The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (14 page)

Hourly, the dissolution of the Republic.

[
The following popular song, with variants, was found scrawled in public places throughout the world.
]

The world is Rome’s and the Gods gave it to Caesar;

Caesar is the descendant of the Gods, and a God.

He who never lost a battle is to every soldier a father.

He has planted his heel on the mouth of the rich man,

But to the poor he is a friend and a consoler.

By this you know that the Gods love Rome:

They have given it to Caesar, their descendant and a God.

[
The following lines of Catullus appear to have been adopted by the general public at once; within a year they had reached the remotest parts of the Republic as an anonymous proverbial aphorism:
]

Suns set and are able to rise again;

But once our brief light has set

Night is f ’rever and must be slep’ out.

Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

[
Probably from August 20 to September 4.
]

[
This journal-letter was maintained from the time that the recipient was captured and maimed by the Belgians in 51 to the Dictator’s death. The entries offer a wide variety in form; some are written on the backs of discarded letters and documents; some have been written in haste, others with great care; some have been dictated and are in the hand of a secretary. Though they have been numbered serially they are only occasionally dated.
]

958. [
On the possible etymology of three obsolete words in the Testament of Romulus.
]

959 – 963. [
On some trends and events in current politics.
]

964. [
He gives his low opinion of Cicero’s employment of metrical devices in his orations.
]

965 – 967. [
On politics.
]

968. [
On Roman religion. This entry has already appeared in this volume as Section I-B.
]

969. [
On Clodia Pulcher and her upbringing.
] Clodia and her brother have invited us to dinner. I seem to have discussed the situation of this couple sufficiently in my letters to you, but, like the rest of Rome, I find myself returning to the subject.

I am no longer immediately filled with compassion when I encounter one of those innumerable persons who trail behind them a shipwrecked life. Least of all do I try to find excuses for them when I see that they have found them for themselves, when I see them sitting on the throne of their own minds, excused, acquitted, and hurling indictments against the mysterious Destiny which has wronged them and exhibiting themselves as pure victim. Such a one is Clodia.

That is not the role she performs before her numerous acquaintance; for them she affects to be the happiest of women. It is the role, however, which she plays in her own eyes and before me, for I am, I think, the only person living who knows of a certain circumstance of which she was perhaps a victim and on which she has for over twenty-five years based her claims to being, each day again, a fresh victim.

Another excuse could be found for her and for those other women of her generation whose disorders are similarly calling attention to them. They were born into the great houses of wealth and privilege and were brought up in that atmosphere of noble sentiments and unceasing moralising which we are now calling ‘the Old Roman way.’ The mothers of these girls were in many cases great women, but they had developed a series of qualities they could not transmit. Maternal love, pride of family, and wealth had combined to make hypocrites of them and their daughters were reared in a sheltered world of bland untruths and evasion. The conversation in their home became too full of loud silences, that is of subjects which we do not discuss. Their daughters, the more intelligent ones, on growing older became aware of this; they felt they had been lied to and they promptly flung themselves into a public demonstration of their liberation from hypocrisy. Imprisonment of the body is bitter; imprisonment of the mind is worse. The thoughts and actions of those who awaken to the fact that they have been duped are painful to themselves and dangerous to others. Clodia was the most intelligent, as her behavior is now the most flagrant. All of these girls acquired or assumed a passion for being seen in low company and the ostentation of vulgarity has become a political factor with which I must deal. The plebeian world is ameliorable in itself, but what can I do with a plebeian aristocracy?

Even the young women whose conduct is irreproachable – like Clodia’s sister, like my wife – exhibit the resentment of the awakened dupe. They had been brought up to think that the domestic virtues were self-evident and universal; they had been starved of the knowledge that most attracts the young mind: that the crown of life is the exercise of choice.

In her conduct I see reflected also a matter which I have frequently discussed with you, perhaps too often – the fact that the usage and very structure of our language exhibits and inculcates the belief that we are passive in the presence of life, bound, committed, and helpless. Our language tells us that we are
given
such and such qualifications at birth. That is to say: there is a Great Giver who gave Clodia beauty, health, wealth, high birth, and conspicuous intelligence and to another slavery, disease, and stupidity. She has often heard it said that she was endowed with beauty (by what endower?) and that another was cursed with a sharp tongue – did God curse? Even if we assume the existence of a God who, as Homer says, pours out from his urns his good and evil gifts, I am amazed at the pious who insult their God by failing to see that as this world is run there is a field of circumstance that is not commensurate with God’s providence and that God must have so intended it.

But to return to our Clodia: the Clodias under such a dispensation never receive enough; they are poisoned by resentment against this niggardly Giver who has only given them beauty, health, wealth, birth, and intelligence, who is holding back a million gifts, namely, perfect felicity in every moment of every day. There is no rapacity equal to that of the privileged who feel that their advantages have been conferred upon them by some Intelligence and no bitterness equal to that of the ill-conditioned who feel that they have been specifically passed over.

Oh, my friend, my friend, what better thing could I do for Rome than to put the birds back into the world of birds, thunder back into the phenomena of the atmosphere and the Gods back into the memories of infancy?

I need hardly say we are not attending Clodia’s dinner.

The Lady Julia Marcia, widow of the great Marius, from her farm in the Alban Hills, to her nephew Caius Julius Caesar in Rome.

[
September 4.
]

Clodius Pulcher and his sister have invited me to dinner on the last day of the month; they tell me, my dear boy, that you will be there. I had not intended coming into town until December when I must take up my duties in connection with the Mysteries [
of the Good Goddess
]. Naturally, I would not think of going to that house without the assurance that you and your dear wife would be there also. Will you return one word by this messenger as to whether you will really be present or not?

I must confess that I am not a little curious to see – after all these years of rustication – how that Palatine Hill society lives. The scandalised letters I receive from Sempronia Metella and Servilia and Aemilia Cimber and Fulvia Manso are not of much help. They are so busy calling attention to their own virtue that I cannot make out whether the daily round at the top of the world is brilliant or trivial.

I have another reason for seeing Clodia Pulcher, also. It may be that, sooner or later, I shall be obliged to have a very serious conversation with her – for her mother’s and grandmother’s sakes, dear friends of my youth and middle years. Can you divine what I mean? [
As will be seen, Caesar did not grasp this intimation. His aunt was on the Governing Board of the Mysteries of the Good Goddess. If the proposal arose that Clodia be disbarred from participation in the Mysteries, the decision would rest largely with the lay committee and not with the representatives from the College of the Vestal Virgins. The final responsibility would devolve, however, upon Julius Caesar himself, as Supreme Pontiff.
]

We country bumpkins are prepared to obey precisely all your laws against luxury. Our little communities love you and give thanks to the Gods daily that you are guiding our great State. There are six of your veterans on my farm. The diligence and cheerfulness and loyalty which they show to me are a reflection, I know, of their worship of you. I try not to disappoint them.

Give my love to Pompeia.

[
Second letter in the same packet
.]

My dear Nephew, this is the next morning.

Forgive my presumption in taking the time of the master of the world, but may I ask you a second question to be answered by this messenger?

Is Lucius Mamilius Turrinus still living? Can he receive letters? Can you give me an address for him?

I have put these questions to a number of my friends, but no one seems to be able to answer them with certainty. We know that he was gravely wounded fighting beside you in Gaul. Some say he is living in complete seclusion in the lake country, in Crete, or in Sicily. Others say that he has been dead for a number of years.

I had a dream the other night – you will pardon an old woman – in which I seemed to be standing by the pool of our villa at Tarentum, with my dear brigand of a husband beside me. Two boys were swimming in the pool – yourself and Lucius. You came up out of the water, and putting his hands on your shoulders my husband looked deep into my eyes and said smiling: ‘Saplings of our great Roman oak.’

How often you both came to our house. You spent the whole day hunting. And what enormous dinners you ate. And do you remember how, at the age of twelve, you used to declaim Homer to me, your eyes flashing. And then you and Lucius went off to Greece together to study, and you wrote me long letters about philosophy and poetry. And Lucius, who had no mother, wrote to your mother.

Oh, the past, the past, Caius.

I woke from that dream weeping, weeping for those lost presences, my husband, your mother, Clodia’s father and mother, and for Lucius.

Oh, dear, I am wasting your time.

Two answers: Clodia’s dinner: and Lucius’s address, if he lives.

Caesar’s reply to Julia Marcia, by return messenger.

[
The first two paragraphs are in the handwriting of a secretary.
]

I have no intention, my dear Aunt, of going to Clodia’s dinner. If I thought there were anything of real interest for you there, I would of course oblige you by going. Pompeia, however, joins me in urging you to come to us on that evening. It may be that Clodia has had the effrontery to invite Cicero and he may have had the weakness to accept; if so, I shall steal him from her party and offer him up to you. I think you will like to see him again; he is even wittier than he used to be and he can tell you all about the society on the Palatine Hill. Moreover, do not take the trouble to open your house; the pavilion in our garden is at your disposal and Al-Nara will be delighted to wait on you. While you are in the pavilion, my dear lady, I shall direct that during the night watches the sentrymen refrain from clashing their swords; they shall exchange their passwords in a whisper.

You will see enough of Clodia when you come to town for the Ceremonies. Contemplating Clodia I find scarcely a drop in my heart of that compassion which Epicurus enjoins us to extend toward the erring. I hope you will have those serious talks with her, of which you speak, and I hope you will show me how I may find my way to some sympathy toward her. I am rendered uncomfortable by the dryness within my heart toward one to whom I have been bound by so wide a variety of associations.

[
Here Caesar continues the letter in his own hand
:]

You talk of the past.

I do not let my thoughts dwell on it for long. All of it, all of it, seems of a beauty that I shall not see again. Those presences, how can I think of them? At the memory of one whisper, one pair of eyes, the pen falls from my hand, the interview in which I am engaged turns to stone. Rome and her business become a clerk’s task, arid and tedious, with which I fill my days until death relieves me of it. Am I peculiar in this? I do not know. Can other men weave past joy into their thoughts in the present and their plans for the future? Perhaps only the poets can; they alone use all of themselves in every moment of their work.

I think that such a one has come among us to replace our Lucretius. I am enclosing a sheaf of his verses. I want you to tell me what you think of them. This mastership of the world which you ascribe to me is more worth administering since I have seen these examples of what our Latin tongue can do. I am not enclosing the verses which have reference to myself; this Catullus is as eloquent in hatred as in love.

There is a present awaiting you in Rome – though my share in it will cost me some of that application to my present duties which, as I have said, follows upon any return I may make to the past. [
Into the monthly Commemoration of the Founding of the City Caesar introduced a salutation rendered by Rome to the spirit of her husband Marius.
]

As to your second question, my dear Aunt, I am not in a position to answer it.

Pompeia sends her love. We await your coming with much joy.

The Lady Sempronia Metella, in Rome, to the Lady Julia Marcia on her farm in the Alban Hills.

[
September 6.
]

I can’t tell you how delighted I am, my dearest Julia, to hear that you are coming to the City. Don’t trouble to open your house. You must stay with me. Zosima, who adores the ground you walk on, will wait on you; I can get on very well with Rhodope who is turning out to be a treasure.

Now make yourself comfortable, dear, because I’m afraid this is going to be a very long chat.