Allan Massie: Caesar

"How could you follow such a man?" he said.

He has a peculiarly candid face, rather square under a shock of yellow hair.

"You never felt either his charm or his authority," I said. "Tell me, do you have any memories of your cousin?"

"Why should you care? You're a Roman, and an accomplice in his murder."

"You have read what I have written," I said. "That should explain my question.")

After the battle Caesar praised Antony and Trebonius. It did not concern me that he had no words for my own part in the action. I should have been embarrassed, to tell the truth, if he had said anything in my praise. I could see Labienus glower, however. He hated Antony whom he thought nothing but a debauchee. Perhaps it was at that moment that he began to separate himself from Caesar.

That night Antony came to my tent. He was drunk, as perhaps he had a right to be. I would have liked to have been drunk myself for another reason. I would rather not recall that visit, but for one thing he said.

"Caesar doesn't realise it yet, but Rome is now his."

I thought him absurd at the time.

He lay back on my couch, his tunic rucked up.

"Slaughter makes me randy," he said.

I suppose I smiled, as I tend to do when embarrassed.

"You look like a white mouse," he said, "a timid little white mouse."

I am naturally pale, but my hair was not white in those days, but straw-coloured. It amused Antony to make a play of words on my cognomen. Perhaps one of my ancestors was indeed an albino. I don't know. My features were always sharp, never handsome, and indeed as a child I was given the nickname "Mouse", which has remained with me. Well, Caesar means "hairy", but Caesar himself was bald, something which did embarrass him.

"Anyway," Antony said, "you don't need to worry. It's a woman I want."

He got to his feet, swaying a little, and yet, despite his drunkenness, moving with the languorous grace of a great cat. He put his hands on my shoulders as if to steady himself, and looked me hard in the face. His breath stank of wine. He leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.

"Little Mouse," he said, "little Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus Mouse. You don't need to look so frightened."

"I'm not frightened," I said. "I'm bored and disgusted."

"By me, Mouse?"

"Bored by you, and disgusted by what has happened today."

"Come," he said, "Vercingetorix played and lost. He's been the hell of a trouble to us. He knew the rules of the game. You can't blame Caesar for his triumph."

"I don't," I said, "I blame him for…"

I paused.

"Be careful, Mouse," Antony said. "Be careful not to speak against the General."

"Of course," I said, "one must never do that."

Caesar: warts and all. Was he ever sincere? We would have died for him, died for his smile. All those of us who were his generals and lieutenants in Gaul felt the wand of the enchanter. We all feared him also, even Antony, who pretended to fear of no man. But I have seen him reduced to stammering and blushes by a cold look from Caesar. Even Casca could be abashed by him.

The first time I saw Caesar he was emerging from my mother's bedroom. I was a child at the time, perhaps nine or ten. It was a summer morning and I had woken early, and being unable to sleep again, had turned towards my mother for comfort. And as I approached her door, it opened, and this young man, whom I didn't know to be Caesar, emerged, in a short tunic. He stopped and smiled, and touched my cheek with his forefinger and then took my ear between thumb and forefinger and held me at arm's length.

"So this is Mouse," he said, "little Mouse of whom I have heard such fine things. They tell me you love Greek poetry." I nodded.

"So do I, boy. We must discourse on it at some future and more propitious moment."

Then he laughed, a laugh of pure merriment, and left me. I turned and followed him out of the house, watching him tip the porter, and my eyes lingered on him as he strolled away. Crossing the courtyard he tossed his folded toga over his shoulder. I had never seen a gentleman show himself in public in such a state of undress. I know now he took pleasure in advertising his conquests. I had no idea then why he had been in our house, and I did not understand that he was my mother's lover.

Of course he cared nothing for her. She, on the other hand, adored him. When I went through to see her, it was as if I was looking on someone I had never met.

In those days Caesar had not yet won a military reputation. He was known only for his debauchery and debts. But that too I learned later. When I heard men speak of Caesar in those terms, I could not connect the man so described with the magnificent carelessness of his manner. At the age of ten I became his slave even as my mother was. It was a secret we shared and kept from everyone, especially my father: our adoration of Caesar.

Later, I overheard my uncle ask him why he had not divorced my mother.

"On account of Caesar?" my father said. "Dear boy, if every husband whom Caesar has cuckolded did that, Rome would be bereft of married couples. She is not likely to betray me with any other man. All us husbands make an exception of Caesar."

Perhaps you see now why his soldiers sang in his Triumph:

Home we bring the bald whoremonger,

Romans, lock your wives away,

All his Gallic slaves and tribute,

Went his Gallic whores to pay.

And not only Gallic whores, that's for sure. Of course on one celebrated, but never fully explained, occasion, Caesar was on the other side, as it were, of the fence.

As a young man, when serving as an aide-de-camp to Marcus Thermus, the proconsul of Asia, Caesar was despatched on a diplomatic mission to King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Nobody knows exactly what transpired there, but I have heard Cicero (admittedly an inveterate and unreliable gossip) declare that "Caesar was led by Nicomedes' attendants to the royal bedroom, where he lay on a golden couch, clad in a purple shifts Imagine that, my friends. Yes, indeed, that was how this descendant of Venus lost his virginity in Bithynia." That may be nonsense, is almost certainly embroidered. But it was widely believed. The versifier Licinius Calvus published a little squib about

The riches of Bithynia's King

Who Caesar on his bed abused.

And once when Caesar was arguing in the Senate in defence of Nicomedes' daughter Nysa, and listing his own obligations to the King, Cicero, again, shouted out in his excitable provincial manner: "Enough of that, if you please. We all know what he gave you, and what you surrendered to him in return."

And it is true that there were certain Roman merchants in Bithynia at the time, who doubtless recounted what happened there; there is no good reason to suppose that their version was all lies.

Anyway, these things were widely bruited in Rome even when I was a boy, and that made Caesar appear in a curious fashion still more dazzling. Any other man would have been overwhelmed by the shame of it. Any other man would have hid his face and shunned public life. Not Caesar. He carried it off with the same swagger with which he could confront the son of the woman from whose bed he had risen. But I have often wondered whether he set himself to achieve the reputation he did win as a ladies' man precisely because of this stain on his honour. After all, nobody objects to a man who chooses to make love to boys, but to submit to the embraces of a man older than yourself is considered dishonourable in an adult. We call such a man a pathic, and generally despise him. That's true even of the Greeks, as you can read in Plato. Incidentally, Bibulus, who shared a consulship with Caesar in 59, actually described him in an edict as "The Queen of Bithynia who once wanted to sleep with a monarch, but now wants to be one."