The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (32 page)

Fanatics occasionally are able to penetrate into his house where they are mistaken for assassins. One of these prowlers, dagger in hand, was surprised one night near to where Caesar was sleeping. A summary trial was held on the spot and Caesar himself conducted the interrogation. The man was all but incoherent, but not with fear. As the interview proceeded he lay on the floor gazing ecstatically at the Dictator’s face and babbling that all he wanted was ‘one drop of Caesar’s blood with which to sanctify himself.’ Caesar, to the consternation of the guards and servants who had collected, asked him many questions and finally extracted from him the whole story of his life. This close interest, which many a consul has not been able to arouse, raised the poor man’s veneration to a still more delirious state and at the end he was imploring Caesar to kill him with his own hand.

Turning to the bystanders, Caesar is reported to have said with a smile: ‘It is often difficult to distinguish hate from love.’

Caesar’s physician Sosthenes to dinner.

He was talking about the effect of Caesar on others.

‘Of what other men have such stories been told and believed?

‘Until recently scores of ill persons were placed nightly by their families to sleep against the wall which surrounds his house. They have been driven away; now you will see them, row by row, lying under and around his statues. On his journeys farmers beseech him to plant his foot on their less productive fields.

‘And the stories! You hear them in the soldiers’ songs; you see them in verses and drawings scrawled in public places. It is said that he was conceived by his mother of a bolt of lightning; that he was born through her mouth or ear; that he came into the world without organs of generation and that those he ultimately possessed were grafted onto him from a mysterious stranger he met among the oak trees of the Temple of Zeus at Dodona whom he slew for that purpose; or that they came from a statue of Zeus by Phidias. There is no abnormality that has not been charged against him and it is believed that, like Jupiter, he has predilections within the animal kingdom. It is widely held that he is literally the father of his country and that he has left hundreds of children in Spain, Britain, Gaul, and Africa.

‘And yet superstition and popular belief do not shrink from inconsistency. It is said, on the other hand, that he guards so austere a continence that the unchaste feel intolerable pain when he passes near them.

‘What man, what mere man, has fired the imaginations of the people to so luxuriant a body of legend? And now that Cleopatra has come to town, what do we not hear? – Cleopatra, the rich mud of the Nile. Go to the taverns, go to the barracks – the heads of the Roman people are swimming at the thought of those embraces. We are celebrating the nuptials of the Unconquered Sun and the Fecund Earth.

‘I am his physician. I have tended that body through convulsions and have bound its wounds. Yes, it is mortal; but we physicians learn to listen to our patients’ bodies as musicians listen to the various lyres which are placed in their hands. His is bald, aging, and covered with the wounds received from many wars; but every portion is informed by mind. Its powers of self-repair are extraordinary. Illness is discouragement. The illness from which Caesar suffers is the one illness which denotes overreaching enthusiasm. It is related to the character of his mind.

‘The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men’s. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is a sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.

‘It may be that he lacks some forms of imagination. It is very certain that he gives little thought to the past and does not attempt to envisage the future clearly. He does not cultivate remorse and does not indulge in aspiration.

‘From time to time he permits me to put him through certain tests. I ask him to exercise strenuously, then lie in repose while I engage in various observations, and so on. During one of these enforced immobilities he asked me, ‘If I were to escape assassination and live into old age, of what organ’s weakness, would I die?’ ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘of an apoplexy.’ He seemed very pleased. I knew what was in his mind. There are two things he dreads: physical pain, to which he is most unusually sensitive, and indecorousness.

‘At another time he asked me whether there were any pressure or action whereby a man might put an end to his life quickly and without bloodshed. I showed him three and I have no doubt that since that day he has regarded me with particular affection and gratitude.

‘I, in turn, have learned much from him. I used to think that eating, sleeping, and the satisfaction of the sexual appetite were best regulated by the formation of habits. I now believe with him that they are best served by responding to them at the first prompting. I have thereby not only lengthened my day, but liberated my spirit.

‘Oh, it is an extraordinary man. These legends have, in their way, a just base; but with one difference. Caesar does not love, nor does he inspire love. He diffuses an equable glow of ordered good will, a passionless energy that creates without fever, and which expends itself without self-examination or self-doubt.

‘Let me whisper to you: I could not love him and I never leave his presence without relief.’

From a Report of Caesar’s Secret Police.

Subject 496: Artemisia Baccina, midwife, healer, and fortuneteller, resident in the suburb of the Goat. Under interrogation, Subject 496 confessed to having been present at rites celebrated by the Confraternity of the Buried Sun. Said there were ten or twelve chapters in Rome. (See Subjects 371 and 391.) Finally under intensive interrogation said the Confraternity was headed by Amasius Lenter (Subject 297, executed August 12.) Rites open with slow torture and death of a black pig, black cock, etcetera, and concluded with veneration of a vial of blood, said to be the blood of the Dictator. Subject is being deported to Sicily and placed under vigilance of the police there.

From Notes left by Pliny the Younger.

[
Written about a century later
.]

Curious. My gardener reported that the following belief is widely held by the common people. On my walks I have questioned vine dressers, hucksters, and others and find this report confirmed.

They believe that the body of Julius Caesar was not burned after his assassination (though we have no doubt of that), but that an organisation or mystery cult seized it and dividing it into many pieces, buried each piece under one of the wards of Rome. They declare that Caesar knew of an old prophecy which affirmed that the survival and greatness of Rome was dependent on his murder and dismemberment.

Announcement by the Queen of Egypt.

[
October 26
.]

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, [
etcetera, etcetera
] regrets that the Reverend College of the Vestal Virgins will be unable to attend her reception tomorrow evening.

Arrangements have been made, however, to receive the Reverend College at three o’clock on that day.

With the concordance of the Supreme Pontiff and the Reverend President of the College a performance will be given at that time of

The great Coming-Forth of Horus,

The beauty of Osiris,

The attack upon the Neshmet Boat,

The Lord of Abydos comes to his Palace.

The portions of these ceremonies which are unsuitable for presentation in the evening will be rendered in all their solemnity before the dedicated guests in the afternoon.

The Queen of Egypt will graciously receive the Reverend Maids at that time.

Caesar to Cleopatra.

[
October 29
.]

All Rome talks of the magnificence of the Queen’s reception; the more discriminating return repeatedly to speak of her royal deportment, of her arts as a hostess, of her discretion, and of the spell of her beauty.

I am permitted to speak of my love and admiration which will never grow less.

My visits to the great Queen will be less frequent in the days that lie ahead, but I adjure her never to doubt my love nor my unceasing attention to the welfare of her country.

It would give me great pleasure to receive the Queen more frequently in my home. I am requesting the actress Cytheris to give lessons to my wife in the declamation and gestures that are required of her at the Mysteries of the Good Goddess. As you are to be present at that reunion also, I think you would derive much interest from these lessons – though far be it from me to imply that the Queen has anything to learn in beauty of speech or in dignity of port.

At the close of the lessons I feel certain that Cytheris will not refuse any wish you may express to hear her declaim passages from the Greek and Roman tragedies – a privilege which our descendants will envy us.

The Lady Clodia Pulcher is retiring to her villa in the country for a time. I think it is fitting that you should know that I indicated this move to her some time ago, though she asked permission to remain in the City until the day following your reception. The reason for this withdrawal springs from a matter which I shall recount to you at some time, if you wish to hear it.

The happiness which the Queen’s visit has brought me has occasionally drawn my thoughts away from my work. Were I a younger man this happiness would become one with the work and would furnish new incentives to its prosecution. My lengthening days remind me, however, that I have not that apparently unlimited time for project and execution which I once possessed.

Allow me to combine my work with happiness by calling on the Queen on [
Saturday
] to show her the plans which I have drawn up for colonial settlements in North Africa. If the weather is favourable then, I should like to take the Queen to Ostia by boat, pointing out to her the measures we have taken for the control of flood and the deceleration of the current. At Ostia we shall be able to see the progress made on the harbour works, concerning which the Queen has already given me such invaluable advice.

There is one more thing I wish to say to the great Queen. I hope she will remain in Italy for an even longer visit than she had first planned. To encourage this decision, may I suggest that she send to Alexandria for her children? I shall place one of my newly finished galleys, which have already proved themselves to be the swiftest on the sea, at the Queen’s disposal for this errand and shall look forward to sharing her joy at their arrival.

Cleopatra to Caesar.

[
By return messenger
.]

A misunderstanding, great Caesar, has arisen between us.

I realise that no protests of mine can clear away the misapprehension under which you are laboring. In my suffering I can only hope that time and events will convince you of my devotion and loyalty.

Once more I must say, however, that the situation in which I found myself – with an astonishment no less than yours – was contrived by malicious persons.

Marc Antony had persuaded me to accompany him to that portion of the gardens to see what he called ‘the greatest feat of daring ever seen in Rome.’ He assured me that it would be undertaken by himself in association with some five or six of his companions. As the moment had come for me to make another tour of the grounds I acceded to his request, taking Charmian with me. The rest you know.

I shall not rest until I have obtained proofs of the complicity of others in what then took place. I know that proofs will not convince you of my innocence unless I can also furnish you evidence of my tireless concern with all that has to do with you and your interest and with your happiness. This ambition alone leads me to accept your invitation to prolong my stay in the City. I gratefully accept also your invitation to attend the sessions directed by Cytheris in your home.

I do not wish at this time, however, to send for my dear children, though I thank you for the opportunity you have extended.

Great friend, great Caesar, my lover, the thing which is uppermost in my mind is that you have unjustly been made to suffer. I cry out in anguish against those forces of destiny which by an infernal device that no mere humans could compound have made me an instrument for your disappointment. Oh, do not believe it. Do not permit yourself to be the victim of so transparent a mischance. Remember my love. Do not now begin to doubt the glance in my eyes and the joy in my surrender. I am still a young woman; I do not know what form a more experienced woman would give to the protestations of innocence. Should I be indignant that you distrust me? Should I be proud and angry? I do not know; I can only be candid, even at the expense of modesty. Never have I loved, never shall I love, as I have loved you. Who can have known what I have known – a delight that was not separable from gratitude, a passion that was none the less for being all homage? Such was the love suitable to the difference between our ages; it need fear no comparison with any other. Oh, remember, remember! Trust! Do not now separate me as by a curtain from that divinity within you. Blackest of curtains that is made up of a belief in my treachery. I treacherous! I unloving!

These words are not royal. They are sincere. I have expressed myself in this manner for the last time, until you permit me to resume it. I now adopt that of a visitor of state, for conformity with your wishes is the rule of my love.

Alina, wife of Cornelius Nepos, to her sister Postumia, wife of Publius Ceccinius of Verona.

[
October 30
.]

You will have seen all the letters we sent concerning this matter by the Dictator’s courier to you and to the poet’s family. Here are a few details I shall add for your eyes alone. My husband is grieving as though he had lost a son (avert the omen! our boys are very well, thanks be to the Gods). I loved Gaius [
Catullus
], also, and have loved him since we all played together as children. But affection should not blind our eyes – I can speak frankly to you – to the lessons of this deplorable mistaken life. I did not like his friends; of course, I did not like that wicked woman; I did not like the verses he wrote during these last years; and I shall never like nor praise the Dictator who has been in and out of our house these days as though he were an old family friend.