Real Dictators - Julius Caesar Part 1: The Roman Dictator

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Politician, writer, warrior, lover... Julius Caesar was the dictator-for-life who became the absolute ruler of Rome and its domains. His life was a series of extraordinary and gruesome adventures. The young student kidnapped by pirates. The general who butchered the people of Gaul and led the Roman legions into Britain. The lothario famously entranced by Cleopatra. But how much truth do the legends contain? A Noiser production, written by Jeff Dawson. This is Part 1 of 3. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

London. September 21st, 1599. It's a Friday night. On the south bank of the River Thames rises a brand new entertainment complex. The tall, circular structure of the Globe Theatre. The Globe towers over the local Southwark marshland. On a warm autumn evening, it's not particularly fragrant. The theatre has been built to showcase a company of actors, the Lord Chamberlain's men. Though the real

star is its new writer in residence, William Shakespeare. A prolific scribe, aged 35, Shakespeare has penned 19 plays to great critical buzz. Earlier this year he scored a big hit with a war epic, Henry V, before bashing out a summer rom-com, As You Like It. For the Globe's grand opening, the Bard has returned to hard-hitting history, to ancient Rome. Tonight marks the premiere of Julius Caesar. Down in the pit, the groundlings,

fueled by cheap ale, are getting raucous. They shout, they stamp, they swear, they urinate. All the way up to the gods, there's an air of fevered anticipation. Some may have heard of Caesar, a character from the mists of time, the general who led the Roman legions into Britain. If others are oblivious, they'll soon understand. So what if the actors' costumes aren't quite right?

Doublet and hose rather than togas. There's enough to show anyone that Julius Caesar was once a man of great significance. In the footlights glow, they cheer, they laugh, they boo, they hiss at the bad guys, some lob rotten cabbages. But in the third act, as Caesar is set upon by members of his very own senate, the conspirators plunging in their daggers one by one, you could hear a pin drop. Dying Caesar looks up, bewildered as his protégé Brutus delivers the 23rd mortal blow.

And you, Brutus? Et tu, Brutus? It is perhaps in this moment, on this Friday night in London, that the Roman statesman's place in the popular imagination is assured for the centuries to come. But who is the man beyond the myths and legends? From Noisa, this is the story of Julius Caesar. Andacs, tyrants, autocrats. Their deeds are marked by a signature brutality, a barbarism, an evil.

The inclusion of Julius Caesar may come as a surprise. Wasn't he heroic? But history, Hollywood, and indeed Shakespeare, have crafted a character who has been heavily mythologized. Their own interpretations based on classical biographies, written a century or more after Caesar's death. David Gwynne is Professor of Roman History at Royal Holloway University of London. Shakespeare lifted his version of Caesar mainly from Plutarch, the Greek biographer who was

translated conveniently into English in 1579, so just in time for Shakespeare to use him. The historical Julius Caesar genuinely seems to be one of those really annoying people who was good at everything. He's one of the greatest soldiers in Roman history, and there's a lot of competition for that title. He's one of the greatest politicians. He's one of the greatest orators. He's one of the greatest writers. He's one of the greatest lovers. He really does tick all those boxes. So he is one of these huge, larger-than-life people. Adrian Goldsworthy is an historian and author of Caesar, Life of a Colossus.

Julius Caesar is one of those strange figures who is there at a pivotal moment in history. Caesar is just a family name like Smith or Jones, and yet it becomes the title of power to the point where at the beginning of the 20th century, you've got a Kaiser in Germany, you've got a Tsar in Russia, versions of the name Caesar. Sometimes we have to step back and remind ourselves that there is just one man at the start of all this and that the name would still be talked about 2000 years on. You'll have heard perhaps about Caesar's conquest of Gaul, his affair with Egyptian queen Cleopatra,

his unfortunately casual attitude towards the Ides of March. But this is also a man who, while marauding across Gaul, slaughtered a million of its inhabitants. And that was just for starters. He was, albeit briefly, the absolute ruler of the Roman universe, from the Atlantic to Asia, from Britain to North Africa. Setting Julius Caesar against modern dictators

is an interesting exercise. Dictator is a Roman term. The Roman Republic indeed coined it. And specifically, what the Roman Republic meant by a dictator was an individual who would step into power for a short-term emergency, solve that problem, and then stand down. You could not be a Roman dictator for longer than six months. Julius Caesar held the title dictator. And crucially for Western history, it's Caesar as dictator, which is the key

transitional point from that Roman Republic to the Roman Empire that dominates Western Europe. Caesar is seen as wanting to become a permanent dictator. The actual title he held was dictator for life. That is a contradiction in Roman terms. You can't be a permanent dictator. That is a king. And so he had to die. Neville Morley is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. There's a tradition of being very suspicious of anyone who looks like they might want to be a king. And Caesar really looks like a king. He's got too much power in a system where no one person is supposed to have it. You can argue that he uses it quite sort of positively, that a lot of what he does seems to be popular. But the reason you would

see him as a dictator is simply no one should have that supreme authority, that much control. And that's the great ambiguity about Caesar is that you look at him and there is much that is very impressive, very good, very noble about what he achieved. There's also a lot that's savage. Pliny the Elder talks about Julius Caesar as the most successful Roman general, but also as killing the most people. There's a million dead in Gaul, Germany, and Britain, a million enslaved. That he rules very well, that he generally rules for the common good while he's dictator, counts in his favor. But again, he seized the power to do this. He is a difficult, ambiguous figure, but there is something that perhaps puts him apart from some of the others other than perhaps the Napoleons of this world in that Caesar had style

and there's nothing dull about what he did, for good or ill. So let's go back. Back to ancient Rome. We're in the year 672, ab urbe condita, the time measured since the foundation of Rome, by modern calibration the year 82 BC. In the back streets of the city, a young man has gone to ground seeking refuge. He moves around by night, spirited through a network of safe houses.

Aged just 18, young Gaius Julius Caesar has been deemed an enemy of the state, the subject of a kill order. It's been drawn up by a man named General Sulla, a fearsome military leader. Sulla has been appointed by the Senate to impose martial law, to quell a rebellion that's been brewing, and his methods are as cruel as their ingenious. Using a tactic called prescription, Sulla has posted lists of the rebels' names in the public spaces of the city. Those listed, and Caesar is one of them, are declared fair game for murder. Kill anyone cited, and you're entitled to the dead man's house and possessions.

All you need to do is bring in his head. Over the past few days, in an orgy of violence, thousands have been dragged into the street to have their lives brutally terminated, sometimes erroneously. The heads have been displayed on spikes around the rostra, the large public platform in the centre of the city. Caesar is not a rebel. His crime is one of guilt by association. The figurehead of the revolt, Sulla's sworn enemy, is a rival general named Marius.

He has married Caesar's aunt, Julia. Marius and Caesar are now family, and in ancient Rome, family counts for everything. Marius is a powerful man, a former consul, a famous general. He is on the side of the popularis, the supporters of the people. general. He is on the side of the popularis, the supporters of the people. Against them stand the optimatis, the entitled class, the old boy network, who believe that rules should reside with those best bred for it. It's the age-old struggle, people versus the elites. In the Roman vernacular, the elites. In the Roman vernacular, patrician versus pleb, and it is descended into civil war. There is an irony here. Caesar's uncle Marius may be fighting for the common folk,

but the line from which Caesar descends, the Julii, was once one of Rome's foremost clans. Gaius Julius Caesar is born into what is technically the oldest, grandest of all the Roman Republic and noble families. The Roman Republic has a great interest in genealogy. What family you come from, what the Romans called dignitas, the inherited authority of your family. Well, no family goes as far back as the Julians, because in Roman mythology, their family goes all the way back to the very earliest event in what becomes the Roman foundation story, which is the Trojan War, and the Trojan prince Aeneas, who escapes from Troy and comes to Italy. Well, Aeneas' mother is Aphrodite, in Greek, Venus, the Roman goddess of love. And Julius Caesar is Aeneas' direct descendant.

So it's an incredibly illustrious family tree. It gives the Julians great dignitas, which makes it fascinating that for the 300 years before Julius Caesar, they haven't done anything. There is no major member of the Julian family who plays any leading part in Roman politics. It doesn't have much money. It's got no real political clout. By the time of Caesar's birth on July the 13th, 100 BC, his family are living in the downhill suburb of Subura. It's a barrio of tenements and slums, which crawls up the slopes of two of Rome's seven hills.

The death of his father when Caesar is sixteen places further strain on the family. He'd keeled over while bending to tie his shoes or his sandals, a classic sign of a heart attack. And so, barely a man, Julius Caesar becomes the family's breadwinner. He marries a fellow teen named Cornelia. She is the daughter of the esteemed Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a four-time consul. Ordinarily, this would be an advantageous move, but Cinna is Uncle Marius' chief ally in his campaign against General Sulla.

The general now has two reasons to resent young Caesar, his uncle and his father-in-law. It's a pattern in Roman politics. Whenever you have two warlords at the same time, they will almost certainly fight a civil war. Well, Sulla wins. And while Sulla is then in power, Caesar's life is in serious danger. Caesar makes it out of the city, moving through the villages to the north. Though he evades his hunters, he can only hide out for so long. Like many Romans, he's afflicted with an illness, malaria. The recurrent outbreaks of fever can prove hugely debilitating,

and while sheltering, cold, wet and hungry, Caesar succumbs. It's game over. His mother, Aurelia, pulls strings and works her contacts. She has an inn with an influential sisterhood, the Vestal Virgins. Clemency is sought. Once back on his feet, Caesar is given an amnesty to appear before Sulla in person. As the story goes, the skinny youth with the dark piercing eyes and floppy hair has a serious case of attitude when he is brought before the general. Perhaps not the most prudent tactic. He's also a bit of a Roman punk. He has self-styled long-fringed sleeves on his tunic,

he wears scarlet boots, and sports a low-slung belt around his waist. But he finds Sulla in a merciful mood. The general will let Caesar live, provided he divorces his young wife and surrenders her dowry, thus diminishing his connections and personal wealth. Caesar barters it down to just the dowry. Sulla waves Caesar away. He rolls his eyes at those who petitioned for his freedom. The general's words will prove prophetic. Bear in mind that the young man you are so eager to save will one day deal the deathblow to the cause of the aristocracy. These are turbulent times for Rome. Nearly 700 years on from its founding, the city is

pushing a million inhabitants. It's the biggest conurbation in the known world. It has a road network, high-rise buildings, sports stadiums, a sewage system. It has a thriving arts scene, music, bars, restaurants. It has litter, pollution, graffiti, traffic jams, crime, everything you'd expect in a bustling metropolis. No longer a mere city-state, the Roman Republic now includes most of the Italian peninsula. Its administered territories cover much of the Mediterranean Rim.

In the east, the Persians represent a consistent military threat. But Rome's old rival, Carthage, has long since been vanquished. Greece has also bowed to Roman dominance. Rome has grown wealthy on trade and plundered riches. Its streets throng with migrant workers and demobbed soldiers. But the job market is tight with the ever-expanding supply of slaves, who make up a staggering 40% of the population. There is ongoing unrest. Politically, Rome stands apart from most civilizations. It's one of the rare few not governed by a monarchy. It was once ruled by kings, but the last one, the tyrannical Tarquin the Proud,

was booted out in 509 BC. The kings were thrown out by a group of aristocrats led by a Brutus, hence the inspiration that even comes into Shakespeare of the Brutus who will murder Julius Caesar, that, you know, this is their job almost as a family. You throw out monarchs, you throw out kings, you throw out dictators, you get rid of them. Since Tarquin's demise, there's been a paranoid near-pathological phobia about the rise of a despot and a deep suspicion of high-handed leaders.

Officially designated as Public Possession of the Roman People, a res publica, a republic, Rome has developed a system of checks and balances against autocratic ascendancy. Its power of rule, its imperium, must be shared. It's not a full democracy in the modern sense, but ordinary Romans do have a stake in their own governance. It's sometimes called a mixed constitution,

and it becomes a model, say, for the United States Constitution. The people have a role in assemblies. You've got a Senate which is made up of senior respected people. It's a system with lots of brakes on it. There's loads of ways of stopping people from doing anything. There's almost no way of making something happen if enough people oppose you. You even have, there are the tribunes of the plebs,

the tribunes of the people, and they have the right of veto, which means literally, I forbid. And if anything is happening in the state, they are allowed by law to go up and say, I forbid this, and it's supposed to stop. There will not be one person in power. So instead, there are magistrates who will hold high office. The highest are the two consuls, but there are two consuls every year. So not only can you not hold this highest office

alone, you always have a partner, you only hold it for a single year. So you're not going to build a strong power base. Family connections are worn extremely proudly, most obviously by way of a person's name. All of the males in the Julii line carry the surnames Julius Caesar. To complicate things, young Caesar's forename Gaius was also that of his father. To add to the confusion, all the women born in the family are called Julia. Nobody quite knows the origin of the name Caesar. It's been attributed to an old word meaning thick head of hair, though ironically the adult Caesar will prove rather sensitive about his thinning thatch,

hiding it with a ring of laurel leaves. It's been suggested it comes from another word meaning to cut, source of the myth that Caesar was born by the method of childbirth that bears his name today, the Caesarian section. The Julii family themselves prefer a more exotic explanation, that Caesar derives from the Phoenician word for elephant. One of Caesar's forebears apparently killed a war elephant during the Second Punic War,

pretty much the equivalent of blowing up a tank. There is a recurring elephant theme in family crests. Since then, the once proud Julii have been on the slide. Since then, the once proud Julii have been on the slide. Caesar's father had a successful, if unspectacular, role as a quaestor, a sort of civil servant. The advent of Uncle Marius was a boon, restoring some of the family's dignitas as well as its wealth. Young Caesar had become a made man, with opportunities on Capitoline Hill. He'd had his eye on becoming a priest in the Temple of Jupiter.

But the Civil War has put paid to that. And when Uncle Marius dies too, felled by pleurisy, young Caesar is well and truly on his own. He may have been pardoned by Sulla, but it isn't safe to hang around. His best bet is to leave the country. And the easiest way to do that is to join the army. In the Roman Republic, politics and military service are inextricably linked. If one aspires to a life in the Senate someday, doing time in the legions is a prerequisite. Young Gaius might as well get the grunt work out of the way. The Roman province of Asia, today's Turkey,

is in theory a soft posting. Julius Caesar heads there, assigned to its Roman governor. But, as is a frequent occurrence in the Roman world, there are outbreaks of resistance to its rule Roman forces end up besieging the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos During the fighting, Caesar is involved in the rescuing of a Roman official An act for which he is given the civic crown, the highest award for gallantry

Julius Caesar is not just a noble now, but a decorated soldier. Unfortunately, his bravery is eclipsed by a scandal. While in Anatolia, Caesar is dispatched as an emissary to the court of King Nicomedes of Bithynia. The old king, as it turns out, had known Caesar's father, who had served some time in Asia himself. He's keen for the young warrior to stay at his palace and partake of his royal luxuries. The old king is a prolific lover of young men. This leads to certain conclusions being drawn. They become the source of a battlefield taunt that, due to services rendered, Caesar is now the Queen of Bithynia.

The rumour will dog Caesar throughout his career. At one point he even swears an oath in public, insisting nothing improper ever occurred. But there will be much bigger scandals than this one. In 78 BC, the hated Sulla dies. It's safe for Caesar to return home. Having paid his military dues, he can begin his civilian career. He decides to train as a lawyer.

One thing he has got is eloquence. If he had specialised, he could have been the greatest orator, but he also wants to go off fighting battles and everything else. But he starts by making a name for himself in court, a couple of famous prosecutions, including prosecutions of corrupt Roman governors.

That's quite a populist move. Caesar is then saying, you know, I am the friend of the provincials. I am the defender of the Roman people who shouldn't be served by such degenerates and so forth. So he builds a name for himself there. In Rome, trials are held in public, in the open space of the Forum. Caesar is wowing the punters. His delivery, though, is still in need of some polish, and his voice is rather high. Caesar's family decide to send him on a course.

He will go to the island of Rhodes to study with the distinguished orator Apollonius Molon. And so in 75 BC, aged 25, Julius Caesar set sail. Despite its decline, the influence of Greece on Rome remains strong. Affluent Romans still hold Greek culture in high regard. It's the done thing for rich young men to complete their education in Athens or Rhodes. Caesar's contemporary, the celebrated man of letters, Cicero, also studied with Molon. In fact, most educated Romans pride themselves on speaking Greek as well as Latin. Don't tell it to Shakespeare, but Caesar's dying words were most likely uttered in Greek. Such matters are of little concern to the pirates

who plunder the shipping lanes of the eastern Mediterranean. The collapse of Greek authority means that there are no longer the powerful Hellenic navies to keep them at bay. Sure enough, as Caesar's galley is crossing the Aegean Sea, it is set upon. Caesar is taken prisoner. For the pirates, the true worth of their plunder comes not in the valuables they seize, but in the shape of this young Roman nobleman. But when they declare that he be ransomed for the not inconsiderable sum of 20

talents of silver, Caesar simply scoffs at them. He is, he says, worth at least fifty talents. That's over one and a half metric tons of silver. As Caesar's shipmates sail off to try and scare up this impossible sum, the pirates soon realize they've never kidnapped anyone quite like him. When Caesar informs them casually that they are barbarians, that he will one day return and kill them, they find it highly amusing. When he uses them as an audience upon which to try out his poetry, they're quite flattered, even touched. For 28 days Caesar is detained, along with his doctor and two slaves.

But his agreeable nature means he's treated more as a colleague than a captive, But his agreeable nature means he's treated more as a colleague than a captive, eating, sleeping, joking with the pirates. Eventually the sails on the horizon signal that his shipmates have returned, the ransom raised. Julius Caesar is free to go. Caesar is bid a fond farewell by his captors, but he has no time for sentiment. Out of danger, he directs his crew to the nearest port, Miletus, where he raises a small fleet to sail straight back out and hunt the pirates down. He hauls them off to the city of Pergamon, where they are sentenced to death.

Caesar had promised to the pirates' faces that he would return to kill them. Perhaps they thought he was joking. He is true to his word. Though in an act of mercy, before their crucifixion, he has their throats slit. Crucifixion is not a nice way to die. It's actually death by long, slow asphyxiation. And the nicest thing you can do to someone who's been put up on a cross is either cut their throat or actually break their legs,

because then they can't brace themselves and you'll die an awful lot quicker. Caesar continues to Rhodes. Such things are just an inconvenience in the ancient world. When he returns to Rome, he's not just a vastly improved public speaker. Word of the pirate episode has preceded him. He's also something of a hero. In his absence, another crisis has hit the Republic. This time it's in the form of a slave revolt, led by another household name, an ex-gladiator named Spartacus. Spartacus' slave army is running amok south of Rome,

raiding across the countryside, wreaking havoc. Once again, the Senate decrees emergency rule. They appoint another hard man to restore order, a general named Marcus Licinius Crassus. Crassus' methods put even Sulla's in the shade. Unimpressed with the discipline of his troops, he gets them to draw lots. Every tenth soldier is pulled from the ranks and beaten to death by his colleagues. The newly focused Roman army makes short work of the slave rebellion, trapping Spartacus and his runaways in the toe of the Italian peninsula.

Crassus has all 6,000 rebels crucified along the length of the Appian Way. The miles of rotting, stinking carcasses are a salutary warning to all those questioning a life in servitude. to all those questioning a life in servitude. Back in the city, Cornelia has given birth to what will turn out to be Caesar's only legitimate child, a girl called, yes, Julia. With a family and a career mapped out, things would seem to be rosy. But the marriage is no longer a happy one. They were thrust together at a young age, and Caesar has been away endlessly. He begins spending time with a woman named Servilia.

She will become his long-term mistress. Given the arranged nature of many noble marriages, men having affairs is deemed par for the course. Not to mention sleeping with the female slaves. They are personal property. With license to stray, Caesar will earn quite a reputation as a love machine. No wife, mother or daughter, or any of their female staff seemingly off-limits. Caesar is notoriously sexually voracious. One of the biographers, Suetonius, says that there is this absolutely astonishing list of ladies of rank whose reputation is damaged by their relationships with Caesar. Cleopatra is not the only foreign queen he sleeps with, but the sense that he has

this voracious appetite is then seen also as a sign of his voracious appetite for power, that the two sort of go together. You know, it's something which at least some people admire him for. It gets picked up by the soldiers when they march into Rome for him to celebrate a triumph after his Gallic victories, the soldiers are singing a song which is basically, you know, Roman husbands, lock up your wives and daughters, we're bringing the bald old dulcerer home. He's already shanked his way through the whole of Gaul. And it's clearly, you know, for them, this is a celebration. When we say bald, by the way, we mean it quite literally.

In later years, smooth Caesar will remove every last hair from his body. Sevilia, for Caesar's added satisfaction, happens to be the half-sister of Cato the Younger, Caesar's sworn enemy in the Senate. But there will be another twist. Caesar's mistress is also the widow of a man named Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of the famous tyrant Basha. Sevillea's son, also named Brutus,

will be the one to deliver Caesar his final fatal wound. By some accounts, he may even be Caesar's own love child. Shakespeare couldn't have scripted it better. At age 30, Caesar stands for a quaestorship, the same position once held by his father. As part of his duties, he is to head off to Hispania,

Spain. More precisely, Hispania Ulterior, Far Spain. While there, he has something of an epiphany. In the town of Gades, modern-day Cadiz, he finds an old crumbling statue, a rendering of Alexander the Great. It's said that he's moved to tears before it. There is a suggestion that he may even have had a fit, some histories attributing him with epilepsy. There's this famous anecdote that Caesar suddenly is sort of struck by the example of Alexander the Great and thinks, you know, well, when Alexander was my age, he had conquered most of the known world and got as far as India. And, you know, what have I done? Key part of the Caesar legend.

At the very least, Caesar is affected deeply. Things he vows are going to change. Back in Rome, age 32, Caesar plots his path to the top. It will take some time. One can't become a consul until after the age of 40. He will build to it gradually. Caesar runs for office again

and becomes an aedile, an administrator of public works. He duly fixes roads and fills in potholes. But he's also responsible for staging Rome's annual games, a 15-day festival of sports and Saturnalia. He's flamboyant at every stage. And one thing he does throughout his career is spend money like water. So when he's a Edile in charge of the games, they are more spectacular and lavish than anyone else. And it's not just money because Pompey the Great on one occasion stages these lavish games and they don't work. People don't like them. They feel sorry for

the elephant that's killed in the arena and this sort of thing. Whereas Caesar obviously has a touch of the sort of Hollywood Busby Barclay sort of showmanship about him. So he can spend the money and get the result. And he wants to be talked about. He wants to be gossiped about, you know, better to be notorious than obscure. So all these rumors of affairs with other men's wives, fine, at least they're talking about me. It doesn't matter whether or not he wins a case in court. He's there, he's public, he's speaking to the crowd, he's getting known. But it does mean at every stage that if his creditors call in his debts, he is ruined. Crassus, the general who defeated Spartacus, is about to come back into

the picture. Getting on in years, Crassus has decided to hang up his helmet. Plus, he considers the powers that be were never sufficiently grateful to him for saving Rome. Already a wealthy man, he has extended his portfolio with a foray into the housing market, doing a brisk trade as the seasonal wildfires devastate parts of the city. General Crassus is now Crassus the Property Baron. He has become without doubt the richest man in Rome, which makes him one of the richest men in the world. Avoiding political life directly, Crassus knows that money is better spent buying influence. He's on the lookout for eager up-and-comers who can do his bidding.

Men like Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar starts sucking up to him. Basically, Caesar gets Crassus to pay off a load of his debts and offer a guarantee for the rest in return for Caesar's support. From Crassus' point of view, okay, Caesar is enough of an up-and-coming type.

He's worth having as an ally. Therefore, effectively, he bankrolls him. An aspiring politico has to project a certain image. Caesar likes his fine wine and haute couture. He even styles a fashionable comb-over to hide his receding hairline. Though pointedly he maintains his everyman credentials. When his wife Cornelia dies suddenly,

he breaks with tradition to give her an emotional public eulogy. It goes down well with the general public. To greater acclaim in 63 BC, Caesar ascends to the job of Pontifex Maximus, high priest. It's a very important religious office and you hold it for life. The general consensus is he got that office through massive bribery, but nonetheless it showed that he was the kind of man who could be elected to this highly impressive office.

In reality, this is more a political role than a spiritual one. The post comes with a nice big house on the Via Sacra near the Forum. It means he'll have to leave his home in Subura, but he'll be right in the heart of the action. Caesar even takes a new wife, Pompeia, a woman considerably younger than himself. Though when it becomes clear that her notion of marital fidelity is not much different to his own, he swiftly divorces her. Unfortunately, despite Crassus' deep pockets, Caesar's debts continue to pile up. He's in hock to the tune of 31 million sesterti,

about 90 million dollars in today's terms, a staggering sum. There is a surefire way of enriching oneself, however, and that is to run one of Rome's overseas provinces. Caesar's next move is as expedient as it's ambitious. He's going back to Spain. And this time, as a fully-fledged proprietor, proconsul, or the governor. As a governor, you're free to attack towns, loot treasures, and demand fealty. You can tax and extort the hell out of the locals.

There are rich pickings. There are sort of expected levels of corruption and self-enrichment. The basic situation is you're trying to pay off your debts through creaming money off the empire. You've got to spend money to make money. People are bankrupting themselves in order to try and get elected with the idea they'll then be able to make the money back. There is an unwritten Roman law.

What happens in Hispania stays in Hispania. As long as a governor can supply a steady string of military victories, a bit of gloria, they can do as they damn well please. Spain has been described as Rome's Vietnam for about 200 years. Spain is a running problem for the Roman Republic. It's a difficult place to govern. It's got lots of individual tribes. There's nearly always a war going on in Spain at some point.

Caesar heads out there, and that's when we begin to see, and indeed one suspects some of his contemporaries began to see, just how good a military commander he was. It may not have been his intention, but deep in bandit country, Caesar turns out to be one hell of a general. He commands the loyalty and affection of his soldiers through leading by example. He marches on foot with his men, eats the same rations, climbs the same hills, swims the same rivers. In battle, he's right there in the vanguard. It yields tremendous results. Caesar not only subdues the Hispanic guerrillas,

but manages to push them into Lusitania, modern day Portugal, driving them all the way to the Atlantic. He's incredibly strict disciplinarian when it comes to, say, mutiny or cowardice or something like that, and he's completely relaxed about almost everything else. Caesar is, say, quite relaxed if they all head off down to the whorehouse. I mean, he said to Ossetia, he has no problem with his troops going into battle smelling of perfume. They still fight

just as well. And this wins him their absolute loyalty. His soldiers hail him imperator, i.e. conquering general, and he is so successful he is awarded a triumph. And a triumph is the greatest accolade a Roman Republican general can receive. It's the right to march through the city of Rome with your plunder, with your soldiers, and when Caesar comes back from Spain, he's entitled to a triumph. And the fact he doesn't take it is one of the most important moments in his entire career. A triumph would rank Caesar alongside his contemporary, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great,

who's been doing something similar in the East, but on a bigger scale, including a naval campaign that puts paid to the widespread piracy that had almost done for Caesar. And if one is intent on running for consul, and at 40 Caesar is now eligible, what better showcase could there be than a triumph? In order to run for consul, however,

Caesar must appear in the forum on a particular date. He must also relinquish his military command. To cross the pomerium, the religious boundary of Rome while still a serving soldier, will invalidate his application. Thus he is forced to make a choice. Who does he want to be? The glorious returning general or the influential politician? You can't actually do both simultaneously. You can't get yourself nominated for the consulship unless you can actually go into

Rome, and you can't do that as long as you are a general under arms. He has a go at trying to get the Senate to agree to bend the rules, and that gets blocked, and gets blocked by Cato. Caesar is disliked, particularly by hardline conservative Roman senators. Cato was almost certainly counting on Caesar taking the triumph, and Caesar doesn't. It's one of those moments that makes you realize Caesar can think beyond the basic values of his own society. He's capable of that extra vision, that in reality, he'll get to hold a bigger triumph later if he can hold the consulship now.

You know, I don't need this, even though this would be for most people the pinnacle of their career. Ah, you know, it's nothing. It's turning down the lead in a blockbuster. Caesar has arrived back in Rome at a critical juncture in the Republic's history. Caesar has arrived back in Rome at a critical juncture in the Republic's history. Pompey the Great, who has reorganized the governance of the eastern Mediterranean, is demanding the land that had been promised to his war veterans.

Crassus, Caesar's bankroller, also controls the taxation in the east. Both Crassus and Pompey are finding their reforms blocked in the Senate. They're not natural bedfellows. Pompey had actually been Sulla's second-in-command when hunting young Caesar. Crassus and Pompey, meanwhile, have a long-standing animosity, not to mention that both Crassus' father and brother were killed by Caesar's uncle Marius. But the three men set aside their differences. And this is where Caesar actually becomes for the first time a really major player. What Caesar proposes to Pompey and Crassus is,

you get me elected consul, I'll deliver on what you want. Pompey and Crassus are the two richest men in Rome. Pompey is by an order of magnitude the one man with the most prestige. If those two both back Caesar, Caesar will landslide the election. And they agree to the deal. That created what is known as the First Triumvirate. As painful as it is, foregoing the pageantry and the claim of the triumph proves the correct decision. Gaius Julius Caesar wins the consular election at Acanta. By all accounts, it's a spectacularly dirty election, even by Roman standards.

Even Cato, who is sort of famously moral, is said to have resorted to bribery to try and get his favoured candidate through. On January 1, 59 BC, Caesar takes office as a consul of Rome, the highest political appointment in the land. Consuls, if you remember, govern as a pair. Caesar is teamed with a favourite of Cato's conservatives, a man named Bibulus. If Caesar's marriage to Cornelio is a sham, then it was as nothing compared to his consular union with the plotting Bibulus. Pretty soon, he's riding rough over his supposed partner. There is much ritual associated with the consulship.

Consuls are to be accompanied everywhere by a team of men called lictors, who each carry a ceremonial axe wrapped in a bundle of sticks called fasces. Two thousand years from now, its symbolism will be appropriated by another Italian dictator, Mussolini, for his own movement, fascism. Caesar has no time for such nonsense. He has Bibulus' fasces broken. Indeed, so marginalized now is poor Bibulus that many refer to this period of rule as the consulship of Julius and Caesar. Caesar manipulates senatorial meetings, bans rivals from speaking. He has Cato arrested for filibustering, and,

just for good measure, his cronies dump a bucket of human excrement over Bibulus's head. In the end, Bibulus retreats to his house, too frightened to come out, though he does get his own back. According to ancient tradition, the senate cannot be convened if a bolt of lightning is glimpsed, a sign that the gods are displeased. So Bibulus simply arises each morning, even on the brightest of days, and declares that he has just seen a flash in the sky, thus forbidding any business to be conducted. The stasis in the Senate is of little consequence to Caesar, or for that matter to the public. For as long as Rome continues to function, the people are happy. In fact, they rather relish Caesar sticking it to the man. Caesar uses his consulship to introduce an assortment of laws which again are essentially

of laws which, again, are essentially populist. In particular, he tries to push through a law to redistribute public lands. Caesar is able just to sort of push through his legislation without any particular difficulty. Through the triumvirate, true power now resides away from the Senate. Forget monarchy. In the hands of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar, Rome is now an oligarchy. It's not an official body in any sense whatsoever. It's not official, it's not elected. It's just three friends who are just discussing together how to control the Roman Republic. And it's sealed, not by any written agreement, but by a marriage alliance. Pompey marries Julia.

Julia, that is Caesar's daughter. Now Pompey at this point, he's six years older than Caesar is. He's been married at least three times already. He has several children. Caesar's daughter, Julia, is probably in her late teens. She's never been married. The fact they fall completely in love is why historians don't like love. It's messy, confusing, and it makes absolutely no sense. But in fact, they did clearly get on brilliantly well, and it helps bind all three together. Roman nobles don't cooperate naturally. It's just not a feature. But the first charm for it is going to work surprisingly well.

Pompey, feathering his nest in the Near East, is also seeking senatorial approval to shore up the position of the Ptolemy dynasty in Egypt. He's been thrown a massive bribe to do so. Possibly coincidentally, or possibly as part of a kickback, Caesar buys for his mistress, Seville, a black pearl worth 1.5 million denarii, in today's money about 18 million dollars. It will soften the news that he is about to marry again to a woman named Calpurnia.

If there's one thing Caesar can be sure of, it's that corruption charges are piling up. If he's not careful, he's going to find himself on the sharp end of some serious senatorial justice. The good news is that as a consul, he's immune from prosecution. The bad news is that he's in office for only a year. Time, once again, to do a geographical. Caesar delivers. The eastern settlements are ratified.

Crassus can control their taxation. Pompey's soldiers get their land. But Caesar's problem with the first triumvirate is he's third. Pompey is way out on front in terms of glory, wealth. Crassus, he's very experienced, far more so than Caesar. How is Caesar going to catch up? Where's he going to go after the consulship? It's to a command of his choice where he can win real glory. Ex-consuls are traditionally rewarded with a foreign governorship, something of which Caesar has already had experience. While his opponents conspire to dispatch him to some dusty hellhole,

Numidia in North Africa perhaps, Caesar wangles himself the cushiest posting of all, Cisalpine Gaul, that is, Gaul south of the Alps, basically northern Italy, and with the added bonus of an extension of his amnesty. bonus of an extension of his amnesty. The key thing which Caesar does is get a law passed which grants him several provinces when he steps down as consul and grants him immunity from prosecution for five years. Normally, you'd get one year. You know, the rules are being bent for his benefit, but he's got Pompey's support, so it gets passed. The Cisalpine dwellers are thoroughly Romanised, nicknamed the Toga-wearing

Gauls. Indeed, Caesar, in another popular move, will soon extend full Roman citizenship to everyone on the Italian peninsula north of the Po River. But there is trouble brewing with their Celtic brethren, the trousered barbarians on the other side of the mountains. You've got a load of tribes beyond the frontier, some of whom are allied to Rome, some of whom are hostile. You've got a perfect situation for engineering the opportunity to start a war. And essentially, that's what Caesar then does for the next eight years.

It's Julius Caesar's adventures in Transalpine Gaul, the land we know today as France, that will transform him into not just one of Rome's greatest generals, but one of the most important and feared figures in world history. Next time on Real Dictators Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul begins. on Real Dictators. Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul begins. An invasion on an epic scale, it will also include two missions to the rain-lashed island, Britain. With the collapse of the Triumvirate, however,

Rome will descend into civil war. The conflict will spill across the Mediterranean and drive Caesar into the arms of a certain Queen Cleopatra. That's next time on Real Dictators.