HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2025-12-03T09:01:06.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/people/julius-caesar/feed/atom HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Julius Caesar's hellraising youth: did he really defy tyrants and crucify pirates?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/julius-caesars-hellraising-youth-did-he-really-defy-tyrants-and-crucify-pirates/ 2025-12-03T09:01:06.000Z 2025-12-03T09:00:43.000Z The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome – sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia.
There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune – the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next.
Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed.
He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge – softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses.
Origin stories
Caesar’s pirate-slaying escapades represent a truly extraordinary tale. But what are we to make of it? We know a great deal about Julius Caesar in the ‘colossus’ phase of his career – that period stretching from his mid-thirties to his assassination in his mid-fifties when he was an established political and military powerhouse. But for the earlier part of his life – before his every act was performed in the full glare of the ancient world’s attention – it’s a different story.
Caesar’s youth and young manhood is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The tales of his formative years are subject to exaggeration, even outright invention. Yet that doesn’t make examining that early life any less worthwhile. Doing so gives us rich insights into not only the rise of one of the ancient world’s towering figures but also of the political motivations of those who wrote that history in the chaos that followed his death.
Much of what we know about Caesar’s early life has come to us through his two biographers, Suetonius and the aforementioned Plutarch, both writing towards the beginning of the second century AD, around 150 years after his death. Their accounts of those early years are quite similar, which suggests that they drew on a common source. Based on quotations in Suetonius’s writings, that source can be identified as Gaius Oppius, one of Caesar’s most powerful lieutenants.
When it came to setting the record straight, Oppius was more interested in a good story than the truth. The same was true of his colleague Aulus Hirtius, who was at work in the same months editing and updating notes that Caesar himself had left behind. Both men were working under the overall guidance of Cornelius Balbus, who had been Caesar’s chief of staff.
Oppius got to work soon after Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March 44 BC. He needed to set the record straight at a time when Caesar’s legacy was being challenged by two very different forces. First, and most predictably, there were the assassins, who presented the slain leader as a tyrant whose character was shaped by uncontrolled arrogance and ambition. The second was aspiring ruler Mark Antony – leading general and one of Caesar’s most powerful supporters – who was also shaping the dead dictator’s legacy to suppress the interests of his chosen heir, Octavian, the future emperor Augustus.
So what do Oppius’s writings, communicated to us via Suetonius and Plutarch, tell us about Caesar’s earlier years? And do they contain any clues about how this product of a moderately successful patrician family rose to such dizzying heights of power?
Classical education
Caesar certainly seems to have benefited from a good eduction. His mother, Aurelia – whom Plutarch describes as “a woman of discretion” – saw to that. She found him an excellent tutor for his early teens, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who went on to run his own well-regarded school. Gnipho had strong views on the Latin language, arguing that a word should only have a single meaning. This made quite an impression on his pupil: Caesar later wrote a book about this very subject, endorsing his tutor’s opinions. Another influence was an uncle, Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who was famous for his wry sense of humour, which perhaps inspired the wit in Caesar’s writings.
One person missing from any story of Caesar’s youth is his father, Gaius Julius Caesar. The biographies emphasise Caesar junior’s devotion to his mother, Aurelia, and make a great deal of his link to another uncle, Gaius Marius, who was renowned as the saviour of Rome from a barbarian invasion around the time of Caesar’s birth. His father, however, is nowhere to be seen.
Was Caesar senior an absent dad? Or did he just not care? The marriages arranged for his offspring – to people who, while socially acceptable, lacked the drive to support the young Caesar – suggests the latter. The young Caesar’s first marriage, in his early teens, was to a girl named Cossutia, whose family hailed from well outside the political elite.
Young Caesar’s status changed after his uncle Marius had himself installed as consul of Rome – the highest elected public official in the Republic – alongside Cornelius Cinna, following a civil war in 87 BC. To bolster this alliance, Marius had Caesar’s marriage to Cossutia dissolved so that the teenager could marry Cinna’s daughter, Cornelia. Caesar, we’re told, loved Cornelia deeply. If his father had any influence on the new match, the sources don’t mention it.
Thanks to his family connections, the young Caesar was increasingly pulled into the orbit of political power. For his later biographers, though, that wasn’t enough: what was needed at this stage in his life were adventures providing context for the great events that came later. If these episodes included triumph over loss and oppression, all the better. And in Caesar’s interactions with the Roman general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, that’s exactly what they got. Sulla’s dramatic arrival on the scene – seizing Rome, establishing a dictatorship and ruthlessly hunting down his enemies – shaped the politics of a generation. It also shaped the politics of Caesar himself.
Sulla had become a major figure on the political stage when he was elected to one of Rome’s two consulships, in 88 BC. He was then awarded a campaign against Mithridates, ruler of the kingdom of Pontus, who had invaded Rome’s provinces in western Anatolia and encouraged the slaughter of Roman citizens. But then the command against Mithridates was taken from Sulla and awarded to Caesar’s uncle Marius. That’s when things turned ugly.
Outraged, Sulla marched on Rome, stormed the city and declared that he had restored the rightful constitution. Marius was forced into hiding, but then returned with Cinna a year later, in 87 BC, winning the civil war mentioned earlier. Sulla then turned the tables on his enemies once again, launching a huge invasion of Italy in 83 BC. His military victory was complete by the end of the following year, at which point he posted up the names of his enemies – his notorious ‘proscription lists’ – around Rome.
Where did this leave Caesar? We can’t know for sure. Yet, as the nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, he may well have been at the top of those lists. Sulla certainly seems to have made life pretty uncomfortable for him. The sources claim that the dictator deprived Caesar of the post of flamen dialis (high priest of Jupiter) to which he had been – or was about to be – appointed. They also tell us of Sulla’s demand that Caesar divorce Cornelia – and that, when the young man refused, he was forced to flee.
Marked man
For Caesar’s biographers, there was no lack of drama in this period of their subject’s life. He was, they tell us, pursued into hiding by one of Sulla’s assassins, who soon caught up with the fugitive – and spared him only after he agreed to pay a large bribe. When Caesar did eventually appear before Sulla, accompanied by his mother’s brothers and the Vestal Virgins, Sulla reluctantly granted him a pardon. “Have your way and take him,” he reportedly declared, “only bear in mind that the man you are so eager to save will one day deal the death blow to the cause of the aristocracy, which you have joined with me in upholding; for in this Caesar there is more than one Marius.”
At this point we must proceed with caution. Did Sulla really utter these portentous words? To many historians, they bear all the hallmarks of a dramatic device, injected into the story to add an extra layer of jeopardy. As for the claim that Sulla denied Caesar the priesthood, that appears to be even more unlikely – because the latter never would have held the position. Cornelius Tacitus, Rome’s greatest historian, states that the post of flamen dialis remained unoccupied for 75 years after the death of a priest called Merula in 87 BC. What’s more, a requirement for the post was that both of the priest’s parents be patricians – members of Rome’s archaic aristocracy. Aurelia was from a wealthy family, but she was no patrician.
Some historians have also speculated that Sulla’s antipathy towards Caesar has been overstated. Light is shed on this point by Caesar’s first post, an appointment to the Roman province of Asia, where he served under one of Sulla’s most trusted lieutenants. Would this man really have taken on a youth whom his boss hated? It seems unlikely.
Caesar’s service in Asia was notable for two events. One was the award he won for valour, having saved the life of a fellow soldier in combat. The other was his dispatch to the kingdom of Bithynia in the north-west corner of Anatolia, where he convinced the ruler, Nicomedes IV, to lend Rome naval reinforcements. A story that has swirled for 2,000 years – that Caesar had a sexual relationship with Nicomedes (Suetonius writes that “he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of improper relations with the king”) – appears to be baseless.
What does seem certain is that Caesar’s experience of persecution by Sulla – deprived of office and property, pursued by homicidal thugs – moulded his later career. After his rise to power in the 60s BC, Caesar repeatedly drew contrasts between the mercy he showed his defeated foes and Sulla’s mass murder of political rivals. And though he came from a noble family – descended, so the story goes, from Rome’s founder, Aeneas – he took the ‘popular’ path to the political summit in a bid to undo Sulla’s conservative constitution, which was designed to keep wealth in the hands of Sulla’s friends and prevent ambitious people from challenging the status quo.
Sulla died in 78 BC, and Caesar returned to Rome soon afterwards. A year later he embarked on a career in law, prosecuting two of Sulla’s most prominent lieutenants for corruption in provincial offices. That wasn’t an act of anti-regime revenge: young men routinely drew attention to themselves by serving as prosecutors. Caesar’s speech in one of these cases, prosecuting a man named Antonius, was so effective that the officials in charge of maintaining the citizen roll quoted it when they banished the convicted man.
Caesar’s eloquence was soon attracting more attention among the ranks of Rome’s elite. In the words of Plutarch: “It is said that Caesar had the greatest natural talent for political oratory, and cultivated his talent most ambitiously.” Even Cicero, who opposed Caesar, later stated that the latter could have become the greatest orator of his generation. But that wasn’t good enough for Oppius. He needed to burnish Caesar’s story with one more escapade showcasing his subject’s courage, resilience and resourcefulness. The tale of his capture by pirates did just that.
Unlikely anecdotes
So, to return to an earlier question, what are we to make of this tale? Caesar may well have been captured by pirates, but details in the story ring alarm bells. A ransom of 50 talents appears extremely high in a region that was largely bankrupt. And at the time, Caesar held no public office and, therefore, no authority to kill anyone, even a pirate.
Perhaps, then, we should reassess this episode by considering what Oppius was trying to say about his former boss. The story was, perhaps, an attempt to contrast the ‘mercy’ of Caesar with the brutality of Crassus, who crucified thousands of Spartacus’s followers a few years later – and didn’t cut their throats to spare them protracted suffering. It also establishes Caesar as a foe of piracy years before Pompey – his one-time ally, later bitter enemy – took on a command to purge pirates from the seas.
No matter how extravagantly the stories of Caesar’s dealings with Sulla and his capture by pirates were embellished, it’s not hard to join the dots between the young Caesar and the icon. He was a brilliant student of literature, shaped by excellent role models. His relationship with Aurelia, a strong character in her own right, may have influenced his own attraction to smart, powerful women, including his long-term mistress Servilia and later, Cleopatra. And he was courageous. The man who stood in the front line during crises in Gaul and the civil war against Pompey was the same person who had saved a fellow soldier’s life in Asia.
Caesar the politician, however, was more the product of the dysfunctional Rome of his adulthood than of any event in his youth. When all’s said and done, it was his meticulous attention to detail and supreme ability to think on his feet that powered his incredible rise. And it seems that these were talents with which he was born, rather than ones honed through the adventures of youth.
David S Potter is a professor of Greek and Roman history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar (OUP, 2025)
This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/caesars-funeral-drama-anger-and-revenge-after-death/ 2026-01-16T14:48:36.000Z 2025-07-10T08:00:53.000Z On 20 March 44 BC, a violent death in Rome was about to send assembled masses into uproar – sparking pandemonium that threatened to engulf the city.
The incident described by the ancient biographer Suetonius wasn’t a real murder but, rather, the climax of a theatre show. If we reconstruct the performance, using both Suetonius’s writing and fragments of the scripts that survive from the time, we can picture the leading actor standing in the centre of the stage before a packed auditorium. He would have raised his sword over his head and declaimed boldly, his voice ringing out across the stands: “What, did I save these men so that they might murder me?” With these words, he would have plunged the blade into his chest. Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ slowly and dramatically in front of his enthralled audience.
Cries of sorrow broke out from the audience, Suetonius tells us, and shouts of indignation were raised against the characters who had instigated his suicide. Like so many other theatre shows at the time, which are recorded for us by the ancient writer, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, this performance – staged in the last years of the collapsing Roman Republic – caused a volcanic reaction among the crowd.
The performance was part of the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. Five days earlier, the Roman general and dictator had been stabbed to death at a senate meeting by a group of conspirators. The city had gone into mourning, and a huge celebration had been organised to commemorate Caesar’s military and political achievements. It would include the usual eulogy and burning of the funeral pyre – but the centrepiece of the event would comprise two magnificent theatre shows.
Incendiary shows
First came the Contest for the Arms of Achilles, set during the legendary Trojan War. In it, Greek heroes Ajax and Odysseus argue over who should keep the sword and shield of their deceased comrade. Odysseus wins the debate and is proclaimed the victor. Unable to bear his defeat, Ajax takes his own life.
According to Suetonius, this staging of the mythical story was designed to provoke a visceral reaction in the crowd – one of intense “pity and indignation” for the wrongful death of the great hero. He also informs us that the tumult continued into the performance of a second play, Electra, which also retells a Greek mythological story. Set a few years after the events of the Trojan War, it follows the story of the eponymous young heroine, who seeks revenge on her father’s assassins. With the help of her brother, Orestes, she exacts her retribution and returns the throne to its rightful heir.
Suetonius recounts that this performance, like the first, was greeted with “shouts of indignation” from the crowd. Rome, already a tinderbox of intrigue and rival factions, threatened to erupt into chaos.
Events in the city had progressed at a dizzying pace. At the beginning of the year, Julius Caesar had been at the height of his powers. Yet by the middle of March he was dead – and, just days later, his funeral seemed poised to descend into violent mayhem. How had popular feeling in Rome reached such a climactic fervour? And what could have ignited such violent reactions in the audience at the great leader’s funeral?
Assassination plot
Born in Rome in 100 BC, Julius Caesar had advanced swiftly through the ranks of the senate. Aged around 42, he had launched the lengthy campaign that led to the conquest of Gaul. On his return in 49 BC, he had come into conflict with his one-time ally, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – now known as Pompey the Great – defeating him at the battle of Pharsalus the following year. And in January 44 BC he had been elected dictator perpetuo: dictator for life.
This had caused panic among many in the Roman senate. Within the established Republican system, the office of dictator had been traditionally a temporary position held during a period of political or military crisis, with the incumbent expected to relinquish the role once the danger had passed. Now Caesar had, to all intents and purposes, been made the sole and permanent ruler of Rome.
A plot was hatched by those opposed to this new state of affairs, led chiefly by Marcus Junius Brutus – the son of Caesar’s long-term mistress – and Gaius Cassius Longinus, Brutus’s brother-in-law. On the appointed day, Caesar would come to a senate meeting – and there he would be set upon with daggers.
The now-familiar story goes that Caesar, waking early on the morning of the Ides (15th) of March, was warned by his worried wife, Calpurnia, not to go to the senate that day. As she told her husband, she had seen omens that foretold calamity if he left the safety of their home. But Caesar did not heed his wife’s advice, and attended the meeting as planned. As he took his seat of honour, the plotters gathered around him; suddenly, one tugged at his toga to reveal his chest – a signal to the others to act.
Caesar was felled by 23 stab wounds, or so the story goes, uttering not a word until he saw the young Brutus among the assassins – when, as he lay dying, he murmured in Greek: “And you, child?”
The conspirators had planned to drag his corpse to the river Tiber and to confiscate Caesar’s property. Instead, fearful of the dictator’s loyal friend Mark Antony – who’d been kept from the senate meeting that day – they fled, abandoning the lifeless body. According to Suetonius, three slaves eventually came and carried Caesar’s body home, with one arm hanging down from the litter.
The assassins were right to fear Mark Antony’s reaction, which was both cunning and effective. Rather than seeking direct violent retribution against those who had plotted against his friend, Antony set about planning a spectacular funeral, orchestrating an event designed to stir up popular goodwill towards Caesar and fan the flames of hatred against the conspirators. And he began with
a clever selection of plays.
Show of strength
Theatre performances had long comprised a traditional element of Roman funerals. The practice seems to have originated in the Etruscan civilisation who may have introduced wrestling and gladiatorial combats in the eighth century BC. In Rome, the earliest evidence of such shows relates to the funeral of Junius Brutus Pera in 264 BC, at which his sons seem to have organised gladiatorial shows on a temporary wooden stage.
Over time, such events became increasingly lavish; indeed, sumptuary laws were passed to curtail the greatest excesses of the wealthy elite. These upper-class funerals might include not only stage shows but also a procession of actors dressed up in costumes and masks to resemble deceased members of a great Roman family. Parading through the city’s streets, the procession celebrated the passage of the deceased from death to life, and reminded the crowds of that aristocratic family’s eminent lineage.
Why did Antony select The Contest for the Arms of Achilles and Electra to be performed at Caesar’s funeral? What was he hoping to convey to his Roman audiences?
On the surface, these seem rather odd choices, particularly Electra; that play (possibly a Latin translation of Sophocles’s earlier work, written in Greek in the fifth century BC) was by Atilius, whose work does not seem to have been well regarded in Rome. One late Republican commentator described his writing style as “iron” and “very harsh”, and Cicero decries Atilius’s Electra as being rather a bad play.
However, exploring the two plays’ thematic content might reveal Antony’s motivation for his production choices. Written by Pacuvius, the Arms of Achilles begins just after the eponymous hero has been killed by an arrow shot from the Trojan ramparts. In the verbal contest for Achilles’ sword and shield that follows his death, Odysseus outsmarts Ajax, securing victory through cunning and subtle arguments. It might be seen as an apt metaphor for the situation in Rome in March 44 BC: two sides struggle for control of a powerful weapon, with the loyal Ajax ultimately losing to the duplicity of his comrades.
If this was the message Antony intended to convey, he seems to have been successful. Suetonius recounts that the audience expressed furious outrage as they watched Ajax take his own life on stage. Did they draw a parallel between the death of the legendary Greek hero and the murder of Julius Caesar?
Electra’s story of revenge, too, features themes that may have been deliberately intended to evoke the contemporary political situation: a wrongful murder and the righteousness of seeking retribution. Little wonder, then, that emotions were running high by the time Mark Antony took to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum later that day.
Inflammatory eulogy
The exact words spoken by Antony during that famous eulogy are now lost. However, according to Suetonius, the central part of his speech was the recitation of a senatorial decree honouring Julius Caesar. As Antony read, he lingered over the passage of the decree in which every senator swore to protect Caesar – highlighting the contrast between these faithful promises and the events that had unfolded on 15 March.
As a final flourish, Antony is said to have displayed Caesar’s bloodied toga to the crowd, pointing out each of the stab wounds. It was clearly a powerful performance, much like those that had just taken place in the theatre – and one that had a powerful effect.
- Read more | Who are the most underrated Roman emperors?
As the funeral bier bearing Caesar’s body was carried into the Forum, the crowd rushed forward and set it alight before it reached the official site of the cremation. Bystanders heaped dry branches on top of the body, smashing up the seats and benches on which they had been sitting and adding them to the flames. Musicians and actors reportedly tore off their robes and threw them into the fire, while women tossed in their jewellery and their children’s amulets.
As the mass outpouring of grief reached a climax, the fired-up masses turned from the flaming pyre and rampaged through the streets of Rome. Bent on destruction, they surged towards the houses of Brutus and Cassius – but were prevented from attacking by sentinels posted outside. Turning away, the crowd came across the unsuspecting poet Helvius Cinna – and, mistaking him for his near-namesake Cornelius Cinna, who had supported the conspiracy, killed him. They cut off his head and, mounting it on a spear, paraded it through the streets of Rome.
Although Brutus and Cassius survived the night, they soon had to flee the city with their fellow conspirators. It would take Antony more than two years to track them down, finally facing them in October 42 BC at the battle of Philippi. And it was Antony who emerged victorious from this clash – as from the battle for popular approval in Rome.
Caesar’s funeral began with theatre shows and ended with a bloody riot. With their themes of duplicity, murder and righteous revenge, the plays seem to have been selected very deliberately to provoke and nurture hysteria in the massed crowds. It is surprising, therefore, that very little about them is mentioned in accounts of the funeral, which tend to focus much more on the eulogy given by Mark Antony.
When we think of theatre today, we think perhaps of Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway – of decorous, darkly lit auditoria filled with well-dressed spectators. But in the ancient world, the theatre could be as riotous and politically impactful as any rhetoric declaimed from the speaker’s platform.
Jessica Clarke’s new book, A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, will be published by Liverpool University Press in December
This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony: how the last pharaoh's love affairs shaped Ancient Egypt's fate]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/cleopatra-love-affairs-julius-caesar-mark-antony/ 2025-08-05T10:55:04.000Z 2025-04-03T09:35:11.000Z Cleopatra was a daughter of Egypt – part of the Macedonian-Greek-Ptolemaic Dynasty that had ruled since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Queen of Egypt, Cyrene and Cyprus, she was renowned for her passionate nature, beauty, intellect and determination to advance the interests of the Ptolemaic legacy.
They were masters of ancient Rome – powerful, ruthless military generals who had expanded the sphere of Roman influence, seizing power for themselves and seeking to add the vast Egyptian empire to Rome’s ever-expanding list of conquests.
The relationships between Cleopatra VII, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were love affairs, and power struggles, that would change the course of Egyptian and Roman history, forever.
Cleopatra and Caesar: how did their love affairs begin?
It was Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, who had effectively opened the door to the Romans. When Ptolemy XI was killed in 80 BC, his only male heirs were Ptolemy XII and his younger brother – the illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX.
Ptolemy XII was crowned in 76 BC but, soon after, the question of his legitimacy was raised in Rome, where anti-Senate politicians claimed to be in possession of a will, written by Ptolemy XI, that bequeathed Egypt to the Romans.
Fearing the loss of the throne and an end to his dynasty, Ptolemy took a huge risk: he struck a deal with Rome.
- Read more | Your guide to the Roman Republic
Desperate to retain his kingship, Ptolemy asked Caesar and Pompey to recognise him as Egypt’s legal ruler and a comrade and ally of Rome. This they did, for the price of 6,000 talents – an enormous amount, of which some was borrowed from Roman moneylenders.
When Rome moved in on the Egyptian territory of Cyprus the following year, Ptolemy did nothing. The Egyptian people were outraged, and banished their Pharaoh, leaving his wife and eldest daughter to rule in his stead.
Ptolemy XII: Cleopatra's father from hell
The tragic fate of Cleopatra has long overshadowed her predecessor, Ptolemy XII. But, as Diana T Nikolova explains, it’s impossible to understand the daughter’s downfall without exploring the father’s hapless reign…
Although Ptolemy was eventually restored to the throne, again with the help of the Roman Senate, the damage had been done.
Egypt was weak, and Rome had its sights firmly set on conquest. To further compound matters, Ptolemy XII made the Roman Senate executor of his will (which proclaimed his eldest surviving daughter, Cleopatra, and eldest son co-regents), and his extensive bribery had left the realm in financial straits: Rome’s foothold in Egypt looked sure to extend.
In 51 BC, 18-year-old Cleopatra emerged onto the political scene as co-regent of Egypt with her younger brother and (in true Egyptian royal tradition) husband, ten-year-old Ptolemy XIII.
Like her father before her, Cleopatra sought absolute power in Egypt, and soon set about dropping her brother’s name from official documents. But, with Egypt facing economic failures, famine and crippling debt, Cleopatra realised she, too, needed the help of mighty Rome to lead Egypt back to peace and prosperity once more.
Only this time, it would be on her terms. Cleopatra was not the only one harbouring a desire for sole control of Egypt. In 48 BC, encouraged by his court advisors, Ptolemy XIII banished Cleopatra from Alexandria and proclaimed himself sole ruler.
The battle lines had been drawn between the sibling spouses and Cleopatra, alone and powerless, hatched a plan to gain the ear of Caesar, who was merrily celebrating victory over his one-time comrade Pompey, at the battle of Pharsalus.
As luck would have it, Caesar and his troops were already in Alexandria (he was in pursuit of his adversary Pompey who, having been defeated, was hoping for assistance from Ptolemy XIII). All Cleopatra had to do was enter Alexandria unseen and talk to Caesar before he reached his own agreement with her brother. It was an idea easier said than done.
Fully prepared to seduce Caesar in order to enlist his help, Cleopatra planned to smuggle herself into Alexandria and inside the royal palace, where Caesar was staying as her brother’s honoured guest. Greek historian Plutarch, writing more than a century later, described how Cleopatra achieved her mission:
“[Cleopatra] embarked in a little skiff and landed at the palace when it was already getting dark; and as it was impossible to escape notice otherwise, she stretched herself at full length inside a bed-sack, while Apollodorus [her servant] tied the bed-sack up with a cord and carried it indoors to Caesar.”
What did Cleopatra and Caesar think of each other?
Caesar – a man some 30 years her senior – seems to have been instantly captivated by the Egyptian Queen and, after “succumbing to the charm of further intercourse with her, he reconciled her to her brother on the basis of a joint share with him in the royal power”.
Suetonius tells us that Caesar was smitten by Cleopatra. “He often feasted with her until daybreak, and they would have sailed together in her barge nearly to Ethiopia had his soldiers agreed to follow him.”
Cleopatra finally had the military support she needed to rule Egypt.
- Read more | What did Cleopatra look like?
Her brother-husband was livid. On finding his banished sister and Caesar together at the palace, having clearly spent the night together, he reputedly flung his diadem to the ground and stormed out of the room, declaring his sister a traitor to Egypt.
Chaos followed. Ptolemy besieged the palace in which Caesar was staying, and Cleopatra’s younger sister, Arsinoe, also joined in the fight. She declared herself to be the true queen of Egypt and led rebel forces against her siblings.
All must have seemed lost for Cleopatra and her Roman lover but, with the arrival of Caesar’s troops from Syria, the tide turned once more. Ptolemy and Arsinoe were both defeated. Cleopatra’s seat as Egyptian ruler now seemed secure – she was even pregnant with Caesar’s child (some time between 47 and 44 BC Cleopatra gave birth to a son whom she named Ptolemy Caesar, or Caesarion].
But, instead, of declaring Cleopatra sole ruler of Egypt, the Roman general instead made her co-ruler with her remaining brother, and soon-to-be husband, 12-year-old Ptolemy XIV
In June 47 BC, Cleopatra gave birth to a son, Ptolemy Caesar, known as Caesarion – ‘little Caesar’ – although the child was never formally acknowledged by his father. The pair followed Caesar to Rome, where they were officially welcomed as “friends and allies of the Roman people”.
Cleopatra and Caesar: how did Rome react?
Beneath the veneer of its friendly exterior, Rome was furious. Caesar had no sons from his Roman wife, Calpurnia, and none from his previous wives. The idea of Caesarion – the son of a foreigner from a land despised as a pleasure-loving and decadent society – growing up to claim rule over ‘civilised’ Rome as Caesar’s heir, was intolerable.
That situation never came to pass, however, as the Caesar named his grandnephew Octavian (who would later take the name Augustus) as his heir.
Caesar: Death of a Dictator
Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since.
Listen to all episodes now
When did Cleopatra and Caesar's relationship end?
In 44 BC, when Caesar was assassinated, Cleopatra – a much-disliked figure in Rome, whose gold-covered statue stood in the city’s temple of Venus Genetrix – fled from Rome with her son.
Just months later, the Egyptian Queen’s second brother-husband was also dead – likely on her orders – and Cleopatra was free to rule with her three-year-old son, and plan the infant’s succession as Emperor of Rome.
Cleopatra meets Mark Antony
Meanwhile, disputes had broken out over who would succeed Caesar, with both Octavian and the Roman general Mark Antony seeking power.
By 41 BC, the leadership had been split: Antony was governing the eastern region and Octavian, the west. Following Cleopatra’s return, Rome had left Egypt in relative peace, but the Senate’s eyes turned once more to the wealthy empire, when Antony decided he needed money to subdue his enemies in the Parthian Empire (now Iraq).
Conveniently, Cleopatra had befriended Mark Antony during her time in Rome, and supported him militarily during the ensuing civil war. She now agreed to meet him in Tarsus (modern-day Turkey) to discuss the prospect of Egyptian support in a war against the Parthians.
When did Cleopatra and Mark Antony become lovers?
In an echo of plans made seven years earlier with her former lover, Cleopatra set out for Tarsus in 41 BC to charm and seduce her unsuspecting old friend. This time, however, her entrance was somewhat grander.
In Plutarch’s words: “[Cleopatra] came sailing up the River Cydnus in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along, under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids, stood on each side to fan her.”
Like Caesar before him, Antony was captivated. “The attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching,” Plutarch tells us. “It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice.”
Antony was so taken with the Pharaoh that he abandoned his original reasons for meeting at Tarsus. He left his wife Fulvia to manage his affairs in Rome and his troops waiting for orders, while he spent the winter of 41–40 BC in Alexandria with Cleopatra. They were inseparable.
During his stay, Cleopatra gained Antony’s support in ridding her of the one person who had the power to disrupt her absolute rule in Egypt: Arsinoe. Defeated in battle, Arsinoe had been banished to the Temple of Artemis in Roman-controlled Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. In 41 BC, on Antony’s orders and in scandalous violation of the sanctuary she’d been promised, Arsinoe was murdered on the temple steps.
- Quiz | How much do you know about Cleopatra?
The following year Cleopatra gave birth to twins: Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II. Antony, however, had finally been forced to return to Rome to deal with the aftermath of his failed rebellion against Octavian. A political alliance known as the Second Triumvirate was formed between the two generals and a dignitary named Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.
Recently widowed, Antony agreed to seal the peace deal with a marriage to Octavian’s sister, Octavia Minor, in 40 BC. But Cleopatra was never far from Antony’s mind and, in 37 BC, he returned to Alexandria where he fathered another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and Cleopatra and Caesarion were crowned co-rulers of Egypt and Cyprus.
What happened to the Temple of Artemis and the other Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
"Despite only being a short-lived collection – the last to be completed, the Colossus of Rhodes, stood for less than 60 years – and one of them, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, possibly not existing at all, the Wonders continue to capture imaginations..."
What happened to Cleopatra and Mark Antony?
For a happy ending, the story should end there. But it doesn’t. Ever greedy for power, Octavian continued to campaign for sole power in Rome, successfully eliminating Lepidus from the Triumvirate.
In 33 BC, allegedly in retaliation for Antony divorcing his sister, Octavian did the unthinkable: he declared war on the Egyptian queen. Two years later, in 31 BC, the combined armies of Antony and Cleopatra took on Octavian’s forces in a great sea battle at Actium, off Greece’s west coast.
The battle was a disaster for the lovers. Victorious, Octavian invaded Egypt where he received the surrender of the defeated Roman forces. Antony’s efforts to become sole ruler of the Roman world had ended and, first believing that his amour had forged an agreement with Octavian to ensure her own survival, and then that she had committed suicide, he attempted to fall on his sword in true Roman tradition.
But even in this he failed, and his wounded body was taken to Cleopatra who, still very much alive, was hiding in a mausoleum.
There, Antony succumbed to his wounds, reportedly dying in his lover’s arms. Cleopatra realised that without her lover and his troops, she and her beloved country were now at the mercy of the triumphant Octavian.
Knowing she would be paraded around as his prisoner should she be captured, the proud Egyptian Queen chose to take her own life, reputedly by allowing a poisonous Egyptian cobra, or aspis, to bite her. Rome had emerged victorious: the age of the Pharaohs was dead.
Cleopatra: what is the real legacy of the last pharaoh?
For more than 2,000 years Cleopatra VII, final ruler of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty, has been portrayed as a manipulative but tragic beauty. Yet, as Joann Fletcher reveals, such simplistic portrayals obscure her true legacy as a strong, politically astute monarch...
What happened to Cleopatra's son, Caesarion?
Following the deaths of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, the victorious Octavian changed his name to Augustus Caesar and assumed sole control of Rome as its emperor, administering to Egypt’s people and controlling its treasury himself. But one last threat to his rule remained: Caesar and Cleopatra’s son, Caesarion.
Advised by his confidant and philosopher Arius Didymus that “too many Caesars is not good”, the new Emperor planned his rival’s murder, luring Caesarion to Alexandria with false promises of his safety.
- Read more | Searching for the pharaohs: where are the tombs of Ancient Egypt's missing kings and queens?
The exact circumstances of Caesarion’s death are unknown, but it is thought that he may have been strangled, after which Augustus took absolute control of Egypt. The three children Cleopatra bore Mark Antony had different fates to their half brother.
Following their parents’ deaths, the three were paraded through the streets of Rome in heavy gold chains, walking behind an effigy of their mother: twins Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios were ten, while Ptolemy Philadelphus was just four.
The three children were given into the care of their former step-mother, Octavia. The two boys disappeared without trace a few years later, but the young Cleopatra later married King Juba II of Mauretania where we know she had at least one child, named Ptolemy Philadelphus, thought to have been named after her younger, missing brother.
]]> Jonny Wilkes <![CDATA[Why should we beware the Ides of March?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/what-ides-of-march-meaning-caesar-death/ 2025-12-16T11:51:17.000Z 2025-03-14T11:03:00.000Z In 44 BC, the Ides of March took on a new meaning. Julius Caesar, who had seized power from the Roman Republic and made himself a dictator, was murdered by a group of 60 dagger-wielding Senators led by his friends, Brutus and Cassius.
What does the 'Ides of March' mean?
The term ‘Ides’ had a perfectly practical – and in no way sinister – meaning to the Romans.
Their calendar, in connection with the phases of the Moon, used three terms to mark the passage of a month.
A ‘Kalend’ was the first day of the month; a ‘None’ signified the first quarter of the Moon (the fifth or seventh day) and an ‘Ide’ was the full Moon (the 13th or 15th day). Therefore the Ides of March simply meant: 15 March.
- On this day in history | More events that happened on 15 March
Why should we beware the Ides of March?
Caesar had known that many wished him dead and a soothsayer allegedly warned him that harm would come to him before the Ides of March. On 15 March, Caesar reportedly passed the soothsayer joking, “The Ides of March have come,” but was met with the ominous reply, “Aye, Caesar, but not gone.”
This moment has been immortalised by William Shakespeare in his play, Julius Caesar, first performed in 1599*.* It is from Shakespeare that we have the famous warning given by the soothsayer: “Beware the Ides of March.”
Caesar’s murder failed to bring back the Republic, but triggered the start of the Roman empire under his adopted heir, Octavian (known as Augustus).
Before the assassination, the Ides of March was best known as a festival. The popular time for feasting and drinking marked the festival of Roman deity Anna Perenna. It was also traditionally the time to settle debts – Julius Caesar certainly paid his.
- Read next | What if Julius Caesar hadn't been assassinated?
This Q&A was taken from a 2014 issue of BBC History Revealed
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Blood, guts and spectacle: 6 shocking events from the history of ancient Roman gladiators]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ancient-rome-gladiators-amphitheatres-who-history-julius-caesar-spartacus/ 2025-01-06T17:27:11.000Z 2024-11-14T17:12:59.000Z
Julius Caesar turns death into mass entertainment
Of all Roman pastimes, gladiators excite the most fascination and horror to this day – not least because of the sneaking suspicion that, if revived, they would rapidly pick up a fervent following.
Yet, ironically, this most Roman of entertainments wasn’t the brainchild of the Romans. That dubious honour goes to the Etruscans, an ancient Italian people that emerged near the beginning of the first millennium BC. Gladiators used to fight in bouts to the death at Etruscan funerals – in short, they served as a form of human sacrifice.
The Romans derived many of their customs from the Etruscans. And so it was perhaps inevitable that, as they grew into the dominant force on the Italian peninsula, they would adopt gladiatorial combat with gusto. Decimus Junius Brutus, later a consul, was said to have been the first to lay on a gladiatorial show – in honour of his deceased father, in c264–262 BC.
Yet, as was the case with so many aspects of ancient Roman history, the concept of fighting to the death as mass entertainment was profoundly shaped by one Julius Caesar.
In 65 BC, Caesar used his position as aedile (junior magistrate) to initiate a programme of public shows to secure, in the words of the historian Suetonius, “the good will of the masses”. He laid on 320 gladiatorial bouts and animal fights – and did so both in his name and in association with the other aedile, Marcus Bibulus, but in a way that ensured it was widely assumed the occasions were all his work. That, of course, was precisely his intention.
Curiously, the 320 gladiatorial bouts represented a reduction of Caesar’s intentions. He had organised such a large number that his political opponents in the senate were terrified by the thought of so many armed men in Rome on Caesar’s payroll. And so they passed a law putting a cap on the numbers.
The fears were well-grounded. Gladiators supplied muscle for thug politicians in the late Republic. By the 50s BC, when Roman politics was becoming increasingly polarised during the age of the imperators Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, violence was routinely used to further political agendas. In 57 BC, the notorious senator Publius Clodius Pulcher rounded up a gang of gladiators to rush those assembled to vote on a measure. They attacked and killed some of the crowd.
In Rome, gladiatorial events later became the preserve of the emperors. The first, Augustus (Caesar’s heir and great-nephew), set the trend with multiple gladiatorial events, involving around 10,000 combatants. It was a sign of things to come.
Caesar: Death of a Dictator
Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody toga has haunted monarchs and tyrants ever since.
Listen to all episodes now
Spartacus gives his captors the fright of their lives
As bizarre as it may appear today, some gladiators were drawn to the profession by the violent glamour, and actually volunteered to lay their lives on the line. The vast majority, however, were there under duress, drawn mainly from the ranks of criminals and prisoners-of-war.
That’s not to say that they were thrown into the arena without a second’s preparation. Gladiators often spent long hours honing their martial expertise. Top-notch training may have made for better entertainment but, for the Roman authorities, it involved a huge element of risk. The most famous of all slave revolts was, of course, led by Spartacus, a former soldier in the Roman army who had been enslaved and sold for gladiatorial training at a school in Capua.
That training, allied with their leader’s natural intelligence, made Spartacus’s army of professional gladiators a formidable fighting force. It took two years (73–71 BC) and two armies to crush the rebellion, the Third Servile War, followed by the crucifixion of the rebels along the Appian Way (the road from Rome to Brundisium, now Brindisi).
Part of the reason that Spartacus’s army proved such an effective fighting force was that gladiators were skilled in the use of numerous weapons, such as swords, tridents and nets. They were also taught to employ a range of defensive equipment, including helmets, shields and guards.
There were many different types of gladiator who fought in the arena. One was the retiarius (from rete = ‘net’), who had no helmet and darted about the arena equipped with a net, dagger and trident. The murmillo, armed with a sword and small shield, was named after the Greek saltwater fish mormylos because of the long, high crest on his helmet. The secutor (‘pursuer’) had a plain helmet with two eyeholes and no crest, protecting him from being snagged by the net of a retiarius, and was armed with a sword and large shield.
- Read more | What were the lives of gladiators like in ancient Rome?
Gladiator specialisation was based on physical attributes. The most heavily armed had to be strong, while the retiarii needed to be agile and swift. Ethnicity was probably also a factor, because part of the entertainment was role-playing. Gladiatorial bouts were as much about theatrics as violence.
That brew of brutality and performance could earn gladiators fame – and the admiration of the opposite sex. “Celadus the Thracian, the gasp of all the girls!” shrieked one piece of graffiti from Pompeii. “Crescens is the lord of the dolly birds!” boasted another.
Not only could gladiators win hearts, they could also win their freedom. Some even went on to run their own gladiatorial schools, picking slaves and prisoners for their physique, educating them in the art of combat, and renting them out for shows. As the case of Spartacus proves, it was that education that made gladiators so potentially dangerous.
- Take the quiz | What type of Gladiator would you be?
Mob violence rages through Pompeii over a gladiatorial show
In the early decades AD, Emperor Tiberius had to send in two cohorts of soldiers to place Pollentia (now Pollenzo) in northern Italy under martial law. Just for good measure, his troops imprisoned many people, including the town councillors. The reason for these extreme measures was a gladiator show – or lack of it.
The people of Pollentia wanted a prominent centurion to stump up the funds to put on a show at the arena. He failed to oblige so the mob killed him and then refused to give up his body until, reported Suetonius, “Their violence had extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show.”
Things got even worse in Pompeii later in the first century AD. The town was home to one of the Roman world’s oldest stone amphitheatres, built around 80–70 BC. Generations of Pompeian magistrates had lined up to compete with one another as impresarios, ingratiating themselves with the population by putting on gladiatorial combat. All that came to an ugly end in AD 59.
The problems started when a troublemaker called Livineius Regulus – who had been expelled from the senate – decided to put on a gladiatorial show. Supporters gathered at the arena in Pompeii and so did rival supporters from neighbouring Nuceria. They started hurling insults at each other in a way the Roman historian Tacitus described as being “typical of the petulance of country towns”.
- Read more | What was Pompeii like before the eruption of AD 79?
Unfortunately, the supporters started throwing stones at each other, and then blades were pulled. There being more Pompeians than Nucerians, the Pompeians soon overwhelmed their enemies. “As a result,” said Tacitus, “many of the Nucerians were carried maimed and wounded to the capital, while a large number mourned the deaths of children or of parents.”
Pompeii was severely punished for the outrage. Gladiatorial bouts were banned there for 10 years. As for the troublesome Livineius and his cronies, they were all sent into exile.
Nero delights the public by forcing his senators to fight
One of the problems with gladiatorial bouts was that there were only so many ways the Romans could be treated to the sight of human beings hacking each other to death. Boredom was inevitable.
During the reign of Nero (AD 54–68), the blood and gore had descended into repetitive tedium. Weary audiences watched the brutality barely half-awake. Impresarios trotted out the same old shows. Part of the problem was trying to please fussy audiences.
Petronius, Nero’s style guru, had one character in his Satyricon novel moaning about a lousy show in which only old and worn-out gladiators “who would have fallen over flat if you’d breathed on them” were sent out to battle. So bad were they that they were all flogged at the end to punish them for a lack of enthusiasm to fight.
Nero’s tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, wrote a letter to a friend recounting how disappointed he’d been by a midday event: “I happened to stop off at a lunchtime show, hoping to enjoy myself with some wit and relaxation, where a man’s eyes can rest at the sight of the death of their fellow men.”
Yet it was just the opposite, he lamented. “The fights that used to take place were merciful by comparison. Now any mucking about is set aside and this is just plain murder. The fighters wear no armour, and their entire bodies are exposed to blows – and none of these are wasted.”
- Read more | Rethinking Nero: was the Roman emperor really so bad?
So how could Nero liven up the action? According to Suetonius, one solution was to force “400 senators and 600 equestrians, some of who were affluent and of excellent repute, to compete in the arena. Even those who battled with wild animals and carried out the various service duties were senators and equestrians.” That was one of the reasons many in the Roman crowd loved Nero. He had the common touch. Humiliating the aristocracy was perfect entertainment.
Nero wasn’t the only emperor to employ a little creativity when it came to putting on gladiator shows. Domitian (reigned AD 81–96) introduced an extra frisson with bouts between female gladiators, known as Amazons, while in AD 107 Trajan organised 123 days of games. Eleven thousand animals died this time, and 10,000 gladiators fought one another. Excess was becoming an end in itself.
Around 80 years later, the Roman mob was treated to a new type of spectacle: a gladiator-emperor. Commodus, whom you might remember was the emperor in the movie Gladiator, was in love with the glamour of the arena.
He acquired special chariot horses and dressed as a charioteer (as well as living with gladiators). According to the historian Cassius Dio, who witnessed Commodus’s antics, “He would enter the arena in the garb of Mercury, and casting aside all his other garments, would begin his exhibition wearing only a tunic and unshod.”
Another historian of the time called Herodian said: “It was easy for him to defeat his opponents in gladiatorial bouts, just by wounding them, because they regarded him as emperor instead of a gladiator, and allowed him to win.”
Britannia catches the bug for bloodsports
Gladiatorial bouts may have begun life as a niche activity at Etruscan funerals, yet, over the following centuries, they were to spread to all corners of the mighty Roman empire – and that includes to the north-western outpost of Britannia. We know this because the physical remains of amphitheatres have been found in places such as London, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester and Caerleon.
The famous Colchester vase depicts two gladiators, Memnon and Valentinus, in action. They were probably notable local gladiators in their day (the late second century). Meanwhile, the Roman villa at Rudston in Yorkshire had a mosaic featuring scenes from the arena, and gladiators are depicted on another at Bignor in Sussex.
- Read more | Bread and circuses: what happened in the amphitheatres of the Roman empire?
For the most part, amphitheatres of Roman Britain were built by creating turf embankments and digging out the arena. At Cirencester the amphitheatre was formed by digging out and adapting a quarry on the south-west side of the town (by the early second century). Stone walls were used to create revetments, entrance passageways and the arena wall. Despite natural erosion, the earthen embankments still rise to a height of about 8 metres.
At Dorchester the amphitheatre was built by adapting a Neolithic henge monument that conveniently supplied ready-made earth embankments around an arena-shaped and sized enclosure. London’s amphitheatre lay close to the fort of the governor’s garrison, and is open to the public today.
At the VI legion’s fortress and military colony at York a man called Victor was buried with a small bone label laid on his chest. It said: “Lord Victor, may you have a lucky win!”, an exhortation normally applied either to gladiators or charioteers.
The glory of the remains of the II legion Augusta’s base at Caerleon in south Wales is its amphitheatre. Today visitors can wander around the arena where gladiators fought and among the stone-revetted earthen embankments for the wooden seats that have long since rotted away. It had seats for around 5,000 or 6,000 spectators – enough for the legion – and probably doubled up as a venue for speeches to the troops and formal military displays.
A doctor embarks on an eye-catching change of career
Gladiators needed some looking after, despite the fact that they might end their lives mutilated and bloody on the arena floor.
One man employed to offer medical care to fighters was Gaius Futius Philargyrus, a freedman doctor of Rome’s gladiators in the first century AD. (His name was appropriately descriptive. It means ‘lover of the horse-training circuit’, but was probably used here in a more general sense to refer to a training arena.) We also know that the Greek doctor Claudius Galen’s first professional appointment was as a surgeon to gladiators.
- Read more | Roman medicine: 6 ways people stayed healthy in ancient Rome
Of course, often there was nothing a doctor could do to save gladiators from the injuries they sustained in the arena – a fact that is made grimly apparent by the contents of a cemetery at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Here, the graves were accompanied by inscriptions and tombstones that name and depict the dead as gladiators. The skeletons featured major bone injuries, some even demonstrably from blows made by a trident.
Another Roman-period cemetery – this time in Driffield Terrace in York – contains 80 or so skeletons, many of which may have been gladiators. Crucially, about 75 were adult men, which of course couldn’t possibly be representative of the population. A little taller than average and well-built, many of them bore the signs of injuries, some healed and some unhealed. It’s possible that before they were buried, some of the corpses were studied by doctors in post-mortems that could also be used for anatomical lessons.
The scientific writer Celsus thought gladiators provided useful evidence for anatomists. “Occasionally,” he wrote, “a gladiator in the arena, a soldier in battle, or a traveller attacked by highwaymen, is wounded so that some part of his insides is exposed.”
Interestingly, we know of at least one man whose life straddled the worlds of both medicine and fighting, earning a living as an eye doctor before, following a dramatic change of career, entering the arena as a gladiator. Unfortunately, it seems that this anonymous individual wasn’t a very good doctor – and that made him the target of one of the Roman poet Martial’s jokes. “You are now a hoplomachus [a type of gladiator],” quipped Martial. “Before you were an opthalmicus [an eye doctor]. You did as a doctor what you now do as a gladiator.”
In other words, the offending individual’s career had consisted of poking out people’s eyes.
Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian, broadcaster and author of Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)
This article was first published in the December 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Joining the Roman empire]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historyextra-academy-video-lecture-joining-the-roman-empire/ 2025-10-24T12:57:17.000Z 2024-06-17T17:31:56.000Z View Green Video on the source website
Discover more learning from week one of the HistoryExtra Academy course on Roman Britain
A timeline of Roman Britain – reading time 4 mins Caesar's British gamble – reading time 11 mins How did the Romans conquer Britain? – reading time 4 mins The Roman invasion: whose side were the Britons on? – reading time 11 mins Boudica: scourge of the Roman empire – reading time 8 mins Caratacus: Roman Britain’s greatest rebel – reading time 10 mins
]]> Danny Bird <![CDATA[Fulvia: the maligned wife of politicians who made herself the power broker of ancient Rome]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/fulvia-wife-roman-politicians-mark-antony-life-legacy-reputation/ 2024-05-31T15:42:43.000Z 2023-08-08T13:26:06.000Z After Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great orator and defender of Roman republicanism, was murdered in 43 BC by agents loyal to Mark Antony, his killers delivered his severed head and hands to Rome. There, they were displayed on the speaker’s rostrum in the Forum after Antony’s wife, Fulvia, came to gloat over the gruesome spectacle.
Removing the pins from her hair, she repeatedly stabbed Cicero’s now-still tongue – symbolically silencing the man whose eloquence had done so much damage to her husband’s standing, as well as her own honour. Or so the story goes...
Fulvia’s life has become entwined in the story of Rome’s transition to one-man rule. Born to Marcus Fulvius Bambalio and Sempronia during the twilight years of the Roman Republic, she was a scion of two of the city’s most respected and wealthiest plebeian families – part of the general citizenry, as opposed to the privileged patrician class. At a time when politics was a male vocation, Fulvia’s innate political instincts distinguished her as an outlier during some of the Republic’s most climactic events.
Fulvia’s short-lived marriages #1 and #2
Fulvia initially gained prominence through her marriage to Publius Clodius Pulcher, an ambitious demagogue who appealed to the plebeians. When he was killed in 52 BC by associates of his political rival, Titus Annius Milo, Fulvia had his bloodied corpse displayed in the street, whipping up a mob of his supporters and sparking Milo’s exile.
After the customary 10-month mourning period, Fulvia marred Gaius Scribonius Curio. Having maintained the loyalty of her first husband’s plebeian support base, she soon mobilised it around Curio’s own political aspirations. But it was amid the geopolitical turmoil unleashed by Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC that Curio’s – and thus Fulvia’s – fortunes soared as the couple aligned their ambitions with Caesar’s.
- Read more | What does it mean to 'cross the Rubicon'?
However, Curio’s death during the battle of Bagradas in North Africa later that year stymied Fulvia’s machinations. Widowed once more, she likely remained in Rome with her children. Fulvia’s status as a wealthy widow and power broker in the capital made her both a force to be reckoned with and an object of desire.
Within five years of Curio’s death, she married Mark Antony, Caesar’s right-hand man. Hot-headed Antony’s fortunes were boosted by Fulvia’s aptitude for political intrigue. However, their relationship soon became the subject of scurrilous gossip among Caesar’s adversaries.
Fulvia and Antony: Roman power couple
In the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination by a group of senators in 44 BC, Cicero’s dismay over the survival of Antony – who had been discussed as another target on the fateful Ides of March – turned polemical. Within the 14 speeches known as the Philippics, Cicero excoriated Antony and accused him of having conducted an affair with Fulvia that had begun during her first marriage.
Despite Cicero’s campaign, Antony’s closeness to Caesar – coupled with the financial and populist clout that Fulvia lent him – had made them Rome’s ultimate power couple. In 43 BC, General Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Caesar’s named heir, Octavian, formed a triumvirate with Antony. To cement the alliance, Claudia – Fulvia’s daughter by Clodius – was married to Octavian.
- On the podcast | Peter Stothard reveals how Julius Caesar’s assassination triggered a brutal power struggle, one that would transform ancient Rome
While Antony and Octavian stalked Caesar’s assassins in Greece, Fulvia was left to preside over the day-to-day politics of Rome. Then once Caesar’s assassins had been vanquished, the triumvirs partitioned the Roman world between themselves.
Antony claimed dominion over the eastern Mediterranean, launching a passionate affair with Egypt’s queen, Cleopatra VII. Meanwhile, Fulvia became rankled by Octavian’s control of Italy. Recognising his monstrous ambitions as a direct threat to her own – and perhaps seeking to lure Antony back from Alexandria – in 41 BC she helped foment civil war.
Was Fulvia a victim of misogynistic propaganda?
In league with her brother-in-law, Lucius Antonius, Fulvia rallied legions to seize Perusia (now Perugia) and Praeneste (Palestrina). Octavian besieged Perusia, which surrendered after sling projectiles engraved with scornful words aimed at Fulvia were hurled at the city.
Absconding to Greece, she reunited with a furious Antony, who soon departed to deal with Octavian. Abandoned in Sicyon, near Corinth, Fulvia died in 40 BC of an unknown illness. Antony reconciled with Octavian and married his sister, Octavia Minor, the two men conspiring to scapegoat Fulvia as the cause of their quarrel.
Both in life and death, Fulvia faced relentless criticism, painted as an androgynous interloper who defied Roman norms. Like Cleopatra after her, the sway she held over men such as Antony fuelled misogynistic propaganda. The fact that Fulvia was the first living woman (albeit depicted as the goddess, Libertas) to appear on Roman coinage is an enduring testament to her influence on the city’s political life.
This article was first published in the June 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[The coin that celebrates Caesar's murder]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/eid-mar-caesar-coin-assassination/ 2023-11-15T11:37:05.000Z 2023-06-20T20:49:16.000Z Please note: the below transcript has been lightly edited for clarity
This is an image of the EID MAR denarius. On one side of the coin, we can see the head of Brutus. In contrast to coins showing Julius Caesar, Brutus is not wearing a laurel wreath. But the most remarkable thing is that we have Brutus's portrait on this coin at all – it was minted only two years after the scandal Caesar caused by putting his portrait on his coin.
On this coin Brutus looks a bit younger than Caesar, which reflects historical reality.
This video clip is an extract from the HistoryExtra podcast series: Caesar: Death of a Dictator
Listen to the full series here
I think the portrait would be considered reasonably realistic because the people who would have handled these coins – and who the coins were aimed at – were Brutus's soldiers. Being able to recognise their leader might have been a good thing to ensure they knew who their allegiance was pledged to. You can also see Brutus' name on the coin as well.
The iconic reverse image of the denarius shows the cap of liberty, which was worn by slaves who were set free. It represents the setting free of the state by the assassination of the tyrant ruler Caesar, which happened violently – hence the two daggers.
As for the two daggers, they make it clear that Caesar's assassination occurred because of various people. People have interpreted them as references to Brutus himself and to Cassius as the two leading conspirators. But it also might be the two references to Brutus – the current one and his mythical ancestor in the sixth century BC.
Having the two daggers also produces a more pleasing design. Then have the inscription, EID MAR, which references the Ides of March in the Roman calendar and refers to the day on which Caesar was assassinated.
So this is very much an ‘in your face’ coin design which makes it as clear what has happened to Caesar; it commemorates his assassination and is a rallying call for the Republic.
Dr Volker Heuchert is curator of Greek and Roman Provincial Coins at the the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford. He is an expert on episode five of the HistoryExtra podcast series Caesar: Death of a Dictator. Listen to him on the podcast here
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[The death of Caesar: do we know the whole story?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/death-julius-caesar-what-we-know-ides-of-march-brutus-cassius-et-tu/ 2025-02-12T13:12:51.000Z 2023-06-20T15:00:38.000Z What do you say, Caesar? Will someone of your stature pay attention to the dreams of a woman and the omens of foolish men?” So said Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus to Gaius Julius Caesar. The 36-year-old Decimus spoke frankly to a man his elder by nearly 20 years, a man who was not only his chief but also Rome’s Dictator for Life. Yet Caesar was fond of Decimus, a longtime comrade-in-arms and a trusted lieutenant, and so he let him speak. They met in Caesar’s official residence in the heart of Rome.
It was the morning of 15 March 44 BC – the Ides, as the Romans called the approximate middle of each month: the Ides of March. The Senate was in session that day, its members eagerly awaiting the dictator’s arrival. Yet Caesar had decided not to attend – allegedly because of bad health but, in fact, the real cause was a series of ill omens that had terrified his wife, Calpurnia.
Watch: What were Julius Caesar's final words?
View Green Video on the source website
Decimus changed Caesar’s mind. Caesar decided to go to the Senate meeting after all, if only to announce a postponement in person. What he didn’t know was that more than 60 conspirators were waiting for him there, their daggers ready. Decimus, however, was all too aware – he was one of the plots’ ringleaders, and his actions that morning were about to change the course of history.
Despite this, most historians have traditionally cast Brutus and Cassius as the brains behind the conspiracy. In doing so, they’ve followed the lead of Plutarch, who wrote 150 years after the assassination, and Shakespeare, who drew most of his story from Plutarch. They tend to omit Decimus, who Shakespeare misnames ‘Decius’ and mentions only in the scene described above. Yet Decimus was key. His motives are less opaque than most think and his behaviour shows just how well organised the conspirators were.
In context: Julius Caesar
By 44 BC Gaius Julius Caesar was the most famous and controversial man in Rome. A populist political star and great writer, he excelled in the military realm as well, pulling off a lightning conquest of Gaul – roughly, France and Belgium – as well as invading Britain and Germany (58–50 BC). When his enemies, the old guard in the Senate, removed him from command, Caesar invaded Italy. He went on to total victory in a civil war (49–45 BC) that ranged across the Mediterranean. His challenge now was to reconcile his surviving enemies and to convince staunch republicans to accept his power as dictator. It was a daunting task.
The earliest surviving, detailed source for Caesar’s assassination makes Decimus the leader of the conspiracy. Sometime within a few decades of the Ides of March, Nicolaus of Damascus, a scholar and bureaucrat, wrote a Life of Caesar Augustus – that is, of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor (reigned 27 BC–AD 14). A later abridgment of this work survives and it focuses on the assassination.
Until recently, scholars have tended to dismiss Nicolaus because he worked for Augustus and so had a motive to attack the conspirators. But recent work suggests that Nicolaus was a brilliant student of human nature who deserves more attention. A series of letters between Decimus and Cicero, all written after the assassination, also shed light on the plot, but they too have been neglected.
Things turn sour
Unlike Brutus and Cassius, Decimus was Caesar’s man. In the civil war between Caesar and the Roman general Pompey (49–45 BC), Brutus and Cassius both supported Pompey and then later changed sides. By contrast, Decimus backed Caesar from start to finish. During the conflict, Caesar appointed Decimus as his lieutenant to govern Gaul in his absence. At the war’s end in 45 BC, Decimus left Gaul and returned to Italy with Caesar.
Then things turned sour. Between September 45 BC and March 44 BC Decimus changed his mind about Caesar. We don’t know why but it probably had more to do with power than principle. Decimus’s letters to Cicero reveal a polite if terse man of action with a keen sense of honour, a nose for betrayal, and a thirst for vengeance.
Perhaps what moved Decimus was the sight of the two triumphal parades in Rome in autumn 45 BC that Caesar allowed his lieutenants in Spain to celebrate, against all custom. Caesar did not, however, grant a similar privilege to Decimus for his victory over a fierce Gallic tribe.
You might be interested in our HistoryExtra podcast series: Caesar: Death of a Dictator
Listen now
Or perhaps it was Caesar’s appointment of his grandnephew Octavian (as Augustus was then known) as his second-in-command in a new war in 44 BC against Parthia (roughly, ancient Iran), Rome’s rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Decimus meanwhile had to stay behind and govern Italian Gaul.
Whatever his motives, once he turned on Caesar, Decimus was indispensable. He was both the plotters’ chief of security and their leading spy. As the only conspirator in Caesar’s inner circle, Decimus was a mole, able to report on what Caesar was thinking. What’s more, Decimus controlled a troupe of gladiators, which played a key role on the Ides.
Caesar remained in Rome between October 45 and March 44 BC – his longest stay there for years. He never revealed a programme but his actions betrayed that he aimed to change Rome’s government. He behaved in ever-more dictatorial ways, summed up in his adoption of the unprecedented title of Dictator for Life.
He maintained Rome’s traditional republican magistracies but elections increasingly became mere formalities – Caesar had the real power of appointment. Consuls, praetors (magistrates) and senators saw power shifting to Caesar’s secretaries and advisors – some of them had only recently become Roman citizens; some were even freedmen (former slaves). Caesar was not a king, but he had acquired the equivalent of royal power.
There was another issue at play here – the prospect of what would happen after Caesar’s death. To his critics, the favour he showed to Octavian raised the terrifying prospect of a dynasty.
Some Romans responded to Caesar’s growing power with flattery. They voted him a long stream of honours including, most egregiously, naming him a god, with plans afoot for priests and a temple. Others, however, decided that he had to be stopped, and so they decided on assassination. True, they acted in the name of the Republic and liberty and against a budding monarchy but they also saw in his growing influence a threat to their own power and privilege.
Plans to assassinate Caesar are attested as early as the summer of 45 BC but the conspiracy that struck on the Ides of March did not gel until February 44 BC. At least 60 men joined it (of whom we can identify just 20 today – and some of them are little more than names). According to a later writer, Seneca, the majority of the conspirators were not Caesar’s enemies – former allies of Pompey – but his friends and supporters.
That certainly can’t be said for Brutus and Cassius, the best-known conspirators. Cassius was a military man and a former Pompey supporter who despised Caesar’s dictatorial ways. As for Brutus, he was hardly the friend of Caesar whom Shakespeare depicts.
View Riddle on the source website
Brutus’s mother was Caesar’s former mistress. However, Brutus supported Pompey until the latter lost to Caesar on the battlefield in 48 BC, at which point Brutus switched sides. He promptly betrayed his ex-chief by providing Caesar intelligence about the likely whereabouts of Pompey, who had escaped after the battle. Afterwards, Caesar rewarded Brutus with high office.
Watch: The coin that celebrates Caesar's murder
View Green Video on the source website
This, however, was to prove the high point of Caesar and Brutus’s relationship. In the summer of 45 BC, Brutus divorced his wife and remarried. His new bride was Porcia, his cousin and, far more pertinently to this story, daughter of Caesar’s late archenemy Cato.
Crucially, in the winter of 44 BC, Caesar’s opponents began calling on Brutus to uphold the tradition of his ancestors, who included the founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus, the man who had led the expulsion of Rome’s kings hundreds of years earlier. And so, through a combination of pride, principle – and, perhaps, love for his wife – Brutus turned on Caesar.
Military precision
The plot to assassinate Caesar succeeded because it was meticulously planned, and flawlessly executed. With generals such as Decimus, Cassius and Caesar’s veteran commander Trebonius involved, one would expect nothing less than military precision. The assassins chose to end Caesar’s life themselves rather than by hiring killers – a decision that showed their seriousness of purpose. And by striking at a Senate meeting they made it a public act rather than a private vendetta – an assassination and not a murder.
That this was a professional operation is even reflected in the killers’ choice of weapon. Caesar’s assassins attacked him with daggers and not, as is sometimes imagined, with swords. The latter were too big to sneak into the Senate House and too unwieldy for use in close quarters. In particular, the killers used a military dagger (the pugio), which was becoming standard issue for legionaries.
Military daggers were not only practical weapons but also honourable ones. Caesar’s supporters later called the assassins common criminals and accused them of using sicae, a short, curved blade that had the negative connotation of a switchblade or flick knife. So, in 44 BC, Brutus issued a coin that celebrated the Ides of March with two military daggers. Again, he wanted to show that the assassins were no mere murderers.
The Roman Senate House still stands in the Roman Forum and most visitors assume that Caesar was killed there – but he was not, nor on the Capitoline Hill, as Shakespeare states. The assassination took place about half a mile away from the Forum in Pompey’s Senate House, ironically built by Caesar’s great rival. It was part of a huge complex including a theatre, a park, a covered portico, and shops and offices. Gladiatorial games took place in the theatre on the Ides of March, which gave Decimus an excuse for deploying his gladiators near Pompey’s Senate House. Their real purpose was as a backup security force.
As a general, Caesar had a bodyguard but he made a point of dismissing it after returning to civilian life in Rome. He wanted to seem accessible and fearless. What’s more, only senators could enter a Senate meeting, so most of Caesar’s retinue would have had to remain outside the building. This made the dictator uniquely vulnerable inside the Senate House. Still, Caesar had appointed many of the senators personally, and they included military men. If they came to Caesar’s aid, they could overwhelm the assassins.
The assassins’ response to this threat was to attack at speed, isolating their target before striking. Even before Caesar took his seat on the tribunal, several assassins stood behind the chair while others surrounded him as if trying to grab his attention. The truth is that they were forming a perimeter.
Then the attack sprang into action. Tillius Cimber, a hard-drinking scrapper of a soldier whom Caesar favoured, held his hands out disrespectfully and pulled at Caesar’s toga. At this signal, his co-conspirators struck, led by Publius Servilius Casca.
What were Julius Caesar's last words?
Caesar immediately called out to Cimber, “Why, this is violence”, and hurled an oath at Casca, labelling him either “impious” or “accursed”. However, he never said: “Et tu, Brute?” (“You too, Brutus?”) – that phrase is a Renaissance invention. Ancient authors report a rumour that Caesar said to Brutus, in Greek: “You too, child.” But they doubt that he even said that.
Caesar, the old warrior, tried to fight back. He stabbed Casca with his stylus – a small, pointed, iron writing utensil – and managed to get back up. Two of his supporters among the senators, Lucius Marcius Censorinus and Gaius Calvisius Sabinus, then attempted to reach him but the conspirators blocked their way, and forced them to flee.
Meanwhile, Trebonius had been assigned to buttonhole his old comrade Mark Antony and engage him in conversation outside the Senate’s door. Antony was a veteran soldier, strong, dangerous and loyal to Caesar. If he’d entered the Senate room, he would have sat on the tribunal with Caesar and could have come to his aid.
With Mark Antony detained by Trebonius, there was little Caesar could do to defend himself. It probably took only minutes for him to die – succumbing to what most of the sources state were 23 wounds. Before the end, he wrapped his toga around his face and, in an ironic turn of events, fell at the foot of a statue of his rival, Pompey.
For all its brilliance, the plot to kill Caesar didn’t prove the panacea that the assassins hoped. Civil war soon broke out again and, to a man, they were to suffer violent deaths. What’s more, the Republic that they aimed to defend perished and gave way to an empire. That, however, does not brand them as foolish idealists. It merely shows that their political acumen did not match the military skill they displayed on the Ides of March.
Barry Strauss (@barrystrauss) is a professor of history and classics at Cornell University. His latest book, The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, is published by Simon & Schuster this month.
This article was first published in the March 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Caesar: Death of a Dictator | The evil that men do]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/caesar-death-of-a-dictator-the-evil-that-men-do/ 2024-11-01T20:21:40.000Z 2023-06-17T05:37:01.000Z In the concluding part of our new series on Julius Caesar’s rise and fall, we take the story on to its dramatic coda as battles continue to rage over who will ultimately succeed the murdered dictator. Rob Attar is joined by Dr Jane Draycott to tell the story of Antony and Cleopatra’s war with Octavian, while Professor Philip Freeman, Professor Catherine Steel and Professor Barry Strauss reflect on the legacy of the Ides of March.
Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our podcast series on the death of Caesar
]]>