"Life of Caesar" Podcast: Episode 5

This episode was the weakest so far.

Episode 5:

• 05:36 – Ray: "The two men [Crassus and Pompey] hate each other. They hated each other ever since they worked with Sulla when he came back."

I already mentioned it, but let's do this again... There are no records that Crassus and Pompey hated each other until now. During Sulla's return to Italy, they actually worked together in a campaign against Gaius Carrinas.

• 06:11 – Ray on Pompey's ineligibility for the consulship: "Pompey is too young. He's not a member of the Senate. He's never been aedile, he's never been quaestor."

a) Quaestorship preceded aedileship in the cursus honorum.

b) Aedileship wasn't compulsory for the consulship. Quaestorship and praetorship were.

• 08:21 – Cam: "So Pompey didn't come from a patrician family like Caesar did. He came from a bit of money and some nobility, but not from the sort of background that Caesar came from. He was one of the "new men" as they referred to it. . . . And so he had to sort of curb his own path, he couldn't go down the traditional path of getting involved in politics at an early age and working his way up through the ranks."

That's nonsense. His dad was a consul. They were a very wealthy family and the patrons of Picenum. Young Pompey raised an entire army on his own money. He wasn't a "new man." A "new man" is someone who was the first in the family to enter the Senate. There was absolutely nothing preventing Pompey from following the traditional path.

• 10:03 – Cam: "[Strabo] was struck and killed by lighting."

A little later, Cam says that he doesn't believe in this story, but I wanted to add that death by lightning is not the only version of Strabo's death:

"Plague ravaged both armies, and Strabo fell ill. C. Cassius was sent to take command of the army until such time as Strabo was fit to resume duty, and for a moment this unwelcome news revived the general, but Cassius saw that his end was near. For three days Strabo lingered on, then he died." – Robin Seager

• 10:20 – Ray: "He [Strabo] was outside of the town. And I don't know if he was besieging the town or something. I know his body gets dragged through the streets by the people. Because he had blocked up the water, did something where a lot of sickness broke out because of the sanitation. And they literally drag his body through the streets. And Pompey, who had spent his entire life around his father in the military, working for his father, just now has a hatred for Rome and for their ways. And he is going to do everything he can to be a thorn in their side. Like you said, he's got all these money, and all of his experience is about fighting, it's about war. That is all that he knows. He's contemptful of everything about Rome. And now he is a position where he can actually start to be that thorn in their side."
Cam: "You got one point wrong. It wasn't the people that tore cross-eyed's corpse to pieces. It was his soldiers."


a) Strabo wasn't besieging any towns or blocking any water supplies. He had an army, but was sitting on his ass while Cinna marched on Rome. He finally got off his ass when Marius occupied a couple of towns.

b) Pompey did not spend his entire life in the military. He served under his father in the Social War because he was old enough, and that's it. He had no other military experience besides that.

c) The next point is the opposite of everything Pompey was and inspired to be. He did not hate Rome and their ways. He was a Roman himself! He craved everything Roman. He wanted to be the first man in Rome and thrived on the adoration that military success brought him. He will go to a civil war, so that Caesar won't replace him as the first man in Rome!

d) How is he a thorn in Rome's side? Pompey extended and strengthened Roman rule in the East! In his third triumph, he would boast that he had killed or conquered 12 million people, captured almost 2,000 strongholds and cities, and brought hundreds of millions into Rome's treasury. What a weird way to be a thorn in Rome's side.

e) Strabo's body was dragged by the people, not the soldiers. And they didn't tear him to pieces.

"His funeral was disturbed by rioting, as the mob pulled his body from its bier and dragged it through the mud on a hook, till the tribunes and some other senators restored order and covered the body with their cloaks. Two motives are cited for this popular hatred of Strabo: his avarice and his persistent refusal to come to the aid of the state in its hour of need." – Robin Seager

• 11:45 – Cam: "Cicero describes him [Strabo] as 'worthy of hatred on account of his cruelty, avarice and perfidy.'"

This quote was first published in "The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology," and they're citing Brut. 47, but no such quote exists in Cicero's works.

According to Asconius, Cicero said that Strabo was "a person much hated by the gods and the nobility." And that's the only one that we have. Though some scholars believe that it refers to Pomponius.

• 12:25 – Cam: "Pompey got involved with Sulla very early on."

Nope. Pompey joined Cinna at first and then switched to Sulla.

• 13:39 – Cam on Pompey raising his own army: "A bit like how Caesar just took it upon himself to go and execute the pirates."
Ray: "Mithridates' men when they came down."

How is the execution of (in Rome's view) criminals (who took him prisoner) in any way comparable to illegally raising a whole army? Nor is the second example applicable. Caesar didn't raise his own army; he organized the defense of the place when Roman officials failed to do so.

I get what they're trying to say. But it still misses the point by a mile. What Caesar did was totally appropriate for the winner of the corona civica. What Pompey did was illegal in every way.

• 19:33 – Ray on Lepidus' rebellion: "Pompey is actually willing to work for the Senate, turn against him [Lepidus] and pretty much end Lepidus' ability to march on Rome. He'd put him down pretty– he and his men, pretty cruelly."

Pompey did turn against Lepidus and used his army to assist the Senate. But it was Quintus Catulus who fought Lepidus outside of Rome and beat him. Pompey was sent to Mutina against Lepidus' ally Marcus Junius Brutus (Servilia's husband) and put him to death.

• 20:39 – Ray: "He [Pompey] has all of his local guides slaughtered. And he says, 'I'd rather have my own guides, who might not know the land very well, but I can trust them'. . . . It takes them years, but eventually they're able to bring Sertorius down. But also Pompey learned another thing. Instead of just fighting someone, you can also get them to fight amongst themselves. So they put a huge price on Sertorius' head. He's eventually betrayed by one of his own man, who then tries to take over the cause."

a) I don't know where the story of slaughtered guides comes from, so I can't comment on whether it's true or not.

b) Pompey didn't put a price on Sertorius' head. Metellus did. But there is no indication that it resulted in any internal squabbling among Sertorius' men. The guy who betrayed and assassinated Sertorius did so because he wanted to be the top dog.

• 21:59 – Ray: "They come into peninsula when there is, I guess, some of the fleeing slaves from Spartacus' army. Those are the men that he [Pompey] kills and he says, 'Okay, I ended the slave war. I want another triumph.' And he's gonna get it, he's gonna get a second triumph. Crassus, who did all the work, is only gonna get an ovation."

Pompey was entitled to a triumph over Spain and had no need to use the slave war to bargain for it! 

As for Crassus' ovation:

"It is questionable whether Pompeius did make a strong claim for a share in the honour for defeating the slaves, for when his triumph is described, no mention is made of a victory over slaves: he is said to have celebrated a triumph for his victories over Sertorius and in Spain. For his victory over the slaves, Crassus was allowed to celebrate an ovation. . . . It would appear that the normal rule for victory in a servile war was to grant an ovation, since it was not regarded as important as a foreign war.

Crassus was, in addition, given a singular mark of distinction for his victory celebration. The crown for an ovation was made of myrtle leaves, while that for a triumph was made of laurel leaves. Crassus received high honour for, although he was allowed to celebrate only the ovation, he was given the privilege of wearing a crown of laurel leaves as a mark of gratitude by the Senate. So it appears that Crassus was not deprived of any glory, but rather received every credit for his victory over Spartacus." – B.A. Marshall

• 22:34 – Ray on Crassus and Pompey standing for the consulship: "They're gonna break a lot of rules to do it. And, of course, the Senate cowers before them . . . and they're both allowed to run for consul."

What rules had Crassus broken? He was eligible for the consulship on all parameters. Pompey was the only one who wasn't eligible.

• 23:26 – Cam on Sertorius: "Very interesting character who stood up against Marius and Sulla." 

Sertorius assisted Cinna and Marius in their march on Rome. Later, he was sent to Spain to hold it against Sulla. When Sulla won the civil war, he outlawed Marian supporters, including Sertorius.

• 24:42 – Cam: "They [Crassus and Pompey] hate each other and yet they seem to come up with some sort of peace deal. And I haven't been able to figure out how that was broken. It wasn't broken by Caesar at this stage as far as we know."
Ray: "There is literally everything from it was Caesar's idea to Caesar wasn't involved to Caesar was just a messenger between the two men. Because he was with Crassus at the end of the war against Spartacus. And Pompey has no idea who this guy is. . . . But you're right, we really have no idea how much credit Caesar deserves for what's about to happen between these two men when they agree not fight each other or have their men fight each other and they're gonna run together, in tandem, for the consulship."

a) None of our sources suggest any involvement on Caesar's part.

b) We don't know if Caesar served in the Spartacus War.

c) How does Ray know that Pompey had no idea who Caesar was? Was Pompey so uninformed that he never heard of Marius' nephew and Cinna's son-in-law? Especially after the famous trial of Cornelius Dolabella (Cicero still talks about it decades later, while Caesar's published speech is still admired in Imperial Rome). They probably didn't know each other personally, but at the very least Pompey must have heard of him.

d) The idea that Pompey and Crassus wanted to fight each other makes no bloody sense. Why would Crassus throw away his life by fighting Pompey's loyal army? And why would Pompey fight Crassus? Crassus wasn't an enemy of the state like Lepidus or Sertorius. What would be the justification?

• 30:41 – Ray: "So Crassus comes up with an idea, a way to get back at Pompey. But again there are rumors that it wasn't his idea, that it was Caesar's idea and Caesar implemented it. [...]"
Cam: "You're talking about the feast of Hercules?"
Ray: "Yeah, yeah. Some people say it was Caesar's idea, some people say maybe he just implemented, and again maybe he wasn't involved at all. . . . So what Crassus is gonna do, and he is the richest man in Rome, he's gonna take roughly one-tenth of his fortune and he's going to, for the lack of better word, donate it to Hercules. . . He's going to literally fill 10,000 tables full of food all throughout Rome for the people. And he's gonna do this for like three months."

a) There were no such rumors! Not a single source hints at Caesar's involvement at any stage.

That Caesar was responsible for the peace deal and for the feast of Hercules is taken from Colleen McCullough's novels.

b) Crassus is not gonna do it for three months. He will do it once after the sacrifice to Hercules, and then he will provide Roman citizens with supplies of grain for three months.

• 35:20 – Ray on Caesar's aunt: "And Caesar really loved her because she was very nice, very kind to him in a lot of ways when his mother wasn't. Because her husband was gone a lot and she had to raise Caesar on her own, so she had to be firm with him. So when it comes to affections and stuff like that Caesar really thought of Julia [aunt]."

Justice for Aurelia! Literally nothing is known of Caesar's relationship with his aunt except for the speech he gave at her funeral. But we know that he was very close to his mother. Aurelia lived with him for all her life, even after he married.

We don't really know how absent Caesar's father was. He was a governor in 91 BC, and we know that he was in Pisa when he died. But that's it. Aurelia was credited with Caesar's upbringing, but it had nothing to do with her husband's absence and everything to do with her fine character.

This whole story of Caesar's aunt being kind to him while his mother was cold is taken from McCullough's novels.

• 36:20 – Ray on Cornelia's funeral: "And he's able to talk about all the different things that the Julii did before he came along."

Not a single line from Cornelia's funeral is preserved. We don't know what he spoke about!

A very important detail that Cam and Ray omitted:

"In the case of elderly women, it was ancient Roman usage to pronounce funeral orations over them; but it was not customary in the case of young women, and Caesar was the first to do so when his own wife died." – Plutarch

• 37:35 – Cam on Caesar's eulogy for his aunt: "And what's interesting about this to me is kings weren't very popular in the Roman Republic, going back to the founding of the Republic. . . . I can't imagine that's going down too well."

The idea of kingship wasn't popular in Rome because the last king was terrible. But not all kings were bad. There were some who were respected by the Romans, and their faces were minted on coins. Cicero even calls them "fathers." There was nothing wrong with boasting of the antiquity of your family line that goes back to kings and gods, as long as you're not aspiring to be a king yourself.

Even Caesar's bitterest enemies, who heaped a ton of abuse on him, never had a problem with his speech. Why? 'Cause it wasn't a big deal. The big deal was that he included images of Marius in the funeral procession. But Cam and Ray omitted this as well.

"...he pronounced a splendid encomium upon her in the forum, and in her funeral procession ventured to display images of Marius, which were then seen for the first time since the administration of Sulla, because Marius and his friends had been pronounced public enemies. When, namely, some cried out against Caesar for this procedure, the people answered them with loud shouts, received Caesar with applause, and admired him for bringing back after so long a time, as it were from Hades, the honours of Marius into the city." – Plutarch

• 39:40 – Ray: "And he sees a statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules. And he was witnessed to be visibly moved or upset. And either he wrote in a letter or talked to a friend or someone wrote this down that he was jealous and he was depressed because this person, who was younger than him, had conquered half of the known world or whatever. And Caesar hadn't done, to his way of thinking, hadn't done anything like that yet."

The original story is already quite ridiculous, but Ray embellished it even further. This is what Suetonius says:

"...seeing a statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he sighed deeply, as if weary of his sluggish life, for having performed no memorable actions at an ages at which Alexander had already conquered the world."

• 41:05 – Cam: "I never saw his mother. Maybe she was a MILF, but..." 
Ray: "I heard she was. I heard she was very, very beautiful. I've read in a lot of different sources she was very beautiful."

Ray, your different sources are the novels of Colleen McCullough. None of the ancient sources provide any comments on Aurelia's looks.

41:34 – Ray: "He comes back a little earlier and from what I can tell . . . but just out of the blue he gets remarried. I didn't see this coming."

Why is it out of the blue? He's been widowed for two years, and marriages were the usual instruments for gaining useful connections. And he still doesn't have a male heir to pass on the family name, so he needs to get married. We know that he won't have any legitimate children besides Julia, but he doesn't know that yet.

• 50:21 – Cam: "Caesar's relationship with Servilia seems to have endured his entire lifetime. . . . We don't know where it started, but it could've been when they were quite young. . . . The other reason we wonder about Caesar's paternity to Brutus is that he was very fond of Marcus Brutus throughout his entire life, even when Brutus went against him a couple of times. Caesar always forgave him and welcomed him back into the fold. [...]"
Ray: "Treated him like a son."

a) The first record of Caesar and Servilia's relationship comes from 63 BC. In 58 BC, he leaves for Gaul for nine years. Then there is a civil war and he is barely in Rome. The next mention of Servilia is from 47 BC, but she is not the one he (allegedly) has an affair with. So, how are 5 years an entire lifetime?

If you believe that Caesar fathered Brutus at the age of 14, when Servilia was already married, and they've been together ever since, how come not a single rumor existed for the next 22 years? Starting from 63 BC, we have a few, but not a single one from the previous 22 years.

b) What couple of times? Brutus sided with Pompey in the civil war. When Pompey was defeated at Pharsalus, Brutus wrote to Caesar asking for mercy, and he got it. But Caesar forgave even his bitterest enemies, so it's not like Brutus received preferable treatment.

c) How exactly did he treat him like a son? Caesar pardoned him and appointed him governor of Cisalpine Gaul for 46-45 BC and praetor for 44 BC, but Brutus wasn't the only one. Caesar's supporters and enemies alike received governorships and magistracies. Caesar was kind to Brutus and probably had affection for him, but that's hardly equal to loving him like a son. Decimus Brutus has a better claim, as he was actually in Caesar's will, unlike Marcus Brutus.

• 52:08 – Cam: "And you were saying before we recorded that Caesar said something about Servilia, 'She should've been a man'?"
Ray: "[...] Caesar, as far as I can tell, was giving her a compliment that she was so intelligent and so ambitious, i.e. had the attributes of the man that it was almost a shame that she wasn't a man, because as intelligent and as ambitious that she is, she is never going to be able to use that because she's a woman. All she can do is make some guy to do things. . . . And I think to a certain degree he did have strong feelings for her because he really respected and/or admired her besides the great times they must have had over the decades. And they were together for a very long, long time."

This is taken entirely from Colleen McCullough. All of it. Although even in McCullough's novels, the affair didn't start until after Caesar's quaestorship.

Episode 6