The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt / A Study in the Origin of the Roman Empire

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

CHAPTER V.
CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR.

When Cæsar thus made the acquaintance of the adventurous young Queen of Egypt he was a man of advanced middle age. He had already celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday, having been born on July 12, B.C. 102, and time was beginning to mark him down. The appalling dissipations of his youth to some extent may have added to the burden of his years; and, though he was still active and keen beyond the common measure, his face was heavily lined and seamed, and his muscles, I suppose, showed something of that tension to which the suppleness of early manhood gives place. Yet he remained graceful and full of the quality of youth, and he carried himself with the air of one conscious of his supremacy in the physical activities of life. He was a lightly-built man, of an aristocratic type which is to be found indiscriminately throughout Europe, and which nowadays, by a convention of thought, is usually associated in the mind with the cavalry barracks or the polo-ground. He appeared to be, and was, a perfect horseman. It is related of him that in Gaul he bred and rode a horse which no other man in the army dared mount; and it was his habit to demonstrate the firmness of his seat by clasping his hands behind his back and setting the horse at full gallop. Though by no means a small man, he must have scaled under ten stone, and in other days and other climes he might have been mistaken for a gentleman jockey. He was an extremely active soldier, a clever, graceful swordsman, a powerful swimmer, and an excellent athlete. In battle he had proved himself brave, gallant, and cool-headed; and in his earlier years he had been regarded as a dashing young officer who was neither restrained in the performance of striking deeds of bravery nor averse to receiving a gallery cheer for his pains. Already at the age of twenty-one he had won the civic crown, the Victoria Cross of that period, for saving a soldier’s life at the storming of Mytelene. In action he exposed himself bare-headed amongst his men, cheering them and encouraging them by his own fine spirits; and it is related how once he laid hands on a distraught standard-bearer who was running to cover, turned him round, and suggested to him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.

His thin, clean-shaven face, his keen dark eyes, his clear-cut features, his hard, firm mouth with its whimsical expression, and his somewhat pale and liverish complexion, gave him at first sight the appearance of one who, being by nature a sportsman and a man of the world, a fearless rider and a keen soldier, had enjoyed every moment of an adventurous life. He was particularly well groomed and scrupulously clean, and his scanty hair was carefully arranged over his fine, broad head. His toga was ornamented with an unusually broad purple stripe, and was edged with a long fringe. He loved jewellery, and on one occasion bought a single pearl for £60,000, which he afterwards gave to a lady of his acquaintance. Indeed, it is said that he only invaded Britain because he had heard that fine pearls were to be obtained there. There was thus a certain foppishness in his appearance, and a slight suggestion of conceit and personal vanity marked his manner, which gave the impression that he was not unaware of his good looks, nor desirous of concealing the fact of his disreputable successes with the fair sex. Yet he was at this time by no means an old roué. His great head, the penetration of his dark eyes, and the occasional sternness of his expression were a speedy indication that much lay behind these inoffensive airs and graces; and all those who came into his presence must have felt the power of his will and brain, even though direct observation did not convey to them more than the pleasing outlines of an elderly cavalier’s figure. Regarded in certain lights and on certain occasions, the expression of his furrowed face showed the imagination, the romantic vision, and the artistic culture of his mind; but usually the qualities which were impressed upon a visitor who conversed with him at close quarters were those of keenness, determination, and, particularly, gentlemanliness, combined with the rather charming confidence of a man of fashion. His manner at all times was quiet and gracious; yet there was a certain fire, a controlled vivacity in his movements, which revealed the creative soldier and administrator behind the ideal aristocrat. His voice though high, and sometimes shrill, was occasionally very pleasant to the ear; but notwithstanding the fact that he was a wonderful orator, there was a correctness in his choice of words which was occasionally almost pedantic. His manner of speech was direct and straightforward, and his honesty of purpose and loftiness of principle were not doubted save by those who chanced to be aware of his little regard for moral integrity.

Cæsar was, in fact, an extremely unscrupulous man. I do not find it possible to accept the opinion of his character held by most historians, or to suppose him to have been an heroic figure who lived and died for his lofty and patriotic principles. There was immense good in him, and he had the unquestionable merit of being a great man with vast ambitions for the orderly governance of the nations of the earth; but when he threw himself with such enthusiasm into the task of winning the heart of the harum-scarum young Queen of Egypt, it seems to me that he was very well qualified to deceive her, and to play upon her emotions with all the known arts and wiles of a wicked world. So notorious was his habit of leading women astray, that when he returned to Rome from his Gallic Wars his soldiers sang a marching song in which the citizens were warned to protect their ladies from him lest he should treat them as he had treated all the women of Gaul. “Urbani, servate uxores,” they sang; “Calvum moechum adducimus.”

He had no particular religion, not much honour, and few high principles; and in this regard all that can be said in his favour is that he was perfectly free from cant, never pretended to be virtuous, nor attempted to hide from his contemporaries the multitude of his sins. As a young man he indulged in every kind of vice, and so scandalous was his reputation for licentiousness that it was a matter of blank astonishment to his Roman friends when, nevertheless, he proved himself so brave and strenuous a soldier. His relationship with the mother of Brutus, who was thought to be his own son, shows that he prosecuted love intrigues while yet a boy. At one time he passed through a phase of extreme effeminacy, with its attendant horrors; and there was a period when he used to spend long hours each day in the practice of the mysteries of the toilet, being scented and curled and painted in the manner prescribed by the most degenerate young men of the aristocratic classes. Indeed so effeminate was he, that after staying with his friend Nicomedes, the King of Bithynia, he was jestingly called Queen of Bithynia; and on another occasion in Rome a certain wag named Octavius saluted Pompey as King and Cæsar as Queen of Rome. His intrigues with the wives of his friends had been as frequent as they were notorious. No good-looking woman was safe from him, least of all those whom he had the opportunity of seeing frequently, owing to his friendship for their husbands or other male relatives. Not even political considerations checked his amorous inclinations, as may be judged from the fact that he made a victim of Mucia, the wife of Pompey, whose friendship he most eagerly desired at that time. “He was the inevitable co-respondent in every fashionable divorce,” writes Oman; “and when we look at the list of the ladies whose names are linked with his, we can only wonder at the state of society in Rome which permitted him to survive unscathed to middle age. The marvel is that he did not end in some dark corner, with a dagger between his ribs, long before he attained the age of thirty.” Being a brilliant opportunist he made use of his success with women to promote his own interests, and at one time he is said to have conducted love intrigues with the wives of Pompey, Crassus, and Gabinius, all leaders of his political party. Even the knowledge of the habits of the young fops of the period, which he had acquired while emulating their mode of life, was turned to good account by him in after years. At the battle of Pharsalia, which had been fought but a few weeks before his arrival in Egypt, he had told his troops who were to receive the charges of the enemy’s patrician cavalry that they should not attempt to hamstring the horses or strike at their legs, but should aim their blows at the riders’ faces, “in the hopes,” as Plutarch says, “that young gentlemen who had not known much of battles and wounds, but came, wearing their hair long, in the flower of their age and height of their beauty, would be more apprehensive of such blows and not care for hazarding both a danger at present and a blemish for the future. And so it proved, for they turned about, and covered their faces to safeguard them.”

In regard to money matters Cæsar was entirely without principle. In his early years he borrowed vast sums on all sides, spent them recklessly, and seldom paid his debts save with further borrowed money. While still a young man he owed his creditors the sum of £280,000; and though most of this had now been paid off by means of the loot from the Gallic Wars, there had been times in his life when ruin stared him in the face. Most of his debts were incurred in the first place in buying for himself a high position in Roman political life, and in the second place in paying the electioneering expenses of candidates for office who would be likely to advance his power. He engaged the favour of the people by giving enormous public feasts, and on one occasion twenty-two thousand persons were entertained at his expense at a single meal. While he was ædile he paid for three hundred and twenty gladiatorial combats; and innumerable fêtes and shows were given by him throughout his life, and were paid for by the tears and anguish of his conquered enemies.

British Museum.]

JULIUS CÆSAR.

He was one of the most ambitious men who have ever walked the stage of life, his devouring passion for absolute power being at all times abnormal; and he cared not one jot in what manner he obtained or expended money so long as his career was advanced by that means. He could not brook the thought of playing a secondary part in the world’s affairs, and nothing short of absolute autocracy satisfied his aspirations. While crossing the Alps on one occasion the poverty of a small mountain village was pointed out to him, and he was heard to remark that he would rather be first man in that little community than second man in Rome. On another occasion he was seen to burst into tears while reading the life of Alexander the Great, for the thought was intolerable to him that another man should have conquered the world at an age when he himself had done nothing of the kind. This restless “passion after honour,” as Plutarch terms it, was not apparent in his manner and was not noticed save by those who knew him well. He was too gentlemanly, too well dressed, too beautifully groomed, to give the impression of one who was seeking indefatigably for his own advancement, and at whose heart the demons of insatiate ambition were so continuously gnawing. “When I see his hair so carefully arranged,” said Cicero, “and observe him adjusting it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should enter such a man’s thoughts to subvert the Roman State.” Yet this elegant soldier, whose manners were so quietly aristocratic, whose charm was so delectable, would sink to any depths of moral depravity, whether financial or otherwise, in order to convert the world into his footstool. When he and Catullus were rival candidates for the office of Pontifex Maximus, the latter offered him a huge sum of money to retire from the contest; but Cæsar, spurning the proffered bribe with indignation, replied that he was about to borrow a larger sum than that in order to buy the votes for himself. At another period of his amazing career he desired to effect the downfall of Cicero, who was much in his way, and circumstances so fell out that this could best be accomplished by the appointment of a certain young scamp named Clodius as tribune. Now Clodius was the paramour of Cæsar’s wife Pompeia, whom the Dictator had made co-respondent in the action for divorce which he had brought against that lady; yet, since it served his ambitious purpose, he did not now hesitate to obtain the appointment of this amorous rogue and use him for his infamous purposes. The story need not here be related of how Clodius had disguised himself as a woman, and had thus obtained admission to certain secret female rites at which Pompeia was officiating; how he had been discovered; how he had only escaped the death penalty for his sacrilege owing to the fact that the judges were afraid to condemn him since he was a favourite with the mob, and afraid to acquit him for fear of offending the nobility, and had therefore written their verdicts so illegibly that nobody could read them; and how Pompeia had been divorced by her husband, who had then made the famous remark that “Cæsar’s wife must be above suspicion”; but it will be apparent that Plutarch is justified in regarding the man’s appointment to the tribuneship as one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Dictator’s career.