The Ides of March Read online

  Now there has been a great quarrel two days ago. When my Mistress left the room for a moment I think my Master quickly pushed his hand around among all the jars and bottles on her toilet table and he found an anonymous letter that came to her many weeks ago. I think he read it and put it back where it was. When she came back he pretended to find it all over again. That’s what I think happened. It was a letter saying that Clodius Pulcher, the man that burned Cicero’s house and that threatened to kill all the Senators, that man, that he loved my mistress like madness, and that she must be warned against him because maybe he could not control his love. My Master was very calm, but I know him he was also white with rage. He said that the letter was obviously written by Clodius Pulcher himself and that only a man who really despised a woman and wished to make a fool of her would write a letter like that. My Mistress said she hated Clodius Pulcher, but that it was obvious that he did not write that letter. Then I was made to leave the room. When I came back she had cried and she began to cry again and she kept saying that life was impossible, simply not to be endured.

  My Master sent for me and said that I had brought the letter in. I swore by a terrible oath that he gave me that I had known nothing about the letter; but I think he knows. I do not think, however, that he will send me away.

  Do you want me to write to you what nights my Master stays away from the house all night?

  The wine butler says that he heard the Master talking to Balbus and Brutus—Decimus Brutus, that is, not the good-looking one—about moving Rome to Troy. Troy is in Egypt, I think.

  The secretary, the one from Sicily, says that he has changed his mind, there will be no war against the Parthians. The Cretan secretary said you fool, of course, there will. That’s all I know about that.

  There’s going to be an edict about no carts coming into the center of town after ten o’clock and they can only stay an hour.

  I forgot to say that Clodius Pulcher rode up on his horse while my Mistress was in her litter going to Lake Nemi and began talking to her until Affius came up and said he had orders no one was to speak to our party. Affius is head of the farm and in charge of our journeys. He was with the Master in the wars and has only one arm.

  Now I will stop.

  I wish to say this that I do not like it here, I am uncomfortable. I have asked the Lady Clodia Pulcher to take me back, but she says I must stay here. I know a way that I could leave here. If this letter to you is what you want I will stay and write a few more.

  The cow we would like is a tawny spotted one.

  XLVI Caesar’s Journal—Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on Capri.

  [About October 13.]

  1012. The Queen of Egypt and I have been quarreling. It is not the quarrel habitual in boudoirs, though it frequently arrives at a termination which cannot be said to be new.

  Cleopatra declares that I am a God. She is shocked to discover that I have not long since come to acknowledge that I am a God. Cleopatra is very certain that she is a Goddess and the worship of her people confirms her daily in this belief. She assures me that the divinity which lives in her has endowed her with unusual perspicuity in recognizing divinity. Through that endowment she is in a position to assure me that I am one also.

  All this makes for conversation of a very flattering sort, interrupted by droll byplay. I pinch the Goddess and the Goddess squeals. I put my hand over the Goddess’s eyes and, by the Immortal Gods, she is unable to see a thing. She has answers for all these sophistries. It is the one subject, however, on which the great Queen is not accessible to reason and on which I have learned not to permit our conversations to take a serious turn. On that subject alone she is, perhaps, oriental.

  Nothing seems to me to be more dangerous—not only for us rulers, but for those who gaze upon us with varying degrees of adoration—than this ascription of divine attributes. It is not difficult to understand that many persons will feel at times as though they were inflated by unusual powers or caught up into currents of some inexplicable Tightness. I had this feeling frequently when I was younger; I now shudder at it and with horror. How often I have had it thrown back at me, generally by flatterers, that I said to the timid boatman in the storm: “Have no fear; you bear Caesar.” What nonsense! I have had no more exemption from the ills of life than any other man.

  But that is not all. The history of nations shows how deeply rooted is our propensity to impute a more than human condition to those remarkable for gifts or to those merely situated in conspicuous position. I have little doubt that the demigods and even the Gods of antiquity are nothing more than ancestors about whom these venerations have been fostered. All this has been fruitful; it expands the imagination of the growing boy and it furnishes sanctions for good manners and public institutions. It must be outgrown, however—outgrown and discarded. Every man that has ever lived has been but a man and his achievements should be viewed as extensions of the human state, not interruptions in it.

  There is no one but you with whom I can talk of this. Every year this discomfiting deification increases about me. I remember with shame that there was a time when I endeavored, for administrative reasons, to fan it: sufficient evidence that I am a man and a most fallible one, for there is no human weakness equal to that of trying to inculcate the notion that one is a God. I had a dream one night that Alexander appeared at the door of my tent with sword lifted, about to slay me. I said to him: “But you are no God,” and he vanished.

  The older I grow, dear Lucius, the more I rejoice in being a man—mortal, mistaken, and unabashed. Today my secretaries timidly brought me a succession of documents on which I had made various kinds of errors (to myself I call them Cleopatra-errors, so obsessive is that enchantress). I corrected them one after one another, laughing. My secretaries frowned. They could not understand that Caesar would be delighted at his mistakes. Secretaries are not exhilarating companions.

  The words “divinity” and “God” have been in use among us for some time. They have a thousand meanings and for any one person a score.

  The other night I found my wife under strong emotion imploring the Gods to send a sunny day for her trip to Lake Nemi. My aunt Julia is a farmer and she does not believe that they will alter the weather for her convenience, but she is certain that they are watching over Rome and have placed me here as governor. Cicero does not believe that they would hesitate to let Rome glide into ruin (he would not wish to share with them the honor of having saved the state from Catiline), but he has no doubt that they placed the conception of justice in men’s hearts. Catullus probably believes that men have developed an idea of justice from quarreling with one another over property and over boundary lines, but he is certain that love is the only manifestation of the divine and that it is from love, even when it is traduced and insulted, that we can learn the nature of our existence. Cleopatra holds that love is the most agreeable of activities and that her attachment to her children is the most compelling emotion she has ever experienced, but that these are certainly not divine—divinity for her resides in the force of one’s will and the energy of one’s personality. And none of these meanings are meanings for me, though at various times in my life I have held all of them. With the loss of each of them I have been filled with an increased strength. I feel that if I can rid myself of the wrong ones, I shall be coming closer to the right one.

  But I am an aging man. Time presses.

  XLVI-A From the Commonplace Book of Cornelius Nepos.

  The Dictator has issued an edict that no more towns may change their names to a form of his own. The reason for this is, I think, that he has discovered that he is being more literally worshipped than he cares to be. He has ceased sending presents to townships and regimental headquarters; they are invariably placed in shrines and become centers of pilgrimage for healing and supplication.

  There is no doubt that this is taking place, and not only in the barbarous outposts of the Republic and in the mountains of Italy, but here in the City.

  It i
s said that his servants are continually being bribed to steal his garments, the parings of his nails, the refuse of his shaving, and his very urine—all of these are said to possess magical properties and are preserved for adoration.

  Fanatics occasionally are able to penetrate into his house where they are mistaken for assassins. One of these prowlers, dagger in hand, was surprised one night near to where Caesar was sleeping. A summary trial was held on the spot and Caesar himself conducted the interrogation. The man was all but incoherent, but not with fear. As the interview proceeded he lay on the floor gazing ecstatically at the Dictator’s face and babbling that all he wanted was “one drop of Caesar’s blood with which to sanctify himself.” Caesar, to the consternation of the guards and servants who had collected, asked him many questions and finally extracted from him the whole story of his life. This close interest, which many a consul has not been able to arouse, raised the poor man’s veneration to a still more delirious state and at the end he was imploring Caesar to kill him with his own hand.

  Turning to the bystanders, Caesar is reported to have said with a smile: “It is often difficult to distinguish hate from love.”

  Caesar’s physician Sosthenes to dinner.

  He was talking about the effect of Caesar on others.

  “Of what other men have such stories been told and believed?

  “Until recently scores of ill persons were placed nightly by their families to sleep against the wall which surrounds his house. They have been driven away; now you will see them, row by row, lying under and around his statues. On his journeys farmers beseech him to plant his foot on their less productive fields.

  “And the stories! You hear them in the soldiers’ songs; you see them in verses and drawings scrawled in public places. It is said that he was conceived by his mother of a bolt of lightning; that he was born through her mouth or ear; that he came into the world without organs of generation and that those he ultimately possessed were grafted onto him from a mysterious stranger he met among the oak trees of the Temple of Zeus at Dodona whom he slew for that purpose; or that they came from a statue of Zeus by Phidias. There is no abnormality that has not been charged against him and it is believed that, like Jupiter, he has predilections within the animal kingdom. It is widely held that he is literally the father of his country and that he has left hundreds of children in Spain, Britain, Gaul, and Africa.

  “And yet superstition and popular belief do not shrink from inconsistency. It is said, on the other hand, that he guards so austere a continence that the unchaste feel intolerable pain when he passes near them.

  “What man, what mere man, has fired the imaginations of the people to so luxuriant a body of legend? And now that Cleopatra has come to town, what do we not hear?—Cleopatra, the rich mud of the Nile. Go to the taverns, go to the barracks—the heads of the Roman people are swimming at the thought of those embraces. We are celebrating the nuptials of the Unconquered Sun and the Fecund Earth.

  “I am his physician. I have tended that body through convulsions and have bound its wounds. Yes, it is mortal; but we physicians learn to listen to our patients’ bodies as musicians listen to the various lyres which are placed in their hands. His is bald, aging, and covered with the wounds received from many wars; but every portion is informed by mind. Its powers of self-repair are extraordinary. Illness is discouragement. The illness from which Caesar suffers is the one illness which denotes overreaching enthusiasm. It is related to the character of his mind.

  “The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men’s. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is a sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.

  “It may be that he lacks some forms of imagination. It is very certain that he gives little thought to the past and does not attempt to envisage the future clearly. He does not cultivate remorse and does not indulge in aspiration.

  “From time to time he permits me to put him through certain tests. I ask him to exercise strenuously, then lie in repose while I engage in various observations, and so on. During one of these enforced immobilities he asked me, ‘If I were to escape assassination and live into old age, of what organ’s weakness, would I die?’ ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘of an apoplexy.’ He seemed very pleased. I knew what was in his mind. There are two things he dreads: physical pain, to which he is most unusually sensitive, and indecorousness.

  “At another time he asked me whether there were any pressure or action whereby a man might put an end to his life quickly and without bloodshed. I showed him three and I have no doubt that since that day he has regarded me with particular affection and gratitude.

  “I, in turn, have learned much from him. I used to think that eating, sleeping, and the satisfaction of the sexual appetite were best regulated by the formation of habits. I now believe with him that they are best served by responding to them at the first prompting. I have thereby not only lengthened my day, but liberated my spirit.

  “Oh, it is an extraordinary man. These legends have, in their way, a just base; but with one difference. Caesar does not love, nor does he inspire love. He diffuses an equable glow of ordered good will, a passionless energy that creates without fever, and which expends itself without self-examination or self-doubt.

  “Let me whisper to you: I could not love him and I never leave his presence without relief.”

  XLVI-B From a Report of Caesar’s Secret Police.

  Subject 496: Artemisia Baccina, midwife, healer, and fortuneteller, resident in the suburb of the Goat. Under interrogation, Subject 496 confessed to having been present at rites celebrated by the Confraternity of the Buried Sun. Said there were ten or twelve chapters in Rome. (See Subjects 371 and 391.) Finally under intensive interrogation said the Confraternity was headed by Amasius Lenter (Subject 297, executed August 12.) Rites open with slow torture and death of a black pig, black cock, etcetera, and concluded with veneration of a vial of blood, said to be the blood of the Dictator. Subject is being deported to Sicily and placed under vigilance of the police there.

  XLVI-C From Notes left by Pliny the Younger.

  [Written about a century later.]

  Curious. My gardener reported that the following belief is widely held by the common people. On my walks I have questioned vine dressers, hucksters, and others and find this report confirmed.

  They believe that the body of Julius Caesar was not burned after his assassination (though we have no doubt of that), but that an organization or mystery cult seized it and dividing it into many pieces, buried each piece under one of the wards of Rome. They declare that Caesar knew of an old prophecy which affirmed that the survival and greatness of Rome was dependent on his murder and dismemberment.

  XLVII Announcement by the Queen of Egypt.

  [October 26.]

  Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, [etcetera, etcetera] regrets that the Reverend College of the Vestal Virgins will be unable to attend her reception tomorrow evening.

  Arrangements have been made, however, to receive the Reverend College at three o’clock on that day.

  With the concordance of the Supreme Pontiff and the Reverend President of the College a performance will be given at that time of

  The great Coming-Forth of Horus,

  The beauty of Osiris,

  The attack upon the Neshmet Boat,

  The Lord of Abydos comes to his Palace.

  The portions of these ceremonies which are unsuitable for presentation in the evening will be rendered in all their solemnity before the dedicated guests in the afternoon.

  The Queen of Egypt will graciousl
y receive the Reverend Maids at that time.

  XLVIII Caesar to Cleopatra.

  [October 29.]

  All Rome talks of the magnificence of the Queen’s reception; the more discriminating return repeatedly to speak of her royal deportment, of her arts as a hostess, of her discretion, and of the spell of her beauty.

  I am permitted to speak of my love and admiration which will never grow less.

  My visits to the great Queen will be less frequent in the days that lie ahead, but I adjure her never to doubt my love nor my unceasing attention to the welfare of her country.

  It would give me great pleasure to receive the Queen more frequently in my home. I am requesting the actress Cytheris to give lessons to my wife in the declamation and gestures that are required of her at the Mysteries of the Good Goddess. As you are to be present at that reunion also, I think you would derive much interest from these lessons—though far be it from me to imply that the Queen has anything to learn in beauty of speech or in dignity of port.