Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

The ludi Megalenses were the first games of the year and religiously the most solemn, perhaps because they heralded the arrival of spring (in years when the calendar coincided with the seasons) and emerged out of the terrible second war Rome had fought against Carthage, when Hannibal marched up and down Italy. It was then that the worship of Magna Mater, the Great Asian Earth Mother, was introduced to Rome, and her temple was erected on the Palatine looking directly down on the Vallis Murcia, in which lay the Circus Maximus. In many ways it was an inappropriate cult for conservative Rome; Romans abhorred eunuchs, flagellatory rites, and what was considered religious barbarism. However, the deed was done in the moment the Vestal Virgin Claudia miraculously pulled the barge bearing Magna Mater's Navel Stone up the Tiber, and now Rome had to suffer the consequences as castrated priests bleeding from self inflicted wounds screeched and trumpeted their way through the streets on the fourth day of April, towing the Great Mother's effigy and begging alms from all those who came to watch this introduction to the games. The games themselves were more typically Roman, and lasted for six days, from the fourth to the tenth day of April. The first day consisted of the procession, then a ceremony at Magna Mater's temple, and finally some events in the Circus Maximus. The next four days were devoted to theatrical performances in a number of temporary wooden structures put up for the purpose, while the last day saw the procession of the Gods from the Capitol to the Circus, and many hours of chariot racing in the Circus. As senior curule aedile, it was Caesar who officiated at the first day's events, and Caesar who offered the Great Mother an oddly bloodless sacrifice, considering that Kubaba Cybele was a bloodthirsty lady; the offering was a dish of herbs. Some called these games the patrician games, for on the first evening patrician families feasted each other and kept their guest lists absolutely patrician; it was always thought an auspicious omen for the Patriciate when the curule aedile who made the sacrifice was a patrician, as was Caesar. Bibulus of course was plebeian in rank, and felt utterly ostracized on that opening day; Caesar had filled the special seating on the great wide steps of the temple with patricians, doing special honor to the Claudii Pulchri, so intimately connected to the presence of Magna Mater in Rome. Though on this first day the celebrating aediles and the official party did not descend into the Circus Maximus, but rather watched from Magna Mater's temple steps, Caesar had elected to put on a pageant in the Circus instead of trying to entertain the crowd which had followed the Goddess's bloody procession with the usual fare of boxing matches and foot races. Time did not permit chariot racing. Caesar had tapped into the Tiber and channeled water across the Forum Boarium to create a river inside the Circus, with the spina doing duty as Tiber Island and separating this cunning stream. While the vast crowd oohed and aahed its total enchantment, Caesar depicted the Vestal Claudia's feat of strength. She towed the barge in from the Forum Boarium end where on the last day the starting gates for the chariots would be installed, took it once entirely around the spina, then brought it to rest at the Capena end of the stadium. The barge glittered with gilt and had billowing purple embroidered sails; all the eunuch priests were assembled on its deck around a glassy black ball representing the Navel Stone, while high on the poop stood Magna Mater's statue in her chariot drawn by a pair of lions, absolutely lifelike. Nor did Caesar employ a strongman dressed as a Vestal for Claudia; he used a slight and slender, beautiful woman of Claudia's type, and concealed the men who pushed the barge, shoulders bent to it in waist deep water, with a gilded false hull. The crowd went home ecstatic after this three hour show. Caesar stood surrounded by delighted patricians, accepting their fulsome compliments for his taste and imagination. Bibulus took the hint and left in a huff because everyone ignored him. There were no fewer than ten wooden theaters erected from the Campus Martius to the Capena Gate, the largest of which held ten thousand, the smallest five hundred. And instead of being content to have them look what they were, temporary, Caesar had insisted they be painted, decorated, gilded. Farces and mimes were staged in the bigger theaters, Terence and Plautus and Ennius in the smaller ones, and Sophocles and Aeschylus in the littlest, very Greek looking auditorium; every thespian taste was catered for. From early in the morning until nearly dusk, all ten theaters played for four whole days, a feast. Literally a feast, as Caesar served free refreshments during the intervals. On the last day the procession assembled on the Capitol and wended its way down through the Forum Romanum and the Via Triumphalis to the Circus Maximus, parading gilded statues of some Gods like Mars and Apollo and Castor and Pollux. Since Caesar had paid for the gilding, it was perhaps not surprising that Pollux was much smaller in size than his twin, Castor. Such a laugh! Though the games were supposed to be publicly funded and the chariot races were dearest to every spectator's heart, in actual fact there was never State money for the entertainments themselves. This hadn't stopped Caesar, who produced more chariot races on that last day of the ludi Megalenses than Rome had ever seen. It was his duty as senior curule aedile to start the races, each one comprising four chariots Red, Blue, Green and White. The first race was for cars drawn by four horses poled up abreast, but other races saw two horses poled up abreast, or two or three horses harnessed in tandem one after the other; Caesar even put on races with unyoked horses ridden bareback by postilions. The course of each race was five miles long, consisting of seven laps around the central division of the spina, a narrow and tall ridge adorned with many statues and showing at one end seven golden dolphins, at the other seven golden eggs perched in big chalices; as each lap ended one dolphin's nose was pulled down to bring its tail up, and one golden egg was taken from its chalice. If the twelve hours of day and the twelve hours of night were of equal length, then each race took one quarter of an hour to run, which meant the pace was fast and furious, a wild gallop. Spills when they happened usually occurred rounding the metae, where each driver, reins wound many times about his waist and a dagger tucked into them to free him if he crashed, fought with skill and courage to keep on the inside, a shorter course. The crowd adored that day, for instead of long breaks after each race, Caesar kept them coming with hardly an interruption; the bookmakers scrambling through the excited spectators taking bets had to work in a frenzy to keep up. Not a single bleacher was vacant, and wives sat on husbands' laps to jam more in. No children, slaves or even freedmen were allowed, but women sat with men. At Caesar's games more than two hundred thousand free Romans jammed into the Circus Maximus, while thousands more watched from every vantage point on Palatine and Aventine. "They're the best games Rome has ever seen," said Crassus to Caesar at the end of the sixth day. "What a feat of engineering to do that to the Tiber, then remove it all and have dry ground again for the chariot races." "These games are nothing," replied Caesar with a grin, "nor was it particularly difficult to use a Tiber swollen from the rains. Wait until you see the ludi Romani in September. Lucullus would be devastated if only he'd cross the pomerium to see." But between the ludi Megalenses and the ludi Romani he did something else so unusual and spectacular that Rome talked about it for years. When the city was choked with vacationing rural citizens who had poured into town for the great games early in September, Caesar put on funeral games in memory of his father, and used the entire Forum Romanum. Of course it was hot and cloudless, so he tented the whole area over with purple sailcloth, hitching its edges to the buildings on either side if they were high enough; where there were no buildings to serve as supports, he propped up the massive fabric structure with great poles and guy ropes. An exercise in engineering he relished, both devising and supervising it himself. But when all this incredible construction began, a wild rumor went round that Caesar intended to display a thousand pairs of gladiators. Catulus summoned the Senate into session. "What are you really planning, Caesar?" demanded Catulus to a packed House. "I've always known you intended to undermine the Republic, but a thousand pairs of gladiators when there are no legions to defend our beloved city? This isn't secretly mining a tunnel, this is using a battering ram!" "Well," drawled Caesar, rising to his feet on the curule dais, it is true that I do own a mighty battering ram, and also true that I have secretly mined many a tunnel, but always the one with the other." He pulled the front neckline of his tunic away from his chest and put his head down to address the space thus created, and shouted, "Isn't that right, O battering ram?" His hand fell, his tunic flattened, and he looked up with his sweetest smile. "He says that's right." Crassus emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a howl, but before his laugh could gather force Cicero's bellow of mirth overtook it; the House dissolved in a gale of hilarity which left Catulus as speechless as his face was purple. Whereupon Caesar proceeded to display the number he had always meant to display, three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators gorgeously clad in silver. But before the funeral games actually got under way, another sensation outraged Catulus and his colleagues. When the day dawned and the Forum appeared from the houses on the edge of the Germalus to look like Homer's gently heaving wine dark sea, those who came early to get the best places discovered something else than a tent had been added to the Forum Romanum. During the night Caesar had restored every statue of Gaius Marius to its pedestal or plinth, and put Gaius Marius's trophies of war back inside the temple to Honor and Virtue he had built on the Capitol. But what could the arch conservative senators actually do about it? The answer was, nothing. Rome had never forgotten nor learned to stop loving the magnificent Gaius Marius. Out of everything Caesar did during that memorable year when he was curule aedile, the restoration of Gaius Marius was deemed his greatest act. Naturally Caesar didn't waste this opportunity to remind all the electors who and what he was; in every little arena wherein some of his three hundred and twenty pairs of sawdust soldiers clashed at the bottom of the Comitia well, in the space between the tribunals, near the temple of Vesta, in front of the Porticus Margaritaria, on the Velia he had his father's ancestry proclaimed, all the way back to Venus and to Romulus. Two days after this, Caesar (and Bibulus) staged the ludi Romani, which at this time ran for twelve days. The parade from the Capitol through the Forum Romanum to the Circus Maximus took three hours to pass. The chief magistrates and the Senate led it off, with bands of beautifully mounted youths following, then all the chariots which were to race and the athletes who were to compete; many hundreds of dancers and mummers and musicians; dwarves tricked out as satyrs and fauns; every prostitute in Rome clad in her flame colored toga; slaves bearing hundreds of gorgeous silver or gold urns and vases; groups of mock warriors in bronze belted scarlet tunics wearing fabulous crested helmets on their heads and brandishing swords and spears; the sacrificial animals; and then, in last and most honored place, all twelve major Gods and many other Gods and heroes riding on open litters of gold and purple, realistically painted, clad in exquisite clothes. Caesar had decorated the whole of the Circus Maximus, and gone one better than for any of his other entertainments by using millions of fresh flowers. As Romans adored flowers, the vast audience was ravished almost to swooning point, drowned in the perfume of roses, violets, stocks, wallflowers. He served free refreshments, thought of novelties of all kinds from rope walkers to fire belchers to scantily clad women who seemed to be able almost to turn themselves inside out. Each day of the games saw something else new and different, and the chariot races were superb. Said Bibulus to any who remembered him enough to comment, "He told me I'd be Pollux to his Castor. How right he was! I may as well have saved my precious three hundred talents they only served to pour food and wine down two hundred thousand greedy throats, while he took the credit for the rest." Said Cicero to Caesar, "On the whole I dislike games, but I must confess yours were splendid. To have the most lavish in history is laudable enough in one way, but what I really liked about your games was that they weren't vulgar." Said Titus Pomponius Atticus, knight plutocrat, to Marcus Licinius Crassus, senatorial plutocrat, "It was brilliant. He managed to give business to everybody. What a year the flower growers and wholesalers have had! They'll vote for him for the rest of his political career. Not to mention bakers, millers oh, very, very clever!" And said young Caepio Brutus to Julia, Uncle Cato is really disgusted. Of course he is a great friend of Bibulus's. But why is it that your father always has to make such a splash?"