046 - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 46, Six Semper Tyrannis. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar stayed in Rome for an extended period for the first time since heading to Gaul some 12 years earlier. During the summer, he was joined by Queen Cleopatra, who visited the city as an honored guest. Somewhat awkwardly for Caesar, she brought with her the product of their affair, a small boy nicknamed Caesarion, or Little Caesar, who would prove to be the great general's only son. Though Cicero found her infuriating, and Calpurnia could not have been happy to see her husband's lover parading around their illegitimate child, Cleopatra charmed the city and was formally made a friend of Rome by the Senate. The Roman development of Egypt, long sought and long staved off by bribery, was now official.

Through the spring and summer, Caesar worked furiously on his reform projects, trying to salvage the Roman economy and restore stability to the empire. I would like to thank alert listener Dave for pointing out an error I made last week in recounting the changes to the calendar. It turns out that Caesar actually got his math wrong and inserted a leap day every three years rather than every four years. The mistake would stand for another 30 years until the reforms of Augustus. And speaking of corrections, I would also like to thank alert and longtime listener Detlef for pointing out that I got crossed up on my Roman numerals a few episodes back and referred to Mithridates the Great as Mithridates the Sixth rather than Mithridates the Fourth. Thanks guys for helping me keep everything straight.

At this point, Caesar still officially served as co-consul with Lepidus as his colleague and had not yet embraced the full-time role of dictator that he would be remembered for. While technically he was just another average Republican executive, in reality, the word of mere consul Julius Caesar was the undisputed law of the land. It felt good to finally wield the power he had sought for so long, and it felt doubly good that for the first time in years there were no enemies on the horizon threatening to take it all away.

As he remade the city, though, he received new reports of trouble in Spain. At first, he hoped to simply brush them aside. He had won the war. He was in power. He did not want to hear that the Sons of Pompey were raising more legions in Hispania to challenge his rule. Finally, though, he was forced to acknowledge the problem when word came that the ragtag remnants of the Senate's North African army was now 13 legions strong. Sigh.

So in the autumn of 46 BC, Caesar sent out from the city once again with two of his veteran legions marching to Spain in less than a month, gathering recruits along the way and joining with a force that had been raised in anticipation of his arrival. In the end, he marshaled some 40,000 to face off against the 70,000 raised by the Pompeys. Outnumbered again. Sigh. But the speed of his advance had taken his enemies by surprise, and Caesar was able to reclaim much of the territory taken by the Pompey brothers. With Caesar in country, and clearly every bit the general he had always been, soldiers on the other side began to get nervous and defect in droves. The Pompeys found themselves forced to challenge Caesar in battle immediately. If they waited any longer, they risked losing their whole army to defection.

So in March of 45 BC, on a slope outside the fortified city of Munda, the two sides met. Caesar was in the weaker position, but like always, he acted boldly and ordered his legions to charge up the hill. The battle was an extremely hard-fought, bloody affair. Caesar himself was recorded to have said afterwards that while he usually fought for victory, at Munda he fought for his life. Indeed, the battle was going against him for quite a while, until he personally took charge of the right wing and rallied his beleaguered troops. The Pompeyans reinforced the line in the face of Caesar's counterattack, but wound up losing the left as a result, allowing Caesar's cavalry to break through and surround them. Engulfed, the Pompeian army broke. The final numbers of 30,000 dead Pompeyans, to a mere 1,000 for Caesar, hide how close Caesar came to losing everything. But what hid nothing was the 13 legionary standards Caesar captured. Military resistance in Spain was shattered, and the sons of Pompey fled. One would be captured a few months later and executed, while the other would remain on the run for another decade before being caught and executed by Octavian.

Caesar remained in Spain for a few months, consolidating his rule and repairing the damage done by the corrupt and ruthless governor he had left in charge after winning the province in 49 B.C. Then, with autumn approaching and the situation in Spain dealt with, Caesar and his entourage headed back to Rome. Unlike his return to the city after the Alexandrian campaign, or after his victory at Thapsus, when he headed back to the capital this time, nowhere in the whole of the empire did there lurk an enemy army to challenge him. This time, he really was the undisputed master of Rome.

But of course, it does not take an army to bring down a single man. With every opposition army destroyed, Caesar's enemies turned to conspiracy. The object now was not to defeat Caesar, but to kill him. At first, it was only a hardcore contingent of enemies who thirsted for Caesar's blood, but his attitude after becoming sole master of the empire alienated many who were ambivalent to his rule and embittered many who had been his greatest friends.

Marc Antony, though, despite the recent falling out with his old friend and numerous overtures from the conspirators, refused to join the ranks of the disaffected plotters. His continued loyalty was well-received, and on his way back to Rome from Spain with his young great-nephew Octavian by his side, Caesar picked up Antony from his political doghouse in Gaul, and the two old friends patched things up. But while Antony's support never wavered, a man in whom Caesar's support for never wavered, Marcus Brutus, would soon find himself at the forefront of the plot to kill his would-be father figure.

The main controversy surrounding Caesar after his return to Rome in September 45 B.C., and the one that was the primary catalyst for his assassination, was the question of whether or not he was planning to have himself crowned king. Not being a dummy, Caesar always went to great lengths to prove that he had no desire to establish a monarchy, but the rumor persisted, and overt attempts to so crown him kept popping up quote-unquote spontaneously. Throughout the year 45, while he continued to serve officially as consul, this time he had not bothered with the formality of naming a colleague, and he seemed to be drifting more and more towards overt autocracy. And unfortunately for Caesar, just as his attitude was becoming more haughty, his grasp of public relations, once his greatest asset, began to slip.

First, Caesar proved that he had learned nothing from the outrage over his last triumph, and staged an official event to celebrate his victory in Spain. Again, the people of Rome were dismayed by a parade glorifying the defeat of their countrymen. The sons of Pompey may have been personal enemies of Caesar, but were they really public enemies of Rome?

Second, Caesar managed to get himself embroiled in a pointless public spat with Cicero over the legacy of Cato. The great orator had published a eulogy of his dead colleague, lavishly praising the old defender of the republican faith. Caesar flew into a rage, and against all good sense, wrote a scathing reply called the Anti-Cato, in which he lobbed every smear he could think of against his old rival. Cicero was taken aback by the fury of Caesar's reaction, but delighted in how unhinged the attack seemed. Cato may have meant a lot of things, but a drunken miser who pimped his wife was not among them, though the latter charge, through some tortured logic, had some basis and truth. Cato had divorced his wife so she could marry another, richer man, and then, when the new husband died, remarried her and reaped the rewards of her inheritance. The people of Rome, though, did not see what Caesar wanted them to see about Cato. They focused instead on his petulant hysterics, a side of Caesar they had never seen before and did not like. His enemies could not print copies of the Anti-Cato fast enough.

In the midst of these public offenses, little things kept popping up that renewed fears of Caesar's monarchical ambitions, and despite his protests, he certainly began to act the part of king. He secured the right to wear his triumphal regalia at public games, which may have seemed like no big deal, but the triumphal regalia was purple, just like the royal robes of old. Add to this the golden throne he had installed in the Senate House to sit in, and a pattern started to emerge. To top things off, he ordered that a statue of himself be carried along with the procession of gods that would make its way through the city on holy days. So not only was he planning to make himself king, but he was already claiming to be a god.

One morning, the citizens of Rome awoke to find that someone had placed a crown on a public statue of Caesar during the night. Two tribunes, vocal opponents of Caesar, ordered that the crown be removed, and made a great fuss about the outrage. And not long after this incident, while he made his way through town, Caesar was hailed as king by a man in the crowd. The same two tribunes had the man hauled off to stand trial, but Caesar ordered the man freed and instead turned his wrath against the two agitating tribunes, stripping them of their property and forcing them to resign from office. What remains a mystery is whether Caesar himself planted first the crown and then the man in the crowd as trial balloons, or whether the two tribunes hoping to score political points engineered both events, or whether one was engineered by one side and the other by the other, or whether they were both just signs of organic public support for a king Caesar. Whoever had done what, though, talk of monarchy was in the air.

For many who would take part in the assassination plot, though, the last straw was when a group of senators came to bestow upon Caesar a long list of new honors, father of the fatherland, imperator, that sort of thing, and Caesar had failed to rise to greet them. There are conflicting reports about whether Caesar was sick at the time, and the whole incident was blown out of proportion by his enemies, or whether he simply miscalculated the depth of the Senate's new subservience. But regardless, the story got out, and the rumor mill was fed.

Caesar downplayed all this kingly talk, but continued to consolidate power at the same time. He stepped down from the consulship in October, and placed two loyal politicians in the office, bypassing both the Senate and public elections. But his successors were just placeholders. Next he had the Senate formally appoint him dictator, but unlike his previous flirtations with the office, this time he would not be stepping down any time soon. He was granted a sequence of ten consecutive one-year terms as dictator, but even this proved not to be enough, and in early 44 B.C. he cast aside the expiration date, and had himself named dictator in perpetuity, dictator for life. He may not be a king, but it was in name only, and even the in name only part seemed destined to be cast aside, as Caesar had a priest announce a contrived prophecy that only a king could conquer the Parthian empire, and everyone knew that Caesar was planning, with the full support of the Roman people, to launch a war with Parthia to revenge the losses of Crassus. So if they wanted the mission to succeed, well, you heard the prophecy.

But the movement to make Caesar a king seems to have died in February of 44 B.C., during a rather strange, it was even considered strange by Roman standards, religious festival that involved men running through the streets naked. Mark Antony produced a laurel crown, announcing that the people had asked him to offer it to Caesar, but the reception from those same people seemed to indicate that they felt exactly the opposite. Roman crowds cheered when they approved of something, and were silent when they did not. When Antony offered the crown, you could have heard a pin drop. Caesar immediately read the crowd's reaction, and used the opportunity not to crown himself monarch as he may have planned, but to declare forcefully that Jupiter alone was the king of Rome. At this, the crowd exploded in cheers. They may accept autocracy, but they would never accept monarchy. Whether or not it was Caesar's plan all along to win support of the masses by engineering a very public rebuke of monarchy, it was clear that a king would not be conquering Parthia any time soon. It was a good thing for Caesar that the prophecy was a complete fabrication.

The last months of Caesar's life were consumed with this planned invasion of Parthia. He had already moved 16 legions and 10,000 cavalry across the Adriatic, and was preparing to launch his campaign in April of 44 BC. What Caesar had in mind seemed crazy for a man nearing the age of retirement, but his self-confidence was unwavering, and he dreamed of nothing less than the greatest series of conquests in Roman history, conquests to rival Alexander himself. Caesar planned to invade Parthia via Armenia, and after defeating the Parthians, which he took to be a foregone conclusion based off of what he had seen of their armies while passing through the east, he would march north through the Caucasus, pacifying the fierce nomadic tribes of the steppes, and then follow the Danube River back into Europe, capping off his run by conquering Germania. His plan, in short, was to return to Italy the greatest Roman who had ever lived. If only he had lived.

Caesar's enemies realized that time was running out for them to do something. It could be years before he was back in Rome, and if he managed to accomplish half of what he was setting out to do, there would be no stopping him upon his return. The people would beg Caesar to be their king. The republic would be destroyed forever. The time to act was now.

In the months since Caesar's victory in Spain, the list of conspirators had grown to some sixty names. Some, like Cassius, were on board because they had been Caesar's enemies from the start. Others, like Gaius Trebbianus, had been with Caesar from the time of the Gallic Wars, but felt sidelined in his new regime. In his zeal to embrace his enemies, Caesar had pushed aside the friends who had got him to where he was. To men like Trebbianus, Caesar was no longer a vehicle for their own personal ambition, but rather an obstacle in its path.

Finally, there were men like Marcus Brutus, the tortured Judas of the Ides of March, who seems to have simply been a republican idealist pushed into the plot by domineering friends. They reminded him constantly of his ancestor, Marcus Junius Brutus, who had led the revolution against the Tarquins and sworn the Romans to their sacred oath of opposing monarchy forever. Every night, on a statue of that Brutus, graffiti would appear asking if the Brutus name was dead. Though he loved Caesar personally, Brutus finally caved to the pressure and agreed to join the plot, and exploit the fact that he was the last person Caesar would suspect of treachery.

For the most part, the collection of plotters were personal rivals who, on any normal day, would have had nothing to do with each other. But this was no ordinary day. Today, they all agreed that Caesar must be killed.

Numerous assassination scenarios were hashed out, but the conspirators finally settled on a meeting of the Senate as the right time and place. Only Senators would be allowed into Pompey's Theater, which is where the body had temporarily moved to, leaving Caesar without the protection of his bodyguards. Formal senatorial togas would also allow the assassins to easily conceal their daggers, the agreed-upon murder weapon. The plan was simple. Lure Caesar into the Senate, surround him, and then stab him to death. With Caesar planning to leave Rome in just a few days, the conspirators also set a date, the 15th of March. Being the midpoint of the month, the 15th was also known by the name we are all familiar with today, the Ides of March.

Caesar awoke on the morning of the 15th and tried to go about his business as usual. There were final preparations to sort out before he left for the East, and the Senate had been called into the session that day so that he could review some new petition. Caesar had been warned previously by a soothsayer to be on guard on the Ides of March, and he was further troubled by the fevered nightmares of his wife Calpurnia, who had dreamed just that night of his death. His wife and friends begged him to listen to the ill omens that surrounded the day and stay home, and while Caesar considered the option, he was convinced by his old surrogate son Brutus that to ignore the Senate's request for his presence would be seen as a great insult. They were already assembled and awaiting his appearance. To simply blow them off would be the height of bad manners, and feed royal rumors. Caesar was convinced. He would go and humor the old man one last time before leaving for the simple comforts of his military tent. The worst he was likely to suffer listening to whatever overwrought petition the Senate had deemed worthy of his attention was acute boredom.

The petition, of course, was a fake, entered for public consideration by the plotting senators to lure their prey into a trap. Caesar made his way through the streets, carefully led by Brutus. Mark Antony had learned the night before that some plot was afoot, though he did not know the details of the plan, and hurried to try and warn Caesar, but Brutus carefully steered the dictator in through a back door. Antony was unable to reach him through the crowd.

Caesar took his place at the front of the chamber and requested the petition. The senator who brought the scroll forward handed it over, but as he did so he grabbed at Caesar's toga. Caesar was shocked by the move and exclaimed, why, this is violence. With Caesar held in place, another senator named Servilius Casca approached from behind and, pulling a dagger from his robes, stabbed at Caesar's throat. Military instinct taking over, Caesar dodged the attack and seized Casca's arm, crying, Casca, you villain, what are you doing? Casca, having lost the element of surprise, called out for his brothers to help him. At this word, the sixty members of the conspiracy rushed in and surrounded Caesar, stabbing at him recklessly. Caesar tried to run, but blinded by blood and confusion, tripped and fell. As he lay on the ground, the stabbing continued. In the end, all Caesar could do was cover his face with his toga and die in a pool of his own blood.

The legend surrounding the assassination has Caesar in anguish seeing Brutus among his attackers and crying either, you too, child? Or, in Shakespeare's poetic turn, et tu, Brute? But these last words did not begin to appear in the historical record until much later, and even then, as in the case of Suetonius, the quotes are simply noted but dismissed as inaccurate. A similar embellishment has Brutus crying, Sic semper tyrannis, thus always to tyrants, over Caesar's dead body. Dramatic and memorable, yes, but a complete fiction. Instead, the assassins are reported to have simply marched out of the chamber, leaving Caesar's body behind. They are said to have then paraded through the streets, announcing that they had killed Caesar and set Rome free. But to their surprise, they were not met as the liberators they imagined themselves to be. The people of Rome greeted them instead with stunned silence. Then they went home. Then they locked their doors. They knew that whatever stability Caesar had brought was about to be blown apart.

Julius Caesar died on the 15th of March, 44 B.C. He had been stabbed 23 times, though doctors determined that in the end only a single thrust to his heart had been fatal. He was the last and greatest of the old triumvirs, but in the end, just like Crassus and Pompey before him, he died a violent death, a victim of his own outsized ambition.

For a brief moment, the fate of Rome hung in the balance. Would the liberators, as they were now calling themselves, see their dream of a restored republic come true, or would Julius Caesar be revealed as merely a symptom of the disease that plagued Rome, rather than the cause? Next week, the full extent of the rod at the core of the republican system will be revealed. Mark Antony will turn the people against the supposed liberators, reminding the masses that all Caesar had ever done was remove the unjust chains placed upon them by greedy oligarchs. Brutus and Cassius, who fancied themselves heroes, will be driven from the city they thought they had saved, and Caesar's revealed heir, Gaius Octavius, the bright young great-nephew of the dead dictator, will make his first appearance on the public stage. The Romans will be forced to endure another thirteen years of chaos and civil war before they are once again granted peace. After all the violence, it will not matter to anyone that the peace will be guaranteed by the rule of a single man, Gaius Octavius, Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.