From his teenage years Caesar was surrounded by a household of women. His mother, Aurelia, who lived down to 54 BC, was included in the list of model Roman mothers along with Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Augustus’ mother, Atia (Tac. Dial. 28). Mothers are frequently credited with playing an important part in the early education of aristocratic young men, particularly in families, such as Caesar’s, where the father dies early in the son’s life. Caesar’s married life seems unexceptional by the standards of the times (Pompey had five wives). Marriages among the Roman Republican elite were motivated by the same mixture of dynastic, political, and personal considerations as in all aristocratic societies. His breaking off of his betrothal to Cossutia may have been in part motivated by the religious taboos associated with the post of flamen Dialis. His marriage to Cornelia was marked by Caesar’s stubborn refusal to divorce her, when Sulla demanded it, and by what
Plutarch suggests was the wholly unprecedented funeral oration Caesar delivered when she died in 69 BC (Plut. Caes. 5), which may be indications of a relationship which was personal rather than political. His divorce of his next wife, Pompeia, was the occasion for his comment, ‘‘I consider that members of my family ought to be free from suspicion as well as accusation’’ (Suet. lul. 74). But the context for the remark was the trial of Publius Clodius for his possible involvement in the defiling of the Bona Dea ceremony. Caesar had refused to give evidence in the trial (the ceremony had taken place in his own house, but, of course, he was not present). The prosecution then argued that his divorce of Pompeia was itself evidence that he believed the story of a liaison between Pompeia and Clodius. Caesar’s response is meant to declare that he did not believe the story, but as Pontifex Maximus he needed to be above scandal. The subsequent marriage to Calpurnia must have been affected by the fact that Caesar was apart from her for so much of the time; but according to Plutarch (Caes. 53.4), on the night before his murder he was sharing his bed with her, ‘‘as he usually did.’’
Caesar’s marriage relationships are not the end of the story. In Rome confining sexual activity to the marriage bed was sufficiently unusual to be worthy of comment (Val. Max. 4.3.3) and was clearly not expected as the norm for husbands. But there were limits. As the Elder C. Scribonius Curio comprehensively summed it up in a speech, Caesar was ‘‘every woman’s man and every man’s woman’’ (Suet. lul.
52.3). Curio was hardly a dispassionate commentator. He was a fierce and vocal opponent of Caesar before and during the consulship of 59 BC and is cited by Suetonius as the source of other abuse of Caesar, much of it for his alleged sexual misbehavior (lul. 9.2-3, 49.1, 50.1; the sources were probably Curio’s speeches rather than a pamphlet he wrote later in the 50s in which, according to Cicero (Brut. 218), he railed at length against Caesar (multis verbis cum inveheretur in Caesarem)). But it is the nature of the charge which is somewhat startling to modern sensibilities. Roman society drew the boundaries of what was acceptable in sexual behavior in a distinctive way. Caesar is accused of being both a passive homosexual and a womanizer. The two charges were often linked (see below on Catullus 57), and Craig Williams (1999) has shown clearly that the distinction between ‘‘homosexual’’ and ‘‘heterosexual’’ plays little or no role in Roman males’ construction of themselves and their sexual behavior. The essence of the Roman conception of‘‘manliness’’ was that the man was an active penetrator, whether what he penetrated was male or female. So, first of all, Caesar was seen as offending against this norm by allowing himself as an adult to be penetrated. This was not acceptable in the Roman view of sexual probity (pudicitia). However, it was also recognized that many features of what was thought of as effeminacy, such as excessive interest in clothing, appearance, and depilation, could also make a man attractive to women. The successful pursuit of women might be seen as laudable machismo, but it also had its limits of acceptability. What lies behind Curio’s accusation was that Caesar’s affairs were with married women. As his troops shouted at his triumph, he was ‘‘the bald-headed adulterer.’’ Adultery in Caesar’s day was dealt with mainly within the family. However, it was possible for the head of the household to bring a charge of iniuria (injury) against the man involved, in effect to sue him for the damage done to the family reputation.
As so often, the accusation of this sort of behavior carried over into political rhetoric because the flagrant ignoring of social norms and of the obligations of friendship towards one’s peers by seducing their wives was a characteristic of the tyrant. So, for example, later, an important part of the construction of the bad reputation of the Emperor Nero was his relations with his entourage’s wives.
The two strands to Curio’s charge are taken up by Suetonius. In lul. 50 he introduces the long list of Caesar’s alleged affairs with women as illustrations of the view that Caesar was eager and extravagant in his love affairs (pronum et sumptuosum in libidines), and in lul. 49 he cites Caesar’s alleged sexual submission to Nicomedes IV, the King of Bithynia.
In 81 BC the young Caesar went to serve as a junior officer in Asia, where the governor, M. Minucius Thermus, sent him on a diplomatic mission to the aging King of Bithynia Nicomedes. Caesar was a natural choice for such a job. His name would have been known to Nicomedes, because Caesar’s father had governed Asia earlier. For some reason Caesar stayed longer than expected at the court and, indeed, returned soon after to Bithynia to arrange the settlement of a debt (Suet. lul. 2). A connection was to remain between Caesar and Nicomedes; he was later to speak in the senate in defense of Nicomedes’ daughter, Nysa, and was ready to list the favors shown to him by Nicomedes. The original gossip about what attracted Caesar to Bithynia circulated among Roman traders in the province, who had been present at one of the banquets thrown by Nicomedes (Suet. lul. 49 - evidence, such as it is, which was exploited much later by Gaius Memmius, a fierce critic of Caesar). At that dinner Caesar is alleged to have acted as cupbearer to the king, which in the Roman mind would have immediately conjured up the picture of Ganymede, Jupiter’s beloved cupbearer. Others added further details of Caesar lying on his couch dressed in purple, and of him being escorted to meet the king in his bedchamber. It was an easy step, and perhaps in the atmosphere of Rome an inevitable one, to turn all this into a story of Caesar being seduced by Nicomedes, a much older man, and submitting to him. The story is very largely the creation of the Roman mentality which was perennially suspicious of the social mores of the Greek world and of the seductive attractions of the courts of the Hellenistic rulers. However, it was a gift to critics throughout Caesar’s career; even Suetonius is startled by the length of the list of references to it, which he was able to collect (lul. 49). Every major opponent of Caesar - Licinius Calvus, the Elder Curio, C. Memmius, M. Brutus, and Cicero in both speeches and private correspondence - alludes to it. During the fierce exchanges between Caesar and his fellow consul, M. Bibulus in 59 BC, Bibulus referred to Caesar in his official edicts as ‘‘Queen of Bithynia.’’ Clearly the accusation deeply irritated Caesar. In the cut and thrust of debate in the senate he could laugh it off with a joke of his own devising (Suet. lul. 22.2).
Again, Caesar did not hide the fact that he was offended by the poems of Catullus that attacked his character in a similar way; but the reconciliation after an apology was not that difficult, given the fact that Caesar had been on close and friendly terms with the poet’s father (Suet. lul. 73) (see Steel, chapter 9, p. 118). The offending poem was certainly Catullus 57 (Suetonius describes it as ‘‘inflicting a lasting stain (perpetua stigmata) on Caesar’s name,’’ which picks up the references to ‘‘stains’’ (maculae) in the poem itself):
They get on well together those wretched poofs (cinaedi), those effeminates, Mamurra and Caesar. No wonder. Equal stains, one from the city and one from Formiae, deeply permeate them both and will not be washed out. Diseased alike, these twin brothers, both on one sofa, dilettantes both, one as greedy in adultery as the other, partners and rivals in the pursuit of young girls. They get on well together those wretched poofs.
These are the same familiar attacks on Caesar’s personal behavior. It was probably no accident that Catullus was a friend of Gaius Licinius Calvus, whose verses also offended Caesar. Such poems belong to the powerful tradition of literary lampooning, often in iambic verse (see Catullus 54: ‘‘my iambics’’), which goes back particularly to Archilochus. It is often thought that such verses have no real political import. But the boundaries are not clear. Catullus 29, an attack on both Pompey and Caesar, is composed of phrases taken directly from the political debates of the time (Pompey and Caesar are said to have ‘‘ruined everything’’ (perdidistis omnia) - the exact phrase used in a contemporary letter of Cicero (Att. 2.21.1)) (Minyard 1971: 176-8). Equally Bibulus’ attacks on Caesar in his consular declarations could be described by Cicero as ‘‘Archilochean’’ (Archilochea edicta). Catullus’ personal abuse of Caesar was in a broad sense ‘‘political’’ and hence was taken seriously by Caesar.
That the personal attacks hit home is shown late in his life with Caesar’s petulant response to the chants of his own troops at his Gallic triumph (‘‘Caesar conquered Gaul, Nicomedes conquered Caesar’’). He went to the serious lengths of swearing an oath that the story of his liaison with Nicomedes was not true. However, as so many victims of tabloid journalism in more recent times have also found, the promptness of his response only fueled the suspicions further (Dio 43.20.4).
Caesar’s alleged affairs with foreign queens share many of the suspicious features of the Nicomedes story. Bogud, king of Mauretania, provided troops for Caesar’s campaigns in Spain and Africa. Caesar is supposed to have had an affair with his wife, Eunoe. But the evidence was simply the many lavish gifts which Caesar gave Bogud and Eunoe - hardly surprising in viewof Bogud’s aid to him (Suet. lul. 52). In any case, the source of the story of an affair was M. Actorius Naso, author of at least one other anti-Caesarian tale (Suet. lul. 9.3).
It is the act of a true spoilsport to seek to cast doubt on Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra VII of Egypt; but it may need to be done. Like his sojourn with Nicomedes, Caesar’s stay in Egypt of up to nine months between October 48 and the summer of 47 BC was seen as unusually long. There were lavish feasts. There was a royal progress up the Nile (Suet. lul. 52). In short, there were all the sorts of thing which made the Greek East such a morally treacherous place in the eyes of some Romans, but which in reality were no more than the usual diplomatic exchanges between Roman leaders and Hellenistic rulers. Caesar had to deal with a complex and fraught situation, once he had taken the decision to back Cleopatra’s claim to the throne of Egypt. That took time to sort out. Back in Rome, people, such as Cicero (Att. 11.18.1, 11.25.2), were anxious to know of Caesar’s movements and when he would be likely to be back in Rome. Then some time later Cleopatra herself arrives in Rome with her husband. This event must surely be associated with Caesar’s celebration of his triumphs in September and October 46 BC. The purpose of the visit was to provide luster for Caesar’s celebrations and it was also diplomatic. Cleopatra and her husband were declared ‘‘friends and allies of the Roman people’’ (Dio 43.27.3). Suspicious minds pointed out these honors and the lavish gifts which accompanied them (Suet. lul. 52). There was also the fact that a gold statue of Cleopatra was placed in the Temple ofVenus in Julius Caesar’s new forum (Dio 51.22.3). However, this was only one of a range of paintings, statues, and objets d’art which were placed within the temple. The true purpose of the collection is revealed by the fact that one of the dedications by Caesar was a corselet made up of small British pearls with an inscription which made clear where the pearls had come from (Pliny HN. 9.116). The collection, or at least some of it, was designed to be a reminder of Caesar’s achievement. So the statue was not the curious dedication of a besotted lover, but a reminder of Caesar’s accomplishments and of his association with the great monarchs of the Hellenistic East.
For some, then as now, the proof of the liaison was the young boy, Ptolemy Caesar, called by the Alexandrians ‘‘Caesarion,’’ who Cleopatra and others claimed was Caesar’s son. However, nothing is heard of this child until after Caesar’s murder. The likelihood is that he was not even born until after the Ides. Plutarch ( Caes. 49) ends his account of Caesar’s stay in Egypt in 47 BC with: ‘‘a little later she had a son by him whom the Alexandrians call Caesarion.’’ However, in his life of Antony (Ant.
54.3) he states that the boy ‘‘was thought to be the son of Caesar who had left Cleopatra pregnant,’’ possibly implying that the child was born after Caesar’s death. The first definite mention of the child is in a letter of Cicero (Att. 14.20.2) of May 11, 44 BC, where he briefly remarks, ‘‘I hope it is true about the queen and that Caesar of hers too.’’ In 43 BC the boy appears in an inscription as ‘‘Ptolemy Caesar’’ (OGIS 194.1). The existence of a natural child of Caesar was a serious threat to Octavian and a gift to his opponents. So the truth, even if recoverable, soon disappeared in a flood of propaganda from both sides. While Antony was prepared to claim in the senate that Caesar’s close friends knew the child was his, C. Oppius, one of those friends and supporters, produced a work to refute the case (Suet. Iul. 50.2).
Never-ending gossip (constans opinio) added an impressive list of the wives of close associates within the elite to Caesar’s conquests (Suet. Iul. 50): Postumia, wife of the legal expert Servius Sulpicius Rufus; Lollia, wife of Pompey’s close political supporter Aulus Gabinius; Crassus’ wife Tertulla; and one of Pompey’s wives, Mucia. The main ‘‘evidence’’ in the case of Mucia, for instance, was the fact that Pompey divorced her. Yet Pompey never gave a reason in public for his action and it was left to one of the usual suspects, the Elder Curio, again to exploit the gossip in an attempt to split Pompey from Caesar in 59 BC. The most notorious of these alleged liaisons was supposed to have been with Servilia, mother of Marcus Brutus, which raised the possibility that the assassin of Caesar was in fact his son. This in turn added savor to the stories of Caesar’s last words to Brutus (‘‘And the same to you, son!’’; Suet. Iul. 82.2) and that Brutus’ own blow was aimed at Caesar’s groin (Plut. Caes. 66.6). But again the evidence for the liaison consists of a costly gift from Caesar to Servilia, a salacious witticism of Cicero, a mysterious exchange between Caesar and Cato in the debate on the fate of the Catilinarians on December 5, 63 BC, and suspicions that Caesar went out of his way to save Brutus’ life at Pharsalus (Suet. lul. 50.2; Macrob. Sat. 2.2.5, Plut. Brut. 5; App. B Civ. 2.112). If, as seems likely, Brutus was born in 85 BC, the paternity of Caesar seems deeply improbable (Cic. Brut. 324; see also Syme 1980b).
In all this there is a strong inclination to suggest that there is no smoke without fire. This attitude is precisely what the debased popular press of our own era thrives upon. It becomes the historian at least to emphasize the fragility of the evidence and the way that evidence was embedded within the political rhetoric of the period.
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