Home -> Articoli -> Donne

Caesar

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Caesar
It is quite useless to say that Caesar was an extraordinary person and this not only for the Romans, but for all the world and for all the epochs. There were great generals and great men and we study them, we read books about their life and even judge them but the only one that is remembered and revered as if he had just died is Caesar. Every years at the Ides of March the Times of London publish his obituary and every years lots of people of all the extractions and all the categories goes to the Roman Forum to mourn him. They bring flowers that they depose on the altar that Augustus built just on the place where he was cremated. I brought red roses and waited till the end of the morning when the altar was covered by mounds of blooms. I even saw special groups of persons who stood in the cell (they didn’t let any other persons enter while they were doing a special ceremony) and, as ancient Romans did, officiated for him with their head covered by a white cloth. I saw schools come with their professors, families stay there with their children and of course also the normal everyday tourists who probably didn’t know a thing about what kind of day it was and couldn’t understand what was happening. All this people was there for Caesar and mourned him, while nobody still mourns great men like Alexander the Great, Gengis Khan, Napoleon or any other and nobody care to put a flower on their tomb.
Then why Caesar? Because Caesar was really an extraordinary person. Now they are all dead, centuries and centuries have passed but Caesar is still here and he is still alive.
Caesar was born in Rome in the 102 B.C. His father Caius Iulius Caesar, a modest official, a and his mother Aurelia daughter of the consul Cotta were noble and patricians. Probably they were not very rich but they certainly were not so poor as Svetonius presents them saying that they had to live in the Suburra one of the poorest Roman districts and more over one of the worst famed in all the town. At least they had the money to pay for him a very good tutor, Marcus Antonius Gnifo of Alexandria, who taught him Greek, Latin, grammar and all the arts like rhetoric that would be necessary for a good career in politic. Caesar was a brilliant student and soon became a great orator. He spoke with a clear and strong voice and his style was easy and pleasant. He also left literary works among which, very important were his De Bello Gallico and the De Bello Civile.
It is interesting to remember a letter of Cicero in which the orator reveals to his friend Atticus the existence of a collection of humorous and amusing saying that Caesar collected and marked down in a book to remember them and be able from time to time to read them again and enjoy their wit, a habit which tells much on his character. Unfortunately this book has not reached us: his adoptive son and successor Augustus, who evidently was not endowed with the same sense of humor, burned it with all the minor works of his great uncle thinking that they were not up to his fame. And this was not the only interesting work that Augustus destroyed, because he threw in the fire many ones that he judged worthless and among the other he reduced to ashes a Cleopara’s treaty about the women’s make up. If we think how much Cleopatra must have known on the argument and how this book would have been a precious source of information for all the women of all the times we can really be angry with him. Also if Augustus was a great man and also if he was the one that succeeded to create the Roman Empire, we must recognize that he lacked the broad outlook and the sense of humor which Caesar displayed.
But Caesar was unique. We know of course that he was a great general, a conqueror and a great politicians, but what strikes us more than all this, is the nobleness of his character, a side of him that was certainly due to his mother influence, an it is probably always his mother that succeeded in giving to him such a rich and magnanimous personality as the one he had. During all his life he never let anybody who trusted him down, and he never killed his enemies. In a letter directed to Cicero that has been saved because it was inserted in he orator’s epistolary and begins with
Caesar imper, hails Cicero imper.
You, who knows me well, are right inciting me to abstain from any form of cruelty. Cruelty doesn’t give me any pleasure and your approval fill me of pleasure. I don’t care if many say that the ones that I sent free, went away just to go to war with me. The only thing I wish is to be coherent with myself. The others could better do the same.
but if Caesar pardoned many person who went against him he never stood any attempt to his dignity and he wrote
“Sibi semper prima fuisse dignitatem vitaque potiorem
(For me the most important thing, much more than my same life, was always my dignity,)
It was just for this that he passed the Rubicon, an act that many of his enemies interpreted as avidity of power, but a decision who in reality was a consequence of the action that the Senate tried to impose on him who had just conquered the Gaul and that he couldn’t accept because it was degrading.
To sum it Caesar was a man with very strong principles on which he based all his life and which counted for him more that anything. Among them there always was a staunch concept of friendship and loyalty. He could do anything for his friends. If there was not enough to eat he usually deprived himself of his food and gave it to them. We know for instance that once, when one of his friends was feverish and there was only a room where to sleep in, Caesar put his friend there while he slept on the soil and in the open air.


Bibliography

E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Amori ed amanti tra la repubblica ed il principato, Editore. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Roma, 1992