The Men Who Think of Rome XI
Caesar Triumphator
According to Suetonius and Plutarch, Caesar dismissed his bodyguards not long before he was murdered. The speculation was that he did not want to maintain the appearance of being above the people, and that he believed his popularity and clemency were such that he was virtually ‘untouchable.’ Despite warnings about plots against his life, including from the soothsayer Spurinna, Caesar walked the streets a free man, fearless and unencumbered. He “strode the narrow world like a Colossus,” as Cassius remarked bitterly to Brutus.
Indeed, what was left to conquer but death itself? When a man has attained his wildest ambitions, how strange that from such heights he would tempt fate. Was it boastful defiance or an invitation, a courting, of death?
Freud speculated in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” an opposing death drive that unconsciously motivated human behavior. Eros in tension with Thanatos. Caesar, in the fullness of his accomplishments, with unparalleled power, suddenly becomes death-obsessed. Did he secretly desire an end as glorious as the rest of his life?
This speculation animates the final section of this poem, where Caesar, at dinner with Lepidus one night, remarking on what kind of death is best, replies, “A sudden one.” The scene, like the others, is drawn from Suetonius and Plutarch.
Caesar Triumphator I. On his litter, in procession to the Circus We shall not forgo honors due to our merit nor diminish by overcaution our accomplishments, for they are great, and ourself the most deserving. Shall the peacock hides its noble plumage, the lion repudiate its mane? Shall we dissemble, abashed at our deeds and the glory of having cast out the evils of our day? Now no more the Senate is beholden like a whore, to proffer dignity of office for coin. Our face on each denarius shall be a hex against corruption, and a guerdon to the poor. And no more shall priests defile the festivals and solemn days of sacrifice with new months. The calendar has been reformed. We take in hand, with our right, the fasces and the sword, the symbol of our might, and with our left, the augural staff, to make of destiny what we may. And though ambition overleaps us—we have attained so much—yet we will chase after it. The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day.
II. On his golden chair, at the Lupercalia The she-wolf who suckled us in our infancy today we honor by becoming wolves. Strike our women with the greasy thong that we, prolific with offspring, shall swell the State and populate our provinces. The world was pregnant seven hundred years with us. We shall repay her many fold. On this Arcadian festival of the wolf bare-chested Antony, sweating from his race, offers us the kingly diadem which we refuse, for it is not our place. But if it should hang from our statues who should it offend? Neither the gods who sanction it, nor the race of men. Did Jove not send the wolf to nurse the twins? Was pious Aeneas not called? We are descended from the chosen. Sons of the Father of All. We have set our troubled lands in order. Remade our house within, and from without ratified our border. We shall even guide, by our providence, the course of the Tiber.
III. From his couch, at supper with Lepidus We ask what sort of death is best and answer A sudden one. We are not haunted or harrowed as you are. Fate afeard. Let it come quick and not grow like the white hairs of a beard. The Greeks are fatalists. Their hearts are sick. They tell the same death-haunted myths in their plays, and make themselves stuporous. They have the theater, but we the horse race. We live or die by the chance of a turn. We hold our lives in our hands as we grip the reigns. We force the rounding of a corner to its crisis and make an end of what had no beginning before. And if we die, it shall be all at once. And nay, we shall not die, but live again. Gods die and are no more, but we shall not. Our name shall live and never be forgot. We shall, victorious from Parthia, return, and, painted red like Jupiter, we shall wear the red face of the Sun that rises and sets. And they shall watch at the start of each day our coming again, and bow to us, and pray.
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