The Book of Ancient Bastards (14 page)

The Gold Standard of Bastardry

(CA. 100–44 B.C.)

I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.
—Gaius Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was renowned not just as a general and politician of the Roman Republic but for his clemency. Time and again, Caesar forgave his enemies and allowed them to prosper, as no other Roman strongman before him had done. His magnanimity would eventually cost him his life, victim of assassination by a handful of senators he numbered among his friends, including several former adversaries whom he had pardoned.

Yet this open-handed great man was personally responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people during the Roman campaign to subjugate Gaul (modern France).

Appointed governor of Gallia Narbonensis (modern-day Provence, in southern France) following his term as consul in 59 B.C., Caesar quickly began to take possession of the unconquered territory of central and northern Gaul by playing the independent Gallic tribes against each other. Over the course of the next six years, Caesar received the submission of no less than 800 cities and towns, defeating the Gauls in battle after battle, until he had subjugated Gaul all the way from Narbonensis in the south to the English Channel in the north.

In 52 B.C., Caesar made plans to return to Rome in triumph. He didn’t get the chance.

In response to the call of a charismatic young chieftain named Vercingetorix, the Gauls rose up and killed Roman soldiers and citizens—mostly Roman businessmen looking for “opportunity” of the type that had so enriched their countrymen in the “pacification” (read: looting) of Rome’s eastern provinces. Caesar went on the offensive, striking deep into the heart of Gaul and driving Vercingetorix and several thousand of his followers behind the walls of the heavily fortified city of Alesia.

Caesar settled in to besiege the city. Vercingetorix settled in to wait out his besiegers, expecting a large Gallic army to move into the area and drive the hated Romans out. When this army, numbering nearly 200,000, appeared, Caesar responded not by breaking camp, but by building a wall around his encampments, and in effect settling in to be besieged himself, even as he continued to besiege Alesia.

Vercingetorix then drove all noncombatants (women, children, and the elderly) out of Alesia, hoping to extend his food supplies. Caesar, showing himself to be a ruthless bastard, refused to allow these thousands of helpless bystanders through his lines or even to take them as slaves. He let all of them die slowly of exposure or starvation within eyesight of their countrymen still in Alesia.

Caesar’s legions repelled attack after attack by the Gauls outside his encampment, and eventually broke the resistance of those within the city’s walls. When Vercingetorix rode out of the city and threw down his arms at Caesar’s feet, the conqueror’s famous impulse to extend mercy to a defeated foe deserted him. Vercingetorix was thrown into prison until he was marched through the streets of Rome during Caesar’s triumph five years later, then executed.

Quotable Bastard

Caesar’s ambition was hardly a secret, and hardly unique in ancient Rome. But others did note that Caesar was ambitious even by Roman standards. His political rival Marcus Tullius Cicero once famously remarked to him: “Your spirit has never been content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us.”

The Bastard as Tiresome, Humorless Scold

(95–46 B.C.)

The conquering cause pleased the gods,
but the conquered cause pleased Cato.
—Lucan, Pharsalia

Look up the word “contrary” in the dictionary, and you’re likely to see this guy’s picture next to it. Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (known to historians as “Cato the Younger” to distinguish him from his famous forbear of the same name) was a stubborn, silver-spoon-sucking son of an old-old-old family. Cato the Elder had distinguished himself by acting as Rome’s conscience in her decades-long struggle with Carthage (or as a tiresome, moralistic scold, depending on your point of view). The younger Cato grew up intent on “out-Catoing” his ancestor.

In this, he was, by and large, successful. Caesar himself once wondered aloud why someone like Cato, who, never bothering to go abroad to conquer territory or fight to suppress the Republic’s enemies, felt entitled to look down his nose in judgment at someone like Caesar.

But Cato seems to have been capable of “out-arroganting” ancient Roman aristocrats! Time and again he would stake out the moral high ground, set himself up as the defender of what was right, and heap scorn on friend and foe alike. And the Romans thanked him for it.

Although this sort of virtue was easy to admire, it was another thing to like it. Cato got a free pass from most ancient historians who didn’t know him personally (especially Plutarch) because of their admiration for his unbending adherence to his principles. But their uncritical acceptance of Cato as the arbiter of what was right and proper does nothing to hide the bald fact that Cato frequently set himself up as the moral authority of his country as a political tool to help in his goal of turning back the clock, keeping the common people (especially the urban poor) in their place, without caring about the cost.

In the end, Cato succeeded in manipulating Pompey into turning on Caesar. But no amount of moral fiber nor stubborn willfulness could make Pompey a better general than Caesar, and Cato and the rest of the
optimates
party who supported the “Great” Pompey were beaten along with him.

Even in defeat, Cato proved contrary. Refusing Caesar’s generous offer to let him off the hook for opposing him, Cato embraced martyrdom, stabbing himself to death, something he’d been preparing for his whole life, the end of which he used as a final moral statement.

Contrary bastard.

Profiteering Bastard?

So Hortensius, an old rich guy in his sixties, tried to get Cato to agree to let him marry Cato’s daughter so that he could form a strong alliance with Cato’s honorable family, and Cato refused. Hortensius, worried about not having an heir, asked Cato to divorce his wife Marcia instead, so that she might then be married to Hortensius and bear him an heir, which Cato did and which Marcia did. After Hortensius died a few years later, Cato took Marcia back into his household. A guy can be a moral force and still come across as a bit of a nut!

The Noblest Roman Tax Farmer
of Them All

(85–42 B.C.)

Caesar does not prevent me from acting according to the laws, nor will he prevent me.
—Marcus Junius Brutus

Everyone knows the story of Marcus Brutus, that “noblest Roman of them all,” a man of unquestioned character, who was good friends with Julius Caesar but helped kill him because he loved the Republic more.

This man of unquestioned character, descended from the near-legendary Brutus who’d chased the last king out of Rome 450 years earlier, actually made his money as a loan shark. Working on the island of Cyprus shortly after it transitioned from client kingdom to Roman territory, Brutus extended loans to people desperate for cash—at an interest rate of 48 percent!

Charging interest at this usurious rate was illegal, but Brutus got an exemption (in part because he was screwing the provincials, not Roman citizens). Within a very short time, Brutus had become an extremely wealthy man.

He had need of the money. His father had been executed on Pompey’s orders during Sulla’s proscriptions, and the family’s possessions had been confiscated by the state.

While all proscription executions carried the stink of murder with them, the killing of the elder Marcus Brutus was particularly rank because he was taken out and killed (likely strangled) after he had surrendered himself to Pompey’s backers, as part of a negotiated deal in which his life was to have been spared. Understandably, the younger Brutus did not take this well; yet, when Pompey and Caesar faced off over the question of which political party’s senate representatives would run Rome, Caesar’s
populares
, or Pompey and the conservative
optimates
, Brutus doesn’t seem to have hesitated. He surprised nearly everyone by siding with Pompey. Historians down the ages have hailed this move as a noble act of putting aside personal interests in the name of patriotism, but they’re wrong. Brutus wasn’t putting aside his personal interests. He was a rich, wealthy, respected member of the aristocracy who sided with other rich, wealthy members of the aristocracy against that ultimate traitor to his class, Gaius Julius Caesar. How is it patriotic to uphold the old order that benefits you most?

On top of that, after Caesar famously pardoned Brutus, Brutus did what? He joined a plot to assassinate the very man to whom he owed his safety and his own recent advancement (he’d been appointed city praetor by Caesar). When Brutus fell on his own sword after losing the battle of Philippi, he did the most patriotic thing he’d ever done.

Bastard’s Son?

Brutus’s mother, the formidable Servilia Caepoinis, was the longtime mistress of none other than Gaius Julius Caesar. Ancient historians speculated that Caesar was actually the young Brutus’s father, but Caesar likely didn’t take up with Servilia until after Brutus was born (Caesar was only fifteen at the time). Caesar sure treated him like a son, though. When Brutus sided with the senate and Pompey against him, Caesar insisted that none of his troops were to fight with Brutus if they encountered him on the battlefield, and he later accepted the young man into his circle of intimates with no penalty for having taken sides against him. Think maybe Caesar was trying to score points with his girlfriend’s kid?