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3. Standing in Caesar's Shadow
- University of Michigan Press
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3 Standing in Caesar’s Shadow The Ides of March and the Performance of Public Oratory A s Caesar lay dead in the theater of his former son-in-law and rival, his imprint was everywhere visible not only on the events of the time but also on the calendar of festivals and the physical landscape of the city of Rome itself. Virtually every festival, triumph, law, or speech contained an overt or oblique reference to Caesar’s memory. The next ‹ve chapters of this study discuss and analyze the public ceremonies following Caesar’s assassination. The typology of Republican ceremonial, as outlined in the ‹rst chapter, will still determine the kinds of events we discuss, but it will be necessary now to do so within a chronological framework in order to understand how such ceremonies informed and were informed by the events of this period. The themes of consensus and con›ict will still dominate our discussion, but invariably efforts at building consensus, and the inevitable con›ict that arose when these efforts failed, played out across the great divide that separated those endeavoring to preserve Caesar’s memory from those intent on restoring his assassins. To his contemporaries Julius Caesar was a controversial ‹gure. Following his assassination the controversy only deepened. If we glance ahead a bit, to January 42, we ‹nd the members of the Second Triumvirate granting Caesar a series of posthumous honors, overtly declaring him divine. This elevation of Caesar to the ranks of the gods set in motion the ‹nal confrontation between his supporters and the conspirators that culminated in the battle of Philippi 74 (Dio 47.18–19.3). M. Brutus, a few months later, minted a coin that celebrated the assassination of the tyrant, depicting a freedman’s cap (pilleus) between two downward pointing daggers, with the subscript referring to the Ides of March (“EID[ibus] MART[is]”).1 These two radically different treatments of the late dictator demonstrate in stark terms the vast chasm that separated the triumvirs and conspirators. Each side, in an effort to win over popular opinion, presented their mutually incompatible assessments of Caesar and his dictatorship that came to be a component of the public ceremonies occurring in the months following his assassination. The expression of these assessments of Caesar and his dictatorship was part of the discourse of political power in this period, a discourse that began formally on the day that Caesar was murdered and continued in the months following, usually at ceremonies before the people. A great deal of this chapter will be devoted to the contiones (public meetings) of the conspirators on one side and Antonius and his supporters on the other, as they wrestled over control of the urban plebs and Caesar’s veterans. Both sides realized that the Roman people and the soldiers provided access to power. We shall see that Brutus and Cassius claimed to have murdered a tyrant while surrounded on all sides by the visible reminders of the “tyrant’s” extraordinary honors and benefactions, including the new topography of the Forum and the reconstruction of the Curia. Antonius, on the other hand, began to use the memory of Caesar and the consequent popular unrest to his political advantage, as he allowed the people to exert pressure on the senate to uphold Caesar’s acta even as they decreed an amnesty for his murderers. First let us look at a brief outline of the historical context.2 Immediately after Caesar’s murder, Brutus had hoped to address the senate gathered in the curia of Pompeius’ theater (see ‹g. 1), explain his actions, and declare the Republic restored; instead he was left standing in an empty hall after the senators not directly involved in the conspiracy ›ed the senate house. Panic and terror devolved into chaos and confusion. The panic spread to the theater proper, where a gladiatorial munus was being held. It quickly emptied. There was looting in the marketplaces. The conspirators rushed out of the curia of Pompeius and sought refuge on the Capitolium (see ‹g. 1). In some accounts, they were accompanied by gladiators who had been hired by D. Brutus to act as an armed guard. It is possible, however, that gladiators rushed from the theater to the senate house, and their fortuitous presence caused greater panic for Caesar’s supporters in the senate who thought that they were there to spill more blood. Once on the Capitolium, the conspirators were joined by senators, many of...