Julius Caesar: Afterwards Deified

Knowing no Latin (and even less Greek), I am reading Robert Graves's translation of The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius. The first Caesar is Julius. I have scanned reports of his MSM activities before, and now read the original account with profit and pleasure, as the formula goes.

The second-century historian wrote,

Caesar first saw military service in Asia, where he went as aide-de-camp to Marcus Thermus, the provincial governor. When Thermus sent Caesar to raise a fleet in Bithynia, he wasted so much time at Nicomedes' court that a homosexual relationship between them was suspected, and suspicion gave way to scandal when, soon after his return to headquarters, he revisited Bithynisa: ostensibly collecting a debt incurred there by one of his freedmen.

Julius did not even have camp conditions to blame since his liaisons took place at court where, presumably, a variety of entertainment was available. I wonder how old Julius was then. He couldn't have been more than twenty (or younger?) since he was on his first military campaign. Don't you love the innocent and pliant expression "suspicion gave way to scandal"? The scandal-mongers, enemies of the then-powerful consul, were named later in the chapter:

Licinius Calvus published the notorious verses:

The riches of Bithynia's King
Who Caesar on his couch abused.

Dolabella called him 'the Queen's rival and inner partner of the royal bed', and Curio the Elder: 'Nicomedes' Bithynian brothel'.

Bibulus, Caesar's colleague in the consulship, described him in an edict as 'the Queen of Bithynia...who once wanted to sleep with a monarch, but now wants to be one.'...Moreover, Gaius Memmius directly charges Caesar with having joined a group of Nicomedes' debauched young friends at a banquet, where he acted as the royal cup-bearer...Cicero...wrote in several letters:

Caesar was led by Nicomedes' attendants to the royal bedchamber, where he lay on a golden couch, dressed in a purple shift...So this descendant of Venus lost his virginity in Bithynia.

The details in the letters seem to be chosen to emphasize the feminine and passive position to which Julius "was led." The assumption was that the King would naturally take the active role. "Descendant of Venus" is well-aimed venom.

Lastly, when Caesar's own soldiers followed his decorated chariot in the Gallic triumph, chanting ribald songs, as they were privileged to do, this was one of them:

Gaul was brought to shame by Caesar;
By King Nicomedes, he.
Here comes Caesar, wreathed in triumph
For his Gallic victory!
Nicomedes wears no laurels,
Though the greatest of the three.

I don't know the circumstances and motivations surrounding Seutonius' writing of this history, but isn't it interesting that he chose to compile a record of these accusations and insinuation, as if the names of the accusers and insinuators make the rumor fact? Am I way off the mark in sensing the gossip-monger's keen ear for a good soundbite?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Example...
Read more

Wallace Stevens' "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

Just read three essays from the "Poetics" section at the back of Volume One of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry : "The Poetry and the Present" by D.H. Lawrence (1919); "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" by Langston Hughes (1926); and "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words" by Wallace Stevens (1942). The first is an artful polemic for free verse in contact with the "insurgent naked throb of the instant moment." The second is a spirited rejoinder to a young Negro poet who wanted to "write like a poet--not a Negro poet." The third, my favorite, is a wide-ranging meditation on the nature of poetry and the role of the poet. So many grand things said but I will only quote a few passages: I am interested in the nature of poetry and I have stated its nature, from one of many points of view from which it is possible to state it. It is an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals. This is...
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic...
Read more