An Unnoticed Trait in the Character of Julius Caesar

The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here An Unnoticed Trait in the Character of Julius Caesar W. Warde Fowler The Classical Review / Volume 30 / Issue 03 / May 1916, pp 68 - 71 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00010052, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00010052 How to cite this article: W. Warde Fowler (1916). An Unnoticed Trait in the Character of Julius Caesar. The Classical Review, 30, pp 68-71 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00010052 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 147.188.128.74 on 04 Jun 2015 68 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW AN UNNOTICED TRAIT IN THE CHARACTER OF JULIUS CAESAR. CAESAR did fewer foolish things than tried, but straightway condemned ; the most men with his opportunities have king appointed two duumviri to per- done; so far as we can judge from his form this duty, being unwilling, Livy own writings and the accounts of those says, to undertake such an ill-omened who knew him, a want of practical wis- job himself.4 A lex horrendi carminis dom was not one of his weak points. governed the procedure. The duum- But on one occasion, early in his viri were to pronounce sentence; against political life, he did what seems to us this sentence the condemned man a foolish thing, and one which no one might appeal to the people; if their has ever attempted to explain as a wise verdict went against him, ' caput obnu- one. I am thinking of the revival of a bito, infelici arbori reste suspendito, quaint antique and semi-religious pro- verberato vel intra pomerium vel extra cedurefor the condemnation1 of Rabirius pomerium.'6 in 63 B.C. The circumstances are fami- This procedure belongs to an age liar, and have been discussed recently in when civil law has not yet been fully this country by the late Master of Balliol disentangled from religious law. The in his Problems of Roman Criminal Law, words last quoted make it probable that and by Dr. Hardy in the Journal of Horatius was a homo sour in some Philology* The leaders "of the popular sense, and the sequel to the story shows or Marian party, Caesar and Crassus, how difficult it was to restore him to wished to make it highly unsafe to put the condition of an ordinary citizen; Roman citizens to death without trial for this point, which does not bear under the ' last decree' of the Senate, directly on our present subject, I may or in any other way, in times of political refer to an article in the Classical excitement. They did not so much Review, March, 1913.6 What could want to impugn the legality of that have induced Caesar to imitate this decree (senatus consultum ultitnum), for strange, semi-religious ritual ? Was it that would have been almost impos- s simply that it gave him an opportunity sible ; but to make it dangerous for to exhibit the infelix arbor, or, as Cicero the consul to take violent action under calls it, the crux, in the Campus Martius, it. They wanted, no doubt, to impress with the executioner (carnifex) who was this deeply on the minds of the city to do the ugly work, unless the victim population, and Caesar hit upon the were acquitted on appeal ?7 Certain plan of reviving a curious and obsolete it is that, having found the old Rabirius, procedure, which would bring the pos- who was said to have killed Saturninus sible results of such political violence in the disturbances of the year 100, and murder vividly before their eyes. Caesar and Crassus, with Labienus The only example of the use of this as their agent, contrived to pass a law procedure known to us dates from the which revived this old procedure; that age of the kings, and is embodied in the legend of the victorious Horatius, who slew his sister on his return from 4 Liv. i. 26: ' Rex, ne ipse tam tristis in- battle. For this murder he was not gratique ad vulgus iudicii ac secundum iudi- cium supplicii auctor esset, concilio populi advocato, Duumviros, inquit, qui Horatio per- 1 The condemnation, because it is quite clear duellionem iudicent, secundum legem facio.' I that the duumviri did not judge the case, but suspect that the Rex appointed duumviri in only pronounced sentence (Liv. i. 26). order that the sacred kingly office might not 3 Strachan-Davidson, Problems of Criminal be polluted. Law, vol i., p. 188 ff. .Hardy in Journal of 6 Liv. i. 26. 6 : Strachan-Davidson, op. cit., Philology, vol. xxxiv., p. 12 ff. i. 135 «"• * This follows from the acquittal of Opimius, • Vol. xxvii., p. 48. Cp. Journal of Roman in 121 B.C., for killing C. Gracchus, under the Studies, vol. i., p. 58 ff. Senatus consultum vltimum. See e.g., Heit- 7 Cicero seems to imply this in pro Rabirio, land's Roman Republic, vol. ii.,p. 318. Hardy, sees. 10, ii, 16. So, too, Strachan-Davidson, op. cit., p. 16 ff. i. 197. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 69 Caesar and a relative of the same name the case of C. Valerius Flaccus, re- were appointed duumviri under it, that corded by Livy as happening about a they condemned Rabirius, and that on century earlier, the object of the family his appeal the Senate interfered and may have been to keep the lad out of declared the whole foolish proceedings mischief.3 On the other hand, it is to be invalid.1 (The speech of Cicero, possible that Caesar's mother Aurelia, of which we have a considerable part, who seems to have shared with him his was delivered in an ordinary trial before ambition to be the head of the Roman the tribune and his comitia tributa, and religious system, may have been one of with this we are not concerned.) At those good ladies who venerate all the moment of condemnation, and be- forms of priesthood, and are ready to fore the Senate had quashed the pro- dedicate their sons at an early age to ceedings, it seems possible that crux the lifelong service of the religion of the and carnifex were actually on view in State. Undoubtedly these things were the Campus. Yet the desire to im- arranged within the family in collusion j>onieren seems hardly sufficient to with the pontifex maximus, as in the explain why a sane man like Caesar case of the Vestals; and it is noticeable should have chosen to go back on that, according to Suetonius, the Flamen such primitive practice. Nothing else Dialis destinatus was immediately pro- that we know of him in that year 63 vided with a wife, young as he was, shows any parallel to such injudicious doubtless because the office could only statesmanship. be held by one who had a Flaminica 4 I think that there are traces in ready to assist him in his duties. Inci- Caesar of a tendency, common at the dentally, I may remark that it was this time, Jo take an interest in ancient pro- wife Cornelia who saved Caesar for the cedure, especially that of religion ; and world. As she was Cinna's daughter, it is possible that for once he may have Sulla ordered the boy to drop her, been tempted to give this intellectual which he promptly refused to do, and interest a practical application. It was at once deprived of his priesthood would be interesting if we could dis- (or, rather, the prospect of it), and of his cover whether he was already pontifex wife's dowry and other property. Sue- maximus when he condemned Rabirius; tonius evidently thinks of the priest- but it does not seem possible to deter- hood as an honour which Caesar would mine this. It is, however, in any case have been glad to retain ; but even if possible that his thoughts were running Aurelia looked at it in this light, it does on the probable vacancy, and the duties not follow that even at the early age of of the office, for which he and his fifteen the boy was not glad to be safe mother seem to have been equally from the shackles of such an office. 2 •desirous. It is worth remembering A few years after this (69 B.C.), when that Varro dedicated his great work on delivering an oration at the funeral of the religious antiquities of Rome to his aunt Julia, he dwelt on the fact that this pontifex maximus, which he would she was descended, on the mother's hardly have done if Caesar had shown side, from a rex, Ancus Martius, and 00 interest in such things. It is also on the father's side from Venus, the worth remembering that, as a boy, reputed ancestor of the gens Julia. Caesar had been, presumably by his His comment on this, as quoted by family, intended to fill the most ancient Suetonius from the original, is remark- of Roman priesthoods, and that a able : ' Est ergo in genere et sanctitas Flamen Dialis was daily and hourly regum, qui plurimum inter homines •engaged in caerimonia. I have else- where casually suggested that, as in 3 Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 343. According to Velleius, ii. 43, Caesar 1 So Hardy, op. cit, p. 28. Strachan-David- had been made a pontifex during his absence son thinks that Cicero interfered, either as in Asia as a young man, and hurried home to •consul or through the agency of a tribune.

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