His arrogance was daily becoming more pronounced, and his ambition was now “swell’d so much that it did almost stretch the sides o’ the world.”[63] He severely rebuked Pontius Aquila, one of the Tribunes, for not rising when he passed in front of the Tribunician seats; and for some time afterwards he used to qualify any declaration which he made in casual conversation by the sneering words, “By Pontius Aquila’s kind permission.” Once, when a deputation of Senators came to him to confer new honours upon him, he, on the other hand, received them without rising from his seat; and he was now wont to keep his closest friends waiting in an anteroom for an audience, a fact of which Cicero bitterly complains. When his authority was questioned he invariably lost his temper, and would swear in the most horrible manner. “Men ought to look upon what I say as law,” he is reported by Titus Ampius to have said; and, indeed, there were very few persons who had the hardihood not to do so. On a certain occasion it was discovered that some enthusiast had placed a royal diadem upon the head of one of his statues, and, very correctly, the two Tribunes caused it to be removed. This so infuriated Cæsar, who declared the official act to be a deliberate insult, that he determined to punish the two men at the first convenient opportunity. On January 26th of the new year this opportunity presented itself. As he was walking through the streets some persons in the crowd hailed him as King, whereupon these zealous officials ordered them to be arrested and flung into prison. Cæsar at once raised an appalling storm, the result of which was that the two Tribunes were expelled from the Senate.
Cleopatra’s attitude could not well fail to be influenced by that of the Dictator; and it is probable that she gave some offence by an occasional haughtiness of manner. Her Egyptian chamberlains and court officials must also have annoyed the Romans by failing to disguise their Alexandrian vanity; and there can be little doubt that many of Cæsar’s friends began to regard the menage at the transpontine villa with growing dislike. A letter written by Cicero to his friend Atticus is an interesting commentary upon the situation. It seems that the great writer had been favoured by Cleopatra with the promise of a gift suitable to his standing, probably in return for some service which he had rendered her. “I detest the Queen,” he writes, “and the voucher for her promises, Hammonios, knows that I have good cause for saying so. What she promised, indeed, were all things of the learned sort and suitable to my character, such as I could avow even in a public meeting. As for Sara (pion),[64] besides finding him an unprincipled rascal, I also found him inclined to give himself airs towards me. I only saw him once at my house; and when I asked him politely what I could do for him, he said that he had come in hopes of seeing Atticus. The Queen’s insolence, too, when she was living in Cæsar’s trans-tiberine villa,[65] I cannot recall without a pang. So I will not have anything to do with that lot.”
The ill-feeling towards Cæsar, which was very decidedly on the increase, is sufficient to account for the growing unpopularity of Cleopatra; but it is possible that it was somewhat accentuated by a slight jealousy which must have been felt by the Romans owing to the Dictator’s partiality for things Egyptian. Not only did it appear to Cæsar’s friends that he was modelling his future throne upon that of the Ptolemies and was asserting his divinity in the Ptolemaic manner; not only had he been thought to desire Alexandria as the capital of the Empire; but also he was employing large numbers of Egyptians in the execution of his schemes. Egyptian astronomers had reformed the Roman calendar; the Roman mint was being improved by Alexandrian coiners; the whole of his financial arrangements, it would seem, were entrusted to Alexandrians;[66] while many of his public entertainments, as, for example, the naval displays enacted at the inauguration of the Temple of Venus, were conducted by Egyptians. Cæsar’s object in thus using Cleopatra’s subjects must have been due, to some extent, to his desire to familiarise his countrymen with those industrious Alexandrians who were to play so important a part in the construction of the new Roman Empire.
The great schemes and projects which were now placed before the Senate by Cæsar must have startled that institution very considerably. Almost every day some new proposal was formulated or some new law drafted. At one time the diverting of the Tiber from its course occupied the Dictator’s attention; at another time he was arranging to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Now he was planning the construction of a road over the Apennines; and now he was deep in schemes for the creation of a vast port at Ostia. Plans of great public buildings to be erected at Alexandria or in Rome were being submitted to him; or, again, he was arranging for the establishment of public libraries in various parts of the capital. Meanwhile the preparations for the Parthian war must have occupied the greater part of his time; for the campaign was to be of a vast character. So sure was he that it would last for three years or more that he framed a law by virtue of which the magistrates and public officials for the next three years should be appointed before his departure. He thereby insured the tranquillity of Rome during his prolonged absence in the east, thus leaving himself free to carry his arms into remote lands where communication with the capital might be almost impossible. When we recollect that Cæsar’s recent campaigns had all been of but a few months or weeks duration, and that the words veni, vidi, vici now represented his mature belief in his own capabilities, these plans for a three years’ absence from Rome seem to me to indicate clearly that he had no intention of confining himself to the conquest of Parthia, but desired to follow in Alexander’s footsteps to India, and thence to return to Rome laden with the loot of that vast country. He must have pictured himself entering the capital at the end of the war as the conqueror of the East, and there could have been no doubt in his mind that the delighted populace would then accept with enthusiasm his claim to the throne of the world.
As the weeks went by Cæsar’s plans in regard to the monarchy became more clearly defined. He does not now seem to have considered it very wise to press forward the assumption of the sovereignty previous to the Parthian war, since his long absence immediately following his elevation to the throne might prove prejudicial to the new office. Moreover, a strong feeling had developed against his contemplated assumption of royalty, and Cæsar must have been aware that he could not put his plans into execution without considerable opposition. Plutarch tells us that “his desire of being King had brought upon him the most apparent and mortal hatred,—a fact which proved the most plausible pretence to those who had been his secret enemies all along.” Much adverse comment had been made with reference to his not rising to receive the Senatorial deputation; and indeed he felt it necessary to make excuses for his action, saying that his old illness was upon him at the time. A report was spread that he himself would have been willing to rise, but that Balbus had said to him, “Will you not remember you are Cæsar and claim the honour due to your merit?” and it was further related that when the Dictator had realised the offence he had given, he had bared his throat to his friends, and had told them that he was ready to lay down his life if the public were angry with him. Incidents such as this showed that the time was not yet wholly favourable for his coup; and reluctantly Cæsar was obliged to consider its postponement. On the other hand, there was something to be said in favour of immediate action, and he must have been more or less prepared to accept the kingship if it were urged upon him before he set out for the East. The position of Cleopatra, however, must have caused him some anxiety. Without her and their baby son the creation of an hereditary monarchy would be superfluous. His own wife Calpurnia did not seem able to furnish him with an heir, and there was certainly no other woman in Rome who could be expected to act the part of Queen with any degree of success, even if she were proficient in the production of sons and heirs. Yet how, on the instant, was he to rid himself of Calpurnia and marry Cleopatra without offending public taste? If he were to accept the kingship at once and make Cleopatra his wife, was she capable of sustaining with success the rôle of Queen of Rome in solitude for three years while he was away at the wars? Would it not be much wiser to send her back to Egypt for this period, there to await his return, and then to marry her and to ascend the throne at one and the same instant? During his absence in the East Calpurnia might conveniently meet with a sudden and fatal illness, and no man would dare to attribute her death to his and the apothecary’s ingenuity.
The will which he now made, or confirmed, in view of his departure, shows clearly that his desire for the monarchy was incompatible with his present marital conditions. Without a Queen and a son and heir there could be little point in creating a throne, since already he had been made absolute autocrat for his lifetime; for unless the office was to be handed on without dispute to his son Cæsarion, there was no advantage in striving for an immediate elevation to the kingship. By his will, therefore, which was made in view of his possible death before he had ascended his future throne, he simply divided his property, giving part of it to the nation and part to his relations, his favourite nephew, Octavian, receiving a considerable share. A codicil was added, appointing a large number of guardians for any offspring which might possibly be born to him by Calpurnia after his departure; but so little interest did he take in this remote contingency that he seems to have made no financial provision for such an infant. There was no need to leave money to Cleopatra or to her child, since she herself was fabulously wealthy. This will was, no doubt, intended to be destroyed if he were raised to the throne before his departure, and it was afterwards believed that he actually wrote another testament in favour of Cæsarion, which was to be used if a crown were offered to him; but if, as now seemed probable, that event were postponed until his return, the dividing of his property would be the best settlement for his affairs should he die while away in the East. So long as he remained uncrowned there was no occasion to refer either to Cleopatra or to Cæsarion in his testamentary wishes; for if he died in Parthia or India, still as Dictator, his hopes of founding a dynasty, his plans for his marriage to the Queen of Egypt, his scheme for training up Cæsarion to follow in his footsteps, indeed all his worldly ambitions, would have to be bundled into oblivion. Cæsar was not a man who cared much for the interests of other people; and, in the case of Cleopatra, he was quite prepared to leave her to fight for herself in Egypt, were he himself to be removed to those celestial spheres wherein he would have no further use for her. His passion for her appears now to have cooled; and though he must still have enjoyed her society, and, to a considerable extent, must have been open to her influence, her chief attraction for him in these latter days lay in the recognition of her suitability to ascend the new throne by his side. She, on her part, no doubt retained much of her old affection for him; and, in spite of his increasing irritability and eccentricity, she seems to have offered him the generous devotion of a warm-hearted young woman for a great and heroic old man.
Cæsar, indeed, was old before his time. The famous portrait of him, now preserved in the Louvre, shows him to have been haggard and worn. He was still under sixty years of age, but all semblance of youth had gone from him, and the burden of his years and of his illness weighed heavily upon his spare frame. His indomitable spirit, and the keen enthusiasm of his nature, held him to his appointed tasks; but it is very doubtful whether his constitution could now have borne the hardships of the campaign which lay before him. His ill-health must have caused Cleopatra the gravest anxiety, for all her hopes were centred upon him, and upon that day when he should make her Queen of the Earth. The fact that he was now considering the postponement of the creation of the monarchy until after the Parthian war must have been a heavy blow to her, for there was good reason to fear lest his strength should give out ere his task could be completed. For three years and more she had worked with Cæsar at the laying of the foundations of their throne; and now, partly owing to the undesirability of leaving Rome for so long a period immediately after accepting the crown, partly owing to the difficulty in regard to Calpurnia, and partly owing to the hostility of a large number of prominent persons to the idea of monarchy, Cæsar was postponing for three years that coup which seemed to her not only to mean the realisation of all her personal and dynastic ambitions, but actually to be the only means by which she could save Egypt from absorption into the Roman dominions or preserve a throne of any kind for her son. In the Second Philippic Cicero says of Cæsar that “after planning for many years his way to royal power, with great labour and with many dangers, he had effected his design. By public exhibitions, by monumental buildings, by bribes and by feasts, he had conciliated the unreflecting multitude. He had bound to himself his own friends by favours, his opponents by a show of clemency;” and yet, when in sight of his goal, he hesitated, believing it better to wait to be carried up to the throne by that wave of popular enthusiasm which assuredly would burst over Rome when he should lead back from the East his triumphant, loot-laden legionaries, and should exhibit in golden chains in the streets of the capital the captive kings of the fabulous Orient. The delay must have been almost intolerable to Cleopatra; and it may have been due to some arrangement made by her with the Dictator and Antony, who now must have been a constant visitor at Cæsar’s villa, that an event took place which brought to a head the question of the date of the establishment of the monarchy.
On February 15th the annual festival of the Lupercalia was celebrated in Rome; and upon this day all the populace, patrician and plebeian, were en fête. The Romans of Cæsar’s time do not seem to have known what was the origin of this festival, nor what was the real significance of the rites therein performed. They understood that upon this day they paid their respects to the god Lupercus; and, in a vague manner, they identified this obscure deity with Faunus, or with Pan, in his capacity as a producer of fertility and fecundity in all nature. Two young men were selected from the honourable order known as the College of the Luperci, and upon this day these two men opened the proceedings by sacrificing a goat and a dog. They were then “blooded,” and the ritual prescribed that as soon as this was done they should both laugh. They next cut the skins of the victims into long strips or thongs, known as februa; and, using these as whips, they proceeded to run around the city, striking at every woman with whom they came into contact. A thwack from the februa was believed to produce fertility, and any woman who desired to become a mother would expose herself to the blows which the two men were vigorously delivering on all sides. By reason of this strange old custom the day was known as the Dies februatus;[67] and from this is derived the name of the month of February in which the festival took place.
It seems to me certain that this ceremony was originally related to the Egyptian rites in connection with the god of fecundity, Min-Amon, the Pan of the Nile Valley. This god is usually represented holding in his hand a whip, perhaps consisting originally of jackal-skins tied to a stick;[68] and it has lately been proved that the hieroglyph for the Egyptian word indicating the reproduction of species[69] is composed simply of these three jackal-skins tied together, that is to say the februa. We know practically nothing of the ceremonies performed in Egypt in regard to the februa, but there is no reason to doubt that the rites were fundamentally similar to those of the Roman Lupercalia. The dog which was sacrificed in Rome had probably taken the place of the Egyptian jackal; and the goat is perhaps to be connected with the Egyptian ram which was sacred to Amon or Min-Amon.
Now it is very possible that in Alexandria Cleopatra and also Cæsar had become well acquainted with the Egyptian equivalent of the Roman Lupercalia, and it may be suggested, tentatively, that since Cæsar was regarded in that country as the god Amon who had given fertility to the Queen, he may, in Egypt, have been identified in some sort of manner with these rites. One may certainly imagine Cleopatra pointing out to Cæsar the similarity between the two ceremonies, and suggesting to him that he was, or had acted in the manner of, a kind of Lupercus. He had practically identified Cleopatra with Venus Genetrix, the goddess of fertility; and he may well have attributed to himself the faculties of that corresponding god who carried on in Rome the traditions of the Egyptian Min, to whom already Cæsar had been so closely allied by the priests of the Nile. The Dictator certainly took great interest in the festival of the Lupercalia in Rome, for he reorganised the proceedings, and actually founded an order known as the Luperci Julii, a fact which could be regarded as indicating a definite identification of himself with Lupercus. Indeed, if he was identified with Min-Amon in Egypt, and if, as I have suggested, Min-Amon is originally connected with the Lupercalia celebrations, it may be supposed that Cæsar really assumed by right the position of divine head of this order. Knowing the Dictator to have been so careful an opportunist, one is almost tempted to suggest that he found in this identification an excuse and a justification for his behaviour to the many women to whom he had lost his heart; or perhaps it were better to say that his unscrupulous attitude towards the opposite sex, and the successful manner in which, as with Cleopatra, he had succeeded in reproducing his kind, appeared to fit him constitutionally for this particular godhead.