The Following images are those used for Unit 2
of the AL RI Shakespeare's
Rome course. Click in the small images or on
the links to see larger images.
Julius Caesar was apparently written in 1599 and was first
produced at the Globe in Southwark the same year.
The 1953 production of Julius Caesar featured Marlon
Brando as Mark Antony. This is Brando speaking clearly
like a good Shakespearian.
Julius Caesar was a protege and debtor of Crassus, who held a
grudge against Pompey for "stealing"
his triumph. Pompey mopped up the Spartacus revolt
remnants in the north and then was given a triumph (for his
victories in Spain). Crassus was denied a triumph for
defeating most of the Spartacus rebels because they were
slaves. It's uncertain whether Caesar used Crassus or
Crassus used Caesar: Crassus financed Caesar's rise to
power and was later repaid both in cash from Caesar's conquest
of Gaul and in revenge from Caesar's conquest of Pompey.
Patrician family intermarriages in the late Roman republican
period were extremely complex. The predictable result was
a proliferation of genetic problems. Julius Caesar and
several other Julio-Claudians (the first dynasty of Roman
emperors and their relatives) were epileptics. The
assertion that Julius Caesar had the "falling sickness" in
mentioned in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's play.
Ancient historical references to Caesar's epilepsy ('defectio
epileptica' according to Suetonius) are given at http://www.epilepsiemuseum.de/alt/caesaren.html.
In 63 BC Caesar was elected Pontifex Maximus by his fellow
pontifices. The coin shows him both as pontifex maximus
and as conqueror (crowned with the conqueror's wreath).
The title is, according to the Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary,
doubtless from pons-facio; but the original meaning is
obscure. Some authorities link it to ceremonies derived
from the building and rebuilding of wooden bridges, especially
the Pons Sublicius ( = pile bridge), which was the first bridge
across the Tiber. Ancient Romans believed that the
earliest iteration of this bridge dated from seventh century BC
during the early monarchy and that the bridge, which linked the
east and west banks of the Tiber, was a symbol of Roman
unification and unity. According to tradition, this and
other early wooden Tiber River bridges were built without metal
fasteners so that they could easily and quickly be disassembled
to prevent enemies from crossing the river.
One of the important duties of the Pontifex Maximus was to
regularize the Calendar by adding days at the end of the
year. The neglect of this duty by Caesar's predecessors
had led to a divergence between the religious and the solar
calendars. With the help of an Egyptian
astronomer/mathematician, Sosigenes of Alexandria, Caesar
revised the calendar. The "Julian calendar" was probably
designed to approximate the tropical year, known at least since
Hipparchus. It has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12
months, and a leap day is added to February every four years.
Hence the Julian year is on average 365.25 days long. The
Julian calendar was eventually replaced by the Gregorian
calendar which is slightly more accurate.
Caesar missed no opportunity to publicize his own
accomplishments. In addition to his self-published
histories of his Gallic Wars, he issued coins which would widely
circulate. Some are still around.
As mentioned above, Crassus, Rome's richest man of his time, and
Pompey, Rome's top general of his generation, were political
rivals. They were co-consuls in 70 and in 53 BC, but
Crassus was always Consul Minor to Pompey's Consul Maior.
Meanwhile, Caesar was working his way up the Cursus Honorum and
accumulating military victories.
The First Triumvirate was the political alliance of Gaius Julius
Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
Unlike the Second Triumvirate, the First Triumvirate had no
official status whatsoever – its overwhelming power in the Roman
Republic was strictly unofficial influence, and was in fact kept
secret for some time as part of the political machinations of
the Triumvirs themselves. It was formed in 60 BC and lasted
until Crassus's death in 53 BC, although it had been seriously
weakened by the death of Julia, the daughter of Julius Caesar,
who Caesar had given as a wife to Pompey.
Crassus still desired recognition for military
victories in the shape of a triumph. He
finally got a real military command after becoming part of the
First Triumvirate. His command was in Syria, where he was
defeated and killed in the Roman defeat at the Battle of
Carrhae, which was fought against the Parthian leader, Spahbod
Surena. Crassus had suppressed the Spartacus revolt, but
his real significance in world history stems from his financial
and political support of the impoverished young Julius Caesar,
which allowed Caesar to embark upon his own political career.
The enmity between Pompey, whose constituency was the Senate and
the old establishment, and the now very rich with Gallic loot
upstart Caesar, who led the "populares" and whose main support
was still the Roman mob, grew quickly after the deaths of
Crassus and Julia. Pompey rightly feared that Caesar's
legions were personally loyal to Caesar rather than to the
The map shows the campaigns led by Julius Caesar before crossing
the Rubicon (red arrows) and during and after his civil war with
Pompey (black arrows).
The present course of the Rubicon (and even its map
identification) is questionable. Coastal flooding and
irrigation schemes have altered its course and location many
times in the last two millennia. Regardless of where it
actually was, Caesar's crossing of the river with one legion was
illegal. The point became moot very quickly, however, when
Pompey and most of the Senate fled Rome and eventually tried to
rule in absentia from Greece. Their attempt was futile
mostly because they had failed to take the treasury with them
when they left. Caesar seized the money to pay his troops
and buy more troops and to ensure the loyalty of the home Roman
Caesar quickly caught up with Pompey at Pharsalus near the
border between Greek Macedonia and Achaia. Both provinces
had long been under Roman control. Pompey's forces were
overwhelmed, and Pompey himself fled to Alexandria where he
thought he could get assistance from Egyptian forces and Roman
mercenaries. His assessment was fatally incorrect.
When he landed on the Egyptian coast near Alexandria, Pompey was
met by Roman mercenaries, who were under orders from the
Ptolemaic Pharaoh. While Pompey waited offshore, he
young king Ptolemy XIII had argued with his advisers
over the cost of offering Pompey refuge when Caesar was already
on his way to Egypt. The king's eunuch Potheinos won
out. In the final dramatic passages of Pompey's biography,
Plutarch had Cornelia watch anxiously from the trireme as Pompey
left in a small boat with a few sullen, silent comrades and
headed for what appeared to be a welcoming party on the Egyptian
shore. As Pompey rose to disembark, he was stabbed to
death by his companions Achillas, Septimius and Salvius.
Plutarch has him meet his fate with great dignity, one day after
his 59th birthday. His body remained on the shoreline, to
be cremated by his loyal freeman, Philip, on the rotten planks
of a fishing-boat. His head and seal were later presented
to Caesar, who not only mourned this insult to the greatness of
his former ally and son-in-law but punished his assassins and
their Egyptian co-conspirators, putting both Achillas and
Pothinus to death. Caesar also may well have been
interested in teaching foreigners not to kill Romans -- even
enemies of conquering Romans.
After settling with the assassins of Pompey, Caesar took the
side of Cleopatra VII in her palace
dispute with her Brother, Ptolemy XIII. After Ptolemy's
defeat, Caesar tarried with Cleopatra long enough to father a
son, Ptolemy Ceasarion, who well might have been the last
Ptolemaic Pharaoh. Verifiable ancient images of
Cleopatra are rare because most were broken up after the defeat
of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian. Most of the known
ancient images are shown in (b) above. We have many modern
images of Cleopatra (c). My Favorite is Claudette Colbert,
center and center right, but Theda Bara in her Princes Leia wire
bra is a close second. Theda Bara, by the way, said she
chose her stage name because the letters could be arranged to
make "Arab death" -- she was an ardent Zionist.
After mopping up the Pompeian partisans in the Middle East, in
Greece, in Spain, and in North Africa (they seem to have taken
refuge all around the Mediterranean) Caesar finally returned to
Rome in September of 45 BC. He had left Mark Antony in
Rome to rule in his absence, and during that period, Antony
lived up to his bad reputation. He did, however suppress
the last of the street gangs, including those who had
theretofore been loyal to Caesar and who had then outlived their
usefulness. On his return, Caesar had himself elected sole
Consul (the law required two, but this was the victorious
Caesar), then elected Dictator, and finally elected Perpetual
Dictator -- see above, http://www.mmdtkw.org/RomeShak205b-CaesarDenarii.jpg.
his high handed decisions was one to build a theater near the
Temple of Apollo on the riverside below the Palatine hill.
To do so he expropriated land, thereby infuriating the rich
Senators, and knocked down part of the Temple precinct, thus
losing the support of the superstitious masses, who thought of
Apollo as the protector of the city. The latter would have
been a factor that would embolden his Senatorial enemies when
they decided to assassinate him. (Augustus later actually
built the theater after carefully reimbursing the landowners and
after slightly resiting it to avoid the Apollo Temple
precinct. It still stands as a landmark in the city.)
The plot to kill Caesar was carried out on the Ides of March 44
BC. Caesar had, according to contemporary reports, 27
"fatal wounds". It seems that many Senators joined in make
sure he was dead. The Assassination took place on the
porch of the Curia Pompeiana behind Pompey's theater. (The
ruins of the curia are buried beneath the Teatro Argentina on
the Largo Argentina in Rome's Campo Marzio. The
"Argentina" name of has nothing to do with the country of
Juan and Evita and everything to do with an Alsatian bishop
named Johannes Burckardt, or, in Latin, Burcardo Argentinensis. The
Argentinensis part of
his name came from Argentoratum,
the old Latin name of his native town, Nieder-Haslach, near
Strasbourg. For more on Burcardo, see http://www.mmdtkw.org/VBurcardo.html.
Curia ruins may never be fully excavated because the Teatro
Argentina is itself a national monument of modern Italy.)
Shakespeare puts Antony's speech immediately after his murder,
but it actually came two days later. Antony spoke Latin,
of course, and Shakespeare's English version is a fairly good
translation of what ancient sources reported that Antony
initially said. But Shakespeare departs from the ancient
texts when he has Antony then talk about Caesar's will, which
the ancient authors said was not read to the public until much
Octavian was out of town when Caesar was killed. He was
with his friends Marcus Agrippa and Marcus Salvidienus Rufus in
Apollonia in Epirus completing his academic and military
studies, when news reached him of Caesar's assassination.
At once he returned to Rome, learning on the way that Caesar had
adopted him in his will. No doubt this only increased his desire
to avenge Caesar's murder.
When he arrived in Rome, Octavian found power in the hands of
Mark Antony and Aemilius Lepidus. They were urging compromise
and amnesty, but Octavian refused to accept this plan. With his
determined stand he soon succeeded in winning over many of
Caesar's supporters, including some of the legions. Though
he failed to persuade Marc Antony to hand over Caesar's assets
and documents. Therefore Octavian was forced to distribute
Caesar's legacies to the Roman public from whatever funds he was
able to raise himself. His efforts to see Caesar's will carried
out helped raise Octavian's standing with the Roman people
considerably. For much more on Octavian, see http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/octavian.php
Although initially at odds, Octavian and Antony, with Lepidus,
formed the Second Triumvirate and split the rule of the Roman
territories. Octavian had Rome and the West, Antony got
Greece and the East, and Lepidus was given Sicily and North
Africa. But a prime reason for their agreement, however,
was their knowledge that the Liberatori -- Brutus, Cassius, and
other assassination conspirators -- had mustered forces that
were marching toward Rome. The newly formed triumvirate
quickly aligned and mobilized their forces and rushed
eastward. In October of 42 BC, the Triumvirate forces
intercepted the Liberatori armies on the Via Egnatia near the
small town of Philippi in eastern Macedonia that had been
founded by Macedonian King Philip II (father of Alexander), just
to the north of the Aegean Sea.
Shakespeare telescopes the action at Philippi into one
battle, but there were actually two battles, the first on or
about 3 October 42 BC and the second on October 23 42 BC. For
details on the historical battles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Philippi.
After the Philippi battles, Octavian returned to Rome and Antony
headed eastward to carry out Julius Caesar's plan for a war
against Parthia. On a stop in Tarsus, he summoned
Cleopatra, who arrived from Egypt on her storied royal
barge. Shakespeare repeats and only slightly embellishes
Plutarch's description of Cleopatra's voyage up the Cyndus
River. See http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sources/antonysources.html.
sequel, of course is that Antony went back to Alexandria with
Cleopatra and never personally pursued Caesar's Parthian war.
For a short bio sketch of Cleopatra, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra.
The first page of the 1623 First Folio version of Julius Caesar.
Plutarch's story of the ghost that visited Brutus, repeated both
in his life of Julius Caesar and his life of Brutus, would
certainly have resonated with the superstitious
Elizabethans. It was one of several of Shakespeare's
notable ghosts and spirits.
Shakespeare's main source for Julius Caesar was Plutarch's life of
Brutus. For a bio of Plutarch, see http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch.htm.
Julius Caesar was likely one of Shakespeare's first
plays to be performed at the Globe Theatre. Thomas Patter,
a Swiss traveler, saw a tragedy about Julius Caesar at a
Southwark theater on September 21, 1599 and this was most likely
Shakespeare's play, as there is no obvious alternative
candidate. The story of Julius Caesar was dramatized
repeatedly in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period, but no other known
play is as good a match with Patter's description as
is Shakespeare's play.
The performance of the 19th century -- November 25, 1864:
the distinguished Shakespearean Booth brothers acted together
for the first and only time in a benefit performance of Julius
Caesar. John Wilkes Booth, who played Mark Antony, the
only non-assassin Booth in the production, finally became one in
Ford's Theater on Good Friday, April 14, 1865. The
Shakespeare play may have convinced John Wilkes Booth that a
single audacious act would change history. Ironically,
just as the assassination of Julius Caesar produced the opposite
of what the Senatorial plotters had sought (the
"Liberatori" wanted but didn't get the restoration of of the
Roman Republic), the assassination of Lincoln led to the rise of
the post-Civil War American "Radical Republicans", who
suppressed rather than restored the south.