Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston Read Free Book Online Page A

the most venerated Roman goddesses. Unlike most other deities, she had her own priestesses. The six Vestal Virgins were selected at the age of eight from good families to be raised in chastity to serve the goddess for thirty years. After that time they were free to leave and marry. Before then, if they were convicted of having sexual relations with a man, they were buried alive and their lover whipped to death.
    *According to one academic source, more Roman love poetry is directed toward youths than to girls and women together. There is, however, no love poetry between men.

CHAPTER 4
    “Odi et Amo”
    I N 75 CAESAR RETURNED EAST to Rhodes to study rhetoric further under Appolinius Molon, whom Suetonius called “the greatest exponent of the art.” However, Mithridates of Pontus interrupted Caesar’s studies when, subdued but not fully conquered by Sulla, in 74 he made some exploratory incursions into Roman Asia. Acting for the first but not the last time on his own initiative and entirely without authorization, Caesar took charge of the local militia and repulsed the attacks, thereby gaining much further glory for himself.
    Crassus and Pompey too were still on the rise. Pompey, unlike Caesar, had understandably accepted Sulla’s suggestion to divorce, since Sulla had offered his stepdaughter as a replacement bride and Pompey was always uncomfortably conscious that his family pedigree was inferior to Rome’s best. After Sulla’s death, Pompey had led an army to subdue a rebellion in Spain.
    While he was away, in the summer of 73 a revolt broke out among gladiators in southern Italy. Such outbreaks were not unusual, but this time, led by a Thracian named Spartacus, the gladiators uniquely formed themselves into disciplined units, drawing further recruits from among runaway slaves. They had rules stipulating that plunder should be shared equally. Sometimes to underline the role reversal they made their Roman prisoners fight as gladiators. At their height, their numbers reached 70,000, some even suggest 120,000, and they defeated several Roman armies, forcing open the road to the Alps and to freedom beyond the Roman frontiers. Why they did not take it but instead turned back into Italy is uncertain, but loot may have been the spur. Crassus sought and was given command against Spartacus and his men. Eventually he trapped them and Spartacus was killed. Crassus crucified each of his prisoners on crosses placed every forty yards or so along a hundred-mile stretch of the Appian Way, Roman Italy’s main southern highway.
    Pompey returned from Spain at the end of the revolt and with his troops defeated and killed all five thousand men of a breakaway gladiator army, thus stealing some of Crassus’ glory and engendering a lasting rivalry. Although Pompey was below the required age of forty, both men were elected consul for the first time—Pompey at thirty-five and Crassus at forty-one. Together they abolished many of Sulla’s changes, returning to the tribunes the powers they had previously enjoyed and expelling from the Senate more than a fifth of its members on the grounds that their contributions were worthless.
    The twenty-six-year-old Caesar was delighted to be made a member of the College of Pontiffs on his return from Rhodes, succeeding one of his relatives. Unlike his previous priesthood, the lifetime position offered influence and privileges—such as the right to wear a red-striped toga—without serious restrictions. Influence was often exerted and deals done informally and over meals. Around 70, Caesar attended and may have presided as “king of the celebrations” over a dinner to mark the inauguration of a recruit to the priesthood. Unusually, details have been preserved. In addition to the candidate, eleven priests including Caesar and his brother were present. Roman women participated in such dinners and the newcomer’s wife and mother-in-law were there too, together with some of the Vestal Virgins. Everyone