The type is distinct. They are the well-to-do, the sound, the honest who do no wrong to any man. The object at which they aim is quiet with honor. They are the conservatives of the State. Religion and good government, the Senate’s authority, the laws and customs of our ancestors, public faith, integrity, sound administration—these are the principles on which they rest, and these they will maintain with their lives. Their path is perilous. The enemies of the State are stronger than its defenders; they are bold and desperate, and go with a will to the work of destruction… The people are conservative at heart; the demagogues cannot rouse them, and are forced to pack the Assembly with hired gangs. Take away these gangs, stop corruption at the elections, and we shall all be of one mind. The people will be on our side. The citizens of Rome are not Populates, They hate the Populates, and prefer honorable men.

 

But the patricians who supported the Optimates had forgotten nothing, learned nothing, and were every whit as violent and unscrupulous as the party that Cicero castigated. If one conceives of Rome as resembling one of the more notorious South American “Republics” of today, it is possible to gain some idea of the world in which Caesar was born and grew up.

 

 

 

2

 

Beginnings

 

DURING the seventh and last consulship of Marius, Caesar had been observed by the great man (he was a friend of his uncle’s adopted son) and had been marked out for future advancement.

One of the many victims of the civil war between the Populates and the Optimates had been the noble L. Cornelius Merula, the flamen dialis or priest of Jupiter, who had committed suicide on the victory of the popular party four years before. One of the requirements for filling this office, one of the highest priestly positions in Rome, was patrician birth and the priest must also only marry a patrician; so the decision that Caesar should be flamen dialis may have been part of the reason for the breaking of his engagement to Cossutia, for Cinna’s daughter was patrician. However, the office of priest of Jupiter was very ancient, and hedged around by so many traditions and taboos that the man who accepted it was very much a prisoner of his priestly status. He had to wear traditional old-fashioned heavy garments, be “the man of only one woman,” never be absent for more than two consecutive nights from Rome, and, most important of all, never hold any other public office. It is highly unlikely that the austere, peaceful life of a priest would have suited Caesar, and to be debarred from all forms of political or military activity would have effectively castrated his whole career.

He was saved from this by a volte-face in Roman affairs, when his father-in-law Cinna was murdered by his own soldiers and the Optimates under the leadership of Sulla swept to power after a decisive victory in further civil war. Immediately everything was changed. From being the nephew of the dead Marius, and the son-in-law of the all-powerful Cinna with the expectation of considerable honor, Caesar was now seen as intimately connected with the party that was disgraced and out of power—and Sulla was determined to restore all favors to the aristocrats and the senate. A terrible proscription was organized not only in Rome but throughout Italy. The popular party was to be extirpated, its leading members killed and their property seized. No one, in fact, was safe, as Sulla’s friends were quick to place on the lists of the proscribed the names of their personal enemies. Sulla, appointed dictator so long as he judged necessary, held the whole Roman world in his grasp.

Caesar was soon acquainted with the change of circumstances. His cousin, the young Marius, who had had himself unconstitutionally elected to the consulship in the year of Sulla’s triumph, committed suicide. Caesar, however, had taken no part in politics or the war, being groomed for his future priestly office. But he remained immensely vulnerable, being in the very heart of the Marian-Cinnan network of blood relationships. His youth, his political and military non-involvement, and the very holiness of the office for which he had been intended, may have been the reasons why he was spared when so many others, with no equivalent entanglements, were daily being murdered. Instead of sending orders for Caesar’s execution, the dictator summoned him for an interview, and there seems little doubt that Sulla wished to draw this young patrician into his own party. But there was a condition required for this act of conciliation. He must put away his wife Cornelia and, though this is only guesswork, presumably marry somebody chosen by Sulla.

Few men in Caesar’s position in the Rome of that time would have done anything but renounce their wife and marry any woman that Sulla designated. Caesar’s certainly unexpected reply was to refuse to divorce Cornelia.