Cornell history professor sheds new light on the death of Julius Caesar

good evening and welcome to the four summer lecture if there is an emergency please exit quietly there and here we don't expect any emergencies but just in case my name is bugger me I'm the Associate Dean of the School of Continuing Education and I want to thank the College of Agriculture and life science for the use of this auditorium it was a generous donation from the college and we appreciate it Barry as Straus is the Brice and Edith M Bomar professor of humanistic studies and chair of Cornell's Department of History a military historian who focuses on ancient Greece in Rome he teaches courses on the history of ancient Greece warned peace in the ancient world history of battle introduction to military history and specialized topics in ancient history Barry is the author of six books that have been translated into nine languages he speaks or reads eight himself the Battle of Salamis the naval encounter that saved Greece and Western civilization was named one of the best books of 2004 by The Washington Post and his master's of command Alexander Hamilton Hamilton sorry about that Hannibal Caesar and the genius of leadership this is not going to be made into a musical by the way was named one of the best books of 2012 by Bloomberg writing in Washington Post Tom Holland hailed his Spartacus war for having quote all the excitement of a thriller and books and culture named it one of its favorite books in 2009 an avid rower his rowing against the current on learning to scull at 40 enjoys a sort of underground existence as an account of athletic angst he is also also co-author of two other books and co-editor of two more he's written many scholarly articles reviews and book chapters he is the series editor of the Princeton history of the ancient world and contributing editor of mhq the quarterly journal of military history Berry has appeared in more than a dozen television documentaries he has published op-ed pieces in the Washington Post LA Times USA Today and Newsday and has been interviewed on NPR and the BBC he has been quoted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and in other major newspapers he spoken at many universities institutes in war colleges both here and abroad Barry has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities the Germanic academic exchange service the Korea foundation the American School at Athens and the American Academy in Rome he received Cornell's Clark distinguished Teaching Award in recognition of his scholarship he was named an honorary citizen of Salamis Greece Barry received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell and a master and the PhD degrees from Yale a former director of Cornell's Peace Studies Program his currently director as well as a founder of Cornell's program on freedom and free societies Barry lives in the New York Ithaca with his wife besides rowing his hobbies are cycling and hiking he loves jazz and opera and he admits to watching too much television Barry's latest book the death of Caesar the story of history's most famous assassination was available in early March this year fittingly just in time for the Ides of March it is one of Amazon's best books of the year so far and in fact that's almost the title of Barry's lecture tonight which is the death of Caesar new light on history's most famous assassination Barry Thank You Dean germy and thank you everyone for turning out on this beautiful night it's really a pleasure and an honor to be here and to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects death no not quite I come not to bury Shakespeare but to praise Him how many of you friends Romans and Cornell Ian's got your first introduction to the subject from the bard as I did raise your hands great it's a wonderful story an immortal story a profound one but Shakespeare was not a historian nor should we have expected him to be a historian what I'd like to do tonight is to try to go between the lines and to bounce off Shakespeare and to get to the story of the history as best as we can reconstruct it now try to explain to you why from the point of view of a scholar we can reconstruct the history and why we can tell a different story than the one Shakespeare tells us the subject of course is this man in his demise Caesar the dictator one of history's most famous dictators it's a great time to be studying this story and to be re-examining the question of Caesars death for three reasons first of all this last generation has made enormous strides in the study of politics in the Roman Republic previously we thought of politics is simply a matter of intra elite fighting but we now understand the degree to which Roman Republican politics are tied into much broader concerns and much more popular issues and brought bigger passions into play here we're looking at the forum the Roman Senate and an imperial speaker's platform more on all this later second reason why it's a great period to be studying the subject is it's an excellent time to be studying ancient military history there's been a nap a flurry of work ancient military history in the past generation and we now understand it in its depth in a way we didn't before and as we'll see this is very much a story about military as well as political history and finally it's a great time to be studying our hero Caesar here we see him on a coin and he represents himself as Kaiser Imperator Caesar the victorious general there's been an absolute renaissance of Caesar studies of late it's very different from when I was in graduate school in the 1970s for some reason for several decades after 1945 the study of monomaniacal war mongering tyrannical dictators was out of fashion but it came back into fashion I won't say not a moment too soon not a moment too late was more like it and there's tremendous work being done on Caesar all of which made it possible for me to be able to enter the fray and try to say something new about his assassination so our story is a story about war and particularly about civil war if you remember Shakespeare's play begins with a triumphal march in 44 BC shortly before Caesar's assassination but we really want to look back a few years before this to the time when Caesar crossed the Rubicon the little stream dividing Gaul from Italy and began a civil war civil war that lasted from 49 to 45 BC and whose scars were still very much visible on the Roman body politic at in the month of March 44 the war was fought all over the Roman world from Gaul which Caesar had conquered in the 50s BC to Italy to Greece where the great battle of farce alles between Caesar and Pompey was fought to Egypt where as we shall see Caesar added very particularly interesting knotch to his belt to a central northern Turkey where Caesar won the famous battle of Zillah which he memorably commemorated as I came I saw I conquered to what is today Tunisia where Caesar defeated his enemies at the Battle of abscess and where his great enemy Cato committed suicide rather than accept Caesars pardon and finally to Spain where in April of 45 BC actually March of 45 BC Caesar won his last victory over Pompey 'he's sons and then slowly made his way back to Italy so you know Caesars great opponent in the Civil War was Pompey another leading Roman general and at one time Caesars son-in-law but two of them broke over the enormous amount of power that Caesar amassed and Pompey led the opposition to Caesar and his rule he led the the die hards the true believers in the Roman Republic after Pompey's defeat and his death he was murdered not by Caesars doing Caesar began to offer pardons to his opponents even indeed even before Pompey's death he offered them pardons this was something new in Roman politics typically when there was a civil war the winner would pursue his opponents to the death and confiscate their property but Caesar said he was going to represent a new kind of politics one in which he forgave his opponents Roman aristocrats were people of very great honor dignity and status and it was not easy for them to ask Caesars pardon and to accept it and yet many of them did and so they came over to Caesars side they accepted what he called his clemency when Caesar came finally came back to Italy in the fall of 45 BC when he finally entered Rome in October of 45 BC these men who had accepted his pardon and even some of the men who had fought for him and I should say the women as well because as we will see they play no small role in the story they accepted Caesar to make concessions sure he had gathered dictatorial power during the Civil War and during his struggles against his opponents but now they thought he would back off and step down in short they expected him to re-establish the Roman Republic this was a form of government that gave some power to the ordinary people of Rome but gave enormous amount of power to the elite to the nobles these were the people either the men very small circle of men who sat in the Roman Senate and who held the highest offices at home and abroad what they expected Caesar to do was to turn power back over to them yes he would keep a share of it for themselves but they fully expected this building the Roman Senate to be at the center of Roman political life as it had been before they had seen dictators come and go before and they thought that Caesar in the end wouldn't be any different but Caesar disappointed them Caesar turned out to be a very different kind of dictator and that's the process we need to talk about now so in the winter either in December of 45 or January February of 44 BC Caesar had himself proclaimed something that had never existed in Rome before dictator perpetual dictator and perpetuity dictator for life this was an oxymoron a contradiction in terms from the Roman point of view originally a dictator in Rome was appointed only to hold office for a temporary period it was an emergency sort of office row had seen dictators hold power for a year or two since then they'd been forced to accept that but they'd never seen anyone who insisted on being dictator for life this was something new and they had to ask what was the difference between being dictator for life and being a king Caesar insisted carefully that he was not a king Caesar knew that being a king was a dirty word in Roman politics the Roman Republic had been founded centuries before in a revolt against Kings and no Roman would dare call himself a king and yet people began to think that Caesar aspired to be a king he dressed like a king in certain ways he wore the red high red boots that went back to the kings of Rome nobody else wore them he had a whole set of honours that the Senate gave him that seemed minar kacal he was allowed to wear the purple and gold robe of a triumphing general he was allowed to wear a laurel wreath on all occasions he was allowed to sit on a golden throne Caesar decided that he would take over a lot of the elections that were normally hold held to choose Roman public officials he would appoint some of those public officials he took that power away from the people Caesar still saw to it that the regular public officials were either appointed or elected but they now had supervisors some of them and these supervisors were Caesars close friends and Caesar saw to it that members of his family and friends got the highest honors men and women began to ask is this a king does Rome have a king again and I want to talk about three incidents in the winter of 44 BC that were in many senses the last straws the ones that made people think Caesar wants nothing less than to be the king of Rome so the first of these incidents took place probably in January of 44 BC and it took place here in the forum of Caesar the forum Julian Julius forum Rome of course had a forum which went back to the big origins of Rome but Caesar created a new forum modestly named after himself adjacent to the Roman Forum on some of the most valuable real estate of Rome and in the center at one end of the forum he had erected a temple to mother Venus the goddess who he claimed as the ancestor of his family he said that his ancestors were descended from Venus himself in January a 44 Caesar was at work in his forum supervising the architects putting the final touches on this buildings and here we'll see all that is mortal of the temple of mother Venus when a delegation of 1 to 200 senators came to see him they were bringing with him a list of some of the additional honors that he had been awarded and one of the honors that Caesar had been awarded was that the Senate had voted to make him a God he would be called the deified Julius he would get his own priesthood his own temple and his own cult none of it had been started yet it was for the future but had been approved the delegation came to see Caesar and Caesar did something absolutely shocking from the Roman point of view he did not stand up everybody knew that when the Senators arrived you had to stand up to receive them and Caesar declined to do that the Senators were shocked and horrified that he had insulted them in this way and afterwards he realized that he'd made a mistake and so he had his spin-doctors I'm not quite sure how you say that in Latin but he had them put out that he was not feeling well he was indisposed and he meant to get up he just couldn't help it the other thing he did which didn't help them as he made a joke when they said they were there to present him with new nursey said in a sense in effect enough already you should be looking at ways to give me fewer honors that did not go over very well either so that was the first incident that made people upset the second took place at the end of January 44 BC on this road the Appian Way it took place where the Appian Way entered Rome and to the walls of Rome at the Appian gate Caesar was returning from the Alban Hills where he had carried out a festival he carried out sacrifice among his other titles he was Rome's chief priests and the Senate had given him the right to return to Rome on horseback as if he had just won a major victory as he entered the city at the Appian gate he was greeted by a crowd and someone in the crowd called out hail Rex hail King and others in the crowd took up the cry Caesar made a joke about it he was nothing if not urbane and he said my name is Caesar not Rex in Latin as in English uh Rex both means King King could be the name of no monarch but it could also be a family name and Caesar made a joke but some of Rome's public officials were not amused among the most important officials in Rome were the ten Tribune's they were elected every year to represent the common people of Rome and two of them decided that this was a slap in the face of the Roman Republic and the privileges of the Roman people a free people who did not want to have a king and so they arrested the man who began the cry of hail Rex Caesar was furious he demanded that they release him he said this is a put-up job you've done this on purpose to make it look bad to make people think I want to be a king when I want nothing of the kind I just want to be a dictator for life can't you understand the difference they made a declaration that they felt threatened in the exercise of their office and unable to do the people's duty and they were right because Caesar called a special session of the Senate in which he insisted that the Senate vote these two Tribune's out of office which they did so earlier Caesar insulted the Roman Senate and now he insulted the Roman people by turning on the tribute the third incident was one in which we might say that he insulted everyone by his bizarre behavior it took place here what we were looking at is the remains of the rostra of Caesar the Julian roster seat the rostra was the speaker's platform in the Roman Forum and Caesar modestly renovated the forum and built a new speaker's platform that he named after himself on February 15 44 BC Caesar was cede seated on this platform here you can see a close-up of the stairs leading up to the speaker's platform it was originally covered with marble and it would have extended further out into the forum the occasion was a festival and this is one that Shakespeare talks about the lubricon festival the Lupercalia it was an annual festival in which the priests would run through the city of Rome wearing only loin cloth they would take goat skin whips and they would mock whip young women it was a fertility Rite and I was all done in good fun this year they had created a special new Association of priests called what else the Julian priests part of us who led the ceremony and the leader of the Julian priests was Caesars close military associate comrade-in-arms henchmen and along with Caesar one of the two leading public officials of 44 BC Mark Antony Antony went up to the speaker's platform the Julian roster where Caesar was seated and he offered him well Shakespeare says the crown in reality he offered him a diadem the diadem was the ancient symbol of monarchy it was an embroidered white ribbon with two free at the end and Caesar turned it down twice Anthony said in the name of the Roman people Caesar I offer you the crown I offer you the diadem and people were horrified on the platform was another associate to speak a Caesars Marcus Lepidus who audibly groaned at the sound of this Caesar said let it be written down in the formal records of Rome that Julius Caesar was offered the diadem the monarchy by the Roman people but Rome has no monarch except Jupiter the king of the gods and Caesar turns it down many people thought this was a put-up job on Caesars part that there was a trial balloon to see how the public would respond if he asked for monarchy so all at all this incident greatly redounded against Caesar and it was now that some of Rome's politicians decided to act I should say one other thing Caesar was married he'd been married 15 years to a Roman noble woman named Calpurnia this is not a statuette of Calpurnia it is a Roman noblewoman from this period we don't know exactly what Calpurnia looked like but we do have many images of Caesars best-known mistress and he had many mistresses his best-known mistress at the time was none other than the queen of Egypt she was 30 years younger than him she was famous she was glamorous and she was living in Rome her name of course was Cleopatra we see her here in a bust in Berlin Cleopatra was at in March of 44 BC in the winter 44 BC she was living in Caesar's Palace not really Caesars gardens the Romans called it which was built about a mile from the center of Rome across the Tiber on the hills and she among her other claims to fame was the mother of Caesar's illegitimate son his name was Ptolemy Caesar but everybody called him Kazarian we means Little Caesar now she was there in Rome even though Caesar lived Danton with his wife she was a queen Caesar was dictator for life and when anyone said gosh your dictator for life and your mistress and the mother of your only living child is a queen it sounds like you want to be a king you would say nothing to see here move right along but not everyone was convinced what happened next is a story that is told in five main ancient authors the most famous of them and the one who Shakespeare got most of his information from is a name you'll probably know Plutarch who was a Greek but I'm willing to bet that you don't know the name of the earliest author to give us a detailed account and to my mind the most interesting he came from this city Damascus he was a Greek from Damascus named Nikolas Nikolas of Damascus Nikolas of Damascus was a remarkable character he studied Aristotle enthuse in ADIZ he was very learning and very wise and he made his career working for King Herod in Judea yes the infamous King Herod he then moved on to become the tutor to the children of Antony and Cleopatra as you know Cleopatra eventually moves on to Mark Antony when they lived in Alexandria and finally fetches up in Rome as a secretary to the Emperor Augustus he wrote a biography of Augustus very little of which survives but luckily for us the main part that survives is an account of the assassination of Caesar the story of the assassination that we get in Plutarch very much the story that we get in Shakespeare is highly idealistic its idealistic men motivated by higher causes and also a story of men who are motivated by jealousy sheer jealousy of Caesar and all he had achieved he made them feel small Nicholas tells a different story yes there are some ideals and there are some jealousy there is some jealousy but it's much more a story about Paulo and power and wealth as these coins from the period it's much more of a down and dirty story and I dare to say I think there's more truth in it so all our sources agree that one of the three key conspirators and the one who Plutarch says started the ball rolling is this man Gaius Cassius he of the lean and hungry look Cassius was a Roman soldier he was a general who'd won a great victory in Syria he'd saved a Roman army there about a decade earlier he had fought in the Civil War for Pompey and then after Pompey's defeat he made his peace with Caesar and he accepted Caesar as better than the other possibilities on offer but once the civil war came to an end he chafed under Caesars rule he felt that Caesar did not recognize him enough and hadn't given him high enough office he had enough of the dictator for life and so Cassius turned to his brother-in-law a man who Cassius was angry at because he too had made his peace with Caesar but to greater effect he had been named by Caesar as chief judge of the city of Rome and he was on tap to become the Consul bleeding public official that brother-in-law was none other than Marcus Brutus the Brutus of Shakespeare Brutus was a remarkable and complex character he came from one of the oldest political families in Rome as we shall see and Brutus was a student of philosophy he was close to this man Cicero misses an image of Cicero done by William Blake the poet and artist Cicero was the last line of the Roman Senate the last man standing from those who had opposed Caesar but he was in retirement writing philosophy now and writing to other philosophers like Brutus Brutus himself published philosophy he was a writer and orator but he was also a Roman politician a pragmatic man and somebody who paid a lot of attention to his own reputation and to his family and its business and that family had a very complicated business indeed when Brutus was young his father was murdered at the order of Pompey st. Pompey who Brutus later went on to fight for and then after pompous defeat defected from and went to Caesar he knew Caesar very well because Caesar was the former lover of his mother here is an image not of his mother we don't have an image of her but of a Roman noble lady of this period his mother's name was Servilia she was so close to Caesar that gossip claimed that Brutus was Caesar's son but that's almost certainly not true Caesar was fit would have been fifteen or his fifteen at the time that Brutus was born even for Rome that was a bit precocious but through his mother he was close to Caesar and he was able to reconcile with Caesar after supporting Pompey and Caesar granted Brutus pardon and Brutus had worked for Caesar he governed part of Gaul for Caesar he had greeted Caesar on his return for Rome but now he was having second thoughts seeing all the power that Caesar grabbed for himself realizing that his future in Rome would be limited in a Rome dominated by Caesar and if he ever thought he would make his peace with Caesar he had another formidable woman to deal with and that was his wife this lady portia the year before Brutus had divorced his wife and married what the Romans called a trophy wife no they didn't but he married a younger woman Portia who was the daughter of the most famous supporter of the Republic in Rome Cato the younger Cato who had committed suicide rather than accept asked Caesar for pardon Brutus was now married to her no doubt because he found her young beautiful and attractive but every day she surely reminded Brutus of what was at stake in allowing Caesar to rule Rome one story claims that an order win Brutus is trust and be the only woman allowed in the conspiracy she actually stabbed herself rat with an inflicting a rather deep wound to show how tough she was and Brutus told her the story the stories are told of other Roman women as well we can't be sure that it's true but it's surely true that Portia was tough so Brutus decided to join his brother in law Cassius and to join the plot it was partly because he believed in the Republic it was partly because he believed in his wife it was partly because he was insulted by all the rumors that Caesar was that he was Caesar's illegitimate child it was partly because he saw his own career and that of his family being blocked off by Caesar and the deal Caesar was making with his own friends and family the third member of the conspiracy is the most famous Roman you've never heard it from Shakespeare his name was Brutus as well his full name was decimus junius brutus Albinus he was Brutus as distant cousin Shakespeare calls him vicious not Decimus and he gives him a small role significant role but rather small one in the conspiracy that's because Plutarch says that Decimus was insignificant not an important figure in the conspiracy but the other sources disagree particularly nicholas of damascus who says that Decimus was the most important figure in the conspiracy I'll settle for saying he was one of the three leading figures Decimus was a very different sort than Brutus or Cassius while Brutus and Cassius had a pose Caesar and fought for the Republican for Pompey Decimus had spent his entire career fighting for Caesar he was caesar's admiral first in Gaul and then during the Civil War and after that caesar appointed him to be his deputy as governor of Gaul and Decimus won great victories at sea and on land when Caesar returned to Italy from the civil wars in the summer of 45 BC he had with traveling with him three other men mark antony his great nephew Octavian and Decimus Brutus so Decimus expected great things from Caesar but Decimus must have been disappointed in the autumn of 44 45 BC and in winter of 45 and 44 while other men were allowed to celebrate triumphs even though their victories had not been as great as Decimus Decimus was not allowed to celebrate a triumph while Caesar chose his 18-year old grand nephew to be his second in command on a forthcoming new expedition more on that in a minute Decimus had to stay home and govern the northern part of Italy Decimus like Brutus was married to a woman who had been part of the Republican opposition to Caesar perhaps he too on the home front was reminded of his priorities and Decimus like Brutus was descended from the alleged founder of the Roman Republic this is a bus that is often identified as Lucius Junius Brutus the founder of the Republic and supposedly the ancestor of both Marcus Brutus and Decimus Brutus and a very important figure in the propaganda of the winter and spring of 44 BC quietly in February and March Cassius Brutus and Decimus gathered over 60 men to their conspiracy they were the most important among them well let me say a few things among them about them first of all there was another Major General of Caesars a man named trebonius who also fought with Caesar in Gaul in the Civil War there were other soldiers other officers who fought with Caesar in fact we're told that more of the conspirators were Caesars friends than Caesars enemies there were some former supporters of Pompey but supposedly more of Caesars friends join the conspiracy than the enemy and again why did they do it it wasn't because they hadn't supported Caesar before it's because they didn't like what he was doing they didn't like what he's doing with this power the direction he was going in the direction he was taking the Republic they saw things spinning out of control and let me just add one other ingredient to the recipe what they saw was a man who cared more about the Empire than about the city of Rome now that might seem a very strange thing to say there were tens of millions of people living in the Roman Empire at this time there was between 500,000 and a million people living in the city of Rome and the population of the city of Rome there was less than a thousand who belonged to the nobility and who held these major offices as far as Caesars opponents were concerned his big mistake was he cared more about the 40 million people in the Empire than he cared about the thousand of them we would say right on that's exactly what Caesar should have done but they saw things differently to try to defend their point of view they would say we care about the people in the Empire as well but we want Rome to be governed by people of quality we are like thoroughbred horses only we have the education the training to have the wisdom and the self-control and the discipline to run this Empire and to make it work for everyone and if you have to make break a few eggs to make that particular omelet so be it Caesar would destroy everything Caesar was gathering all this power in his own hands and those of his family and he doesn't care he doesn't have respect for honor and rank and status and dignity he'll overturn all our values and that's what we care about and that's why we are willing to put our lives on the line and risk everything to stop Caesar while we still can so the conspiracy was born they had to decide where to kill Caesar where to act indeed they had to decide if they should kill Caesar because the standard way to carry out an assassination in and assassinations unfortunately were not unknown in Rome the standard thing to do is to hire assassins get them to do the dirty work but they didn't want to do that they didn't want to hire assassins they wanted to kill Caesar themselves because they wanted to make a statement Roman politicians were on the most among those media savvy politicians in the history of the world and they knew how important it was to have the right message and to brand themselves in the proper way they wanted to brand themselves at the descendants of the earliest Senators of Rome who killed Romulus the legendary founder of Rome when he became a tyrant they also knew that they had an unusual opportunity to strike caesar was a dictator he was dictator for life he might have guessed that that would make him unpopular and yet Caesar did something very strange he dismissed his bodyguard he came back to Rome from the field of the bodyguard he fired them all I don't need a bodyguard he said I am open I'm an open book I want the Roman people to have access to me why did he do this on the one hand it was because he was arrogant he was the kind of person who got to the top by breaking the rules and people like that when they get to the top tend to think there are no rules I make the rules if I say no one will touch me then no one will touch me the second reason is that Caesar was a risk addict his entire life had been about pushing things and gambling and taking risks and he must have known it was risky to go without a bodyguard in Rome the third reason is that Caesar was a very shrewd guy and although he dismissed his bodyguard he still had supporters he still had armed men to help him what Caesar did is he made sure that whenever he went into public he would be surrounded by well the sort of men that nowadays you would see surrounding a public official with the ones with the earphones and the dark glasses and the crew cuts so it was very hard to approach Caesar there was only one place where he was relatively vulnerable and even there he still had made sure that he had some friends that as the Roman Senate only senators were allowed in the Roman Senate and so Caesars conspirators Caesars opponent's decided to strike in the Senate they would kill Caesar with their by their own hand in the Senate but they did not plan to kill him in the Senate house that I showed you before which would be located here right off the Roman Forum instead they were going to go outside the walls of Rome and strike him in a different place where the Senate met the most famous building in Rome that you've never heard of I'm sorry limits before getting that let me just say why did they decide to strike on the Ides of March on the 15th of March because on the 18th of March Caesar was leaving Rome he was heading to the east on yet another war Caesar didn't want to end his career as the man who'd fought against other Romans in the civil war he wanted to be known as a conqueror who added territory to the Roman Empire and so he was heading to the east in an enormous expedition with a hundred thousand men to conquer no less than the parthian empire an empire that stretched across what is today Iran Iraq and eastern Turkey that was Caesar's plan leaving on March 18th once he left Rome he'd have a bodyguard he'd be untouchable so the conspirators had to strike first the building that you've never seen is the enormous complex known as pompous works Pompey had built it it opened in 55 BC it continued it was an enormous structure 600 feet long 450 feet wide on the west end it contained Rome's first stone theater then there was what was in effect Rome's first public park there were shops and offices and galleries all around and at the east end there was a Senate House you can't see this building anymore because it was looted for construction material in the Middle Ages but you can still see buildings that trace the shape the footprint of it the amphitheater like shape of an ancient theatre you can see it here and in these buildings Oh built on the footprint of Pompey's theater the theater is at the West End at the east end of the building the building ends in a site that some of us may have seen as tourists of Rome that's called Lauda Gorge and Tina there are some temples there and so ok so here's this round temple and oops sorry to the west of the round temple here's the round temple I want you to look at this structure the foundations of building f you can see some of it here there's the round temple see that there and here you see it from the West I'm sorry this is a little bit backwards it's from the east and then yeah okay so that's from one direction I believe it's from got it wrong I got that direction is from this from the south at looking north here and here okay and here a technical failure there we go here we are in the other direction so what am i making such a big deal about this for this is all that is mortal of pompey senate-house those foundations that's all that's left from the east end of the Porticus of pompey here is a reconstruction it's been badly translated as reenactment but it's a reconstruction of what the building might have looked like it was not a very big building less than 5,000 square feet less than a hundred feet tall it was relatively it was relatively small and this is the place where Caesar went to the Senate meeting on the Ides of March the Senators were gathered there little did Caesar know that 60 some-odd of them had daggers under their togas they were wearing Roman military daggers poggio neighs as the Romans called them and they were waiting for Caesar to arrive the Senate met early in the morning but Caesar didn't come little do they know that back at home Caesars wife Calpurnia had told him as we know from Shakespeare that there are terrible omens you mustn't go to the Senate that day Caesar decided to listen to her perhaps because he wanted domestic peace perhaps because he knew that she was plugged into Roman politics and might have known what she was talking about perhaps even because he had had one of his bouts of the infamous epilepsy from which he suffered in any case he decided to dismiss the Senate and stay at home but before he could put that into effect the conspirators sent the one man who was close enough to Caesar to get him to change his mind Decimus Brutus Decimus now traveled half mile across town to Caesar's house and convinced Caesar to go we don't know exactly what he said the ancient sources which tend to make up dialogue said basically Caesar if you're a man you'll not listen to a woman but you'll come to the meeting of the Senate you have nothing to be afraid of I guarantee your safety and how could Decimus guarantee his safety because Decimus had his own private police force as it were Decimus had a crew of gladiators it was not uncommon in Rome for this period for great men to have their own troops of gladiators these gladiators would fight in public shows to win the support of the public but they would also serve as bodyguards and as it happened Decimus said I've got my gladiators at the center portico of Pompey today you have nothing to worry about they were there allegedly it's a long story but it had to do with games in the theater but I imagine that Decimus told Caesar they were there to protect him and so Caesar agreed he left home he got into a litter he was brought to the Porticus of Pompey and around noon on the Ides of March 44 BC he entered Senate house and there of course destiny was waiting for him no time to go through the whole story in detail but suffice it to say that the conspirators being military men had planned it very carefully they had one group that formed a perimeter around Caesar and another that blocked the Senators and prevented them from coming to his aid and we know if two senators who actually tried to come to his aid what about Brutus and what about the famous at tu brute a well Caesar never said at tu brute a youtube Rudess that line was made up in the Renaissance but the ancient authors tell us is that there was a rumor a rumor that they deny a rumor that Caesar said in Greek Chi su teknon and you took you to child again the ancient sources say he didn't say that he groaned and moaned and tried to protect himself he didn't say much of anything it only took a minute to kill him but if he did said it what what did he mean there are three theories theory one is by saying you to child Caesar was incredibly urbane and quick-witted and he was insulting Brutus he was saying you know what the rumors are true you really are my illegitimate son you have just killed your father the most heinous crime a Roman can do have a nice day I don't believe it version 2 is that Caesar again being very urbane was quoting a line of Greek tragedy that went on to say you too child well one day enjoy power such as mine but he croaked before he could finish the line the third version and perhaps the most persuasive is that Caesar was quoting a well-known ancient curse of the Ancients signed cursed tablets they and they would they would bury these tablets with curses against their enemies and the tablets often said in Greek same to you and that is one theory as to what Caesar was supposedly saying in any case Caesar fell and infamously he fell at the foot of his arch enemy this was the same house of Pompey on the tribunal stood a statue of Pompey which the artist has depicted here this is a statue found in the Renaissance which was thought to be Pompey you can still see this statue but it ain't Pompey we know that it's actually a Roman senator a Roman Emperor excuse me we have some ideas as to which one it might be we don't have the statue of Pompey but this is a nice very dramatic version and you'll notice that the artist has this guy holding a sword more accurate what we see in these other hands is that the men who killed Caesar carried daggers how do we know that they carry daggers we have the most famous coin of the ancient world the Ides of March coin in which a year or two later Brutus advertised the deed on that day by showing the Ides of March a Liberty Cap a cap worn by a freed slave and two daggers it goes to the extent of showing two different daggers this one has a cross like handle very rare by the way in this period and this one you can't see it so well in this particular coin but if you could there would be two discs on the handle so daggers were what they use these were Roman soldiers daggers after the assassination the enemies of the assassin said you're just cutthroats you use the what you used in effect a switchblade a Sica a Roman version of a switchblade nonsense they said we used good military daggers we were carrying at a military mission on behalf of the Republic well as we know from Shakespeare the conspirators tried to address the senator is to say we've brought freedom to the land the Senators were scared out of their minds and they skedaddled Brutus and the fellow conspirators at this point surrounded by their gladiators marched a half mile from the Senate house back towards the center of Rome to the capital line hill and they then proceeded to fortify the hill surrounded by gladiators this was a smart thing to do because less than a half mile away on the island in the Tiber River was a Roman legion at least a thousand men commanded by one of Caesars loyalists marcus lepidus they're now followed a standoff for the next three days the conspirators were here on the Capitoline hill no over here and the Roman people were gathered in the forum the conspirators address the Roman people and they won a lot of supporters they were not the only people who were opposed to Caesar becoming a king and there were many people who thought the conspirators must have known what they were doing and surely had armies waiting to come to the gates of Rome but they didn't they expected that they could win on popular support and by co-opting their enemies they had a measure of success their enemies meeting the Senate met not in the place where Caesar but in another meeting house and they decided on the 17th of March to have an amnesty and late in the day on the 17th of March the conspirators left the capital line hill they came down and they shook hands with Caesars two leading supporters Antony and Lepidus and they then followed reconciliation dinners bizarrely Brutus went off to dinner with Lepidus who was also his brother-in-law these Romans had operatic connections and Cassius went off to dinner with Antony where they made jokes about daggers I am not kidding and that might have been that but it wasn't of course Antony was a shrewd political operator here's Mark Antony on a coin and he was married to an even shrewder political operator a woman named Fulvia this is not a very good image of her fovea had been married to two other Roman politicians she'd seen them both died and one of them she saw have a funeral that devolved into a riot that burned down the Roman Senate house and oak too overturned Roman politics and I imagine that she was now suggesting to Antony that this is precisely what he should do Antony and Caesar supporters demanded a public funeral for Caesar and the conspirators seeing the number of soldiers and veterans who supported Caesars supporters supported union support Caesar had no choice but to agree and so on the 20th 20th of March the famous funeral took place once again Caesars body was on the rostra the Julian roster where he sat on February 15th this time it was as a corpse Antony led the funeral he never said friends Romans countrymen he never said honorable men but the real funeral was even more dramatic than the version that Shakespeare tells us it had opera it has music excuse me it had singing it had chanting it had seen stagecraft it had a model of Caesars body on a crane a revolving model that showed the wound and Antony whipped the crowd up into a riot I imagine that he had a Jean provocateur can't prove it for some reason to think he had a Jean provocateur there to make sure there was a riot Caesars body was here oops he rather on the Julian rostra and the crowd came they grabbed a the the corpse and they brought it across the Roman Forum near where Caesar lived and right here they burned it they created their own funeral pyre and they then rampage through Rome uh forcing some of the conspirators to be locked into their houses and they actually killed someone who they thought was a conspirator but he was indeed innocent how do we know exactly where Caesar was built was killed because in later years a temple the temple of the dfi Julius was built on this very site into this day we can see the place where Caesar was cremated and as you can see people to this day leave flowers there for Julius Caesar so that was that or was it no that wasn't that and in spite of this the conspirators and Antony might have made the deep' made a deal the Romans were very practical people and Antony was a member of the old Roman aristocracy things might not have added ended so badly for the conspirators if not for the emergence of this man Caesars eighteen year old grand nephew Gaius Octavius Gaius Octavius was not in Rome at the time he was in Albania with the army that was poised to invade the east but he came back to Italy and discovered that in his will Caesar had let adopted him as his son and heir and 18 year old Gaius Octavius accepted this even though he was advised not to that it was too dangerous he accepted it and he said from now on my name is Gaius Julius Caesar we tend to call him Octavian but he turned out to be one of the most intelligent shrewd mature and prudent eighteen-year-olds in history freshmen take note he goes on to lead caesar's veterans in a war in which he switch asides and betrays various people over the years at one point he's fighting against Antony then he's fighting with Antony then he's fighting against Antony again and when it's all over fifteen years later guys Octavius here we see a wreath part of the decoration of the temple of the deified Julius Gaius Octavius is Rome's first emperor Augustus so the act the assassination that was meant to save the Republic ends up ironically leading it to an even stronger and leading it to a monarchy so a different one than Caesar had in mind wasn't entirely in vain no it wasn't entirely in vain Octavian Augustus learned something from Caesar he learned that you couldn't be a dictator for life much less a king he learned that you had to respect the Senate and share power to a small degree with it and so although Augustus was a monarch he was a constitutional monarch he was not an autocrat it would take centuries before Rome devolved into autocracy so the conspirators achieved something that was far less than they had hoped to achieve here we see part of Augustus as propaganda you can see a coin with him depicted on the other side a reminder that he is the son of the dfi Julius and that symbol is of a comet which passed over Rome in the summer of 44 which Augustus Octavian then said was a symbol that Caesar had been accepted into the heavens as far as Pompey senate-house Augustus had it bricked up was never used again he declared the Ides of March to be official parricide day a black day on the Roman calendar and he built a latrine next to the Ides of March to the portico Senate has a pomp turning it into a public urinal as for the story of the assassination in valiant Brutus the noblest Roman of them all that of course has survived in Shakespeare's version and Hollywood's version I want to ask you how many seen that and I hope I've added a little bit to it tonight thank you I'd be very happy to take a few questions well so the question is how much is that how close to the truth is the story well always in ancient history there has to be an element of plausibility and competitive plausibility we don't have a video camera we weren't there but what ancient historians try to do is to put together the evidence and to make the most sense of it so from my story I'm pivoting against a tradition that's rooted in Plutarch and his idealistic version of what happened and I take Nicholas's tradition which is a much more realistic even cynical version of what happened and argue that that is closer to the truth because this is a based on work that a number of other scholars have done on Nicholas and looking him more closely previously scholars tended to say he was just a guy working for Augustus so he's only giving us a gustas version of the story but I think what other scholars have shown is that Nicholas was a much more a much deeper thinker than that and he had really learned a lot from studying facilities in Aristotle he was a very shrewd judge of politics so I start from the premise that there's really a lot more truth in his story than he's been given credit for when you do that you then see more of a role for Decimus and you tell rather a different story than then Shakespeare tells I'd like to think that the story I'm telling is more of a story in the round that sees more of human nature than we're used to in the other stories not that I could possibly compete with Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature I just think that the historical truth has some different facets to it than the ones that Shakespeare chose to to emphasize I think August I think Augustus would have been Caesar himself of course would have been the most interesting to speak to although when in December of 45 BC Caesar visits Cicero's villa on the Bay of Naples and Cicero writes a letter about what a tense occasion it was and he ends up saying he's not the sort of guest to whom you'd say please come again so in the right control environment I'd like to speak to Caesar I think probably Nicholas Nicholas of Damascus would have been an absolutely fascinating person to speak to he saw so much of this period of history and so many different perspectives and what little survives of his work is so good and so fascinating I think he would have been the most interesting to talk to with maybe Cicero being the second most interesting sister of course is a wonderful heroic sometimes fatuous and tragic figure in the end but extraordinary what we learn from Cicero you well so the question is are there new sources there are some first of all the that what we saw is that the the Senate has a Pompey that was only excavated in the 1930s and only really published in the 1950s and it's still being studied today so reconstructing the Senate house of Pompey is something that we're learning more from I personally crawled through a number of basements in that part of Rome and can tell you that there are pieces of Pompey's portico that's around there we're learning things from that there are some coins that we haven't seen before and there's some topographical work on Caesar's campaigns that we haven't seen before there are few little tidbits from here and there a lot of the evident new evidence we get from the intramural comes from Egypt because the climate allows papyrus to survive and believe it or not there is a papyrus that's about something completely different that suggests that Decimus Brutus and Mark Antony shared a girlfriend and that this girlfriend was a prominent actress on the Roman stage in this period so there are few tidbits as far as new things but you're absolutely right that a lot most of the progress comes from reinterpreting old things but some of them were hardly interpreted all some of them were passed over so that's where we learn a lot from great question what happened to Cleopatra she was still in Rome she did not leave Rome for about a month and you might say how could she possibly have stayed in Rome well Cleopatra besides being Caesar's mistress was the queen of Egypt and her job was to represent her country but she needed to find out was who was going to run Rome now and she had to make sure she was friends with whoever was running Rome so she didn't want to leave right away she stuck around for a while before she got a sense of the political lay of the land and and then she left and then she went back to Egypt she ends up helping the opponents of the assassins and being part of the effort to destroy the assassins which happens and as you know she ends up up married to Antony and it's a whole additional story but then she's back in Egypt many great question dig surely Caesar knew and even in ancient times there were people who said that and who said either who said he was he was so depressed and in such poor health that he didn't really mind but I don't buy that I really don't buy that I mean if I'm Julius Caesar I don't think I want to end my life in this horrible sort of way if you want to end your life there are other ways to end your life rather than being slaughtered in the Roman Senate that way I don't think that I'm going to be planning a three-year long military the expedition to the east I don't think I'm going to be so quick to say goodbye to Cleopatra for all those things again I think this is more of a story of the arrogance of power that Caesar is so used to thinking I break the rules I make the rules that what other people around him could see he couldn't see to be sure to other factors a the conspiracy came very close to being revealed to him there were two different men on that day who wanted to tell him the truth with 60-plus conspirators it's hard to keep a secret so this thing was going down one way or another and why it's so important that Decimus got caesar to go to the Senate that day it was now or never for the conspirators the other thing you have to realize is there's a lot of noise out there Caesar hears all the time about this and that conspiracy out to get him and he's reached the point where he thinks and no one's going to really do it they're all talking but it's a good game and no one's really going to do it and I think Caesar again being someone who liked risk just said the best thing to do is to be bold and I have nothing to worry about so I don't think he knew about it that's my opinion right yeah I love HBO Rome it was absolutely terrific and you know there are many inaccuracies the way they show the Senate house is not accurate but they do two things that I think are really great for one thing they remember that the sources tell us that before he died Caesar put his toga Oh covered his head with his toga which was supposed to be a gesture of modesty and also some said a gesture of arrogance that he was joining the gods the other thing they do is if you remember they claim that Caesar got one of his ex and turians I think it's titus pullo to be his his personal bodyguard even a Vorenus okay even though he didn't have a bodyguard I'm absolutely convinced that Caesar did something like that one of our sources tells us that the conspirators didn't dare go after him in public because he had big scary men around him also remember the sources tell us there were two men two senators who tried to save Caesar we have their names and we know that afterwards Augustus rewarded them to the skies so yes I think it was a lot scarier a lot more dangerous for the conspirators than we tend to think and I think they get some sense of that in a HBO Rome wonderful show also because they give a sense that that rome wasn't entirely a pretty place of made of marble but there was a seme Guti side to it as well and they give women important roles to yeah so Octavius was very young but a Caesar doesn't have a male heir he has a few close male relatives and Octavius I think is the most impressive among them his mother his father died when he was young but his mother was pushing him she was the one related to Caesar and he had important public positions from an early age and Caesar showed him favor from an early age I think the key moment is when he goes to join Caesar in Spain he gets there too late for the fighting in 45 BC but he spends several months with Caesar and he must have impressed his uncle I imagine that he impressed his uncle as the sources claimed he did as just the sort of brilliant cunning ruthless ambitious person that he was a chip off the old block I think that's what makes the difference Caesar wants someone who is related to and someone who has his talent and so on the Ides of September 45 BC Caesar rewrites his will and he makes octavius's main air and he deposits it with the Vestal Virgins and that's the will that people read after his death that's so shocking to so many people that he chose this young whippersnapper over all the 40 year olds who wanted to be Caesar's heir that he chose Octavius instead a question yes yes yes yes I think that's a those are two great questions the letters first the Romans don't have a regular postal service and later on in the Empire when things become more regularize it's a postal service only for government in government officials but I'm sure that bigwigs liked Servilia would always be able to find people to take their letters in the late Republic the Senate and public officials did have people who they would hire regularly one of them was called a tablet carrier at a bellarius and there's also a fast writer and they would send them at on expeditions they would use people like that Cicero we know sometimes would send slaves he would have slaves who would carry the letters or he would have friends who slaves he would piggyback on and have them carrying the letters but it's a very ad-hoc system and I don't think that ordinary people could use it very much we do know later on we have Roman examples of letters from between Roman soldiers but I suspect they were using the big government post because they were in military capacity as far as the soldiers and their money I think it's going to be really it's great question it's going to be really difficult to get that money back to people there is a security issue and I would imagine that most soldiers held on to that money very tightly they're not going to trust it to others to take it to them so the people back at home I would think I haven't looked into the subject it's a good one we might have some evidence on it but I would think that the people back at home are just going to have to eight for those soldiers to come back there's you could trust a banker I suppose but I don't think very many people would want to do that but great questions thank you okay those are great questions so I'll take the last one first what happens to the common people well the common people get some benefits from the Roman emperors this is the famous bread and circuses they get bread and they get entertainment but they lose all political power I mean the the sad one of the sad things about the late Republic is that in a sense both sides were wrong the Senate was wrong and that it didn't see the need to reach out to the Empire and to expand the the ruling group the people like Caesar were wrong and that they didn't believe the Republic had anything of value in it Caesar supposedly said the Republic is just a name it has neither form nor substance he didn't set any store by the voting of the Roman people or by the the freedom of the liberty of the Roman people and that gets lost sadly the people common people lose any electoral power while the elite does retain some as far as having an elective monarchy versus a hereditary monarchy it's true that having an elective monarchy was messy and sometimes there was violence and sometimes even civil war but the one huge advantage of the elective monarchy is that it was extremely flexible and it allowed people who are not in from the in charm circle of the elite to become emperor and one of the reasons the Roman Empire lasts as long as it does is that the Romans are among the most flexible people in history they're incredibly good at dealing with change and the imperial system is one of the ways they deal with change they go Augustus himself we think of him he must have been very Roman because he is Caesar's heir in fact he's one-quarter Roman on his mother's side he's he's he's part Roman from Caesars family but three of his four grandparents came from families that did not come from Rome they came from Italy and they came from Italian families true they were Roman citizens but they're nowhere near the charm circle of the Roman elite so he himself already represents a move away from the narrow days of the Senate so for all the problems of the monarchy it is extremely flexible in many ways and it serves Rome in very good stead one last question well thank you for being such a great audience you

Channel: Cornell University

Views: 125,463

Keywords: history

Id: ucvqNtfxxbk

Length: 77min 32sec (4652 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2015

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Barry Strauss, Cornell's Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies and chair of the Department of History, talks about "The Death of Caesar: New Light on History's Most Famous Assassination" in this July 22, 2015 lecture sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions. Strauss is the author of a highly praised new book on the subject.