Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:11:10.018Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Levi quidem de re …’: Julius Caesar as Tyrant and Pedant*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Llewelyn Morgan
Llewelyn Morgan
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

At Divus Julius 76 Suetonius begins his account of the circumstances which led to the murder of Julius Caesar. He describes those actions committed by Caesar which were considered heinous enough to justify assassination: his acceptance of excessive honours, many of them inappropriate to a mere mortal, and his scorn for traditional procedure. In ch. 77 Suetonius passes from Caesar's unacceptable deeds to his scandalous utterances:

nec minoris inpotentiae uoces propalam edebat, ut Titus Ampius scribit: nihil esse rem publicam, appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie. Sullam nescisse litteras, qui dictaturam deposuerit. debere homines consideratius iam loqui secum ac pro legibus habere quae dicat. eoque arrogantiae progressus est, ut haruspice tristia et sine corde exta quondam nuntiante, futura diceret laetiora, cum uellet; nec pro ostento ducendum, si pecudi cor defuisset.

No less arrogant were his public utterances, which Titus Ampius records: that the state was nothing, a mere name without body or form; that Sulla did not know his A. B. C. when he laid down his dictatorship; that men ought now to be more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word as law. So far did he go in his presumption, that when a soothsayer once reported direful inwards without a heart, he said: ‘They will be more favourable when I wish it; it should not be regarded as a portent, if a beast has no heart’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 87 , November 1997 , pp. 23 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Llewelyn Morgan 1997. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For the details see Butler, H. E., Cary, M. and Townend, G. B., Suetonius: Divus Julius (1982), ad 76.1.Google Scholar

2 How best to translate the various elements of this chapter is a central question of this paper. I here reproduce the translation of J. C. Rolfe (1960) so as not to prejudge the issue.

3 Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (1939), 53Google Scholar. For the details of Ampius' career see Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Cicero's Letters to Atticus Vol. 4 (1968), 343Google Scholar.

4 Veil. Pat. 2.40.4; Schol. Bob. (Stangl), p. 156; Cic., Leg. 2.6; Fam. 13.70. Ampius was praetor in 59 and subsequently governed Asia.

5 Fam. 6.12.3. A similar description (‘bellicum me cecinisse dicunt’) was applied to Cicero's highly bellicose insistence on the threat posed by Mark Antony in early 43 (Phil. 7.3). Att. 8.11B.2, likewise, finds Ampius ‘zealously’ (‘diligentissime’) raising troops for Pompey at Capua at the beginning of the Civil War.

6 3.105.

7 Joseph., , AJ 14.230Google Scholar.

8 Collins, J. H., ‘On the date and interpretation of the Bellum Civile’, AJPh 80 (1959), 113–32Google Scholar; Carter, J. M., Julius Caesar, The Civil War Books I & II (1991), 16–21Google Scholar.

9 Fam. 6.12.5.

10 The issue inevitably presents itself whether the sentiments retailed by Ampius are genuinely attributable to Caesar. It will emerge from the remainder of this paper that these are precisely the kind of remarks Caesar would have made.

11 For Caesar's exceptional intelligence see, for example, Pliny, , HN 7.91Google Scholar, Matius apud Cic., , Att. 14.1.1Google Scholar; for his lack of humanitas see Yavetz, Z., Julius Caesar and his Public Image (1983), 213Google Scholar.

12 Beard, M. and Crawford, M., Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations (1985), 32Google Scholar. On the general question of religion in Roman politics, see 25–39.

13 Div. 2.28. The work takes the form of a private conversation between Cicero and his brother Quintus at Tusculum. Cicero considered himself a member of the sceptical Academic school of philosophy.

14 Gelzer, M., Caesar: der Politiker und Staatsmann 6 (1960), 309.Google Scholar

15 Contrast Meier, C., Caesar2 (1982), 520Google Scholar, who considers Caesar made the remark ‘im Affekt’, and that it consequently does not reflect any real conviction on his part.

16 Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, politics, and politicians at Rome’, in Griffin, M. and Barnes, J. (eds), Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society (1989), 1–37Google Scholar, at 34. I feel justified in treating the issue as a philosophical one by Varro's equation of the higher forms of grammatica (on which see below) and philosophia at Ling. 5.8.

17 Ars Am. 1.740.

18 See, for example, Livy 3.9.3; Vell. Pat. 2.30.4; Ov., , Am. 3.3.23Google Scholar.

19 Pinsborg, J., ‘Classical antiquity: Greece’, Current Trends in Semantics 13 (1975), 69–126, at 120Google Scholar.

20 See Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (1985), 125 (on Varro).Google Scholar

21 Inst. 2.21.1.

22 Sen., , Ep. 58.13–15Google Scholar; Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987), Vol. 2, 167Google Scholar.

23 Reading ‘illud’ with Reynolds, L. D., L. Annaei Senecae ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (1965)Google Scholar. The same reading is adopted by Long and Sedley, op. cit. (n. 22), Vol. 2, 198.

24 See also Sen., , NQ I.15.6–7Google Scholar.

25 On this aspect of Stoic linguistic theory see Long and Sedley, op. cit. (n. 22), Vol. 1, 199–202; Vol. 2, 198.

26 Cic., , Tusc. I.58Google Scholar; Top. 30.

27 Cic., Top. 30, where he explains that species is the standard translation for εἶδος, though forma is preferable in translating plural forms; but it matters little since ‘utroque uerbo idem significetur’, ‘both words signify the same thing’. H. A. Holden, M. T. Ciceronis De Officiis Libri Tres (1881), 374 comments on a crux at Off. 3.81, ‘quae sit in ea [species] forma et notio uiri boni’, where ‘it is impossible to say which of the two words species or forma is to be ejected’ because of their effective synonymity in such contexts.

28 Ling. 6.78.

29 Wistrand, E., Caesar and Contemporary Roman Society (1979), 42.Google Scholar

30 Kohns, H. P., ‘Res publica — res populi (zu Cic. rep. 1 39)’, Gymnasium 77 (1970), 392–404, at 395Google Scholar. For the breadth of its usage see Drexler's, H. exhaustive ‘Res publica’, Maia 9 (1957), 247–81Google Scholar and 10 (1958), 1–37.

31 Cato apud Gell., , NA 3.7.19Google Scholar.

32 At Cic., , Phil. 3.38Google Scholar, for example, (‘recte atque ordine exque re publica’) the three adverbial expressions do little more than express approval. Shackleton Bailey's translation captures their vagueness: ‘rightly, properly and in the public interest’, D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero, Philippics (1986).

33 Syme, op. cit. (n. 3), 155

34 Leg. Man. 64; see also 18.

35 Leg. Agr. 1.27.

36 Collins, op. cit. (n. 8), 117.

37 Wistrand, op. cit. (n. 29), 40.

38 ibid.

39 BCiv. 1.9.2–3.

40 BCiv. 1.9.5.

41 Collins, op. cit. (n. 8), 120.

42 pace Wistrand, op. cit. (n. 29), 41. See, for example, Att. 9.7C.2, from a letter by Caesar to his agents Oppius and Balbus sent on by Balbus to Cicero, and 9.11A.2, where Cicero adopts Caesar's usage. Both these letters date from March 49.

43 Compare Cic., Sest. 36, Prov. Cons. 45, Phil. 2.1.

44 Suet., , Jul. 19.1Google Scholar.

45 Fam. 9.9.2–3. For Caesar's apparent influence on the letter see Gelzer, op. cit. (n. 14), 214 n. 193; D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero, Epistulae and Familiares (1977), ad loc.

46 2.48.4; and see the note of A. J. Woodman, Velleius Paterculus: The Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41–93) (1983), ad loc.

47 Boatwright, M. T., ‘Caesar's second consulship and the completion and date of the Bellum Civile’, CJ 84 (1988–1989), 31–40, at 32 f.Google Scholar; Collins, op. cit. (n. 8), 128 f.

48 20.7. Cicero of course sees Catiline's activity as a threat to the existence of the res publica: Cat. 1.8; Fam. 4.13.2.

49 McGushin, P., Sallust, Bellum Catilinae (1980) ad loc.Google Scholar

50 38.3.

51 Compare Thuc. 3.82.4–8.

52 1.12. See McGushin, P., Sallust: The Histories (1992), ad loc.Google Scholar

53 52.11.

54 In the debate on the death penalty both Caesar and Cato claim to be giving advice which is appropriate to the res publica. The advice they give is, of course, diametrically opposite. For Caesar the proposal of Decimus Brutus to impose the death penalty is ‘aliena a re publica’ (51.17). Cato, however, sees execution as the appropriate response, sanctioned by the mos maiorum (a principle also invoked by Caesar), to an assault on the res publica (52.36).

55 Fish, S. E., There's No Such Thing As Free Speech (And It's A Good Thing, Too) (1994), 4Google Scholar.

56 ibid., 10.

57 Minyard, J. D., Lucretius and the Late Republic, an Essay in Roman Intellectual History (1985).Google Scholar

58 ibid., 14–15.

59 ibid., 16–17. See Cic., , Att. 7.11.1Google Scholar; BCiv. 1.9.2; and compare Suet., Jul. 72.

60 An alternative reading for ‘uirorum’.

61 Compare the terms of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (1.8), whose author advises the orator to win goodwill by relating his services to (in order) the res publica, his parents, his friends, and the members of his audience; and Cicero's rejoinder to an imagined justification for Pompey's abandonment of Rome in January 49 (Att. 7.11.3): ‘“non est” inquit “in parietibus res publica”. at in aris et focis’, ‘“houses” he might say “don't make the res publica”. But altars and hearths do’. On the emotive ‘arae et foci’ for ‘homes’ see R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (1965), ad 5–301.

62 In contemporary Ireland the equivalent slogan is ‘peace’, similarly insubstantial and emotive. At the time of writing election posters in Northern Ireland issued by Sinn Féin, a party which espouses armed conflict, read simply ‘Vote for Peace’, a cynical but unquestionably potent appropriation of the term to serve factional interests described by a contemporary Irish commentator as the ‘assumption that peace is synonymous with progress down the nationalist agenda’ towards a united Ireland (Conor Cruise O'Brien in The Sunday Independent, 2 June 1996). Compare Syme, op. cit. (n. 3), 156; Cic., , Fam. 10.27Google Scholar.

63 Ch. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (1950), 104. For the expression speciosum nomen see Tac., , Hist. 4.73.3Google Scholar.

64 Cic., , Fam. 8.1.4Google Scholar.

65 Rep. 1.39.

66 Zetzel, J. E. G., Cicero, De Re Publica: Selections (1995), ad Rep. 1.39.1.Google Scholar

67 ibid., 20.

68 1.48.

69 Rep. 3.43.

70 3.44–5.

71 This is one of Cicero's accusations against Rullus: see Leg. Agr. 1.2, 23; 2.8; and P. MacKendrick, The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, Rhetoric (1995), 51 f. Compare Parad. 27 on Clodius.

72 Compare Cic., , Rep. 3.44Google Scholar; Caes., , BCiv. 1.22.5Google Scholar; Sall., , Cat. 20.7Google Scholar.

73 Cic., , Phil. 2.117Google Scholar, Off. 1.112.

74 Büchner, K. , M. Tullius Cicero, De Re Publica (1984) ad 3.43.Google Scholar

75 Cicero's procedure here perhaps finds a parallel in Varro, some of whose etymologies of political terms seem to betray a partisan political line. Thus at Ling. 6.61 he asserts that the dictator is so called, not because he dictat (the obvious explanation) but because ‘is a consule debet dici’, ‘he must dici by the consul’. Compare 5.82. The dictator is subordinated to the constitutional order by definition. His comments on consul and praetor from Book 2 of the De Vita Populi Romani (apud Nonius Marcellus, De Compendiosa Doctrina p. 23, 31), similarly, yield a suspiciously Optimate hierarchy from the people through the magistrates up to the senate: ‘quod praeirent populo, praetores; quod consulerent senatui, consules’, ‘praetors were so called because they gave guidance to the people; consuls because they consulted the senate’. For parallels see R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (1991), s.v. consul.

76 Stockton, D., Cicero, a Political Biography (1971), 304–5.Google Scholar

77 It is possible to argue that the third sentence recorded by Ampius is also part of the same utterance. If Caesar is suggesting in the first sentence that the notion of res publica is too much in dispute to be meaningful, then his suggestion in the third sentence (‘debere … dicat’) that people should substitute his pronouncements for the old laws could well be related. Carter, op. cit. (n. 8), 18 summarizes the aim of the BCiv. as follows:

the whole narrative was designed to show that his own behaviour was legal and reasonable while that of his opponents was in fact a subversion of the principles of the very Republic which they claimed to be defending.

‘Legality’, like the res publica, Caesar might have argued, was a partisan and vacuous notion and should therefore be discarded. Yavetz, op. cit. (n. 11), 41, along with others, makes much of Caesar's ‘illegal’, ‘unconstitutional’, crossing of the Rubicon in January 49. But what Caesar was breaking by marching his army beyond the boundary of his province was of course a Lex Cornelia (de maiestate, 81 B.C.), one of the raft of measures by which Sulla attempted to shore up his restored Optimate res publica. A notion of legality built on Sullan legislation was no more objective than the Optimate notion of res publica. On the moral inadequacies of (specifically Sullan) legislation see Cic., , Att. 9.10.3Google Scholar; Leg. 1.42; and for Caesar's low opinion of Sulla's laws see BCiv. 1.5,7.

78 Rolfe, loc. cit. (n. 2); Gelzer, op. cit. (n. 14), 261. See also Butler, Cary and Townend, loc. cit. (n. 1); Meier, op. cit. (n. 15), 520.

79 Sen., , Clem. 2.1Google Scholar; Suet., , Ner. 10.2Google Scholar. There are more parallels in TLL, s.v. littera, 1516. 56 ff.

80 s.v. littera, 3.

81 See, typically, Paterson, J., ‘Politics in the late Republic’, in Wiseman, T. P. (ed.), Roman Political Life go B.C. to A.D. 69 (1985), 21–43Google Scholar, at 25.

82 TLL s.v. littera, 1524. 35 ff.

83 Kaster, R. A., Suetonius, De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus (1995), 88.Google Scholar

84 Athen. 588a; Plut., Contra Ep. beat. 1094d; Long and Sedley, op. cit. (n. 22), Vol. 1, 160 f.

85 On the role of grammatica in the curriculum see Rawson, op. cit. (n. 20), 117.

86 Brut. 252.

87 Suet., , Jul. 56.5Google Scholar.

88 The fragments are collected in A. Klotz, C. luli Caesaris Commentarii III (1927), 177–85. On this text see further Hendrickson, G. L., ‘The De Analogia of Julius Caesar’, CPh 1 (1906), 97–120Google Scholar.

89 For a succinct account of this controversy see Frede, M., ‘Principles of Stoic grammar’, in Rist, J. M. (ed.), The Stoics (1978), 27–75, at 71–3.Google Scholar

90 His programme is summarized at Cic., Brut. 261: ‘Caesar invokes theory to correct corrupt and defective usage by reference to pure and uncorrupted usage’.

91 Brut. 258.

92 The example of Sisenna (Brut. 259), on whom see Rawson, E., ‘L. Cornelius Sisenna and the early first century B.C.’, CQ N.s. 29 (1979), 327–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Brut. 259.

94 Brut. 261.

95 Kaster, op. cit. (n. 83), 88.

96 Douglas, A. E., M. Tulli Ciceronis Brutus (1966), ad 259.Google Scholar

97 Hendrickson, G. L. and Hubbell, H. M., Cicero, Brutus and Orator (1939), 222.Google Scholar

98 Rawson, op. cit. (n. 20), 122.

99 Gell., , NA 19.8Google Scholar.

100 19.8.3.

101 19.8.12. Gellius describes the discussion as ‘leui quidem de re, sed a Latinae tamen linguae studio non abhorrens’, ‘on a trivial topic, indeed, but not entirely divorced from the study of the Latin language’, 19.8.2.

102 It has also been suggested that Caesar's grammatical project in the De Analogia is not without its political dimension: see Sinclair, P., ‘Political declensions in Latin grammar and oratory, 55 BCE - CE 39’, in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), Roman Literature and Ideology: Ramus Essays for J. P. Sullivan (1995), 92–109.Google Scholar

103 For the various possibilities see MRR 3.74–5.

104 App., , BC 1.98Google Scholar; Sail., , Hist. 1.55.24Google Scholar; Cic., Dom. 79; Brut. 311.

105 MRR 3.107–8. An inscription from Tarentum (AE 1969/70, 132) may indicate that this remained his title until quite shortly before his death. The restoration of the inscription by L. Gasperini has it refer to Julius Caesar, pater patriae (an honour given him in 45 or early 44) and dictator rei publicae constituendae: ‘Su alcune epigrafi di Taranto romana’, in U. Cozzoli et al., Seconda miscellanea greca e romana (1968), 379–97, at 381. M. Sordi, however, restores the inscription to refer to Octavian, patronus of Tarentum and IIIuir rei publicae constituendae, and cites a parallel: ‘Ottaviano patrono di Taranto nel 43 a.C,’ Epigraphica 31 (1969), 79–83Google Scholar. Even if the inscription does refer to Julius Caesar it would be odd if his title retained a reference to the circumscribed task of ‘setting the res publica in order’ after his assumption of the (quite uncircumscribed) dictatorship for life. But it is possible that he was Dictator r. p. c. right up until that moment.

106 See Suet., Jul. 78.2; Cic., Marcell. 27, Fam. 13.68.2. For the suggestion that Caesar's regime did not constitute a res publica see Cic., Att. 7.3.1–4, Fam. 4.5.5, 4.13.5, 6.21.1–2; Plut., , Caes. 4.4Google Scholar.

107 Meyer, E., Caesars Monarchie und das Principat des Pompejus: innere Geschichte Roms von 66 bis 44 v. Chr2 (1918), 526 and n. 2Google Scholar. On 26 January, according to the fasti triumphales, he was still dictator for the fourth time; on 15 February he was dictator perpetuo (Cic., , Phil. 2.87Google Scholar). Gelzer, op. cit. (n. 14), 296 f., points out that on 9 February he is described as ‘dictator for the fourth time, consul for the fifth time, and perpetual dictator designate’ (Joseph., , Ant. 14.211–12, 219–22Google Scholar), implying that he hesitated after being decreed the life dictatorship before actually starting to exercise that authority.

108 Gelzer, op. cit. (n. 14), 297. Compare Yavetz, op. cit. (n. 11), 209: it is from the assumption of this ‘non Republican’ magistracy that Yavetz dates the conspiracy to kill him.

109 If, as seems likely, Caesar made the remark on or near 15 February, it would place it (tidily) at about the same time as the remark about haruspicy recorded by Suetonius in the same chapter: see Gelzer, op. cit. (n. 14), 297 f.; Cic., , Div. 1.119Google Scholar; Pliny, , HN 11.186Google Scholar. Gelzer equates the Lupercalia (15 February) with ‘that day on which he first sat on the golden throne and appeared in public in a purple robe’ (Cicero, Pliny), the occasion of Caesar's exchange with the haruspex. It is possible that the golden throne was connected with his perpetual dictatorship: see S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (1971), 273 n. 2 on the coin of Octavian depicting a throne inscribed ‘Caesar dic(tator) per(petuo)’.

110 Caplan, H., [Cicero]’, Ad C. Herennium de Ratione Dicendi (1954), xxivGoogle Scholar. Compare, for example, the Optimate rhetoric of 4.12 and the Popularis of 4.31, and note the use in both contexts of the expression amantissimus rei publicae.

111 1.21. For the Optimate assessment of Saturninus see also Cic., Rab. perd., passim. For the expression aduersus rem publicam compare Caes., , BCiv. 1.2Google Scholar.

112 loc. cit. (n. 81).

113 Cic., , Att. 14.14.1Google Scholar, Fam. 12.2.1. Compare Phil. 14.35, where defeat of Mark Antony constitutes a restoration of the res publica.

114 Fam. 11.28.

115 Fam. 11.28.3, 7.

116 Fam. 11.28.2.

117 Cic., , Fam. 10.28.1Google Scholar (to the conspirator C. Trebonius).

118 The letter from Cicero to which this letter is a reply implies that Matius was himself something of an intellectual: see Fam. 11.27.5–8.

119 Fam. 11.28.4.

120 Syme, op. cit. (n. 3), 53 n. 3. Syme also interprets Caesar's comments on the res publica and on Sulla as parts of the same remark.

121 Eur., Phoen. 524 f. In Cicero's Latin, ‘nam si uiolandum est ius, regnandi gratia/ uiolandum est: aliis rebus pietatem colas’. See also Suet., , Jul. 30.5Google Scholar.

122 Att. 7.11.1 = Eur., Phoen. 506.

123 See Holden, op. cit. (n. 27), ad loc.

124 Raditsa, L., ‘Julius Caesar and his writings’, ANRW 1.3 (1973), 417–56, at 448Google Scholar.

125 Eur., Phoen. 499–502.

126 Raditsa, op. cit. (n. 124), 449.

127 AE1992, 1534; W. M. Murray and Ph. M. Petsas, Octavian's Campsite Memorial for the Action War (1989), 76 f. On Augustus' extensive use of the term see P. A. Brunt, ‘“Augustus” e la “respublica”’, in A. Heuss et al., La Rivoluzione romana: inchiesta tra gli antichisti (1982), 236–44.