The overwhelming impression of Caesar from the other literary sources is of a man who not only carried out his religious duties, but also was receptive to divine
Communication through various types of divinatory practice. With the benefit of hindsight Suetonius seems to have constructed a Caesar who was divinely destined for power and conscious of his destiny. While Caesar’s career before his quaestorship seems marked only by an extraordinary ambition to succeed rather than by special, supernatural guidance or affirmation,4 his decision to embark on radical popularis policies was a direct consequence ( ergo) of the dream promising world rule that he received at Gades during a probable incubation at the temple of Hercules ( lul. 7-8; Fear 2005: 326). His Caesar accepts a divine epiphany at the Rubicon (32; Marinoni 2002: 278) and apparently gives credence to a haruspical prophecy that the owner of an extraordinary horse born on his estate would rule the world (61). Plutarch’s Caesar respects a dedication by the Arverni (26.4), performs the ceremony of lus-tratio before Pharsalus, and interacts with seers on favorable signs in sacrificial entrails (43.2). Appian’s Caesar sacrifices before (and after) Pharsalus, makes a vow, and interprets a portent in his own favor (B Civ. 2.68, 88), and prays ostentatiously before Munda (2.104). Dio’s Caesar uses religious language and ideas in a speech (38.40.1), outdoes Pompey in erecting an altar on the Pyrenees (41.24.3), strips the Capitol of all its offerings, but is encouraged by the interpretation given to the portent of a bull escaping sacrifice (41.39.1-3), plunders the temple of Hercules at Gades (43.39.4), accepts the portent of a shooting palm tree as relating to his own successes (43.41.1-3), and is ostentatiously devoted to Venus (43.43.3).
The ancient sources emphasize that he received a series of warnings on his last day: his own and Calpurnia’s dreams (Suet. lul. 81.3), doors opening ominously, and the arms of Mars rattled (Dio 44.17.2), inauspicious auspices and sacrificial victims at home on the morning of the Ides and at the door of the senate-house (Nic. Dam. 84, 86; App. B Civ. 2.115-16). But these same sources also show that Caesar did not dismiss the warnings out of hand; indeed, he had the haruspex repeat the sacrifices, but yielded finally to severe pressure from Decimus Brutus and others. In short, even as they spell out the disastrous consequences of Caesar’s actions, the ancients do not characterize him as a Flaminius, deliberately ignoring divine warnings and thereby bringing disaster on himself and the state.
Within the rubric on his military excellence Suetonius comments that Caesar was never delayed or deterred by any religious scruple from an enterprise that he had begun (59) and illustrates this with three examples from the African campaign. The sacrificial victim escaped as he sacrificed at the beginning of the campaign; he slipped as he disembarked, but immediately saved the situation by crying out ‘‘I have hold of you, Africa’’ (cf. Dio 42.58.2-3; Front. Strat. 1.12.2), and he successfully nullified the prophecies that seemed to indicate victory for his opponent Metellus Scipio on the basis of his name by adding to his own staff an ignoble Scipio (cf. Plut. Caes. 52.2; Dio 42.57.5-58.1). None of these instances marks out Caesar as a general ‘‘despiser of portents’’ (cf. App. B Civ. 2.152: shmslrav fpegopThB). Rather, Suetonius presents Caesar as a skillful employer of the freedom that was fundamental to Roman religion, in which there was no place for determinism (e. g. Lateiner 2005: 56).
Caesar seems to ignore divine warnings inappropriately only in one area of the Etruscan discipline, namely when they were mediated to him via members of the Order of LX haruspices (Zecchini 2001: 65-76; cf. Montero 2000: esp. 236-44).
This body, the expertise of which in respect to portents the Senate recognized, was comprised of members of the Etruscan elite (e. g. Cic. Div. 1.92). Lower-level haru-spices, such as assisted at sacrifices on campaign, attracted no criticism from Caesar (Dio 41.39.2; Plut. Caes. 43.2; Polyaen. 8.32-3). But Cicero records (Div. 2.52) that the summus haruspex (possibly identical with Spurinna) personally warned Caesar against embarking on his African campaign in late 47, and was ignored. In February 44, when no heart could be found in the sacrificial victim Caesar had offered, Spurinna explained this as indicating danger to Caesar’s life; on the next day, when no caudate lobe ( caput) could be found on a new victim (Cic. Div. 1.119), Spurinna appears to have set a time limit for Caesar to beware the danger (Suet. lul. 81.2;Plut. Caes. 63.3) which he notoriously mocked on the Ides (Val. Max. 8.11.2). It seems that the elite from southern Etruria had followed Pompey and that Spurinna’s latter warning was a direct challenge to Caesar’s assumption of the perpetual dictatorship (cf. Rawson 1978: 132-46; Aigner-Foresti 2000: esp. 11-18). Caesar’s fraught relations with the Order of LX haruspices, then, derive from his anger at their political bias during and after the Civil War, rather than from derision of their divinatory science per se.
Great debate surrounds the notion of Caesar’s Fortune - did he ‘‘believe’’ that his successes emanated from his being a favorite of the goddess? The evidence of his own works is not conclusive, but it seems plausible that, while the idea was common currency (cf. Cic. Fam. 1.9.7), the major military reverses Caesar suffered in Gaul from 54 ensured that he treated the notion cautiously. In his Bellum Gallicum chance/fortune is predominantly the unforeseeable element in warfare that can sometimes be influential (e. g. 2.21, 5.44, 6.30, 34-5, 42) rather than a quality given to a general (cf. BG 4.26), although that is present (Cupaiuolo 1984: 9-14; Champeaux 1987: 259-67). His special fortune was a part of Caesar’s propaganda from the start of the Civil War (cf. Cic. Att. 7.11.1) and after his victory (Cic. Deiot. 19, 21) was celebrated on the coinage of 44 (RIC i. 480 no. 25).
World History
