With the accession of Tiberius came a new era and a new perspective: Tiberius embodied the proof that the principate was an enduring system, not a peculiar novelty. Among the writers of the period there was no ambiguity in their praise of Caesar, who ceases to serve as a foil for Augustus and appears in his own right as the divine founder of the line of Caesars, the ultimate victor over his assassins and a heroic figure amid the death throes of the republic.
This being so, it should occasion no surprise that Caesar appears far more frequently than either Augustus or Tiberius in the nine books of memorable deeds and sayings composed by Valerius Maximus in the middle of Tiberius’ principate. As with the Augustan authors, Valerius characterizes Caesar in relation to prominent aspects of his career (Wardle 1997). The adopted father of Augustus now becomes the divine founder of the line of Caesars (1, praef., 2.1.10 and 8.15 praef.; Donie 1996: 95; Wardle 1997: 345), and it may be that Valerius was the first author (and the last for some time) who understood Caesar to be the first Princeps (Wickert, RE 22.2 (1954), s. v. ‘‘princeps,’’ 2025; Donie 1996: 101; cf. Ovid’s reference to Caesar as princeps at Fasti 3.697). Caesar’s murder, which provided the justification for the early career of Octavian in the Augustan ideology, becomes in Valerius an act of parricide against the State but one that ends not with the death of Caesar but with his divinity (1.5.7, 6.13, 8.8, 4.5.6, 6.8.4; Bloomer 1992: 210-11). Valerius does not avoid incidents in the career of Caesar that reflected unfavorably on him. He describes how Cato was escorted to jail by the whole senate after his arrest by the consul Caesar in 59 BC (2.10.7), and Valerius is unique in recounting a story of Caesar’s demand that the father of Caesetius, a tribune Caesar had exiled, disown his son and the father’s courageous refusal (5.7.2). But Caesar is only a secondary character in these exempla, the main purposes of which are to illustrate the prestige of Cato and the love of a father. More significant are converse examples where the assassin Brutus or Cassius is credited with some positive act or quality but then is excoriated by Valerius for having raised his hand against Caesar (3.1.3, 6.4.5). Caesar’s famed and now divine clemency Valerius celebrates in relation to his dictatorial power, for it was only the summa clementia of Caesar that kept Caesetius’ father from coming to harm (5.7.2). In a similar way, it was only due to Caesar’s heart, ‘‘milder than gentleness itself’’ (ipsa mansuetudine mitiuspectus, 6.2.11) that Servius Galba was not ejected from court after he objected to Caesar’s auction of Pompeius’ property.
Caesar is presented in a very different but no less adulatory way in the summary universal history ofVelleius Paterculus. Writing at just about the same time as Valerius Maximus, the historian never refers to Caesar’s divinity or divus Iulius. As in Nicolaus, Velleius’ Caesar is a mortal Roman, but one whose accomplishments and virtue exceed all who came before. In Velleius there appears the first extant portrait of the heroic and tragic Caesar so familiar from later authors: a charismatic conqueror and eminent statesman forced to civil war by the intransigence of his opponents and who, when he had vanquished and pardoned them, became the victim of his own clemency. Velleius seems deliberately to avoid the approach of Sallust by not pairing Cato and Caesar in his account of the debate over the Catilinarian conspirators where the character and role of Cato are presented without mention of Caesar (2.35.1-4). But from the year 59, Caesar is the dominant figure in Velleius’ narrative down to his assassination (2.41-57). Ever concerned about pace and space (festinatio et brevitas), Velleius pauses to praise Caesar’s ancestry, beauty, keen mind, superhuman courage, and generosity - as a military leader he was only to be compared with Alexander himself, but only in the latter’s sober moments (2.41.1). Velleius even takes time to provide a detailed account of Caesar’s kidnapping by pirates and his punishment of them to demonstrate that the courage and decisiveness of Caesar the general and statesman were already present in the young adult (2.41.3-42.3). Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul were great achievements (immanes res) and in undertaking his invasion of Britain it was as though Caesar was ‘‘seeking to add another world to our empire’’ (2.56.1), although Velleius tactfully avoids mentioning that his two invasions of that island failed. Velleius (2.44.1) admits that the pact of Caesar, Pompeius, and Crassus was destructive for the state (societas potentiae exitiabilis), but by Velleius’ time this may have become a standard view that implied no great criticism of Caesar (cf. Woodman: 1983 ad loc.). Velleius follows the line of Caesar himself in his commentarii that the Dictator did all in his power to avoid conflict with Pompeius (2.48.5, 49.3, 50.2). But when it came, despite the fact that Pompeius, supported by the senate, seemed to have the better cause, which a person of old Roman values (vir antiquus et gravis) could laud, the pragmatist (prudens) would follow Caesar, who had the full support of his soldiers (2.49.2-3). This judgment of Velleius betrays an ambivalent attitude that both admired the lost republic even as it conceded its inevitable decline and so absolved Caesar of direct responsibility for it. Velleius’ explanation of Caesar’s assassination contains the elements found in later biographers and historians. His famed clementia toward defeated opponents, while a marvelous practice in itself, sowed the seeds of his own murder since those who were forgiven formed the conspiracy against him (2.52.4-6, 56.1, 3). In contrast to Nicolaus’ characterization of Caesar as an imperceptive victim, Velleius (as Manilius) presents what would become the standard explanation of the murder of Caesar. In light of so many signs that portended the event, it was the power of destiny ( vis fatorum) that confounded the judgment of so keen-minded and successful a statesman (2.57.2-3). Caesar would better have followed the advice of old friends, to hold with arms the position he had won by arms (2.57.1).
Writing at the end of Tiberius’ principate, Seneca the Elder in his collection of material for declamation demonstrates that Caesar had already become a fixture in the rhetorical schools. Like Valerius Maximus (5.1.10), Seneca found in Caesar’s weeping at the sight of the severed head of his son-in-law Pompeius an exemplum of the effect of family ties even on the most bitter of enemies ( Cont. 10.3.1). And Caesar could play his role in what would become a favorite rhetorical topos, the death of Cicero. In contrast to the intolerable behavior of Antonius toward Cicero during the proscriptions, Caesar’s pardon of Cicero after the battle of Pharsalus was acceptable. At least the crumbling republic had fallen into the hands of a good master (bonus princeps, Suas. 7.1).
Under Tiberius, facets of Caesar - his divinity, clementia, and victory over his assassins - that were prominent in the literature of the Augustan era became codified as beneficent aspects of the transition from failing republic to tranquil principate. At the same time, Velleius already presents many of the themes that would become standard by the early second century AD in the biographies and historical accounts of Caesar.
World History
