Caesar

by Adrian Goldsworthy

The tribune’s brother Caius was serving with the army in Spain at the time and on his eventual return to Rome was permitted to continue his career.

Embittered by the fate of Tiberius, Caius was still in his early twenties and it was not until he was elected to the tribunate in 123 BC that he embarked upon his own series of reforms, which were far more radical and wide ranging than those of his brother.

Less popular with Romans was Caius’ move to extend citizenship to many more Latins and Italians, and his attempt to win a third term as tribune failed. From the beginning both Caius and his opponents were more prepared to employ intimidation and threats than anyone had been ten years before.

The Senate passed a decree – known to scholars as the senatus consultum ultimum (ultimate decree) due to a phrase used by Caesar, though it is not known what it was called at the time – calling upon the consul to defend the Republic by any means necessary.

Opimius added to his force a group of mercenary Cretan archers who were waiting just outside Rome, suggesting a degree of premeditation in his actions. Caius and his outnumbered supporters occupied the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill, but the consul refused all offers of negotiation and stormed the building. Gracchus died in the fighting and his head was brought to Opimius, who had promised a reward of its weight in gold.

We cannot know whether the Gracchi were genuine reformers desperate to solve what they saw as the Republic’s problems, or ambitious men out solely to win massive popularity. Probably their motives were mixed, for it is hard to believe that a Roman senator could be unaware o...

Things were not helped by the inertia of the Senate in dealing with the problems that the Gracchi had highlighted, and its preference for doing nothing, rather than allowing anyone to gain credit through providing a solution.

A dynastic struggle in the allied Kingdom of Numidia in North Africa resulted in a succession of scandals, as senators were bribed on a lavish scale to favour the claim of Jugurtha.

Exploiting this mood, Caius Marius campaigned for the consulship for 107 BC, contrasting himself, a tough and experienced soldier who had succeeded only through personal merit, with the scions of the noble houses who relied on their ancestors’ glory rather than their own ability.

Marius won comfortably and, through the aid of a tribune who passed a law in the Assembly to override the Senate’s allocation of provinces, was given the command in Numidia.

A further attempt to frustrate him came when the Senate refused to let him raise new legions to take to Africa, instead granting him permission only to take volunteers. Marius outmanoeuvred them by seeking volunteers from the p...

was an important stage in the transition from a militia army conscripted from a cross-section of the property-owning classes, to a professional army re...

Marius eventually won the war in Numidia by late 105 BC, but by this time the menace of the Cimbri and Teutones hung heavy over Italy. The early contacts with these tribes had again been marked by scandals and incompetence on the part of magistrates, many of them from the old established families.

Part of Saturninus’ legislation in 100 BC was aimed at providing for the discharged soldiers of the operations against the Cimbri. Saturninus used the tribunate in much the same way as the Gracchi, bringing forward popular measures to distribute land, particularly land in the provinces, and renewing a measure that made wheat available to all citizens at a set price irrespective of the market.

The Republic into which Caesar was born was not coping well with some of the problems facing it.

‘Born into the most noble family of the Julii, and tracing his ancestry back to Anchises and Venus – a claim acknowledged by all those who study the ancient past – he surpassed all other citizens in the excellence of his appearance.’ – Velleius Paterculus, early first century AD.1 ‘In this Caesar there are many Mariuses.’ – Sulla.2

Names revealed much about a person’s place in Roman society. Caesar possessed the full tria nomina or ‘three names’ of a Roman citizen.

The first name (praenomen) served much the same purpose as its modern equivalent, identifying the individual member of a family and being used in informal conversation. Most families employed the same first names for their sons generation after generation.

Caesar’s father and grandfather were both also named Caius, as presumably had been many more first sons o...

The second or main name (nomen) was most important for it was the name of the ‘clan’ or broad group of families to which a man belonged. The third name (cognomen) specified the particular branch of this wider grouping, although not all famil...

Caesar’s aunt, sisters and daughter were all called simply Julia, as indeed was any female member of any branch of the Julian clan. If a family had more than one daughter, in official contexts their name was followed by a number to distinguish them. This

The Julii were patricians, which meant that they were members of the oldest aristocratic class at Rome, who in the early Republic had monopolised power, ruling over the far more numerous plebians.

Several of these other families continued to be very influential, while the patricians’ exclusive hold on power was gradually eroded as the plebians demanded more rights, and wealthy plebian families forced their way into the ruling elite.

From 342 BC one of each year’s consuls had to be a plebian. By the end of the second century BC the majority of the most influential families amongst the senatorial elite were plebian.

A few honours continued to be open only to patricians, who in turn were barred from becoming tribunes of the plebs, but on the whole the di...

There was no process for creating new patricians, and over the centuries a number of families died out alto...

A Julius Caesar – the first man known to have had that cognomen – reached the praetorship d...

The story may be an invention. It does seem that around about the same time the line divided into two distinct branches, both called Julius Caesar but registered in different tribes in the census.

In the early years of the first century a number of Julii Caesares would begin to enjoy greater electoral success. In 91 BC Sextus Julius Caesar was consul, as was Lucius Julius Caesar in 90. The latter’s younger brother, Caius Julius Caesar Strabo, was aedile in the same year.

Lucius and Caius were from the other branch of the family, and so distant cousins of Caesar’s father. Strabo was widely respected as one of the leading orators of his day.

Yet the association with Rome’s earliest days did not begin with this event, for the family claimed that their name was derived from Iulus, the son of Aeneas, the leader of the Trojan exiles who had settled in Italy after the fall of Troy. Aeneas himself was the son of the human Anchises and the goddess Venus, so that the ancestry of the Julii was divine.

As yet the myths of these early times had not crystallised into the form they would take in the Augustan age, when the poet Virgil and the historian Livy would recount the stories in some detail.

In contrast the clan’s claim of descent from Venus was fairly widely known and presumably not of recent invention.

My Aunt Julia’s family is descended on her mother’s side from kings, and on her father’s side from the immortal gods. For the Marcii Reges – her mother’s family – descend from Ancus Marcius; the Julii – the clan of which our family is part – go back to Venus. Therefore our blood has both the sanctity of kings, who wield the greatest power amongst men, and an association with the reverence owed to the gods, who in turn hold power even over kings.5

Marriage into this family probably did much to help the political prospects of Caius Caesar, but these were boosted even more as a result of his sister’s marriage to Marius.

already noted, Caius was one of ten commissioners tasked with overseeing part of the colonisation programme created by Saturninus for Marius’ veterans in 103 or 100 BC. In due course he would be elected praetor, but the year in which he achieved this is unknown,

Once the baby was born the midwife would lay it down on the floor and inspect it for abnormalities or defects, at the most basic level assessing its chance of survival. Only after this would the parents decide whether or not to accept and try to raise the child.

In law this decision was to be made by the father, but it seems extremely unlikely the mother was not involved, especially when she was as formidable a character as Aurelia.

This and other stories suggest that it was no longer normal for an aristocratic woman to breast-feed her children.9 Most probably a wet nurse was found amongst the substantial slave household maintained by any aristocratic family, even one of such comparatively modest wealth as the Caesars.

On the point of destroying his homeland he withdrew his army, moved less by a sense of patriotism than by a direct appeal from his mother.

At Rome, it tended to be those of middle income who sent their children to the fee-paying primary schools, which took children from about the age of seven. For the aristocracy, education continued to occur in the home and, at least initially, boys and girls were educated alike, being taught reading, writing and basic calculation and mathematics.

Caesar’s day it was rare for senators’ children not to be brought up to be bilingual in Latin and Greek.

Early tuition in the latter probably came from a Greek slave (paedagogus) who attended to the child. There would also be much instruction in the rituals and traditi...

Children learned to admire such quintessentially Roman qualities as dignitas, pietas and virtus, all words with a far more powerful resonance than their English derivatives, dignity, piety, and virtue.

Virtus had strongly military overtones, embracing not simply physical bravery, but confidence, moral courage and the skills required by both soldier and commander.

For the Romans, Rome was great because earlier generations had displayed just these qualities to a degree unmatched by any other nation. The stern faces carved on funerary monuments of the first century BC, depicting in detail all the idiosyncrasies and flaws of the man in life and so unlike the idealised portraiture of Classical Greece, radiate massive pride and self-assurance.

The Romans took themselves very seriously and raised their children not simply to believe, but to...

Caesar’s family, with few ancestors who had reached high office and done great deeds in the service of the Republic, still doubtless had some achievements to recount, as well, of course, as the great antiquity of the line and its divine origins.

With this sense of importance came a massive sense of duty and of the obligation to live up to the standards expected by the family and the wider community of the Republic. Children were raised to see themselves as intimately connected with their family’s and Rome’s past.

As Cicero would later declare, ‘For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former gene...