Caesar's Women Read online

  On the last day the procession assembled on the Capitol and wended its way down through the Forum Romanum and the Via Triumphalis to the Circus Maximus, parading gilded statues of some Gods like Mars and Apollo—and Castor and Pollux. Since Caesar had paid for the gilding, it was perhaps not surprising that Pollux was much smaller in size than his twin, Castor. Such a laugh!

  Though the games were supposed to be publicly funded and the chariot races were dearest to every spectator's heart, in actual fact there was never State money for the entertainments themselves. This hadn't stopped Caesar, who produced more chariot races on that last day of the ludi Megalenses than Rome had ever seen. It was his duty as senior curule aedile to start the races, each one comprising four chariots—Red, Blue, Green and White. The first race was for cars drawn by four horses poled up abreast, but other races saw two horses poled up abreast, or two or three horses harnessed in tandem one after the other; Caesar even put on races with unyoked horses ridden bareback by postilions.

  The course of each race was five miles long, consisting of seven laps around the central division of the spina, a narrow and tall ridge adorned with many statues and showing at one end seven golden dolphins, at the other seven golden eggs perched in big chalices; as each lap ended one dolphin's nose was pulled down to bring its tail up, and one golden egg was taken from its chalice. If the twelve hours of day and the twelve hours of night were of equal length, then each race took one quarter of an hour to run, which meant the pace was fast and furious, a wild gallop. Spills when they happened usually occurred rounding the metae, where each driver, reins wound many times about his waist and a dagger tucked into them to free him if he crashed, fought with skill and courage to keep on the inside, a shorter course.

  The crowd adored that day, for instead of long breaks after each race, Caesar kept them coming with hardly an interruption; the bookmakers scrambling through the excited spectators taking bets had to work in a frenzy to keep up. Not a single bleacher was vacant, and wives sat on husbands' laps to jam more in. No children, slaves or even freedmen were allowed, but women sat with men. At Caesar's games more than two hundred thousand free Romans jammed into the Circus Maximus, while thousands more watched from every vantage point on Palatine and Aventine.

  "They're the best games Rome has ever seen," said Crassus to Caesar at the end of the sixth day. "What a feat of engineering to do that to the Tiber, then remove it all and have dry ground again for the chariot races."

  "These games are nothing," replied Caesar with a grin, "nor was it particularly difficult to use a Tiber swollen from the rains. Wait until you see the ludi Romani in September. Lucullus would be devastated if only he'd cross the pomerium to see."

  But between the ludi Megalenses and the ludi Romani he did something else so unusual and spectacular that Rome talked about it for years. When the city was choked with vacationing rural citizens who had poured into town for the great games early in September, Caesar put on funeral games in memory of his father, and used the entire Forum Romanum. Of course it was hot and cloudless, so he tented the whole area over with purple sailcloth, hitching its edges to the buildings on either side if they were high enough; where there were no buildings to serve as supports, he propped up the massive fabric structure with great poles and guy ropes. An exercise in engineering he relished, both devising and supervising it himself.

  But when all this incredible construction began, a wild rumor went round that Caesar intended to display a thousand pairs of gladiators. Catulus summoned the Senate into session.

  "What are you really planning, Caesar?" demanded Catulus to a packed House. "I've always known you intended to undermine the Republic, but a thousand pairs of gladiators when there are no legions to defend our beloved city? This isn't secretly mining a tunnel, this is using a battering ram!"

  "Well," drawled Caesar, rising to his feet on the curule dais, “it is true that I do own a mighty battering ram, and also true that I have secretly mined many a tunnel, but always the one with the other." He pulled the front neckline of his tunic away from his chest and put his head down to address the space thus created, and shouted, "Isn't that right, O battering ram?" His hand fell, his tunic flattened, and he looked up with his sweetest smile. "He says that's right."

  Crassus emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a howl, but before his laugh could gather force Cicero's bellow of mirth overtook it; the House dissolved in a gale of hilarity which left Catulus as speechless as his face was purple.

  Whereupon Caesar proceeded to display the number he had always meant to display, three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators gorgeously clad in silver.

  But before the funeral games actually got under way, another sensation outraged Catulus and his colleagues. When the day dawned and the Forum appeared from the houses on the edge of the Germalus to look like Homer's gently heaving wine-dark sea, those who came early to get the best places discovered something else than a tent had been added to the Forum Romanum. During the night Caesar had restored every statue of Gaius Marius to its pedestal or plinth, and put Gaius Marius's trophies of war back inside the temple to Honor and Virtue he had built on the Capitol. But what could the arch-conservative senators actually do about it? The answer was, nothing. Rome had never forgotten—nor learned to stop loving—the magnificent Gaius Marius. Out of everything Caesar did during that memorable year when he was curule aedile, the restoration of Gaius Marius was deemed his greatest act.

  Naturally Caesar didn't waste this opportunity to remind all the electors who and what he was; in every little arena wherein some of his three hundred and twenty pairs of sawdust soldiers clashed—at the bottom of the Comitia well, in the space between the tribunals, near the temple of Vesta, in front of the Porticus Margaritaria, on the Velia—he had his father's ancestry proclaimed, all the way back to Venus and to Romulus.

  Two days after this, Caesar (and Bibulus) staged the ludi Romani, which at this time ran for twelve days. The parade from the Capitol through the Forum Romanum to the Circus Maximus took three hours to pass. The chief magistrates and the Senate led it off, with bands of beautifully mounted youths following, then all the chariots which were to race and the athletes who were to compete; many hundreds of dancers and mummers and musicians; dwarves tricked out as satyrs and fauns; every prostitute in Rome clad in her flame-colored toga; slaves bearing hundreds of gorgeous silver or gold urns and vases; groups of mock warriors in bronze-belted scarlet tunics wearing fabulous crested helmets on their heads and brandishing swords and spears; the sacrificial animals; and then, in last and most honored place, all twelve major Gods and many other Gods and heroes riding on open litters of gold and purple, realistically painted, clad in exquisite clothes.

  Caesar had decorated the whole of the Circus Maximus, and gone one better than for any of his other entertainments by using millions of fresh flowers. As Romans adored flowers, the vast audience was ravished almost to swooning point, drowned in the perfume of roses, violets, stocks, wallflowers. He served free refreshments, thought of novelties of all kinds from rope walkers to fire belchers to scantily clad women who seemed to be able almost to turn themselves inside out.

  Each day of the games saw something else new and different, and the chariot races were superb.

  Said Bibulus to any who remembered him enough to comment, "He told me I'd be Pollux to his Castor. How right he was! I may as well have saved my precious three hundred talents—they only served to pour food and wine down two hundred thousand greedy throats, while he took the credit for the rest."

  Said Cicero to Caesar, "On the whole I dislike games, but I must confess yours were splendid. To have the most lavish in history is laudable enough in one way, but what I really liked about your games was that they weren't vulgar."

  Said Titus Pomponius Atticus, knight plutocrat, to Marcus Licinius Crassus, senatorial plutocrat, "It was brilliant. He managed to give business to everybody. What a year the flower growers and wholesalers have had! They'll vote for him for
the rest of his political career. Not to mention bakers, millers—oh, very, very clever!"

  And said young Caepio Brutus to Julia, “Uncle Cato is really disgusted. Of course he is a great friend of Bibulus's. But why is it that your father always has to make such a splash?"

  Cato loathed Caesar.

  When he had finally returned to Rome at the time Caesar took up his duties as curule aedile, he executed his brother Caepio's will. This necessitated a visit to see Servilia and Brutus, who at almost eighteen years of age was well embarked on his Forum career, though he had undertaken no court case yet.

  "I dislike the fact that you are now a patrician, Quintus Servilius," said Cato, punctilious in his use of the correct name, "but as I was not willing to be anyone other than a Porcius Cato, I suppose I must approve." He leaned forward abruptly. "What are you doing in the Forum? You should be in the field with someone's army, like your friend Gaius Cassius."

  "Brutus," said Servilia stiffly, emphasizing the name, "has received an exemption."

  "No one ought to be exempt unless he's crippled."

  "His chest is weak," said Servilia.

  "His chest would soon improve if he got out and did his legal duty, which is to serve in the legions. So would his skin."

  "Brutus will go when I consider him well enough."

  "Doesn't he have a tongue?" Cato demanded, but not in the fierce way he would have before leaving for the East, though it still came out aggressively. "Can't he speak for himself? You smother this boy, Servilia, and that is un-Roman."

  To all of which Brutus listened mumchance, and in a severe dilemma. On the one hand he longed to see his mother lose this—or any other—battle, but on the other hand he dreaded military duty. Cassius had gone off gladly, while Brutus developed a cough which kept getting worse. It hurt to see himself lessened in his Uncle Cato's eyes, but Uncle Cato didn't tolerate weakness or frailty of any kind, and Uncle Cato, winner of many decorations for valor in battle, would never understand people who didn't thrill when they picked up a sword. So now he began to cough, a thick hacking sound which started at the base of his chest and reverberated all the way to his throat. That of course produced copious phlegm, which enabled him to look wildly from his mother to his uncle, mumble an excuse, and leave.

  "See what you've done?" asked Servilia, teeth bared.

  "He needs exercise and a bit of life in the open air. I also suspect you're quacking his skin, it looks appalling."

  "Brutus is not your responsibility!"

  "Under the terms of Caepio's will, he most certainly is."

  "Uncle Mamercus has already been through everything with him, he doesn't need you. In fact, Cato, no one needs you. Why don't you take yourself off and jump into the Tiber?"

  "Everyone needs me, so much is plain. When I left for the East, your boy was starting to go to the Campus Martius, and for a while it looked as if he might actually learn to be a man. Now I find a mama's lapdog! What's more, how could you let him contract himself in marriage to a girl with no dowry to speak of, another wretched patrician? What sort of weedy children will they have?''

  "I would hope," said Servilia icily, "that they have sons like Julia's father and daughters like me. Say what you will about patricians and the old aristocracy, Cato, in Julia's father you see everything a Roman ought to be, from soldier to orator to politician. Brutus wanted the match, actually, it wasn't my idea, but I wish I had thought of it. Blood as good as his own—and that is far more important than a dowry! However, for your information her father has guaranteed a dowry of one hundred talents. Nor does Brutus need a girl with a big dowry, now that he's Caepio's heir."

  "If he's prepared to wait years for a bride, he could have waited a few more and married my Porcia," said Cato. “That is an alliance I would have applauded wholeheartedly! My dear Caepio's money would have gone to the children of both sides of his family."

  "Oh, I see!" sneered Servilia. "The truth will out, eh, Cato? Wouldn't change your name to get Caepio's money, but what a brilliant scheme to get it through the distaff side! My son marry the descendant of a slave? Over my dead body!"

  "It might happen yet," said Cato complacently.

  "If that happened, I'd feed the girl hot coals for supper!" Servilia tensed, understanding that she was not doing as well against Cato as she used to—he was cooler, more detached, and more difficult to wound. She produced her nastiest barb. "Aside from the fact that you, the descendant of a slave, are Porcia's father, there's her mother to think of too. And I can assure you that I will never let my son marry the child of a woman who can't wait for her husband to come home!"

  In the old days he would have flown at her verbally, shouted and badgered. Today he stiffened, said nothing for a long moment.

  "I think that statement needs elucidating," he said at last.

  "I am happy to oblige. Atilia has been a very naughty girl."

  "Oh, Servilia, you are one of the best reasons why Rome needs a few laws on the books to oblige people to hold their tongues!"

  Servilia smiled sweetly. "Ask any of your friends if you doubt me. Ask Bibulus or Favonius or Ahenobarbus, they've been here to witness the carryings-on. It's no secret."

  His mouth drew in, lips disappearing. "Who?" he asked.

  "Why, that Roman among Romans, of course! Caesar. And don't ask which Caesar—you know which Caesar has the reputation. My darling Brutus's prospective father-in-law."

  Cato rose without a word.

  He went home immediately to his modest house in a modest lane at the viewless center of the Palatine, wherein he had installed his philosopher friend, Athenodorus Cordylion, in the only guest suite before he had remembered to greet his wife and children.

  Reflection confirmed Servilia's malice. Atilia was different. For one thing, she smiled occasionally and presumed to speak before being spoken to; for another, her breasts had filled out, and that in some peculiar way revolted him. Though three days had elapsed since his arriving in Rome, he had not visited her sleeping cubicle (he preferred to occupy the master sleeping cubicle alone) to assuage what even his revered great-grandfather Cato the Censor had deemed a natural urge, not only permissible between man and wife (or slave and master), but really quite an admirable urge.

  Oh, what dear kind benevolent God had prevented him? To have put himself inside his legal property not knowing that she had become someone else's illegal property—Cato shivered, had to force down his rising gorge. Caesar. Gaius Julius Caesar, the worst of a decayed and degenerate lot. What on earth had he seen in Atilia, whom Cato had chosen because she was the absolute opposite of round, dark, adorable Aemilia Lepida? Cato knew himself to be a little intellectually slow because it had been drummed into him from infancy that he was, but he didn't have to search very far for Caesar's reason. Patrician though he was, that man was going to be a demagogue, another Gaius Marius. How many wives of the stalwart traditionalists had he seduced? Rumor was rife. Yet here was he, Marcus Porcius Cato, not old enough yet to be in the Senate—but obviously deemed a future enemy of note. That was good! It said he, Marcus Porcius Cato, had the strength and will to be a great force in Forum and Senate. Caesar had cuckolded him! Not for one moment did it occur to him that Servilia was the cause, for he had no idea Servilia lived on intimate terms with Caesar.

  Well, Atilia may have admitted Caesar into her bed and between her legs, but she hadn't admitted Cato since the day it happened. What Caepio's death had begun, Atilia's treachery finished. Never care! Never, never care. To care meant endless pain.

  He did not interview Atilia. He simply summoned his steward to his study and instructed the man to pack her up and throw her out at once, send her back to her brother.

  A few words scrawled on a sheet of paper, and the deed was done. She was divorced, and he would not give back one sestertius of an adultress's dowry. As he waited in his study he heard her voice in the distance, a wail, a sob, a frantic scream for her children, and all the time his steward's voice overriding hers, the noi
se of slaves falling over each other to do the master's bidding. Finally came the front door opening, closing. After which, his steward's knock.

  "The lady Atilia is gone, domine."

  "Send my children to me."

  They came in not many moments later, bewildered at the fuss but unaware what had taken place. That both were his he could not deny, even now that doubt gnawed. Porcia was six years old, tall and thin and angular, with his chestnut hair in a thicker and curlier version, his grey and well-spaced eyes, his long neck, his nose in a smaller form. Cato Junior was two years younger, a skinny little boy who always reminded Cato of what he himself had been like in the days when that Marsian upstart Silo had held him out the window and threatened to drop him on sharp rocks; except that Cato Junior was timid rather than doughty, and tended to cry easily. And, alas, already it was apparent that Porcia was the clever one, the little orator and philosopher. Useless gifts in a girl.

  "Children, I have divorced your mother for infidelity," said Cato in his normal harsh voice, and without expression. "She has been unchaste, and proven herself unfit to be wife or mother. I have forbidden her entry to this house, and I will not allow either of you to see her again."

  The little boy hardly understood all these grown-up words, save that something awful had just happened, and that Mama was at the heart of it. His big grey eyes filled with tears; his lip wobbled. That he did not burst into howls was purely due to his sister's sudden grip on his arm, the signal that he must control himself. And she, small Stoic who would have died to please her father, stood straight and looked indomitable, no tear or wobble of the lip.

  "Mama has gone into exile," she said.

  "That is as good a way of putting it as any."

  “Is she still a citizen?'' asked Porcia in a voice very like her father's, no lilt or melody to it.

  "I cannot deprive her of that, Porcia, nor would I want to. What I have deprived her of is any participation in our lives, for she does not deserve to participate. Your mother is a bad woman. A slut, a whore, a harlot, an adultress. She has been consorting with a man called Gaius Julius Caesar, and he is all that the Patriciate stands for— corrupt, immoral, outmoded."