Posted on 03/15/2015 9:55:04 AM PDT by EveningStar
This is what most of us know about the death of Julius Caesar, half-remembered from movies and plays:
All of that is wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
Here’s a work about Crassus from nineteen centuries ago:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/crassus.html
The Parthians had a good army and effective tactics against the Romans’, and had a massive numerical advantage, plus better intel. This is not to sell Crassus short, he made some wrong decisions, but as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. Instead of working with a local ally, he allowed the Parthians to chop up both piecemeal. Marc Antony was a drunken ass-wrangler who tended to take his eye off the ball a bit much. When he made his half-assed attempt to avenge the death of Crassus, he was also at a disadvantage when a good bit of what Roman population lived in the east turned against him and against Rome. Over a century later, Trajan spent a couple of years smashing the crap out of the Parthians, taking their capital, annexing Mesopotamia, and probably literally washing his sword in the waters of the Persian Gulf. He died there, and his supposedly adopted son, Hadrian, gave up those conquests, and spent most of his reign banging young boys and traveling through the Empire, apparently avoiding Rome.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/people/a/crassus.htm
http://www.historynet.com/mark-antonys-persian-campaign.htm
Caesar decided to give Brutus a big reward by making him governor of Gaul. However previously Xena Warrior Princess had told Brutus that Caesar had hired Gaulish assasains to kill Brutus (she was fibbing). So Brutus did not take news of his promotion well.
Sounds like modern America in many respects. Effeminate activities being a major one.
According to Suetonius, Caesar said to Marcus Brutus, in Greek, "And you, my child?" (kai sy, teknon).
Maybe Shakespeare thought his audience might be able to make sense of a three-word phrase in Latin but would be totally lost hearing Greek. (Of course, the saying "it was Greek to me" comes from the same play.)
According to Suetonius, Caesar said to Marcus Brutus, in Greek, "And you, my child?" (kai sy, teknon).
Maybe Shakespeare thought his audience might be able to make sense of a three-word phrase in Latin but would be totally lost hearing Greek. (Of course, the saying "it was Greek to me" comes from the same play.)
The effectiveness of Parthian archery is not to be underestimated. I understand that they had a quiver with 70 arrows, and could fire quite a few each minute. The figure 15 per minute comes to mind, but my memory could be off on that. The battle of Crecy which was won by English longbowmen also comes to mind. Crassus may also have been tricked into believing faulty/destructive information about water, and travel conditions, in the desert in the summer.
Did some more Goggle at wikipedia, Battle of Carrhae. Found this quote regarding my opinion that Cassius may have been motivated by Caesar’s ambition to restore Roman honor, recapture the Roman eagles lost at Carrhae, as well as his dictatorial ambitions.
“Gaius Cassius Longinus, a quaestor under Crassus, led approximately 10,000 surviving soldiers from the battlefield back to Syria, where he governed as a proquaestor for two years, defending Syria from Orodes II’s further attacks. He received praise from Cicero for his victory. Cassius later played a key role in the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
Parthian Horseman, §Legacy[edit]
The capture of the golden aquilae (legionary battle standards) by the Parthians was considered a grave moral defeat and evil omen for the Romans. At the time of his assassination, Caesar was planning a retaliatory war. The Parthians are said to have feared especially harsh retribution if Caesar won, because the surviving son of Crassus would be among the Roman forces.[37]
However, the fall of the Roman Republic intervened, and the beginning of imperial monarchy at Rome followed. Sulla’s first march on Rome in 88 BC had begun the collapse of the republican form of government, but the death of Crassus and the loss of his legions utterly reconfigured the balance of power at Rome.[38] An old theory ran that the death of Crassus, along with the death of Julia in 54, Pompey’s wife and Caesar’s daughter, may have severed the ties between Caesar and Pompey; the first Triumvirate no longer existed. As a result, civil war broke out. Caesar won, and the Republic quickly became an autocratic dictatorship. But several astute historians[who?] note the lapse of time between Crassus’ death and the outbreak of civil war. Gaius Stern has claimed that Crassus’ death nearly cut the links the First Triumvirate enjoyed with the blue-blooded aristocracy, leaving the entire state vulnerable to the friction that eventually turned into civil war.[39] Thus, an immediate effect of the battle may have been the elimination of certain private checks and balances (e.g. Crassus’ relationship to Metellus Pius Scipio) that formerly kept a lid on political tensions.[citation needed]”
I also read that Crassus’ son Publius may have persuaded the old man to go after the Parthians to further his own military ambitions. Well, it got him killed instead.
I decided to read the rest of the article and found this:
“For one, we know who the soothsayer was and what he really said: he was named Spurinna, and he was from Etruria. That’s important, because Etruscans were known to specialize in divination. Cicero’s letters , Plutarch, and Suetonius all confirm his high status. As notably, Spurinna’s warning to Caesar was more complex — and more accurate — than the type of prophecy most modern skeptics would dismiss. “They have a lot of contacts,” Strauss says, “and they’re people who know what’s going on.” That would have made Spurinna’s prophecy a more frightening bellwether of the anti-Caesar sentiment in Rome. Soothsayers could poll the elites, and the elites did not like Caesar.
On February 15, Spurinna said he found a bad omen: a bull without a heart (it’s unclear if the bull was a genetic abnormality, a shocking sign, or a soothsayer’s poetic license). After that, Spurinna told Caesar to beware for the next 30 days, not just on the Ides of March. It wasn’t a lucky prediction but rather a calculated assessment of Rome’s political climate. The end date of the prophecy wasn’t a coincidence, either — on March 18, Caesar was going to embark on a multiyear military campaign that would take him away from Rome. The assassins had to kill him before he left.”
Thus, there were large numbers of veteran soldiers in and around Rome looking forward to going off to Parthia with Caesar with paydays, looting, etc. If, in fact, Cassius believed this was foolishness, then that would explain why he was not able to win them over.
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Divus Julius 81.2: Et immolantem haruspex Spurinna monuit, caveret periculum, quod non ultra Martias Idus proferetur..
It is very important to bear in mind that Shakespeare was writing against the backdrop of his time. This was written late in the reign of Elizabeth I, of the Tudor dynasty. The public was acutely aware of thirty years of bloody civil war during the Wars of the Roses. The Tudor dynasty had brought relative peace. So, a theme that would resonate in his day was the dangers of regicide and civil war and the importance of smooth transition of power. Remember, Elizabeth did not have an heir, which caused considerable anxiety.
The English were very fond of the story of Rome and identified with the Romans. The fall of the Republic did not in the 16th Century trouble them in that they had always been governed by a monarch and Parliament that in their eyes roughly corresponded with the Senate. That view later changed, of course.
Beg to differ. Shakespeare had a lifelong love for Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and had familiarity with the then-current translations of various classical works. Using Renaissance Italy or classical Rome, or pre-Roman Britain to frame stories gave him a needed alibi when it came time to make commentary on the country.
The Tudors slaughtered people wholesale, and changed the acceptable religion of the country four times in a generation.
I’m not complaining exactly, the turmoil and oppression by Tudor and Jacobean dynasties led to the colonization of America and eventually the English Civil War. Some of my ancestors bailed when the gubmint marched into their small town and strung the local pastor from his own steeple.
Shakespeare lived and worked in the Tudor surveillance state, and had cousins tortured and executed. The master of the revels had to approve (or rewrite) every script before it was ever performed. His history plays were little more than Tudor propaganda in their conclusion, whatever he may have put into the script.
The ending of Richard III has the dream sequence where Henry VII is being told that he’s all good and Richard III is being told he’s all bad. Only after James I took the throne did Shakespeare let his hair down a little bit, finally getting around to Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon.
Other than their modern embrace of the quasi-mythical Boudicca, and the koranimals squatting in Britain, the British seem to look back fondly at Roman rule; there was even a commissioned epic poem that, analogous to the Aeneid, attributed the founding of Britain to a fictional Brutus, I think from Troy. Not unlike our own framers, they developed a love for the architecture as well.
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/homes/house1.jpg
I don't know if you could find a state in 16th Century Europe that did not employ methods we would find intolerable and indeed some of our ancestors in that time found intolerable. But, the at times wholesale slaughter of the Wars of the Roses had ended and thankfully so for most Englishmen.
Shakespeare's characters and stories are not wooden, however, far from it. You can see in the histories a dislike of the opportunism and machiavellianism that had infected politics in his day.
One of the more interesting themes Shakespeare develops is regicide. Obviously, he portrays it in Richard III but the general attitude of the history plays is that it is never justified. Shakespeare does explore the issue, however, outside England, in Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth. Perhaps the idea was still percolating in the 1640's.
I agree that the Tudors and Stuarts set the stage for the English Civil War, although I lay more blame on James I and Charles I's attempts to impose the idea of the divine right of kings on the English, who always regarded themselves as free people albeit governed by kings.
I’d never badmouth Shakespeare’s ability to write, what with his being the greatest-ever. The Wars of the Roses came about in part because of the 100 years war with France having ended, and too many armed veterans sitting around with nothing to do all day. Not the same situation we have now, or rather what Zero seems to think we have now.
Shakepeare’s company performed “Richard II” for the Earl of Essex and his co-conspirators, for some decent money, but under the condition that they include a scene that had been cut because it was considered seditious. The next day he managed to botch his attempt at overthrowing big Liz, and after the executions tapered off, she commanded Shakespeare & co to perform the play again, for her. Eek.
Supposedly Liz had confided and complained that the play had been all about her from the beginning, and that everyone was aware of it. By that time she was nearing the end of her life. Ironically, I think Essex rebellion (such as it was) took place just a couple of years before she died, and Essex’ supposed goal was to put James I on the throne (he was descended from Henry VII as well, uh, huh, twice I think, cousins married).
James I/VIth was the guest of honor for the first performance of MacBeth, and maybe King Lear. Shakespeare’s final sprint to the finish line was breathtaking. And that’s just the works which have survived, based on how many plays they performed in a given year (and some would have been older, famous plays by other hands) probably four times that many went up in 1666 during the great fire.
Yes, James VI/I was the child of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, both of whom were grandchildren of Henry VII. Darnley's surname was Stuart. It's ironic if putting him on the throne was Essex's goal because there was no other successor available with even a passing relation to the Tudors.
Although his parents were Catholic, James was raised by a series of regents as a Scottish Calvinist. So, the Protestant succession was assured.
If time travel were possible going back to see one of those Shakespeare debuts would be on my list.
Nifty, I’ll have to go find that book now.
[snip] Some websites state that an English archaeologist, James Theodore Bent, had discovered the “Tomb of Cassius” on Thassos in the late 1800’s. This relates to an article published in the New York Times in 1902. However, the story was posted 5 years after the archaeologist’s death and many years after he is said to have visited Thassos. We can find no published report from Mr. Bent pertaining to this, which is highly surprising as this would have been a major archaeological discovery! They obviously had ‘fake news’ even in the 1900’s! As to other published reports that there are artefacts from Cassius’ tomb in the museum on Thassos, these are again totally false. [/snip]
https://www.atoz-guides.com/ancient-cemetery-discovered-on-thassos-2/
(afaik, none of the murderers of Julius Caesar has a known burial place; by contrast, the spot where Caesar’s body was cremated by the thousands of his mourners has a monument still visible today, and it continues to have flowers and other stuff left there by admirers)
They got the date wrong, it was actually March 23rd....
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