The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #195

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where I shall be once again continuing my narrative of the

00:00:04.900 decline and fall of the Roman Republic, focusing now solely on Caesar, because last time, if you

00:00:10.760 remember, Pompey had been killed. So there can be only one. Caesar couldn't really suffer anyone

00:00:18.820 being above him in the Roman state. So it's now a case of Caesar trying to mop up, and there's still

00:00:24.880 a few years to go yet before his own early untimely death. So the story of what happens to Caesar in

00:00:30.900 the remainder, the short remainder of his life. So let's pick up the story with Plutarch's life of

00:00:37.060 Caesar, where he's in Egypt. So Plutarch tells us this, quote, he arrived at Alexandria just after

00:00:44.360 Pompey's death. When Theodotus came to him with Pompey's head, Caesar refused to look at him, but

00:00:49.640 he took Pompey's signet ring and shed tears as he did so. He offered help and his own friendship to

00:00:55.760 all who had been friends and companions of Pompey, and who, without anywhere to go, had been arrested

00:01:01.080 by the king of Egypt. And he wrote to his friends in Rome to say that, of all the results of his

00:01:06.200 victory, what gave him the most pleasure was that he was so often able to save the lives of fellow

00:01:10.860 citizens who had fought against him. As I've said before, Caesar's clemency is a bit of a double-edged

00:01:16.440 sword. He's sort of ruthless with his clemency, if you like. It doesn't leave the people pardoned

00:01:23.360 unscathed. It's often still a complete humiliation. Although most people, but not all, would say

00:01:30.180 they'd prefer that to death. But there you go. Plutarch goes on. As for the war in Egypt, some say

00:01:36.600 that it need never have taken place, and that it was brought on by Caesar's passion for Cleopatra,

00:01:41.320 and that it did him little credit while involving him in great danger. Others blame the king's party

00:01:46.620 for it, and particularly the eunuch Pothinus, who was the most influential person at the court.

00:01:51.780 He had recently killed Pompey, had driven out Cleopatra, and was now secretly plotting against

00:01:57.060 Caesar. Because of this, they say, Caesar now began to sit up for whole nights on end at drinking

00:02:02.600 parties, in order to be sure that he was properly guarded. Even openly, Pothinus made himself

00:02:08.100 intolerable, belittling and insulting Caesar, both in his words and in his actions. For instance,

00:02:14.300 the soldiers were given rations of the oldest and worst possible grain, and Pothinus told them

00:02:18.900 that they must put up with it and learn to like it, since they were eating food that did not belong

00:02:23.100 to them. And at official dinners, he gave orders that wooden and earthenware dishes should be used,

00:02:28.340 on the pretext that Caesar had taken all the gold and silver in payment of a debt. The father of the

00:02:33.740 present king did in fact owe Caesar 17 and a half million drachmas, and though Caesar had previously

00:02:40.240 remitted part of this debt to the king's children, he now demanded 10 million for the support of his

00:02:45.860 army. Pothinus suggested that for the time being, he should go away and attend to more important

00:02:52.100 matters, promising that later on they would be delighted to pay the money. But Caesar told him

00:02:56.380 that Egyptians were the last people he would choose for his advisors, and secretly he sent for

00:03:01.200 Cleopatra from the country. Cleopatra, taking only one of her friends with her, Apollyodorus the

00:03:06.560 Sicilian, embarked in a small boat and landed at the palace when it was already getting dark. Since

00:03:11.640 there seemed to be no other way of getting in unobserved, she stretched herself out at full

00:03:16.400 length inside a sleeping bag, and Apollyodorus, after tying up the bag, carried it indoors to Caesar.

00:03:22.440 Some say it was a rug, but this translation says a sleeping bag. Anyway, this little trick of

00:03:27.280 Cleopatra's, which showed her provocative impudence, is said to have been the first thing about her

00:03:32.060 which captivated Caesar, and as he grew to know her better, he was overcome by her charm, and arranged

00:03:37.780 that she and her brother should be reconciled, and should share the throne of Egypt together.

00:03:42.260 So, a few words then about Cleopatra. She's still very young, she's like 20, 21 years old at this

00:03:47.880 point. Caesar's in his 50s. It's thought that possibly within hours of their meeting, her being

00:03:54.260 unrolled in this rug, this carpet, or this sleeping bag, being unrolled before him. Classic scene,

00:04:01.300 another classic image from ancient history. Perhaps within hours, within a day or so, they

00:04:05.820 were lovers. They were sleeping together. Now, Caesar was a ladies' man, and some say, you know,

00:04:12.440 may have even been bedded by the king of Bithynia. Needless to say, he's experienced sexually,

00:04:18.080 and she isn't. She might even have been a virgin. So, you know, take from that what you will.

00:04:23.760 She is said to have been very clever, very, very clever, very well read for her age,

00:04:29.620 fluent in loads of languages, seven languages, more. She knew Egyptian, one of the very, very few

00:04:34.940 Ptolemies, one of the very, very few Hellenistic Greek rulers of Egypt that ever learned Egyptian.

00:04:41.900 She's supposed to have understood maths. And also, she was highly educated. And also, she was supposed

00:04:48.540 to have been charming, a good conversationalist. So, sort of, quite a, well, if we believe it,

00:04:54.920 very well-rounded person. And she knew who she was. She knew her power. She knew her position,

00:05:01.540 her status, what it was worth, the value of her position. So, you know, what we might, in modern

00:05:06.900 parlance, call a politician. She was a good politician. She had an acute mind for what was going on

00:05:11.880 around her. She was no dummy. And though not, you know, Liz Taylor beautiful, apparently she had

00:05:16.660 some sort of physical charm about her. She wasn't completely ugly or disgusting, although the coins

00:05:22.140 of her don't look very attractive to me, anyway. But there's some question over, really, how pretty

00:05:27.200 she really was. But needless to say, apparently, she was an impressive human, put it that way.

00:05:32.560 And Caesar sees this. One of Caesar's many, many gifts is to be able to spot talent and utilise it.

00:05:39.620 Okay, let's let Plutarch go on. So Caesar wants her and her brother to be reconciled.

00:05:45.000 Everyone was invited to a banquet to celebrate the reconciliation. And while the banquet was in

00:05:50.100 progress, a servant of Caesar, who acted as his barber, and who, because of his unexampled cowardice,

00:05:56.360 was in the habit of looking into everything, listened to every scrap of gossip, and generally having

00:06:00.780 something to do with everything that was going on, managed to find out that the general Achaeus and the

00:06:05.300 eunuch Pothinus were plotting together against Caesar. Once Caesar had discovered this, he set

00:06:10.580 a guard round the banqueting hall and had Pothinus killed. Achaeus, however, escaped to the camp and

00:06:16.260 involved Caesar in a full-scale war, and one that was very difficult to fight, since he had a great

00:06:21.100 city and a large army against him, and only a few troops with which to defend himself. So remember,

00:06:26.220 Caesar only went to Egypt to chase Pompey, and he knew Pompey didn't have any sort of army with him.

00:06:31.360 So Caesar, always wanting to do things as quickly as possible, always wanting to have the initiative

00:06:36.640 and the momentum, went to Egypt with barely a legion, just a few Roman soldiers, really.

00:06:42.320 And now he finds himself in Egypt, besieged inside the palace in Alexandria, which is a giant

00:06:49.280 palace complex. It's sort of a big percentage of the whole city is the palace. And apparently it's

00:06:56.060 something approaching impregnable. The walls were very, very, very sturdy. He could have stayed holed

00:07:02.320 up in there almost indefinitely, but nonetheless, he's got a tiny number of men versus, well, the

00:07:08.680 entire Egyptian army. In various ways, the entire Egyptian state ranged against him. So once again,

00:07:18.560 Caesar finds himself in a very, very tight spot. Plutarch goes on.

00:07:22.560 First of all, the enemy dammed up the canals, and he was in danger of being cut off from his

00:07:27.260 water supply. Then they tried to intercept his communications by sea, and he was forced to deal

00:07:32.060 with this danger by setting fire to the ships in the docks. This was the fire which, starting from

00:07:36.800 the dockyards, destroyed the Great Library. People might know of the terrible tragedy of the Great

00:07:41.440 Library of Alexandria burning down. There's actually a couple of different occasions. The big one,

00:07:46.700 the main one, really, is much later, centuries after this, in a Christian riot, actually. But this

00:07:53.600 is the first time that there was a fire at the Great Library of Alexandria, and, you know, who knows

00:07:58.760 how much knowledge was lost in these fires. The Great Library was supposed to, every ship with

00:08:05.360 scrolls that came to Alexandria, they were said to have copied them and kept a copy in this Great Library.

00:08:10.480 So, if that library had survived through late antiquity, the Dark Ages, the medieval period,

00:08:17.380 into modernity, we would have so much more information. Among the greatest tragedies in the

00:08:23.740 human story is the various fires that happened at that library of Alexandria. Anyway, this is one of

00:08:30.960 them, the first one. Plutarch goes on.

00:08:32.400 And, thirdly, he was hard-pressed during the fighting that took place on Pharos. He had sprung

00:08:38.080 down from the mole into a small boat and was trying to get the help of his men who were engaged in

00:08:42.980 battle. But the Egyptians sailed up against him from all directions, and he was forced to throw

00:08:47.620 himself into the sea and swim. So he's having to flee for his life. Lucky he could swim. The ability

00:08:52.340 to swim was kind of rare in the pre-modern age. Nowadays, we're all little kids, aren't they? You'll learn to

00:08:58.400 read and write, and do a little bit of maths, and you're taught to ride a bicycle, and you're taught

00:09:02.380 to swim, right? Most people can swim. Well, that wasn't the case for most of human civilisation.

00:09:08.700 It's almost something of a specialist skill. But luckily, Caesar could swim, and was obviously a

00:09:13.360 strong enough swimmer as well to get away, just about get away by the skin of his teeth.

00:09:18.440 Okay, so Caesar himself was forced into the sea to swim, only just managing to escape. This was the

00:09:23.080 time when, according to the story, he was holding a number of papers in his hand and would not let them go,

00:09:28.140 though he was being shot at from all sides, and was often underwater. Sounds like he'd very nearly

00:09:32.400 drowned. Holding the papers above the surface with one hand, he swam with the other. His small boat

00:09:37.040 had been sunk immediately. Finally, however, after the king had gone over to the side of the enemy,

00:09:42.100 Caesar marched against him and defeated him in battle. Many fell in this battle, and the king

00:09:46.320 himself was one of the missing. Caesar then set out for Syria. He left Cleopatra as queen of Egypt,

00:09:51.380 and a little later, she had a son by him, whom the Alexandrians called Caesario, end quote. So, a bit more

00:09:57.440 detail on that. At a certain point, the 13, 14-year-old king of Egypt, Pharaoh, Ptolemy,

00:10:04.440 realises that Caesar has become a partisan of Cleopatra, or that he has essentially picked

00:10:10.960 Cleopatra's side, that he's not going to act as a fair arbiter in this civil war. Ptolemy realises

00:10:17.100 this, and probably, who knows exactly, but probably realises or knows, gets intelligence, that Caesar and

00:10:22.580 Cleopatra have become lovers. So, he knows he's not going to get a fair shake from Caesar. So, he

00:10:27.380 appeals to the people of Alexandria. Now, the people of Alexandria are famously volatile, shall we say.

00:10:34.340 They will rise up and do a full-scale riot at the drop of a hat very often. So, they usually need very

00:10:40.540 little encouragement to get rowdy, and that's an understatement. Ptolemy goes before them and says,

00:10:46.100 look, Caesar's trying to usurp my power. Caesar's trying to pervert the Egyptian state who's with

00:10:52.040 me. And, you know, the common folk of Alexandria are with him. They don't appreciate being the vassal

00:10:57.600 in all but name to the Romans. They'll become a full Roman province in the next generation, but

00:11:01.800 they've already had the complete mickey taken out of them by the Romans for a few generations already,

00:11:06.080 and they don't like it. They don't take kindly to it. So, they rally to Ptolemy's side, and Ptolemy's

00:11:10.280 got the army with him and everything. But, as we were told there, months go by. Actual months go by

00:11:15.440 while Caesar is holed up in the palace at Alexandria, sort of unable to leave. Eventually,

00:11:20.500 there is an actual engagement, and Caesar, against the odds, heavily outnumbered, as usual,

00:11:24.620 wins. Ptolemy's forced to flee. Some accounts say that he was, well, he was, he was sort of forced

00:11:30.080 one way or another to try and get across the river, the Nile, and his armour was too heavy. Perhaps it

00:11:34.600 was golden armour, and it weighed him down, and he drowned. He either couldn't swim or wasn't a strong

00:11:38.920 enough swimmer. I mean, even a very, very strong swimmer's going to struggle to swim in golden armour.

00:11:43.300 Gold is really heavy, stupidly heavy. I'm not sure how a 13 or 14 year old could even wear

00:11:48.840 golden armour and walk around in it. But anyway, there we go. Depends how much of it he was really

00:11:54.160 wearing. But he sinks to the bottom and drowns, and that's, that's the end of him. He's dead.

00:11:58.760 So, Cleopatra can rule, at least for a while, for an interim period. She's going to need to get

00:12:02.940 remarried. She can't really be a full-blown, absolute queen in her own right. She has, she has to have

00:12:09.440 a husband. But for a while, anyway, she could be sole ruler. But as, as Plutok told us there,

00:12:15.180 she got pregnant by Caesar and had a son, Caesarion, who features in the story a bit. And if anyone

00:12:21.800 doesn't know, that's Caesar's only child now. Before, he'd only ever had one other child, and

00:12:26.200 that was Julia, who, you know, had grown up and been married and been pregnant herself, but had died.

00:12:31.440 So, now Caesar is childless. Well, he's late in life, got another, got a son now, the ill-fated

00:12:38.020 Caesarion. Okay, let's let Plutarch continue the story, where Caesar goes from, from there, after

00:12:43.660 he's able to actually leave Egypt, after having spent months and months there. The whole rest of

00:12:48.900 the Mediterranean is still in the midst of this civil war, and Caesar's had his foot off the gas

00:12:54.060 for a while. Well, he hasn't had any other option. He couldn't have left Egypt, or the royal

00:12:58.100 palace in Alexandria, even if he'd wanted to. And it has given his enemies, from Spain to North

00:13:03.020 Africa to Syria, a bit of a breathing space. So, now he's finally escaped from Egypt, it's all on

00:13:09.180 again. So, Plutarch says this, quote, from Syria he went to Asia when he heard that Domitius had been

00:13:14.820 defeated by Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, the king of Pontus, that is, and had fled from Pontus

00:13:21.660 with the few troops that remained. He heard, too, that Pharnaces was making the fullest possible use of

00:13:27.020 his victory. He was in control of Bithynia and Cappadocia, was aiming at taking over the country

00:13:32.420 called Lesser Armenia, and was encouraging all the princes and tetrarchs there to revolt. So,

00:13:37.980 Caesar's potentially got another Mithridates on his hands, i.e. a king of Pontus, who, above and

00:13:42.640 beyond his means, really, is spreading his power and dominion far and wide. A real headache for any

00:13:48.200 Roman dreams of dominance in the Near East. So, with three legions, he, Caesar, marched against him

00:13:55.520 immediately. He fought him in a great battle near the city of Zella, drove him out of Pontus,

00:14:00.840 and annihilated his army. No big deal, just Caesar doing what Caesar does. In describing the sharpness

00:14:06.240 and rapidity of this battle, Caesar wrote to, in Latin, however, the words have the same inflexible

00:14:11.340 ending, and this gives them a remarkable effect of brevity and concentration. We usually translate it

00:14:16.560 as, I came, I saw, I conquered. Rex Warner, the translator of this Penguin edition of Plutarch,

00:14:23.000 translates Plutarch's Greek simply as, came, saw, conquered. Okay, Plutarch goes on.

00:14:27.600 After this, he crossed over to Italy and came to Rome. It was now a year since he had been chosen

00:14:31.980 dictator for the second time, though previously this office had never been held for a whole year,

00:14:36.520 and for the following year he was proclaimed consul. So, whenever Caesar goes to Rome, he just

00:14:40.540 sort of, because there's no one to stop him, issues himself with more powers and titles and things.

00:14:45.900 So, you know, no proper elections anymore, right? He can just say, more or less, I'm going to be

00:14:50.760 consul next, and nothing can be done to stop that. There's no one left to prevent it or thwart that

00:14:56.180 in any real way. You know, making himself dictator multiple times in a row. Each time Caesar returns

00:15:02.100 to Rome, he cements his authority on paper legally. We all know it's sort of extra-legally, but, you know,

00:15:08.620 on paper, he cements his authority every time he's there. Plutarch continues.

00:15:12.340 People spoke badly of him because, after his soldiers had mutinied and killed two men of

00:15:17.500 Praetorian rank, Galba and Cosconius, the only reprimand which he gave to them was to address

00:15:23.160 them as citizens instead of fellow soldiers, after which he gave each man a thousand drachmas

00:15:29.260 and a large allotment of land in Italy. So, Caesar's turning a blind eye, or even actually

00:15:35.140 rewarding killers, people that are prepared, at least in a limited way, to murder his political

00:15:40.920 opponents. Again, it's nothing like Sulla, is it? The odd political opponent being murdered,

00:15:45.280 literally one or two here or there. It's about as bloodless as it could be. Not entirely bloodless,

00:15:51.000 but nothing close to what Marius did or what Sulla did. Plutarch.

00:15:56.080 Other things which were held against him were the irresponsible behaviour of Dolabella,

00:16:00.560 the greed of Amantius, the drunkenness of Antony, and the conduct of Corphinius,

00:16:05.360 who enlarged and refurbished Pompey's house, as though it was not grand enough for him.

00:16:10.160 All these things caused much ill feeling at Rome. Caesar was quite aware of what was going on

00:16:16.060 and disapproved of it. But, because of the general political situation, he was forced to make use

00:16:21.220 of those who would do his will. If you would like to see the full version of this premium video,

00:16:25.840 please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our premium content.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 24, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #195 ｜ Pompey and Caesar Part XX

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