Caesar. Life of a Colossus (Adrian Goldsworthy) Yale University Press (12 page)

the rise to the consulship, 100–59 bc

disreputable activities, most notably prostitution. The occupants were probably mainly citizens, including many former slaves, but may well also have included substantial foreign communities. There is evidence for a synagogue in the area at a later date and it is not impossible that one already existed in Caesar’s day.4

Much of a senator’s business was conducted in his home and this was reflected in the design of houses. A porch for meeting visitors, including the clients who were expected formally to greet their patron each morning, and for displaying the busts or ancestors and the symbols of honours and achievements won by them or the present resident was essential. Equally important were rooms for more private discussions and places to entertain dinner guests. The usual layout with a central, enclosed courtyard did offer some privacy, but ambitious men were reluctant to shut out the world. Livius Drusus’ architect is supposed to have offered to construct his house so that he would be free from all outside gaze, prompting the reply that if it were possible he would prefer it built so that everything he did was visible.5 For all their wealth, status and influence, men in public life could not afford to close themselves off from the life and business of the wider city. Therefore, though he doubtless lived on the fringes of the Subura, and certainly is most unlikely to have had a house in the very poorest part of the region, Caesar cannot have been entirely detached from what was going on around him. It may even be that daily contact with the less well off taught him some of the skill he would later show in handling crowds and in talking to the rank and file of the legions.

Living in the Subura may have proved advantageous, allowing the foppish aristocrat to understand better the wider population, but the reason for living there is unlikely to have been anything other than his own modest means. The young Sulla had been even worse off, having to rent a flat in an apartment block since he could not even afford a house, and paying only a little more for his accommodation than the freedman who lived above him. Caesar’s house indicated both his lack of funds and his comparative unimportance in the Republic. To an extent his desire to stand out conflicted with this, as did his willingness to spend beyond his means. Usually this was to further his career, but occasionally it seemed little more than whim. Suetonius tells us that he decided to have a country villa constructed on one of his estates. However, when the foundations had already been laid and building was underway, he was dissatisfied with the design. He immediately ordered the structure to be demolished and a new one built in its place. The date of this incident is uncertain, and it may well have occurred somewhat 64

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later in his career, but it helps to illustrate the point that, at least in certain things, Caesar demanded perfection. For much of his life he was an enthusiastic collector of fine art, gems and pearls, which was a rather expensive hobby given his circumstances.6

A Crown and a King

Caesar had gone abroad soon after escaping from Sulla’s men and did not return to Rome until after the dictator’s death. During these years he began the military service that was the legal preliminary to a public career. He served first with the governor of Asia, the propraetor Marcus Minucius Thermus. Caesar’s father had governed the same province about a decade before, so that the family name was already a familiar one to the provincials and the son inherited a number of important connections with leading men in the region. Thermus was a prominent Sullan and Caesar became one of his
contubernales
(‘tent-companions’), young men who messed with the commander and performed whatever duties he allocated to them. Ideally this provided the governor with a pool of useful subordinates for minor staff functions, while at the same time teaching the youths about soldiering and command. The
contubernales
were supposed to learn by observation, just as younger boys learned how the Republic worked by accompanying prominent senators in the daily duties at Rome. Like so many aspects of an aristocrat’s early years, the details of where and with whom he would serve were not centrally controlled by the State, but arranged by individual families. The connection between Caesar and Thermus is obscure and may well have been indirect, via someone else with whom both parties had bonds of political friendship.7

Under normal circumstances Asia was a peaceful and prosperous province, making it the sort of posting where a Roman governor and his staff could expect to make a handsome profit during their service. Yet it was only seven years since Mithridates of Pontus had overrun the whole area and ordered the communities to massacre all the Romans living amongst them. Sulla had defeated Mithridates and for the moment the king was once again at peace with Rome, but some of his recent allies had yet to be defeated. One of Thermus’ main tasks was to defeat the city of Mytilene, which was besieged and eventually taken by storm. During the course of the fighting the nineteen-year-old Caesar won Rome’s highest award for gallantry, the civic crown (
corona civica)
. Traditionally this decoration was given only to those 65

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who had risked their own life to save that of another citizen. The rescued man was supposed to plait a simple wreath of oak leaves – a tree that was sacred to Jupiter – and present this to his saviour as an open acknowledgement of his debt. However, by Caesar’s day it was normally awarded by the magistrate commanding the army. The wreath was worn at military parades, but winners of the crown were also permitted to wear them during festivals in Rome. None of our sources preserve any details of the exploit that led to Caesar being awarded the crown, but the
corona civica
was never lightly bestowed and commanded immense respect. During the crisis of the Second Punic War, when the Roman Senate had suffered huge casualties and needed to replenish its numbers, men who had won the
corona civica
were one of the main groups chosen for admission. It is just possible that Sulla had decreed a similar measure, so that aristocratic winners of the crown were immediately enrolled in the Senate, but even if this was not true, the decoration was guaranteed to impress the electorate and help a man’s career.8

Not all of Caesar’s first term of overseas service was so creditable. Before the storming of Mytilene, the propraetor had sent him to the court of King Nicomedes of Bithynia (on the north coast of modern Turkey) to arrange for the despatch of a squadron of warships to support the Roman campaign. Bithynia was a client kingdom, allied to Rome and obliged to make such contributions. Nicomedes was elderly and had doubtless encountered Caesar’s father, which probably ensured that the welcome given to the son was especially warm. The youth seems to have revelled in the luxury he encountered, and was accused of lingering far longer than was necessary to perform his task. Caesar was young, had led a comparatively sheltered life because of the burdens of the flaminate, and was getting his first taste of the wider world and of royalty. He was also moving amongst those steeped in the Hellenic culture that was so admired by the Roman aristocracy. Any of this might explain his tarrying overlong at the king’s court, but gossip soon spread that the real reason was that Nicomedes had seduced the youth. Stories began to circulate portraying Caesar as a very willing lover, claiming that he had acted as the king’s cup-bearer at a drunken feast attended by a number of Roman businessmen. Another tale had him being led by the royal attendants into the royal bedroom, dressed in fine purple robes and left reclining on a golden couch to wait for Nicomedes. The rumours spread rapidly and were fed when Caesar returned to Bithynia not long after leaving, claiming that he needed to oversee the business affairs of one of his freedmen.9

It was a scandal that would dog Caesar throughout his life. The Roman aristocracy admired most aspects of Greek culture, but it never openly 66

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accepted the celebration of homosexuality that had been espoused by the nobility of some Greek cities. Those senators who took male lovers tended to do so discreetly, but even so would often be held up to public ridicule by political opponents. The dislike of homosexuality appears to have been fairly widespread in most social classes at Rome, and it was seen as something that weakened men. In the army homosexuality within the camp was a capital offence from at least the second century BC. During the campaign against the Cimbri, Marius awarded the
corona civica
to a soldier who had killed an officer after the latter had tried to force his attentions on him. The legionary’s conduct was held up as an example of virtue and courage, while the officer’s death was seen as fitting punishment for his excessive passion and abuse of authority. This was in spite of the fact that the dead man was a relation to the consul. Senators were not subject to such rigid rules as ordinary soldiers, but faced at the very least criticism and mockery if they showed a fondness for male lovers. During his censorship Cato the Elder expelled a senator because the man had ordered the execution of a prisoner at a banquet merely to please the boy with whom he was then enamoured. The man’s fault was his abuse of
imperium
, but his motives were felt to have made the crime worse. Particular contempt was reserved for the boys or young men who were the objects of passion, and the passive partners in sex. Such a role implied extreme effeminacy and, if anything, was felt to be worse than the behaviour of the older, more active lover. That Caesar was said to have been submissive in this way made the rumours all the more damaging, for this meant that the young aristocrat had acted in a way that was thought unfitting even for a slave. The enthusiasm with which the stories claimed he had taken on the role compounded the crime.10

Ultimately, it was a very good piece of gossip, playing on well-established Roman stereotypes. The Romans were suspicious of easterners, seeing the Asiatic Greeks as corrupt and decadent, in no way resembling the admired Greeks of the Classical past. Kings were especially disliked, and royal courts seen as places of political intrigue and sexual depravity. Thus the tale of the ageing, lecherous old ruler deflowering the young, naive aristocrat on his first trip abroad had a wide appeal. It helped that the story involved Caesar, a youth whose unusual dress and massive self-esteem had doubtless made him cordially disliked, since as yet neither he nor his family could boast sufficient achievements to justify such vanity. It was deeply satisfying for others to think that this overconfident young man had behaved so submissively to gratify some decrepit old lover. Later in Caesar’s career, as he acquired more and more political enemies, the affair with Nicomedes offered them plentiful 67

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ammunition to use against him. The story was widely repeated throughout Caesar’s life, so that at times he was dubbed the ‘Queen of Bithynia’. Another of his opponents styled him ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’. Whether or not men like Cicero, who joyfully repeated the charges, actually believed them to be true is hard to say. Whatever they believed, they wanted the allegations to be true and relished hurling them at a man that many disliked, and some came to loathe. Political invective at Rome was often extremely scurrilous, and the truth very rarely got in the way of a juicy story of rampant or perverted desires. Yet it was not just his opponents who mocked Caesar over this episode, for in later years his own soldiers also enjoyed repeating the joke. Interestingly, this does not appear to have diminished in any way from their respect for their commander, and their mockery was affectionate, if characteristically crude.11

The story that Caesar became Nicomedes lover persisted, but it is now impossible to say whether or not it was actually true. Caesar himself fervently denied this, on one occasion offering to take a public oath that there was not a fragment of truth in the allegation, although all this achieved was to increase the ridicule. In later life he was extremely sensitive about the subject, one of few that led him to lose his temper in public. At the time, his rapid return to the royal court had fired the rumours. Was this an indication of his infatuation, a sign of his naivety that such an action might be interpreted as it was, or a conscious decision to ignore the gossips when there was no truth in the rumours about him? The last is a distinct possibility given Caesar’s urge not to be confined by some of the rules that bound others. In the end we simply cannot know. Perhaps the nineteen-year-old did feel and succumb to an attraction to an older man – ‘experimenting with his sexuality’ would probably be the fashionable modern euphemism. If so, then this was the only occasion on which this happened, for it is absolutely certain that homosexuality did not play a part in the rest of Caesar’s life. Given the nature of political debate at Rome, it was striking that the affair in Bithynia was almost the only insult of this sort that others were ever to hurl at him. Other rumours of a similar nature, including a scurrilous work by the poet Catullus, did not win widespread belief, though they clearly bothered Caesar himself. Caesar’s sexual exploits were a rich source of gossip and scandal, and earned him an extremely dubious reputation, but his frequent affairs were always with women. The lack of restraint he displayed in his relations with his female lovers makes it all the more unlikely that he also slept with men or boys, but that this was not commented upon by contemporaries. Caesar’s appetite for women was almost insatiable and his conquests – who 68

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often came from the most distinguished families – very numerous. The knowledge of this doubtless added further to the delight others took in repeating the accusation that the great womaniser had once played the woman himself for Nicomedes. Once again, whether or not the story was true mattered far less than that it struck a raw nerve and embarrassed Caesar. All in all, it is more than probable that there was no real truth in the story, although of course absolute certainty is impossible.12