The Gates Of Rome

Historical Note

There is very little historical information on the earliest years of Julius Caesar's life. As far as possible, I have given him the sort of childhood that a young boy from a minor Roman family could have had. Some of his skills can be inferred from later accomplishments, of course. For example, swimming saved his life in Egypt, when he was fifty-two years old. The biographer Suetonius said that he had great skill with swords and horses as well as surprising powers of endurance, preferring to march rather than ride and going bareheaded in all weathers. I am sorry to say that Renius is fictional, though it was customary to employ experts in various fields. We know of one tutor from Alexandria who taught Caesar rhetoric, and we can read Cicero's reluctant praise of Caesar's ability to speak skillfully and movingly when needed. His father died when Julius was only fifteen, and it is true that Julius married Cinna's daughter Cornelia shortly afterward, apparently for love.

Although Marius was an uncle on his father's side rather than Aurelia's as I have it, the general was very much the sort of character presented here. In flagrant opposition to law and custom, he was consul seven times in all. Where previously it was possible to join a legion only if a man owned land and had an income from it, Marius abolished that qualification and enjoyed fanatical loyalty from his soldiers. It was Marius who made the eagle the symbol of all Roman legions.

The civil war between Sulla and Marius forms a major part of this book, but I found it necessary to simplify the action for dramatic purposes. Cornelius Sulla did worship Aphrodite, and parts of his lifestyle scandalized even the tolerant Roman society. However, he was an extremely able general who had once served under Marius in an African campaign for which they both claimed credit. The two men disliked each other intensely.

When Mithridates rebelled against Roman occupation in the east, both Marius and Sulla wanted to move against him, seeing the campaign as an easy one and a chance to gain great riches. In part from personal motives, Sulla led his men against Rome and Marius in 88 B.C., claiming that he would "free it from tyrants." Marius was forced to flee to Africa, returning later with the army he had gathered there. The Senate was simply unable to cope with such powerful leaders and allowed him back, declaring Sulla an enemy of the state while he was away fighting Mithridates. Marius was elected consul for the last time, but died during his term, leaving the dithering Senate in a difficult situation. They sought peace at first, but Sulla was in a strong position, after a crushing victory in Greece. He did let Mithridates live, but confiscated vast wealth, looting ancient treasures. I compressed these years, having Marius dying in the first attack, which may be an unfairly quick ending for such a charismatic man.

When Sulla returned from the Greek campaign, he led his armies to quick victory against those loyal to the Senate, finally marching on the city again in 82 B.C. He demanded the role of Dictator and it was in this role that he met Julius Caesar for the first time, when he was brought before Sulla as one of those who had supported Marius. Despite the fact that Julius flatly refused to divorce Cornelia, Sulla did not have him killed. The Dictator is reported to have said that he saw "many Mariuses in this Caesar," which if true is something of an insight into the man's character, as I hope I have explored in this book.

Sulla's time as Dictator was a brutal period for the city. The unique position he held and abused had been designed as an emergency measure for times of war, similar in concept to martial law in modern democracies. Before Sulla, the strictest time limits had accompanied the title, but he managed to avoid these restrictions and scored a fatal wound on the Republic by doing so. One of the laws he passed forbade armed forces approaching the city, even for the traditional Triumph parades. He died at age sixty and for a while it looked as if the Republic might flower again into its old strength and authority. In Greece at this time, there was a twenty-two-year-old man called Caesar who would make this impossible. After all, Marius and Sulla had shown the fragility of the Republic when faced with determined ambition. We can only speculate how the young Caesar was affected when he heard Marius say, "Make room for your general," and watched the jostling crowd cut down in full view of the Senate house. The histories of these characters, especially those written shortly after the period, by Plutarch and Suetonius, make astonishing reading. In researching the life of Caesar, the question that kept coming up was "How did he do that?" How did a young man recover from the disaster of being on the losing side in a civil war to the point where his very surname came to mean king? Both tsar and kaiser are derived from that name and were still being used two thousand years later.

The histories can be a little bare at times, though I would recommend Caesar by Christian Meier to any reader interested in the details I had to omit here. There are so many fascinating incidents in this life that it has been a great pleasure putting flesh to them. The events of the second book are even more astonishing.

C. IGGULDEN