials in Asia. Caesar’s first mission was to the kingdom of Bithynia on the Black Sea, west of Pontus. Its king, Nicomedes, maintained a luxurious court and was well known for his harem of young men. Nicomedes seems to have taken an immediate fancy to Caesar, who, to the later outrage of Rome, performed the role of cupbearer to Nicomedes at an extravagant banquet. Also according to persistent rumor, reclining on a gold bed with purple sheets, he became the king’s lover—in the words of his later opponents, “the female rival of Bithynia’s queen” and “the bottom half of the royal bed.” While the Romans and Greeks had no such word as homosexuality and relations with youths were accepted and celebrated in verse, the Romans approved only the active role in such relationships for freeborn men. The receptive or pathetic role, which Caesar was said to have assumed with the king, was considered far too submissive for a freedom-loving Roman and to be taken only by foreigners or slaves.*

  In 78 came the news that Sulla was dead. He had in 81 revived for himself the office of dictator, abolished at the end of the third century for fear of autocracy. The role, designed for emergencies only, had previously been restricted to a six-month tenure but Sulla had set himself no time frame and used the office to inaugurate a vast number of conservative reforms, among them drastic reductions in the power of the people’s representatives—the tribunes—including removing their veto over legislation. He also restricted the freedoms of provincial governors, who were not allowed, without the permission of the Senate, to make war or to lead their legions over their provincial boundaries. However, in 79 and to the amazement of many, Sulla retired into private life, where, once again, he took to riotous drinking and partying in a bid to recapture his youth. Like his old rival Marius, his excesses probably hastened his death, which occurred a few months later. By bringing troops onto Rome’s streets, by his murderous proscriptions and by his assumption of dictatorial powers, Sulla had set sinister precedents for the years ahead, both for the fate of the Republic and for the actions of Caesar, Antony and Octavian.

  Now seemed a good time to Caesar to return to Rome. Once there, he took his first step into the political limelight by taking up in 77 the case of a group of Greeks against their former governor. Rome had no state prosecutor or formal legal qualifications. Anyone could act on anyone else’s behalf and appearing in high-profile legal cases on the popular side was not an unusual way of building a reputation. The governor was certainly unpopular and equally certainly guilty. It therefore says much for the corruption of the Roman courts and juries that Caesar lost this case and a second against another follower of Sulla. But he had done well in his training for the “race for glory.” Plutarch sums up what he had already achieved: “In his pleadings his eloquence soon obtained him great credit and he gained no less in the affections of the people by the affability of his manners and address, in which he showed tact and consideration beyond his age; and the open house he kept, the entertainments he gave and the general splendor of his way of life contributed little by little to create and increase his political influence.”

  *According to the Roman calendar the month of Caesar’s birth was Quintullus and the year 653, the number of years since legend said that Romulus had founded Rome and become its first king.

  *Aeneas was also the hero whose desertion of Dido, queen and founder of Carthage, to pursue his own imperial ambitions was said to have caused her suicide—a story much elaborated later by the poet Vergil to the detriment of both Cleopatra and Antony and the benefit of Octavian.

  *Vesta, keeper of the eternal fire, was one of the most venerated Roman goddesses. Unlike most other deities, she had her own priestesses. The six Vestal Virgins were selected at the age of eight from good families to be raised in chastity to serve the goddess for thirty years. After that time they were free to leave and marry. Before then, if they were convicted of having sexual relations with a man, they were buried alive and their lover whipped to death.

  *According to one academic source, more Roman love poetry is directed toward youths than to girls and women together. There is, however, no love poetry between men.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Odi et Amo”

  IN 75 CAESAR RETURNED EAST to Rhodes to study rhetoric further under Appolinius Molon, whom Suetonius called “the greatest exponent of the art.” However, Mithridates of Pontus interrupted Caesar’s studies when, subdued but not fully conquered by Sulla, in 74 he made some exploratory incursions into Roman Asia. Acting for the first but not the last time on his own initiative and entirely without authorization, Caesar took charge of the local militia and repulsed the attacks, thereby gaining much further glory for himself.

  Crassus and Pompey too were still on the rise. Pompey, unlike Caesar, had understandably accepted Sulla’s suggestion to divorce, since Sulla had offered his stepdaughter as a replacement bride and Pompey was always uncomfortably conscious that his family pedigree was inferior to Rome’s best. After Sulla’s death, Pompey had led an army to subdue a rebellion in Spain.

  While he was away, in the summer of 73 a revolt broke out among gladiators in southern Italy. Such outbreaks wer
e not unusual, but this time, led by a Thracian named Spartacus, the gladiators uniquely formed themselves into disciplined units, drawing further recruits from among runaway slaves. They had rules stipulating that plunder should be shared equally. Sometimes to underline the role reversal they made their Roman prisoners fight as gladiators. At their height, their numbers reached 70,000, some even suggest 120,000, and they defeated several Roman armies, forcing open the road to the Alps and to freedom beyond the Roman frontiers. Why they did not take it but instead turned back into Italy is uncertain, but loot may have been the spur. Crassus sought and was given command against Spartacus and his men. Eventually he trapped them and Spartacus was killed. Crassus crucified each of his prisoners on crosses placed every forty yards or so along a hundred-mile stretch of the Appian Way, Roman Italy’s main southern highway.

  Pompey returned from Spain at the end of the revolt and with his troops defeated and killed all five thousand men of a breakaway gladiator army, thus stealing some of Crassus’ glory and engendering a lasting rivalry. Although Pompey was below the required age of forty, both men were elected consul for the first time—Pompey at thirty-five and Crassus at forty-one. Together they abolished many of Sulla’s changes, returning to the tribunes the powers they had previously enjoyed and expelling from the Senate more than a fifth of its members on the grounds that their contributions were worthless.

  The twenty-six-year-old Caesar was delighted to be made a member of the College of Pontiffs on his return from Rhodes, succeeding one of his relatives. Unlike his previous priesthood, the lifetime position offered influence and privileges—such as the right to wear a red-striped toga—without serious restrictions. Influence was often exerted and deals done informally and over meals. Around 70, Caesar attended and may have presided as “king of the celebrations” over a dinner to mark the inauguration of a recruit to the priesthood. Unusually, details have been preserved. In addition to the candidate, eleven priests including Caesar and his brother were present. Roman women participated in such dinners and the newcomer’s wife and mother-in-law were there too, together with some of the Vestal Virgins. Everyone reclined on ebony couches, the men in two circles and the women in a third.* The diners leaned on their left hand with a cup of wine near their right alongside perfumed oil, perhaps of roses, to anoint their brows. Just as in Egypt, achieving the right ambient aroma was thought essential to conviviality. Dining room floors were often spread with aromatic foliage such as ferns and verbena and scented oils burned.