![]() Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia after she became involved in a scandal involving Clodius Pulcher, her alleged but unlikely paramour. In the wake of the drama, Cato felt vindicated in his long-held mistrust of Caesar and his populist politics, and firmly made an enemy of him.Īs different as they were, Cato and Caesar were both plagued by problems in their marriages, some of them of their own making. For Osgood, the real importance of the Catilinarian Conspiracy lay not in the damage it caused to Cicero’s reputation, but in the impact it had upon the dynamic between Cato and Caesar. He spoke impassionedly of the threat the conspirators posed to the very existence of Rome and her Republic and found himself on the winning side of the argument.Ĭicero, by contrast, never lived down his role in proceeding to execute the accused without trial. ![]() Cato felt that a death sentence was necessary. The big question that confronted the senators was how best to punish his accomplices after they were captured.Ĭaesar spoke in favour of confiscating their property and handing them a life sentence in one of Rome’s prisons. Whilst Catiline rushed to head up the command of the military uprising in Etruria, five of his key co-conspirators remained in Rome, ready to see off his chief opposition. Catiline was a disaffected and almost bankrupt politician who engineered a coup in Rome after repeatedly failing to be elected to the consulship in the senate. It began in earnest in the wake of the Catilinarian Conspiracy of 6 3 BC. For Osgood, the dispute between Caesar and Cato was significant in at least the medium term. But all wars have long-term and short-term causes. Blame for this war has more usually been placed on the collapse of the First Triumvirate - an illegal alliance for power forged between Jul ius Caesar, Pompey the Great and Mar cus Licinius Crassus in 6 0 BC - and the breakdown in relations between Caesar and Pompey in particular. He argues that their feud has been overlooked as a contributing factor to the civil war that erupted in 4 9 BC and brought the Roman Republic crashing to the ground. Osgood takes the tense relationship between Cato and Caesar as the central focus of his book. It is little wonder they came to blows.Ĭicero never lived down executing the accused without trial Osgood sums these up as “an empire wielding its power for the people” (Caesar) versus “a Senate protecting the people from the all-powerful empire builder s” (Cato). The differences between Caesar’s and Cato’s personalities mattered because they reflected the differences in their visions for Rome. ![]() Cato’s family was Sabine, and his most famous ancestor was a mere mortal in the shape of the plebeian writer and highly conservative statesman Cato the Elder. Caesar belonged to a well-established Roman family and claimed descent from Venus via her son Aeneas. Cato could count Sulla as an old family friend. Caesar was the nephew of the wife of Gaius Mar ius, the populist enemy of Sulla, who as dictator had thousands of Italians proscribed and killed in his bid to restore the authority of the Senate. Even Donald Trump and Joe Biden have more in common than they did. If Caesar was louche in his barely-belted toga and exotic unguents, Cato was positively austere - a prime hair-shirt candidate - with his bare feet, rustic diet, extreme exercise and strict sexual mores it was most unusual for a Roman to make his wife the first woman he slept with.įew would argue with Josiah Osgood, Professor of Classics at Georgetown, when he describes Caesar and Cato as opposites. Cato despaired at Caesar’s profligacy and tireless womanising. For years the two men had been locked in furious rivalry. Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic, Josiah Osgood (OUP, £25)Ĭaesar wrote it shortly before he became dictator, with the intention of denigrating the memory of Mar cus Porcius Cato, “Cato the Younger ”. The Anticato survives today only in fragments, but according to an ancient satirist, it was originally so long that it took up two scrolls and almost outweighed the penis of Publius Clodius Pulcher, apparently among the best-endowed politicians in Rome. Less famous, but equally explosive, was Caesar’s own collection of vitriol. Cicero composed fourteen fiery Philippics against Mar k Antony in the 4 0s BC, and Catullus jibed at Jul ius Caesar so profusely in his poems that he had to issue an apology. If there was one thing the Romans did well - aside from sanitation, irrigation and concrete - it was polemic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. This article is taken from the December/January 2023 issue of The Critic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |