"Life of Caesar" Podcast: Episode 6

A huge thank you to my friend for her continual help!

I completely forgot how cringy these first episodes were. I listened to the first 20 or so episodes and then took a break for like a year before finishing it. Now I remember why I dropped it initially.

A quick note... Cam and Ray completely omitted Crassus' censorship in 65 BC, even though it was the beginning of Caesar and Crassus' political association.

Episode 6:

• 01:45 – Ray: "Did you know that Rome had a secret word that if it was ever said out loud and supposedly heard by people, it will literally bring the end of the Republic, the city, the people, the offices, Rome itself would be destroyed? . . . What it is, you know, the name of the city: Roma. The secret word . . . if you said it backwards, a-m-o-r, amor–"
Cam: "You couldn't say 'love'"?
Ray: "Well, in the context of it being the name of the city backwards. So here's the story I dug up somewhere, can't remember where I read it out, but... During the time of Sulla . . . things had gotten so bad and everybody was so scared, one guy decided to pull the plug. But instead of killing himself, he was going to destroy the Roman world. So he ran out to the Forum and he started just yelling, 'amor, amor, amor!' And, of course, these people hearing the secret word dropped whatever they were doing, they covered their ears and they grabbed up their kids or whatever and they ran away. And obviously Rome did not come to an end, so Sulla put the word out that some god, probably Jupiter, the best and greatest, had a wind come along and carry his words away, so no one "heard" him say it. I don't know if they had the guy killed or he killed himself or he just disappeared."

This is Colleen McCullough AGAIN. "Fortune's Favorites," to be precise.

It's based on the following story, and as you can see, the secret name is not divulged:

"...and, last and greater than all, Rome herself, whose other name the hallowed mysteries of the sacred rites forbid us to mention without being guilty of the greatest impiety. After it had been long kept buried in secrecy with the strictest fidelity and in respectful and salutary silence, Valerius Soranus dared to divulge it, but soon did he pay the penalty of his rashness." – Pliny the Elder

"Why is it forbidden to mention or to inquire after or to call by name that deity, whether it be male or female, whose especial province it is to preserve and watch over Rome? This prohibition they connect with a superstition and relate that Valerius Soranus came to an evil end because he revealed the name." – Plutarch

There is also Servius' "Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil." I couldn't find the English translation, but he says the same thing. None of what Ray says: no amor, no people running, no winds.

As for what happened to Soranus... He was proscribed by Sulla and fled to Sicily, where he was executed by Pompey.

• 06:04 – Ray on Pompeia: "But she was pretty air-headed. There was nothing of substance to her, but she's supposed to be very beautiful."

It's McCullough again. Neither Pompeia's character nor her looks are described in the sources.

But I have to say that I tend to agree with authors who portray her as silly or air-headed. There is a basis for that, imo.

• 07:13 – Ray: "I don't think it was a marriage of love or lust or passion. From what I've been able to gather is he was still seeing Servilia. She gets pregnant and no one really knows, 'cause her husband was really sick and there wasn't sure if he was able perform the act of love-making. So maybe they're throwing dust in everybody's face. Caesar decides to get married."

Do you wanna know where this story is from? Yes, it's Colleen McCullough.

As you can guess, Decimus Junius Silanus' impotency is not mentioned anywhere in the sources. Or any other health issue, for that matter.

Servilia had three daughters from her marriage to Silanus. McCullough makes Servilia's third daughter, Junia Tertia, to be Caesar's. You know, the very same Junia Tertia who, in 47 BC, was rumored to be his lover... with her mother's blessing, no less. Why would you make his alleged lover to be his daughter is beyond me, but yikes.

And besides, Tertia was born c. 74 BC, but McCullough makes her year of birth to be 67.

Wikipedia used to list Tertia among Caesar's potential children, but that was McCullough's influence.

"There are bound to be many different Caesars. Perhaps every generation has to create its own. We can at least seek to attempt to rescue him from the fog of innuendo, distortion, and salacious gossip which enveloped him in his own day." – Jeremy Paterson

• 09:16 – Ray: "Crassus goes back to hanging around Rome, making money. Pompey, who doesn't need the money, goes back to Picenum."

He didn't go back to Picenum. Pompey had a house in Rome and country villas near Rome.

• 09:23 – Ray: "But he [Pompey] doesn't tell anybody that he's got a plan. . . . Pompey literally spends roughly two years doing some study. He is going to get rid of all the pirates in the Mediterranean. Because he has money, he sends spies out to update his maps, he sends spies out to find out which pirates groups were more martial than others, what's their location, how many ships they have. And so he literally does all this work and then roughly, I think, somewhere around 67 BCE, he comes back to Rome and he's done all his homework, he's ready to go and now he just needs to figure out the way to get Rome, the Senate, to give him formal permission to go after the pirates." 

Damn, Pompey, you sound badass! Except... none of this is in the sources. :)

Yes, Pompey got the command against the pirates. But everything else is from McCullough, though much embellished by Ray.

• 11:21 – Cam: "[Pompey] didn't come from wealth."

That's news to Pompey!

 
• 11:37 – Ray: "His family had a lot of land in Picenum, but that's not cash."

Even if all of Pompey's wealth was land, that's more than enough. The land could be rented or sold; it could be used for commercial farming; it could be used as collateral to take out loans, etc. At the end of the day, young Pompey was wealthy enough to raise his own army. And in the immortal words of Crassus himself: "Only a man who can raise an army from his own resources can truly call himself rich."

• 12:29 – Ray: "Now, the boni, "the good men," the ultra-conservatives are against this because they're against Pompey, because he's not one of them."

They weren't against Pompey because he's not one of them. They were more than happy to use his services when Lepidus and Sertorius were threatening Sulla's constitution. But Gabinius' law was too outrageous for their liking. It would give Pompey too much power.

• 13:51 – Ray: "He [Pompey] just literally went from west to east. And when he caught the pirates, he would say, 'If you resist, I kill you. If you resist a lot, I'll sell you into slavery. Or if you want I can take you to some nice farm land and you can change up your life style and you can be a farmer for the rest of your life. Or we'll go back to me killing you or selling you into slavery.' And most of the pirates knew they were beaten and accepted it."

He did resettle them after the war, but there is no explicit mention that he was making offers of land while the conflict was still ongoing.

But Pompey wouldn't be a Roman politician if he didn't have an additional incentive for resettlement: 

"The settlements in eastern Cilicia, which was nominally still in the hands of the rapidly disintegrating Syrian royal house, the Seleucids, suggest that Pompeius had already decided that this region must be brought under direct Roman control and by his arrangements proposed to force the senate's hand on annexation." – Robin Seager

• 14:19 – Ray: "And then he [Pompey] does the Eastern half. It takes him a little longer because there is more land and ocean to deal with."

It took him longer because the pirates put up a good fight there.

"But the most numerous and powerful had bestowed their families and treasures and useless folk in forts and strong citadels near the Taurus mountains, while they themselves manned their ships and awaited Pompey's attack near the promontory of Coracesium in Cilicia; here they were defeated in a battle and then besieged. At last, however, they sent suppliant messages and surrendered themselves, together with the cities and islands of which they were in control; these they had fortified, making them hard to get at and difficult to take by storm." – Plutarch

• 14:25 – Ray: "But within months the Mediterranean is cleared of pirates like it had never ever been before."

Pompey's campaign was brilliant, but let's not exaggerate.

"Eulogists proclaim that no pirate was ever seen in the Mediterranean again. Cicero himself maintains that after Pompeius there were no pirates in Asia, dismissing the claim that there were as a malicious attempt to diminish his glory. But he admits that there was still need for L. Flaccus to be diligent against pirates when he governed Asia in 62. Later it is recorded that Syria was ravaged by pirates at the time of Gabinius' restoration of Ptolemy Auletes. Their activities provoked complaints against the governor not only from the provincials but also from the publicans, who found it impossible to collect the taxes." – Robin Seager

• 14:49 – Cam: "I love that story. Just the offer that 'Hey, listen, if you surrender, we'll set you up.' What a brilliant strategy. Had that been done before?"
Ray: "I think they tried it in, what, 74 BCE. Mark Antony's father tried and failed miserably and died afterwards. Which may not have been related to that, but it just gave this double negative connotation to it. Not only did he fail, but he died afterwards, like the pirates can't be broken."

a) Mark Antony's father wasn't offering to resettle the pirates.

b) His failure was seen as a sign of his incompetence, not "Jupiter, the pirates can't be defeated!"

• 17:44 – Ray: "He [Lucullus] was actually doing a good job. He was keeping Mithridates and his father King Tigranes on the run."

Mithridates VI's father was Mithridates V of Pontus. Tigranes II was the king of Armenia and Mithridates VI's son-in-law.

• 19:41 – Ray: "In 66 BCE, Caesar runs for, I'm not sure the proper terms here, runs for and wins the right to be the curator of the Appian Way."

Caesar was appointed curator of the Appian Way in 67 BC.

• 23:01 – Ray on Caesar as aedile: "And he has two lictors going around with him all over the place." 

We don't know if aediles had lictors. The sources are silent on this.

• 31:20 – Ray: "But Caesar is just someone who takes everything seriously and he goes around and he checks the scales in the Forum. You know, are the people being cheated, is scales rigged? Or people who're building the new structures, are they're using enough timber or, you know, they're using weak material. And it turns out Caesar is just leveling fines, left and right, because any money he collects, he gets to use it for paying the games, and he needs every cent he can get. So he's leveling all these fines. He ends up leveling the equivalent of two talents from Marcus Crassus himself, who gets totally pissed because he owns Caesar at this point. And Caesar's like, 'Hey, you break the law, you pay. I need the money.' And Crassus is like, 'I would loan you the money.' But Caesar's like, 'Well, I can just fine you and take it and I don't have to pay it back. Why wouldn't I?' But he literally treated everybody fairly. And he just fined heck out of everybody and he raised a lot of money."

All of this is from Colleen McCullough.

Look, I have the highest opinion of Caesar's abilities, his work ethic, etc. I'm sure he was a kickass aedile. But! When it comes to his aedileship, the sources don't spend any time on the less exciting functions of aediles and talk exclusively about the public entertainments that he was responsible for.

• 33:47 – Ray: "These two men [Caesar and Bibulus] hated each other and they will go on hating each other. He will become one of Caesar's many mortal enemies. And about 10 or 15 years before this, Caesar nicknamed him 'the flee.' Because they just hated each other, he was a lot shorter than Caesar. And he called him 'the flee' so much that the name actually stuck with a lot of people, which just pissed off Bibulus even more that that was his nickname chosen by his enemy."

Argh! Are the sources not good enough that they need a fictional novel to spice up the narrative? This isn't cute or funny, and it makes Caesar look like a dick. It's frustrating to think that a lot of people learn the story of his life from this podcast and get these fake stories.

This comes from McCullough's "Fortune's Favorites." She makes Caesar and Bibulus serve together in Asia when they're 19. But the sources don't say anything about Bibulus serving there. Nor do they mention his height or any nicknames.

Bibulus will be one of Caesar's enemies, but their aedileship is the first time they clashed.

• 34:32 – Ray: "He [Caesar] built ten wooden theaters for plays and for everything else. And the people were just amazed. There was food all over the place. So that's done in April. And then he even upped the stakes in September. It was really hot in Rome and so what he did was over the Forum . . . he put like the equivalent of purple sailcloth over like a roof to block the sun. And he had chariot games and he had gladiatorial fights. And he had so many gladiators in Rome, the boni were scared, it reminded them of Spartacus, so they were getting nervous, thinking he was gonna take over. . . And he put on funeral games for his father, even though his father was dead for 20 years now, he still honored his father."

The first half is McCullough again.

a) There was no purple sailcloth over the Forum. This will be done during his triumphs in 46 BC (not over the whole Forum, though, but for the spectators who were watching theater productions and such; there is also no mention of color).

b) There is no mention of ten wooden theaters. Suetonius says that Caesar built temporary colonnades to display art and such.

c) A large number of gladiators were displayed in the funeral games for his father. But Ray's wording makes it sound like these were two different occasions.

The scared boni sure sound dramatic, but a more practical reason for their displeasure is probably this:

"Probably as importantly, other senators were reluctant to allow such lavish displays, which would raise the expectation of the audience and so make it more expensive and difficult for everyone else to woo the people in future. As a result, a law was passed limiting the number of gladiators that could perform in any games staged by an individual." – Adrian Goldsworthy

d) Cam and Ray forgot to mention that gladiators were equipped with silvered armor. This was a big deal back in the day. Pliny says that Caesar was the first one to do it.

• 35:36 – Ray: "People woke up one morning during the Romani games in September, they walked out into the street and there were statues all over Rome that had not been seen for many, many years. . . . He literally put back statues of Gaius Marius that had been taken down when Sulla took over. So the people literally wake up, they’re expecting to party, they know there is a big party going on, there is giant purple sailcloth, whatever, over their heads and they're having a good time. And they notice slowly that there is this... all these statues and all these awards that Gaius Marius won defeating the Germans. . . And the people, even though they knew that Gaius Marius lost it in the end and a lot of people died, they still loved Gaius Marius. . . And they were so approving of what he did that the boni did not dare to take down the statues. [...]"
Cam: "And he's married at this stage to Sulla's granddaughter. So he's kind of allying himself with the family of Sulla, but he's already allied with the family of Marius through his aunt Julia. And now he's remembering Marius in a very public way. He's playing both sides. . . . Now, there is this quote from one of the senators, Catulus, who wasn’t a fan of Marius or Caesar at this stage. He says, 'No longer, Caesar, are you undermining the defenses of the Republic. You are now launching a direct assault.' What do you think that meant? I didn't really understand what the direct assault was."

a) We don't know the exact month when the restoration of Marius' trophies took place. And no purple sailcloth, as I already mentioned.

b) "Statues all over Rome" sounds like there were dozens of them. lol Caesar restored Marius' statues and trophies in the Forum, but we don't know how many there were.

c) If the optimates perceived Caesar's marriage to Pompeia as an offer of alliance, they were bound to be disappointed. He had barely gotten married when he was supporting the motions that the optimates were fiercely opposing. His politics didn't change, and he was starting to get on their nerves. By the way, Pompeia's brother, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, was a populares.

"But for the whole of his life Caesar would be probably the most steadfast Roman politician that there was for the populares cause. And normally the Roman politicians supported whichever cause the moment dictated. . . And Caesar's one of the ones, who's most firmly in, what might be called, the people's side. . . and who opposed for the most part the oligarchy. Very difficult to oppose the oligarchy all the time and still do well in Rome." – Dan Carlin

d) Quintus Catulus served under his father (who had the same name) in the war against the Germans. Catulus (the father) was Marius' co-consul, but was completely overshadowed by him. And though they celebrated the triumph together, it was Marius who was everyone's hero. In the civil strife of the 80s BC, Catulus (the father) opposed Marius. When Marius took control of Rome, Catulus was condemned to death and committed suicide. So the restoration of Marius' trophies felt like a major offense to Catulus (the son) on a personal level. And he was an optimate, so there is that, too.

• 39:14 – Cam: "And I believe that as a result of him pulling together so many gladiators there was a law, a new law passed limiting the number of gladiators that can be formed in any games staged by an individual. . . . You mentioned his father's funeral and he threw gladiatorial display on for that. And that was how gladiatorial displays were traditionally used, just for funeral games. And they were normally private family affairs . . . but somewhere around the 3rd century BC apparently they became public spectacles. But even in Caesar's day there was this tradition that they could only be staged to commemorate the death of the family member, but as you say Caesar's father been dead for 20 years, but he somehow managed to justify the gladiatorial display. I don't know, he could've used his wife, maybe he could've used aunt Julia, but maybe that had to be a man, I'm not sure."
Ray: "Yeah, he was questioned in the Senate, but he just said, 'look, I'm just honoring my father. This is an acceptable practice.' And, of course, like you said they went, 'oh, no, it's not.' And then they changed the law, it could only be a certain number."

a) Nobody questioned him in the Senate over this. The speech that he delivered in the Senate was an answer to Catulus' accusation over the restoration of Marius' trophies, not this gladiatorial business.

The gladiatorial displays did not require the Senate's permission, though they could impose general restrictions (like the number of gladiators).

b) The time gap between a person's death and the funeral games didn't matter. For example, in 205 BC, Scipio Africanus held funeral games in honor of his father and uncle a few years after their deaths. Most gladiatorial games in the Late Republic were held for publicity. In 63 BC, Cicero even passed a law prohibiting candidates for office from holding gladiatorial displays two years before the elections. That's how common the practice was.

c) Funeral games couldn't be held to commemorate the death of a woman. Such honor was only available to men.

In 46 BC, Caesar will stage funeral games in honor of his daughter, and that will be the first time that funeral games were held to honor a woman.

• 40:58 – Ray: "During the gladiatorial games in the theatre only Roman men and women could go. Children and slaves could not go. And they were supposedly so popular and so packed that the wives had to sit on husbands' laps just to make enough room for people to get in."

Another thing from McCullough. And it's incorrect.

Men, women, children, freedmen, slaves, and foreigners were all allowed to attend. In fact, there were no rules or restrictions at all until the time of Augustus (Suet. Aug. 44).

• 41:23 – Ray: "Supposedly, by the time it's all done he is like 1,300 talents or 31 million sestertii in debt."

Plutarch says: "Before he held any office it is said that his indebtedness amounted to 1,300 talents." Appian says that at the time of his praetorship, Caesar "owed much more than he could pay, by reason of his political expenses. He was reported as saying that he needed 25,000,000 sesterces in order to have nothing at all."

Personally, I find Appian's account more realistic.

• 46:14 – Cam: "Now, the toga candida was bleached by chalk to becoming dazzling white color and it was worn by candidates from the Latin 'candida,' which means pure white. . . . And I assume that's something to do with your ethical position. You're trying to put yourself forward as a political candidate. Your pureness. Who knows." 

Candidates for office were wearing pure white togas to be better seen in the crowd.

• 47:41 – Ray: "If somebody was on trial and . . . after the trial was over and they were voting for them. If the people thought they were guilty, they would write 'condemno' on the little tablet. And if they thought they were innocent, they would right 'absolvo.'"

"The judices were provided with three Tabellae: one of which was marked with A. i.e. Absolvo, "I acquit;" the second with C. i.e. Condemno, "I condemn;" and the third with N.L. i.e. Non Liquet, "It is not clear to me." The first of these was called Tabella absolutoria and the second Tabella damnatoria, and hence Cicero calls the former litera salutaris, and the latter litera tristis. It would seem that in some trials the Tabellae were marked with the letters L. and D. respectively, i.e. Libero and Damno." – William Smith

• 49:13 – Ray: "[Cato] had become aedile in 64 BC. And he literally ran around accusing all the people, a lot of the people who were killing during Sulla's proscriptions. And he was so passionate and seemed so incorruptible that he was winning all his cases. And he was getting money back from conscriptions and murders and things like that. And Caesar was a judge. . . . And so Caesar is the judge over all these people being prosecuted by Cato."

a) Cato was a quaestor in 64 BC.

b) Cato wasn't prosecuting people in courts. He demanded that those who took rewards for killing the proscribed should return the money. These men were charged with murder, but not by Cato.

"A group he singled out for particular attention were those who had taken the reward money of 12,000 denarii . . . offered for killing the proscribed. These men were publicly named, and made to return this 'blood money'. . . . Realising the mood of the times, prosecutors rapidly came forward to charge all of these men with murder." – Adrian Goldsworthy

c) Caesar was iudex quaestionis, i.e., he wasn't passing judgments but presiding over the trials. The juries were passing judgments (of course, he could most likely influence them behind the scenes). And we don't know how many trials he presided over (we only know of three cases).

• 50:06 – Ray: "When all these cases are going around, Caesar is going to meet a lot of interesting people. He's gonna mix it up with Cicero, he's gonna mix it up with Catiline. . . And there's just a lot of people that are going to affect Rome for the immediate future and they're gonna affect Caesar's life in the immediate future. And all of them end up, one way or the other, being an enemy of Caesar, but they don't last very long. They certainly don't last as long as Caesar did."

a) He already knows both Cicero and Catiline. "We are going to meet" would be more appropriate.

b) If we're talking about the immediate future, who are these "a lot of interesting people" that are yet to appear? Apart from the aforementioned Cicero and Catiline, every other major player is already in the story.

c) "They certainly don't last as long as Caesar did" 

I guess it was Cicero's ghost that wrote 14 speeches against Antony after Caesar's death.

• 50:51 – Ray: "So Caesar's got all this debt, he can't run for office, he's gotta live in a better area, because he lives in the Subura and it's just not done if you wanna be praetor or consul, you have to live in a better neighborhood. But Pontifex Maximus is getting older and everybody knows he's gonna die any day now. So Caesar's thinking, 'If I ran for Pontifex Maximus and I win, I get a house paid for by the State in the Forum. I'll be in charge of the Vestal Virgins, they represent Rome's good luck and it will just be win-win-win. I'll be able to save some money."

This is Colleen McCullough again.

a) You could run for praetorship and consulship just fine, even if you lived in Subura.

b) The sources don't mention Metellus Pius' health.

c) "I'll be able to save some money" 

More like acquire even more debt. Or does Ray think Aurelia was crying tears of joy when she was seeing him off for the elections?

"This priesthood was a tempting prize, and Isauricus and Catulus stood for it, both highly distinguished men, and both with great influence in the senate. But Caesar would not be put off. He went down to the people, and announced that he would stand too. . . Catulus was the more distinguished man, and this made him the more nervous about the uncertainty: he sent to offer Caesar a vast sum of money to abandon his ambitious campaign. Caesar replied that he would borrow even more, and fight it to the end. The day of the election came, and Caesar's mother was tearfully seeing him off from the house. He embraced her, and said: 'today, mother, you will see your son either a high-priest or an exile.'" – Plutarch

***

Now, I don't have a problem with Colleen McCullough's novels. I think she did a monumental job of producing seven massive books. I don't particularly like her characterization of certain individuals (including Caesar), but that's just my personal taste. She wasn't writing an academic study and had all the right to fill in gaps, invent things, etc. The only one I'm criticizing here is Ray, 'cause it's silly to use fictional novels to "teach" history. Can you imagine if everyone did that with other periods of history?

Episode 7