You're Dead to Me - Julius Caesar’s Rise To Power

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Shushma Malik and Ahir Shah as they travel back to Ancient Rome to meet one of history’s biggest names, Julius Caesar. With a name so good his family used it multiple times, for every relative, we follow the rise to power of the man who would one day become Dictator of Rome.You’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.Research by Bethan Davies Written and produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Abi Paterson

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. I was the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. And today we are venturing back to ancient Rome to learn all about the rise and rise of one of the biggest names in history,

the big JC himself. No, not that one. We're talking Julius Caesar. And to help me do that, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a senior lecturer at the University of Roehampton, soon to be joining the University of Cambridge, and she's an expert in the politics of Imperial Rome, how emperors were depicted, and classical reception studies. You may have read her book, The Nero Antichrist, it's quite the read, or heard her on BBC In Our Time talking about Nero.

It's Dr Shushma Malik. Welcome, Shushma. Hi, Greg. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And in Comedy Corner, he's a rising star of stand-up, whose acclaimed shows have twice been nominated for prizes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. That's the best festival. He's a regular voice on Radio 4 and various comedy podcasts. You'll have seen him on the telly, flinging zingers with Wild Abandon on things like Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, Live at the Apollo and The Mash Report.

It's Ahir Shah. Welcome, Ahir. Salve. Oh, hello. Very good. Immediately on theme. For listeners, what does Salve mean, Ahir? What's up? Sure, it does. It means hello.

Already you're showing your brains here, Ahir. And, I mean, you are a man who is pretty comfortable with philosophy, with politics. Do you also enjoy wandering through the realms of history? I do. I've listened to multiple podcasts about Rome while falling asleep. So as far as I'm aware, Rome is a place that existed both a long time ago and now. And also there are a variety of mindfulness apps that I can get discounts on if I enter a special code. And normally I'd ask people, do they know about the person we're talking about today? But surely you've heard of Julius Caesar, right?

I have heard of Julius Caesar. I was in Rome a couple of weeks ago. So I think I had a moment sort of standing on a bridge across the Tiber and thinking, oh, how weird that like Julius Caesar probably looked at these waters and all of that sort of thing all that time ago. And here's me, just some guy. But actually, I'm the champion because he's dead. he is dead uh but you're right rome is a city where you can you can sort of point to anything and chances are julius caesar has probably pissed on it so what do you know so this is the so what do you know this is where i have a go at guessing what you our lovely listener knows about today's subject and i'm willing to bet you an extravagant £3.50 that Julius Caesar is the most famous Roman of all of them. He is the gateway Roman. In our heads, Julius Caesar is the big kahuna. You may think of him as a politician, or maybe as the Lothario who romped with Cleopatra, or perhaps you are fans of his iconic assassination by his ex-bestie buddy Brutus and the Stabby Gang. There's some other stuff too that is not really true. He wasn't born by Caesarean section. No, he didn't invent the salad. But he does get his own month. July is named after him,

which is pretty cool, isn't it? And in terms of pop culture, he pops up absolutely everywhere. But today we are not talking about his dramatic final chapter. No, we want to find out how did he get there in the first place? That's right. It's the young Julius Caesar biopic that Hollywood is too scared to make. We're doing it instead. Dr. Shushma, let's go back to the very start. What sort of world is Kid Caesar born into? So the Romans started off their history with monarchs as a monarchy. They managed to expel those kings by about the 6th century BCE and form another system of government known as the Republic. The Republic had magistrates, a bit like what we would call the cabinet, but they also had voting assemblies that elected those magistrates.

Only people from particular families could be magistrates. So aristocratic families, these were called patricians, and they were understood to be the descendants of the first senators who were appointed by the first king, which is Romulus, which is of course where we get the name Rome from. But by about the fourth and third centuries BCE, so we have this thing called the struggle of the orders or the conflict of the orders where newer families from what we call the plebeians came into the political mix at this point Rome was also starting to gain more territory around the Mediterranean and Romans who were in charge of that that expansion were becoming really really rich and powerful so about the first 70 years of the first century BCE, which is where we are with

Julius Caesar, you get this sort of alternation in Rome between civil war and dictatorship, but also periods of normal governance as well. And this is the point where we get Julius Caesar entering the picture. Crikey. Quite a lot of history there to cram into the opening paragraph, isn't it? What do you think Julius Caesar's family is? Do you think they're plebeians? Do you think they're poshos? I sort of realised how little I knew about this when one of the first things you said was he wasn't born by Caesarian section.

And I was like, well, I'm out. I was like, surely that's like a big fact about it. Like, why do we not call them Macduffff sections if julius caesar was not born in that way so if i've got a 50 50 then i'm gonna go maybe he was a plebeian uh unless this is a horrible trick question and he was also like romulus just sort of like found somewhere sucking on a wolf titty and uh thereby made everyone's king sucking on a wolf titty is quite the phrase um um shushma i here has gone for plebeian is he correct in his 50 50 gamble i'm afraid he's not right julius caesar was from a patrician branch of his family. So the Iulii, the Julius bit, is a very noble family in Rome. But he is a poor patrician, if that helps.

He wasn't from one of the sort of very wealthy families of that period. But he was born Gaius Julius Caesar on the 12th of July, 100 BCE. Although, of course, July wasn't named July then, as Greg said, that was named afterwards. So his name was Gaius Julius and Julius Caesar is both his last name. So he's like Morrissey. Excellent question. So Romans have three names, the trianomina. The first name Gaius is a prynomen, what we would think of as a first name. The first name Gaius is a prynomen, what we would think of as a first name. Julius is the family name.

So the family that you come from, the Iulii. Then the cognomen, which is Caesar, is the branch of your family, like a family nickname. So the Roman naming system for men was quite complicated. Okay. So if we lived in the Roman times, I'd be called Ahir Shah. Cool. You can make up your nickname. So he's Gaius to his mates.

That's his first name. He was part of, like I said, a really important family in Rome. One that had, even before him, said that they had an ancestral connection back to the Trojan who came over and settled in Italy, whose family would then go on to found Rome. So this is Aeneas. Virgil wrote a big epic about him. Aeneas is particularly important because Venus was his mother. So you then have a divine ancestry as part of your lineage that the members of the Ulii can claim.

Can there be a buzz around where I'm like, no, she wasn't? Are you fact checking here, Ahir, that he's not the descendant of a goddess? This is another one of your tricks. And his mum's called Aurelia, which is a nice Roman name. It's a lovely Roman name. Ahir, do you know what his dad is called? Jeff. Jeff Caesar.

All right, I'm Jeff Caesar. What do you want? Yeah, I can do that for you. No worries. His dad's called Gaius Julius Caesar. So he has exactly the same name as his dad. This is the other problem. Lots of very similar names in family trees, in particular with women as well, who didn't have the three names. They just had the one name, which was normally a version of either the nickname or the family name. Yeah, I hear.

Julius Caesar has two sisters. Do you know what they're called? I think that one of them is also called Aurelia and the other one is weirdly called Beyonce. If only. Both sisters are called Julia Caesar. It's like Nigel Lawson and Nigella. Yeah. So there's Gaius Julius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar, Aurelius Caesar, Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar. They all live in the same house.

And so you're just living in a house. It's like, Julia, no, not you, the other one. So one would have been Julia the Elder, the other Julia the Younger. So Maior and Minor in Latin. But yes, I imagine that would have been very confusing come dinner time. Let's address the elephant in the room, the name pronunciation. Ahir, how should we be saying his name? How should we be saying Gaius Julius Caesar? I'm guessing not like that. He spotted our trap. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the letter C is often hard. So is it supposed to be like Kieser? Oh, close. Yeah. Think German.

Think German. Kaiser? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. It's where the word comes from. So Shushma, could we have our. Think German. Kaiser? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, it's where the word comes from. So, Shushma, could we have our authentic Latin pronunciation, please, from the start? Sure. Gaius Julius Kaiser. When you see inscriptions, you don't see a J, you see an I. Gaius Julius Kaiser. And the German word for emperor comes from that, but also the Russian Tsar comes from it as well. So we have

Gaius, Julius Caesar or Gaius Caesar to his mates and they're posh. They descend from a goddess which is pretty good but are they rich? So not really. His family was actually in the neighborhood of Rome which was not on one of the beautiful airy hills that you get imperial residences later on, but more kind of in the streets, so in between shops and those sorts of things. They weren't poor though, they did have money. Our sources though on this period of his life are very limited because we've lost the beginning of two of our main biographies of him. So we don't know a lot about his very early life, but he would certainly have had the kind of education a Roman aristocrat would have had. So with private tutors, learning Greek and Latin grammar, writing, mathematics,

literature, poetry, those sorts of things. In about 85 BCE, when Caesar was about 15, his dad dies. So his mother takes over quite a lot of the duties of education and bringing up the children. And our sources say he was particularly good and fond of riding horses. And there's a great story in one of our sources, which is that he could ride a horse bareback while holding his hands behind his back. So that was perhaps his party trick. Ooh, he fancy. So that is basically the equipment of no handlebars when you're on your BMX.

Ahir, what's your exciting physical party trick? Well, I don't know that I'd like to ride a horse full stop, but certainly wouldn't want to do it without a saddle and with my hands tied behind my back because I feel like one day I'd quite like children. That may prove slightly problematic. Life is better if you're staying away from phrases like, hey guys, check this out. It's very jackass, isn't it?

Yeah. All right, so he's well-educated, comfortably affluent, but he does live in a slightly crappy street, which is quite funny. There's also this horrible, brutal civil war with a very nice name. It's called the Social War, which sounds delightful. It sounds like the kind of thing that happens on Instagram between Colleen Rooney and Rebecca Vardy, but it's actually a brutal civil war. It is. So it's called the social war because the Roman allies were called socci. That's Latin for allies. That's where social comes from. So it's a war about whether or not these allies who have been fighting for Rome want some sort of recognition through full citizenship or perhaps their independence. So what we get in this period is the rise of two

quite famous figures, which are Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius. These men are going to be rivals. Marius is what we call a new man, whereas Sulla was one of those patricians. He had the family pedigree. So the conflict between these two was partly to do with who got military glory, but also through how Rome wanted to operate as a political system. Do you go through the people or do you go through the Senate? And basically, the conflict between them builds up during the social war to such an extent that in 88 BCE, Sulla marches his troops on Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar was around about 12 at this point. But by the time he got to roughly the age of 17,

Sulla had become a dictator, which in the Republic was a legal political office. It's something that you held for about six months in a period of particular crisis to take control of the situation. But it was supposed to be an appointment for a six-month period only. Yeah, and he does it for three years, which is very much classic dictator. They do love to dictate. And young Gaius is growing up in the midst of this civil war as a teenage boy. But he does get married to a young woman called Cornelia, who's from a good family. But this puts him at huge risk. Yeah, so firstly, because Cornelia's father isynna, who was an ally of Marius,

sort of his deputy. But also, Julius Caesar's aunt was married to Marius himself. So her name, you will be astounded to hear, was Julia, and she was married to Marius. So the connection was quite strong. Okay, so a teenage Gaius Dulicis has already managed to anger the most powerful man in Rome, Sulla, which is not great. He's married to young Cornelia. Is she his first love? Not as such. There was another woman called Corsutia and either they were engaged or they were married and then had to divorce because Corsutia wasn't a patrician. She was very wealthy, but she wasn't from one of those old noble families. She's new money. Yeah.

And Caesar had just been nominated or was being felt out for one of the major priesthoods, the Flamandialis, which is the priest of Jupiter. And you could only get that position if you were both a patrician and married to a patrician. So Corsutia made way for Cornelia. It's brutal dumping out here. I identify strongly with this guy. I mean, I'm with my fiance for her civil service pension. So you're not going for the high priest of Jupiter role, you're going for the comfortable retirement in your 50s. Yeah, precisely. Listen, I'm self-employed.

Prior to meeting her, my retirement plan was to not live that long. Yeah, OK. So he wants to be High Priest of Jupiter, which is a brilliant name. Men only want one thing, and it's disgusting. It's to be High Priest of Jupiter. So he's dumped Cossutia, he's shacked up with Cornelia, who's a proper old family. Then he has another encounter with Sulla. Yeah, so Sulla is not particularly a big fan of this marriage. And some of our sources suggest that he might have asked Julius Caesar to divorce her. But also the other part that's going on during this period is Sulla is famous for instituting these particularly brutal measures as a dictator called prescriptions,

which basically meant that anyone he ordered was an enemy of the state could be legally killed. And then their property is divided between the person who does the killing and the state. So Cornelia's family were involved in these prescriptions, it seems. And so the tension between Sulla and Caesar was heightened. And Greg, that's not even the worst bit. He orders this prescription, right? And not only can the state kill you if they deem you an enemy, but you have to pay 950. awful if the queue up at boots and everything it's going to take forever yeah you'd be lucky if it were 950 it's more like millions of sesterces it's a terrifying idea that the assassin who kills you gets half of your stuff because then everyone's out to kill you it's like running man or something it's like some sort of

really scary game show okay so so this marriage to cornelia is a terrible idea and asula says all right divorce her i hear you've heard quite a lot already about young guys julius caesar what do you think he does so he's told to divorce i don't think that he does do that because i think that he like i think that this is what spurs him on to be like, you want me to get divorced? I'll show you when I'm emperor. I mean, you're right, he doesn't dump her, which I was quite surprised at. He's like, no, no, I'm staying with my true love,

who I just met last week. And that means that he becomes a literal fugitive, Shushma. He's on the run. Yeah, he had to, at this point, leave Rome and go to northern Italy and constantly move around because he had to make sure that he didn't get caught. However, at one point he does seem to get ill and then he is caught by one of Sulla's men, but Caesar managed to bribe him. And then eventually, possibly a few years later, Sulla's power starts to decline. And that meant that Caesar was probably

safe to go back and reunite with Cornelia. And how old is Caesar at this point? Early 20s. Yeah. It's great. He was born in 100, which makes the maths really easy. Nice. There's a lovely line that Sulla does say that he's suspicious of Caesar due to his dodgy fashion sense. He says, beware the badly belted boy. It's quite the burn, isn't it? I'm constantly bewaring the badly belted boy. Interestingly, that was also my grandmother's catchphrase.

We've seen already some of these classic traits that will show up in the man later on. When we tend to think of Julius Caesar, you know, with the big J, the big C, we tend to think of a man of strategy, ambition, survival, raw confidence. And then in 80 to 81 BCE, give or take, he's back in Rome, we think. But then he goes again somewhere else. Where does he go this time, Shushma? So this is the start of Julius Caesar's military career proper. He takes up a position on the

staff of Marcus Thermus, who's the governor of Roman Asia at the time. And he travelled to the kingdom of Bithynia, which is modern day Turkey, because he wanted to bring back some ships from them to help with a siege that was happening, a rebellion against Rome. So he went to see the king, Nicomedes, and he did manage to procure some ships from the king. But he also seems to have taken a little bit too well to the king's court. So he stayed there for quite a long time. And this made people then start to circulate rumors about him, specifically that he and Nicomedes were lovers, and that Caesar played the passive partner in that relationship, which led to a nickname circulating that Caesar was the Queen of Bithynia. And our sources even tell us that there was a

chant which went, Caesar laid Gaul low, but Nicomedes laid Caesar low, which shows you how long and enduring these rumours were because Caesar didn't go to the Gaul till the 50s BCE. So these are quite pervasive rumours. So was the attitude towards homosexuality in ancient Rome like that? Like that was seen as an unacceptable thing for him to do? Because I'm thinking of in ancient Greece, it wouldn't have been that unusual. But was that the case in Rome? So the thing here is about the power play. So you're absolutely right. The idea of men having relationships with other men is very common.

But they pay very close attention to who is doing what to whom. It's about the fact that he is being dominated by someone and also by someone who's not a Roman as well, by someone who comes from the East for a patrician to be dominated by someone like that is also where part of the joke lies. I see. The fact is he stayed there for a while

and was successful in his mission. He got some ships. That's what he did when he was there. But everyone else is like, oh, he got ships. So it's a sort of homophobic gossip and rumour, but it sticks with him for 30 years. For what was basically just like a maritime transaction. No, I think that if I were going to try and make some chants about him,

it would be largely predicated on the fact that literally everyone in his family has the same name, which is incredibly weird. All right, he's a soldier too. He's fighting in the front lines. He wins the much-coveted Corona Kivica. It's a sort of bravery award. I've been trying to avoid the Corona Kivica for over two years now. Yes, yes.

And it's an important spell in his budding career. And in 78 BCE, when he's probably 22, 23, it gets better still. Cusullaulla dies which means Caesar is back in Rome and he has a daughter with Cornelia his wife and Ahir what does he call his daughter? Julia Caesar. Yes he does. But maybe do you think it's sort of like how you know like they used to say about steve jobs or whatever that he wore the same type of clothes every day because it's like oh you can only make a certain number of decisions so he was like well i can't be wasting time naming people things that aren't

julia or julius caesar it's to avoid decision fatigue. I think this makes sense. Streamline your mental capacity. Just call everything Julia. Yeah, he was sort of like microdosing mushrooms. Julia sees him back in Rome. Sulla is dead. Is he starting to make political friends and climb the ladder? He also decides at this point that it might be a good idea if he wants to be very serious about a political career to study some rhetoric with one of the masters. And he went off to the Greek island of Rhodes to study with Apollonius Molon. He had taught Cicero, we think as well. So

enrolling in that school really tells you that he was sort of trying to get serious about a political career. However, Suetonius, one of our sources, tells us that he was sort of trying to get serious about a political career. However, Suetonius, one of our sources, tells us that he didn't make it to Rhodes on that occasion. Ahir, do you know why Gaius Julius Caesar does not make it to Rhodes potentially? Because he refused to accept that it could be called anything other than Julia. I don't know. I'm fascinated to learn that he was the original Rhodes Scholar. Yeah, he was. What obstacles might you meet on the water,

on the crossing towards Rhodes? Kraken, Leviathan. Oh, that's fun. Storm, just a big, big storm. That's a good guess. It's actually pirates. Oh, okay. They captured him and put a ransom on him of 20 talents of silver.

Yeah, which is a lot of money. Ahir, how does Julius Caesar react to this ransom? Badly. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he's quite bold about it. And he's like, only 20. Don't you know who I am? You've got it. Really? Yeah. Like offended that it would be only 20 talents of silver. Yeah, you're getting the hang of Julius Caesar. He's like, 20? 20? 50? I think you'll find. I love that. So he raises his own ransom, which is great. Puts it up to 50 talents of silver.

I love the confidence. Baller move. And Shushma, he has quite a nice time with the pirates. He's sort of hanging out with them. Yeah, perhaps surprisingly. He was captured for nearly 40 days and he shared meals with them, did javelin practice with them, wrote poetry and made them listen or ordered them about. I always think of that bit on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

where they have to listen to the dreadful paratroop of the Vogon captain. But he kept joking with them that one day he would return and he would have them all crucified, which they took as a joke. Yeah, just like light banter that you sort of have with... We're all friends here, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But eventually he managed to raise the ransom through sort of his networks

and it was paid and he was released. And the first thing he did, I hear, was? Have them all crucified. Yes, he did. He's a man of his word. So we've had a busy few years, Shushma, and surely now we're on to politics? Yes, we can go to politics now.

So we've kind of begun to see, I hope, that the political system in Rome is a little bit complicated. Rome isn't a democracy like Athens. They had what was called a mixed constitution, which meant that you have the consuls at the top, they're your most senior magistrates, and then you have the Senate, which is the aristocracy. And then there is a democratic element, and that's the voting assemblies. But again, these aren't one person, one vote. So the influence of your decision was weighted according to how much money you had, your property qualification. Excellent. A good system. I like that.

system. I like that. And the men, and they were just men, who were hoping to make it in politics would also have to complete a sort of course of advancement, the cursus honorum, a sort of ladder of honours. And it basically meant you had to start at the bottom as you would expect and work your way up in order. And Caesar starts approaching the ladder in about 72 BCE when he was elected military tribune. So he's about 28 years old at this time. And that was an army officer post, so not a senatorial post, but it could lead to one in the future. And in fact, in 69, so just three years later, he held the position of quaestor, which is when he really gets onto that ladder. And as a quaestor, you're sent abroad and he was sent to Spain. I mean, the cursus honorum, the idea of the kind of climb the ladder,

that is, I guess it's a similar idea in comedy, but you've done it backwards out here. You've already done Life of the Apollo, which is like the peak, and now you're slumming it on a podcast. Yeah, I'm falling precipitously. This is my equivalent of being captured by pirates. You will be listening to my poetry in a few minutes. Gaius Julius Caesar, or Gaius Caesar, as he is, is he just sort of right place, right time?

Is he lucky? Or are we talking here about someone who is politically just very talented? Yeah, so perhaps a bit of both. We get a sense from our sources that he was able to read the room politically. And following the death of Sulla, the opposing faction, the sort of Marian faction, they're called Populares, people who wanted to work through the voting assemblies, and they were starting to rise again. And Caesar was able to make the most of that because, of course, he had very strong political alliances with that particular faction in Rome. And in 69, which was a very busy year for him, this is before he went to Spain, his aunt, Julia, the widow of Marius died. And he

threw a huge funeral for her, a public funeral with funerary games. And this was in commemoration of a woman, which is extraordinary to have something on that scale for her. But also it gave him the opportunity to parade through Rome images of Marius, masks of the family. And to see that really nailed his colours to the mast, I think. And he was very much winning popularity with the people at this point. And by 65 BCE, he was elected a curule edile, which means he was overseeing public building works, festivals, temples, public games, and so forth. And that's a really good position to have because if you have some money to spend, he didn't have a lot of money, but he spent very, very, very generously. You throw huge games and the public love you even more. So by 62,

when he was in his late 30s, he was elected a praetor, which gave him a magistracy with the right of military command, what we call imperium. So Ahir, so far, what do you make of the man? Are you impressed? I think I am impressed, yeah. You know, I'd be interested to find out where this lad ends up. Here he is, a man in his mid-30s who's playing the political game, climbing the ladder. But he is widowed, which is rather sad.

His wife Cornelia dies perhaps in childbirth. She's about 28, very young. But he also then gets a new wife. She's Pompeia. Yes, that's right. She's the granddaughter of Sulla, bizarrely enough. No way. So having married the daughter of someone in the Marian faction,

he now marries the granddaughter of Sulla. But this marriage doesn't last hugely long, about five years or so. And he eventually divorces her because there's a bit of a scandal that she's implicated in. Did she also shag the king of Turkey? Is everyone shagging the king of Turkey? This is a slightly weird story, Shushma. How do we do it quickly? Well, I think the important thing to stress

is she probably didn't do anything wrong. Around 63 BCE, Julius Caesar was elected as the chief of priests, Pontifex Maximus. And as part of that, at your house, a religious festival is thrown, known as the Bonadea Festival. So Bonadea means good goddess. Did she Bonadea? Is that what it is?

Does that stand up? No. So this is a festival for women and men are forbidden. However, at some point during the evening, a man snuck in. This is a man called Publius Claudius Pulcher. Pulcher means beautiful. He was a handsome man and one that was well known about town. It was rumored that he was in love with Pompeia and that's perhaps why he had snuck in.

He's found out it's an act of sacrilege because this is a religious festival. Publius Claudius Pulcher was put on trial. Caesar's response to all of this was to divorce his wife. And during the trial, Caesar is called up because he says, I don't know anything about these rumors and I don't necessarily believe them. says, I don't know anything about these rumours and I don't necessarily believe them. And so he's called up to give an account of why then he would divorce his wife. And he does in a very particular phrase, which Plutarch records Caesar saying at the trial, I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion. I mean, that's bad, isn't it? That's just like, well, I don't trust her. And so I'm dumping her, even though I don't believe it happened.

At what age do you think he's got his eyes on the prize and stuff? Because it seems like with all of these politically expedient marriages and things that he's doing, is it always that he's looking for, well, how to get up to the next run? the next run. Maybe I've been married to this person for a few years, but the political use of that is done. So this is a convenient way of me getting out of it. And is he just trying to ascend this whole time? Or does he sort of stumble into it? So that's a brilliant question, because our sources really try and build the image that he is very much moving in ways that will ensure that he gets to a particular point during his career. And that point is rule of Rome. There's a great story one of our sources includes, which is when he's sort of in his early 30s, he's with one of his soldiers and he's reading a biography of Alexander the Great and he starts crying and his companion says, what's wrong? And he says, look at what Alexander had done by the time he was my age. I have a lot of catching

up to do essentially. Our sources are very clear that he has these huge ambitions about what he wants. He probably did sometimes marry or have relationships and so forth because he was in love with a person. But at other times, it was political expediency, as was very common in the Roman aristocracy. I would say one of the main differences between Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar was, of course, that Alexander the Great had a horse called Persepolis, whereas Julius Caesar had a horse called Julius Caesar. Absolutely everything in that guy's life. Which he rode with no hands. Julius Caesar does marry a fourth time.

This time it's to Calpurnia. She's from a leading Populares family. So again, he's tacking towards the populists. He is 41 years old. She is 17. Creepy. In fact, she's tacking towards the populists. He is 41 years old. She is 17. Creepy. In fact, she's the same age as his daughter, Julia. Oh, Greg, thanks for clarifying the name of the daughter there.

I think we may have either forgotten or been unable to guess. It's been a while since we discussed the daughter. But also now we enter into a really important phase. So he's already Pontifex Maximus, basically in charge of bridges, right? The Latin, is that right? That's where it comes from, yeah. But it's the chief of the priests in Rome, the Pontifical College. We still use the terminology in relation to the Pope now.

Well, the Pope's Twitter is at Pontifex. Exactly, yes, yeah. And the Pope loves bridges. Yeah, he's always posting Bristol Suspension Bridge. He was like, I saw Francis there on the first day of the Millennium One. He's like trying to get around that. We've reached a really important part of the story, as well as all the kind of classic relationships with women.

The most important relationships probably in Caesar's career are with two other dudes. This is the famous triumvirate. Caesar starts to make really strategic political friendships. And the two main people that he forms an alliance with are Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, so we know him as Pompey. And he was a very successful military man at this stage. And think of something like the Spartacus slave revolt that Pompey was instrumental in putting down. Huge Portsmouth fan, of course. He also became friends with another man named Marcus Licinius Crassus. And he brought something else to the equation, which was his extraordinary wealth. He bankrolled Caesar actually at various points in Caesar's career,

including the election to become Pontifex Maximus. And both Pompey and Crassus, they'd had alliances that went on and off basically in the preceding years. They weren't particularly good friends at this point. And they sort of saw Caesar as a sort of rising political showman with the popularity with the people that they could use to help sort of bolster their own careers. And Caesar, of course, saw them as a way of bolstering his career in return. Caesar at this point really wanted to be consul. He wanted that top post on that, the Cursus Honorum. So at this point, they formed this alliance, which we call the First Triumvirate. And it was solidified by things like Julius Caesar

marrying his daughter off to Pompey. And then we get also then Caesar being able to get to the consulship in 59 BCE. So was it like Caesar was like the front man and the other two... Were they almost like the Dominic Cummings of this situation? And Caesar's Johnson, and they're like, oh, well, we want to get our way. And then this guy's pretty popular. So let's put him at the head of it. So I think they were all trying to be different forms of Johnson, if that makes sense.

So at this stage, Pompey had just come back from an enormous campaign and he needed things that he did on campaign. He should have run by the Senate before he did them, but he didn't and he needed them to be pronounced legal. So Caesar being consul meant that that could happen. Pompey also really wanted land for his veterans. Crassus has a big following of the equestrians, so the non-political elite rich class in Rome, and they need tax reliefs and all sorts of things, so that's negotiated as well. So they're all doing it for their own particular purposes. None of them are doing it necessarily to support Caesar, but because Caesar in that role can help them get what they want.

And the role he wants is consul, but the clever thing the Romans have done is made sure that consul actually is two roles and Caesar has to share it with another guy called Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, who's a bit, he's less good than Caesar. He's more into sort of like farming legislation. There's a kind of tension there, isn't there, Shushma,

between Bibulus and Caesar in terms of who's really top, top dog, even though they're joint sharing this consulship? Yeah. So Caesar, as we've spoken about, is from the populares group of things, whereas Bibulus is much more on the traditional side and the senatorial side of things. Caesar's trying to get all of this legislation through that Bibulus is not necessarily a huge fan of. So what Caesar can then do is use this mass amount of popular support he has, what we call the mob, and use them to intimidate essentially. So the crowd in the forum turn on Bibulus, they broke his fasces, which are the bundle of rods that symbolize the power of the

consulship. Oh, of course, which is where fascist comes from, right? Exactly. Yes, the word fascist comes from. They've thrown down the steps of a temple and then they also pour feces over him because it's been collected overnight. Not everyone had a toilet in their house. That's not where the word fascist comes from, but it should be. So there's lots of sort of jokes and and rumors circulating about caesar at various points but one of the ones that comes out of this period suetonius tells us is that there was a joke that the two consuls were really julius and caesar which i imagine you also like for the name thing it could be two different people

exactly yeah hello my name's julius put the mustache on and my name's caesar and we're Which I imagine you also like for the name thing. It could be two different people, right? Exactly, yeah. Hello, my name's Julius, put the moustache on, and my name's Caesar, and we're different men. Entirely different men. In 58 BCE, this is where I get excited because this is where my childhood history of reading Asterix books comes in, we get the Gaul campaign.

Caesar has been... Is he elected commander? How does that work, Shushma? How does he end up smashing Gaul with his armies? So after you're a consul, you get to go to a province. So what Julius Caesar did was took this as an opportunity to go and make money, essentially, let's be honest. It's a very, very good way to build your fortune back up after you've spent so long campaigning in very,

very expensive political elections, paying the people that you need to pay, throwing the spectacles that you need to throw in order to win votes. So he goes off to Gaul, France and modern day Belgium. He goes on to conquer territory as Pompey had done in the East. And we know quite a lot about these campaigns because Caesar wrote an account of them himself, the Gallic Wars, which we still have. But one of the things that they are really notable for is the extreme violence and oppression that came with these wars. So mass enslavement, destruction of land, mass starvation as well. So people having no ability to find food and just mass slaughter as well.

And even by ancient standards, his tactics were extreme. And some of the politicians back in Rome, they were his enemies. The other faction wanted to accuse him of war crimes for what he did. War crimes then? Wow. It's like when people were putting down statues of slaveholders and everyone was like, oh, well, what about the history and stuff? And with some of them, maybe products of the time or what, but some of these guys at the time, people were like, dude, we all own slaves and you're mad.

When Romans are calling you a war criminal, it's like, well, OK, takes one to know one, I guess. He absolutely slaughters the Gauls. It's brutal. He also, I hear, has another mini invasion of somewhere else. Do you know where it is? The Principality of Andorra. It's a lovely guess. No, a little closer to home for you. India? Oh, sorry.

No. That would be quite the logistical achievement. No, Britain. He's the first Roman to invade Britain in 15 BCE. He shows up. He's there for, what, a couple of weeks? And then he goes home. And then he does it again the following year. He gets as far, I think, as to rome and to invade britain right bce he shows up he's there for what a couple of weeks and then he goes home and then he does it again the following year he gets as far i think as the

river thames and he's like yeah i've basically conquered this now and then he goes home again so he's like the opposite of a cabbie from the 80s like he's not going north i think he goes to brentford and goes yeah, this is far enough. That'll do. He also invades Germany, too. There's a campaign in Germany, also very brutal. So he's extremely aggressive as a military conqueror. And he's, as you say, he's making huge amounts of money from this, building his fame. He gets, you know, incredible amounts of glory from it.

And then we have another big, devastating year for Julius Caesar in 54 BCE, is the death of his daughter Julia and this obviously is a personal tragedy for him but it's also a political disaster too because she is married to Pompey and that's where the beginnings of their friendship fractures really isn't it we start to see the breaking up of the triumvirate because Crassus he dies in battle fighting the Parthians I think they pour gold down his throat as a sort of joke about how wealthy he is, which is quite a famous death. And then things get fractious with Pompey. So he's having a bit of a midlife crisis, Gaius Julius Caesar. Do things get better for him or is it going to sort of gradually tail off?

It's going to get worse and then very good. Okay, all right. He's on the comeback trail. So at this stage, as we're moving towards 50 BCE, Pompey back in Rome has, after the death of Julia, marries someone who is far more allied to that traditional senatorial sort of optimate faction in the city. And he is rethinking maybe who he wants to have his alliances with. And part of what happens at this stage is they try to recall Caesar from Gaul. He's getting far too wealthy, but there's also an influx of that wealth already coming back into Rome. These conquests are devaluing,

to some extent, the private wealth held by the senatorial elite. So they threaten Caesar with prosecution for his actions when he was consul. So you remember he kind of intimidated Bibulus. Bibulus spent pretty much the rest of that year in his house, which technically meant that the things that Caesar was doing during that year were not hugely legal. So whether he would ever really been prosecuted or not is a question. But what he wanted was to have a certain type of power, imperium, which meant he was immune from prosecution. So he asked if he could run for the consulship in absentia from Gaul, so that as soon as he crossed back into Italy, into Rome, he would have that power, that imperium,

and they couldn't prosecute him. A lot of legal wrangling went on between the senators and Pompey on the one hand and Caesar and his army on the other. And eventually, in the end, their efforts to negotiate any of this failed. So in 49 BCE, Caesar was declared an enemy, a hostess of the Roman state. And that's where the situation had really reached a boiling point. Yeah, this is where history is at its apex now, Ahir. So we have a very, very successful military commander and he's got a pretty loyal army with him in Gaul. How do you think he keeps his army sweet? Well, are they just like sacking all of the places that they come into and he's just distributing

all of the stuff that they get? Yeah, it's pretty simple. He pays them really well and they've got good pensions. Telling you, it all goes back to the pension. But we are now getting to the most famous moment in Roman history from this period, which is 49 BCE. He gives a speech to his men and he shouts, let the die be cast, which in Latin is... Elea iacta est.

Oh, very nice. He does this at the River Rubicon. This is the ultimate political gamble, Shushma. And what happens? Yeah, so he leads his soldiers across what's actually a very shallow river, the Rubicon River in northern Italy. It's a puddle. It's just a crap puddle. But it's hugely symbolic because it's the boundary that demarcates Italy from the provinces. So crossing it there then was an act of illegality and a sort of declaration of war.

And we've already seen Marius and Sulla in 88. And now we have another civil war in Rome, which is between Caesar and Pompey. And the reference, of course, is the famous bit is also always about rolling the dice, which Caesar is supposed to have said as he's about to cross over. But it's actually a quote from a Greek play.

And one of our sources say he may have actually said it in Greek. So there you go. And he's about 51 years old at this stage. Pompey's in Rome. He's too old to be in Rome. It's like, listen, I'm 31 and I wouldn't give it a go. I know people in their early 50s. They aren't invading Rome anytime soon.

Take retirement at that point, surely. That pension should kick in. You just want to go to a nice garden centre, have a cup of tea. Maybe we can see this as him securing his pension the hard way. I mean, I think historically, Shushma, people tend to think of the crossing of the Rubicon as like a huge gamble. But he's betting on something quite key, which is that Pompey's army is not in Rome. It's in Spain. It's a long way away. So Pompey flees to the east with a part of the senatorial faction.

He's accumulated quite a good power base in the east because he'd been there before. And the Roman public don't rise up against Caesar and depose him or anything like that. He's popular. And he has a lot of money as well, which always helps. He doesn't stay in Rome for long, though. So he then goes off to Spain to deal with Pompey's men. And then after that goes to deal with Pompey and the others in Greece itself. Of course, Julius Caesar is the victor. And after that, he'll eventually come back to Rome a few years later.

And in the fateful year of 44, he will declare himself as dictator for life. Yeah, not dictator for six months, not even three years, but dictator for life. What I would like to bring up is that the subject of this podcast is the young Julius Caesar. And we've gone up to him at the age of 56 declaring himself dictator of rome and i can't get a rail card anymore do you know what i mean like so how is 56 year old him in the past where you are absolutely smashing it if you made it past your fifth birthday a young guy and i theoretically have to pay full wedge to go to Farnham on Friday. Love this question out here.

Yeah, the amount that I could have said about those intervening years, we'd be here for hours. There's so much still to come in the story. You think it's over, it's really not. Well, I really thought you'd be on my side with that complaint, Greg. All I have to say is et tu? Of course, famously, when he's murdered, his lines in Greek, not in Latin. Kaisu technon. Which means I love techno. He loves high house. He loves Hothouse.

He loves trance. To be fair, it would have been a reasonable time to say, wait for the drop. We haven't done Young Caesar. We've done the rise of Caesar. What we'll do here to make you look stupid is we'll change the name of the episode title so people can't tell. This is bullshit. You'll look like a pedant. But there we go.

Julius Caesar, that's where our story ends. He defeats Pompey in Greece. It's a very close-run thing, but he does eventually end up dictator for life. The nuance window! So that leads us on to the nuance window. This is where Ahir and I relax Roman style. We recline.

We have grapes dangled into our mouth. We allow Dr. Shushma two uninterrupted minutes to tell us something we need to hear. So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. And without much further ado, you have the nuance window, please. So one of the things we've been touching on, I think, that I haven't really talked about explicitly is how we know anything about Caesar's life in the first place. I've been throwing in names on occasion like Suetonius and Plutarch, but it's worth remembering that they were writing under the regime of emperors

that was established by Caesar's adopted son, Augustus. So they're writing in a very different political circumstance that has come about as a result, partly, of Caesar's actions. So they were writing around the late 1st century CE to the early 2nd century CE. And also they were writing biographies rather than histories. What it means is that they were very interested in questions of character and character development. So when Plutarch writes, for example, he writes these biographies where he pairs up a Greek and a Roman, and Alexander the Great was paired up with Julius Caesar. And we might want to see both of these as sort of studies of how these people can have the character and the

ambition to get to where they go to as a kind of comparative of each other. We do have sources, of course, of Caesar's own time as well. One of his contemporaries is a very well-known man named Cicero, and he talks about Caesar in his letters. We also have material evidence, which is wonderful, like inscriptions, coins, buildings, in fact, things that Caesar built. And we can do quite a lot with those too. But in order to weave the sort of narrative that we've been talking about in this episode, you do need to also look at the literary sources, Suetonius and Plutarch. And remember that they're writing with hindsight. Plutarch was the source for Shakespeare, but he's writing when all of this has happened and the

Prince of Pitt has been established. So of course, he can make the story the kind of narrative that he wants to say with the particular points. And it's great to think about what Slant each historian puts on his own version of history of this man that we think we know so well. Beautifully done. Thank you. So what do you know now? So what do you know now? All right, time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for our comedian, Ahir Shah, to see how much he has learned and remembered.

Oh, God. You studied politics, psychology, sociology at Cambridge. You are a clever, clever man. Are you good at exams? I was good at exams. I haven't taken one in a while. Okay. All right. We're about to find out. So question one, in what year BCE was Gaius Julius Caesar born? Oh, 100. It was 100. Very good. Question two, what was Julius Caesar's first name? I've just said it. Gaius. It was Gaius.

Question three. Julius Caesar was a member of which ancient patrician family? That's what the Julia thing was, right? The middle bit is the family, yeah. That's it. Question four. A year after his father's death, a young Gaius Julius Caesar dumped his fiancée slash maybe wife so he could be nominated to which fancy priestly post with the great name?

The High Priest of Jupiter. Well remembered. Question five. What were Caesar's sisters called and also his daughter and also his aunt? All Mildred, weirdly. Julia, it's Julia's all the way down. Julia's as far as the eye can see. Question six.

What did Caesar do to his pirate pals after being ransomed? He kept his word. He visited upon them the worst form of torturous death ever exhibited by man. Yeah, good. Question seven. In the wake of scandal, Caesar dumped his third wife, Pompeia, possible third, by messenger. But what priestly job did he have at the time? Think bridges. Oh, that's the Pontifex Maximus.

It is, yeah. Question eight. The first triumvirate was made up of which three people? It was Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. It was Kaiser, Pompey and Crassus. Yeah. Question nine. Name three of the historical sources that Dr. Shushma mentioned for our biography of Julius Caesar's life. You mentioned Plutarch. You mentioned Cicero. And, oh God, I'm struggling with a third.

I don't know. And a third historical writer on the subject of Julius Caesar is Dr. Shushma Malik of the University of Roehampton and soon to be University of Cambridge. I'll let you have that. I'll take that. And this for a perfect run, this for 10 out of 10. In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar famously led his army out of Gaul and crossed which puddle slash river? Rubicon manga. That's 10 out of 10 out here. I mean, flawlessly done. You did slightly squirm your way out of question nine, but I'll let you have it because it was very elegantly executed. Really, really good.

Thank you so much. What do you think about Caesar now? I mean, you were quite impressed early on, and then he went a bit dark. Well, the thing is, is that you hear about someone doing all those things and you're like, yeah, I couldn't have done that. Fair play. You nailed that. Even knowing how he did it, I don't think I've got it in me. I don't really want you to be a murderous dictator who brutalises an entire continent. So I'm quite pleased to hear that you haven't got it in you, to be honest.

Well, thank you so much. And listener, if you want more hot goss from your ancient Roman rulers, then you can check out our episode on Agrippina the Younger. She was quite the lady. If you fancy more before they were famous prequels, then you can check out our episode on young Napoleon, who of course was himself a huge Julius Caesar fan.

You'll find them all on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends. Make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All that's left for me to do is to say a huge thank you to my guests in History Corner. We had the simply sensational Dr Shushma Malik from the University of Roehampton, soon to be University of Cambridge. Thank you, Shushma. Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.

And in Comedy Corner, we had the awesome Ahir Shah. Thanks, Ahir. Such a pleasure. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we roll the dice, alea yakta est, on a different historical moment. But for now, I'm off to go and form a prog rock band called the High Priests of Jupiter. We're going to wear togas. It's going to be great. Bye!

You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Bethan Davis. The episode was written and produced by Emma Neguse and me. The assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow. The project manager was Isla Matthews. And the audio producers were Abby Patterson and Steve Hankey. You've been listening to a Radio 4 podcast. It was probably in our time. I find quantum mechanics confusing today.

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