Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston Read Free Book Online

Caesar wisely took himself abroad, finding a place on the staff of one of Rome’s high officials in Asia. Caesar’s first mission was to the kingdom of Bithynia on the Black Sea, west of Pontus. Its king, Nicomedes, maintained a luxurious court and was well known for his harem of young men. Nicomedes seems to have taken an immediate fancy to Caesar, who, to the later outrage of Rome, performed the role of cupbearer to Nicomedes at an extravagant banquet. Also according to persistent rumor, reclining on a gold bed with purple sheets, he became the king’s lover—in the words of his later opponents, “the female rival of Bithynia’s queen” and “the bottom half of the royal bed.” While the Romans and Greeks had no such word as homosexuality and relations with youths were accepted and celebrated in verse, the Romans approved only the active role in such relationships for freeborn men. The receptive or pathetic role, which Caesar was said to have assumed with the king, was considered far too submissive for a freedom-loving Roman and to be taken only by foreigners or slaves. *
    In 78 came the news that Sulla was dead. He had in 81 revived for himself the office of dictator, abolished at the end of the third century for fear of autocracy. The role, designed for emergencies only, had previously been restricted to a six-month tenure but Sulla had set himself no time frame and used the office to inaugurate a vast number of conservative reforms, among them drastic reductions in the power of the people’s representatives—the tribunes—including removing their veto over legislation. He also restricted the freedoms of provincial governors, who were not allowed, without the permission of the Senate, to make war or to lead their legions over their provincial boundaries. However, in 79 and to the amazement of many, Sulla retired into private life, where, once again, he took to riotous drinking and partying in a bid to recapture his youth. Like his old rival Marius, his excesses probably hastened his death, which occurred a few months later. By bringing troops onto Rome’s streets, by his murderous proscriptions and by his assumption of dictatorial powers, Sulla had set sinister precedents for the years ahead, both for the fate of the Republic and for the actions of Caesar, Antony and Octavian.
    Now seemed a good time to Caesar to return to Rome. Once there, he took his first step into the political limelight by taking up in 77 the case of a group of Greeks against their former governor. Rome had no state prosecutor or formal legal qualifications. Anyone could act on anyone else’s behalf and appearing in high-profile legal cases on the popular side was not an unusual way of building a reputation. The governor was certainly unpopular and equally certainly guilty. It therefore says much for the corruption of the Roman courts and juries that Caesar lost this case and a second against another follower of Sulla. But he had done well in his training for the “race for glory.” Plutarch sums up what he had already achieved: “In his pleadings his eloquence soon obtained him great credit and he gained no less in the affections of the people by the affability of his manners and address, in which he showed tact and consideration beyond his age; and the open house he kept, the entertainments he gave and the general splendor of his way of life contributed little by little to create and increase his political influence.”
    *According to the Roman calendar the month of Caesar’s birth was Quintullus and the year 653, the number of years since legend said that Romulus had founded Rome and become its first king.
    *Aeneas was also the hero whose desertion of Dido, queen and founder of Carthage, to pursue his own imperial ambitions was said to have caused her suicide—a story much elaborated later by the poet Vergil to the detriment of both Cleopatra and Antony and the benefit of Octavian.
    *Vesta, keeper of the eternal fire, was one of