Book 2, Letter 19: (Pt 2 of 3) To Cicero on Pompey the Great

Book 2, letter 19

Part 2 of 3

To Cicero, on Pompey the Great

                                                Pompey

*

Enough about Sulla (I will have to write a letter all about him somewhere down the line) but for now, back to Pompey.

There are a few stories that serve to illustrate something of the character of the man, and in describing him, something of the nature of his society is also revealed. There is the tale of Flora, a famous courtesan, who proudly told of how she would be covered with bite marks after having made love with Pompey. Flora also recounts that one of Pompey's friends, Geminius, fell in love with her. She rejected him, telling him that she was in love with Pompey. However, Geminius spoke with Pompey, who then turned Flora over to him. “But afterwards he (Pompey) would never have anything to do with her or even meet her; and she herself, far from taking that as a courtesan might be expected to to, was ill for a long time with grief and longing for him.”

Then there is the tragic tale of Aemelia, this taken from the 1906, Dryden translation of Plutarch's biography of Pompey:

Now, when Sylla had brought all Italy under his dominion, and was proclaimed dictator, he began to reward the rest of his followers, by giving them wealth, appointing them to offices in the State, and granting them freely and without restriction any favors they asked for. But as for Pompey, admiring his valor and conduct, and thinking that he might prove a great stay and support to him hereafter in his affairs, he sought means to attach him to himself by some personal alliance, and his wife Metella joining in his wishes, they two persuaded Pompey to put away Antistia, and marry Æmilia, the step-daughter of Sylla, borne by Metella to Scaurus her former husband, she being at that very time the wife of another man, living with him, and with child by him. These were the very tyrannies of marriage, and much more agreeable to the times under Sylla, than to the nature and habits of Pompey; that Æmilia great with child should be, as it were, ravished from the embraces of another for him, and that Antistia should be divorced with dishonor and misery by him, for whose sake she had been but just before bereft of her father. For Antistius was murdered in the senate, because he was suspected to be a favorer of Sylla for Pompey’s sake; and her mother, likewise, after she had seen all these indignities, made away with herself, a new calamity to be added to the tragic accompaniments of this marriage, and that there might be nothing wanting to complete them, Æmilia herself died, almost immediately after entering Pompey’s house, in childbed.

The above anecdote serves to illustrate something that I don't think is well understood about arranged political marriages. Everyone is oppressed, not just the women. Pompey was forced by Sulla to divorce his wife Antistia. Pompey had originally married Antistia as part of a private arrangement with the judge presiding over a corruption case in which Pompey was the accused. So this first marriage was possibly a bribery deal with the judge in order to secure Pompey's acquittal. Earlier in his life, Pompey had really been in love with Flora, but something his friend Geminius said had convinced him to forgo his own feelings and give her up to him. Then when Sulla took power, Pompey was forced to divorce Antistia, and marry an already married and pregnant woman, who died in childbirth shortly after arriving in Pompey's house.

Nobody wins in this sort of situation. Politically arranged marriages are supposed to solidify alliances and ensure lasting peace, but they often seem to be no different from hostage taking in military conquests. The women and men forced into these marriages are hostages, kept to ensure the continued obedience of the husbands in service to those in positions of greater power. Let us not forget that it was Sulla's wife Metella who supported the arrangement, selling off her own daughter (from a previous marriage) to Pompey in order to reinforce Pompey's obedience to Sulla, and at the same time to secure Aemelia's position as a daughter-in-law to the new Dictator.

Scaurus lost his wife Aemelia and his unborn child to the machinations of Sulla and Metella. Pompey was forced into a divorce, and into a second arranged marriage. Aemilia was forced to divorce her husband, and died giving birth in the home of a stranger who was the ally of a man responsible for the wholesale murder of thousands of Roman citizens. It's just horrible for everyone.

Also, since I'm a suspicious sort of person, Aemilia's death in childbirth could really be a cover story for her murder. Her death serving as another level of threat to ensure Pompey's obedience, or to terrify Scaurus into keeping his mouth shut. That might be stretching the story too far, but I wouldn't put anything past Sulla who was very open about his methods of control.

So Cicero, this was Pompey, your friend and ally.

There is a lot more to his story that I still wish to discuss, but I want to read a little more before continuing...

*

Cicero, it's been a few days, I'm still reading through your letters, and studying more of Pompey's life via Plutarch's biography of him. I even watched an Italian movie called “Caesar and the Pirates”, which had scenes of some of the things Plutarch had to say about the Pirates, but unfortunately he movie didn't show anything of Pompey or of his successful war against them. It was just the story of Caesar and Calpurnia. I've begun writing a letter to Caesar, do you mind me writing to him? I know that in the end you hated him and were over the moon with joy at his murder, but the more I learn of his life, the more reasons I find for respecting him and taking great interest in his decisions and philosophy. Plus, your brother Quintus served with Caesar in Gaul for years, and Caesar has a lot to say about him, praising his actions in the war...but all of that can wait.

Let's get back to Pompey.

Pompey seems quite famous for his success against the Pirates, and Plutarch has some choice things to say about this chapter of his life, and about pirate culture.

“They were certainly formidable enough; but what excited the most indignation was the odious arrogance of it all – the gilded sails, the purple awnings, the silvered oars – the general impression that they were delighting in this way of life and priding themselves on their evil deeds. Roman supremacy was brought into contempt by their flute-playing, their stringed instruments, their drunken revels along every coast, their seizures of high-ranking officials, and the ransoms which they demanded for captured cities. It may be stated as a fact that the pirates had more than 1,000 ships and that the cities captured by them amounted to 400. They offered strange sacrifices of their own at Olympus, where they celebrated secret rites or mysteries, among which were those of Mithras. These Mithraic rites, first celebrated by the pirates, are still celebrated today.”

So these were the pirates originating from Cilicia. Cilicia which you, Cicero, were the successful and lauded governor of, in later years. All roads, as they say, lead to Rome. Also, curiously enough, Mithras is by some scholars said to be a religious figure whose myths are mirrored almost perfectly with those of the later Jesus Christ. Mithras was the son of an almighty Sun God, Mithras died and was resurrected...but I'm not going to get into that here.

                                             Mithras

The Pirates were also famed for their treatment of Roman prisoners.

“If a prisoner cried out that he was Roman and gave his name, they (the pirates) would pretend to be absolutely terrified; they would smite their thighs with their hands and fall down at his feet, begging him to forgive them. The prisoner, seeing them so humble and hearing their entreaties, would believe that they meant what they said. They would then put Roman boots on his feet and clothe him in a Roman toga in order, they said, that there should be no mistake about his identity in the future. And so they would play with him for some time, getting all the amusement possible out of him until, in the end, they would let down a ship's ladder when they were far out to sea and tell him that he was quite free to go and that they wished him a pleasant journey. If he objected, then they threw him overboard themselves and drowned him.”

Because the civil wars had so occupied the Romans, the pirates had essentially taken control of the whole Mediterranean sea and their domination thus threatened to breakdown the entire Roman supply network. Pompey was then voted in with a sort of temporary dictatorship, granting him absolute power over the entire sea, and for 50 miles extending inland along all the coastlines.

I am continually fascinated by the practice of democratically electing dictators to fulfill certain essential tasks, and even more fascinated by the number of these dictators who, their job done, gave up the absolute power they were granted, thus restoring democracy to the people. Pompey was one of these, though his election was not without it's controversy. Every senator opposed the granting of such power to Pompey, every senator except one. Caesar, who, having already been captured by pirates when he was a young man, either had a personal grudge, or as Plutarch suggests, was currying favour with the people by opposing the Senate. I suppose that both could be true.

Pompey was granted 500 ships, 120,000 regular infantry and 5,000 cavalry, with which he divided up the entire Mediterranean into thirteen sections, and entrusting each section to a subordinate commander, he was able to completely defeat the pirates in every region in a mere forty days. In his conquest, many of the pirates surrendered and Pompey took huge numbers of prisoners, but instead of selling them into slavery, he did something that I find quite remarkable.

“As regard the prisoners Pomey never even entertained the idea of putting them to death; on the other hand there were great numbers of them, they were poor and used to war; so that he did not think it would be wise to let them go and allow them to disperse or else to reorganise again into bands. He reflected, therefore, that by nature man neither is nor becomes a wild or unsocial creature; it is rather the case that the habit of vice makes him become something which by nature he is not, and on the other hand he can be made civilised again by precept and by example and be a change of place and of occupation; in fact even wild beasts, given a measure of gentle treatment, loose their savage and intractable qualities. With all this in mind, he decide therefore to transfer the men from the sea to the land, to give them a taste of civilised life and to get them used to living in cities and cultivating the land. Some of them were received by the small and half-populated cities of Cilicia which, on admitting them to citizenship, were given additional land. Many were settled by Pompey in the city of Soli which had recently been devastated by King Tigranes of Armenia and which he now restored. Most of them however, were given a place to live in at Dyme in Achaea. Which was at that time very underpopulated and had a lot of good land.”

So, Cicero, with this tale in mind, I can understand what you might have seen in Pompey, and why you might have desired to keep his friendship and to treat him with respect and deference. He seems to have been powerful, capable, intelligent and above all, able to respect the Republic above his own desires for glory and power, or revenge. Pompey did in fact step down from his position as temporary dictator once his conquest of the pirates was complete. Pompey seems honest, hard working, willing to serve Rome's interests and to make personal sacrifices to ensure the continuation of those old and great traditions that you, Cicero, are so proud of.

But that's not where the story ends, is it Cicero...?

Book 2, letter 19. To Cicero, on his friend Pompey

Book 2, letter 19

Part 1 of 3

To Cicero, on his friend Pompey the Great.

                                              Cicero

December 2018 CE

Dear Cicero,

I drove out past the salt flats today, through the sandy wastelands and stubble and rubble of old pioneer farmsteads. While bush fires ravage the north-east coast of my country, floods inundate the streets of a major eastern city and in my own region, here in the borderlands, drought tightens its grip and we all begin to believe in dreams, like rain dance magic, even as we forget what real rain feels like.

This might be my last letter to you for a while. Or at least, my last letter regarding your work. I'm having a sort of crisis of faith, it's hard to tell. I'm an up and down sort of person, a typical artist really, pushed around by mood swings and passions. Perhaps I'm just in a slump. I've been reading your letters, your treatise On Duties, and your biography (written by A.Trollope, 1870), searching for references to your friend Pompey, or to Sulla, both of whom I plan on writing about. Perhaps I will say a few things about Pompey today...I'm not sure.

Your soul is so close to mine
I know what you dream.
Friends scan each other's depths;
Would I be a Friend, if I didn't?
A Friend is a mirror of clear water;
I see my gains in you, and my losses.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

A friend sent this poem to me today. A gentle reminder of an important truth. We are mirrors of each other, aren't we? Cicero my dear friend, you support me in my dark moods, you uplift me when I despair, you offer truth when all my ideas prove to be delusions. I am as thankful to you as I am to my living friends who offer their wisdom and compassion, who feel as I feel and who strive to make their happiness my happiness.

Non scholae sed vitae discimus

We learn not for school, but for life.

In writing about friends, there are a lot of things to consider. There is the sort of friendship Rumi describes, and which you certainly had with Atticus, who was a second self, as you proudly declare.

Then there was Pompey.

                                               Pompey

It might be better to think of him as your political ally, but you express real friendship for him in your letters, an affection which he seemed to return only when it was convenient. A fair weather friend, we might say. You and he both strove to attain glory for Rome and for the Republic, but Pompey betrayed both in the end, when he joined with Caesar and Crassus to form the Triumvirate and overthrow the old republican methods of government.

The Roman republic always had two Consuls, which actually seems really similar to the two party political system of my country, a system designed to keep in check any single leader who might strive for kingship, by having an equally powerful leader in a position to oppose such an attempt. That's the idea, but of course it is susceptible to corruptions and abuses, just like my own democracy. The Liberal and Labor parties in Australia were once two sides of a political debate, striving for different aims and serving different interests. Now they seem like two sides of a single coin. It doesn't matter which side the coin falls on, we are governed by the same greedy ignorance of the corporate powers that fund both parties.

In Rome though, it got out of hand in a different way with the first Triumvirate. Essentially three Consuls, sharing their power and using their pact of alliance to totally dominate the entire political field, voting themselves in for longer terms in office, granting themselves governorships in wealthy foreign provinces, always ready to back each other up in their collective efforts to overthrow the republic and, by using the quasi-democratic system against itself, to elect themselves into positions of absolute power.

Crassus, Pompey and Caesar.

                                              Crassus

Crassus was the money man, Pompey was the great war hero, defeater of the pirates, and Caesar, that fast talking, fast walking, fashion setting, conqueror of Gaul, was the schemer who orchestrated the whole Triumvirate.

But today I want to write about Pompey. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

Pompey, whom his enemies dubbed Adulescens Carnifex “The Adolescent Butcher”, followed in his father's footsteps, and came to lead armies when he was only twenty three. He rose to a position of military power and reputation during the final years of the Roman civil wars when he raised three legions on his own and lead them against the enemies of Sulla, whom Pompey had wanted to impress.

The civil wars and Sulla in particular, are something I will have to cover in more detail later, since they relate directly to the Catiline Conspiracy, but I will say this here, quoting from Plutarch, in his life of Pompey, from the Rex Warner translation of 1958: (I'm going to quote from Plutarch quite a lot, as usual. I do love his books, as you well know Cicero)...

The disasters (of the civil wars) that had fallen upon Rome had brought her to such a pass that, there being no hope of freedom, people longed only for a milder form of slavery.

After the tumultuous years of the Gracchi brothers, who were assassinated as punishment for their efforts to reform the Republic, Rome descended into further turmoil, each new conflict giving rise to worse tyrants who oppressed the people with greater violence and despotism, until Sulla took power, and through his 'proscriptions', had every single one of his political enemies murdered (some three thousand or so...), and all their property turned over to him, and to the men who killed on his behalf.

                                                                      Sulla

This is the Sulla who Pompey wanted to impress, and Pompey formed up three new legions, (15,000 men), to help him in his conquest of his own country. On his way to join Sulla, Pompey was attacked by the Roman generals Carinas, Cloelius and Brutus, who surrounded him with their three armies, but when Pompey formed up his cavalry and charged at Brutus' forces, they were routed. The other two generals began quarrelling amongst themselves and retreated.

Pompey later faced the army of the Consul, Scipio Asiaticus, “...but before the two lines were within range of each other's javelins Scipio's men shouted greetings to Pompey's and came over to their side.”

You see, it's little details like this that change the whole tone of the conflict. Scipio was Consul, that means he was the legally elected leader of the Roman people, but the whole army led by him simply crossed over to Pompey's side rather than fight at all. It says something of the popularity of Pompey's cause, and the public support for Sulla as well. There are lots of stories of Roman legions behaving in this way, and it sheds light on the political delicacy with which a general had to handle his men. I try to imagine something like this happening in my own country, a civil war being fought, and the government forces changing sides to follow the leadership of some popular young commander who had formed his own private army. It's crazy.

As I write this letter, there is a great swelling of public disgust for the Australian government and their obvious corruption, but I cannot imagine a twenty three year old Aussie boy from Canberra raising his own army and convincing the government troops to defect to his side as he marched on the Capital city. It is precisely the existence of private armies who were loyal to their generals that stands out as a huge difference between our cultures Cicero, although it wasn't that long ago that a young man in Germany did as Pompey did, and raised a private force with which he took over his own government in collusion with other powerful, and violent men.

The story of the Night of the Long Knives has a chilling similarity to the proscriptions of Sulla.

Cicero, you were a young man living in Rome through these proscriptions. You even served, although somewhat unwillingly, in the army under Sulla during the civil wars, or Social Wars, as they are most often called. Proscriptions seems quite a polite way to describe death squads murdering people in the streets and in their homes, with the express purpose of confiscating everything they owned, land, slaves, property, and handing it over to Sulla in exchange for lavish payments. Lists of names were published and posted in public so that anyone who wanted, could take up the highly paid work of a killer for hire.

There are stories of people going out in the morning to find their own names written on those lists, and being killed in the crowd before they could take a dozen steps to make their escape. Often people were proscribed for no other reason than their wealth, or their ownership of a certain property which the allies of Sulla wished to possess. One such victim is famously quoted as declaring just before he was killed in the street, “My Alban farm has done me in!”

It seems a marvel that you survived, Cicero. There is a speech (Pro Roscio) that you delivered just after the proscriptions had officially come to an end but while Sulla was still in power, in which you denounce the obvious criminal violence and thefts of of his death squads. You were on the rise, politically, and willing to speak out against tyranny, as a young man might who has not yet learned to fear death. Actually, you left Rome shortly after giving this speech, to study philosophy and oratory in Attica. A prudent move. Still, it is surprising that Sulla let you live, when he could have so easily done away with you.

What kind of world we would live in now, if you had died young Cicero? Did you know that there are several towns in America, called Cicero? If Sulla had written your name on his lists, the whole world would look different today, I don't think there is any way to overestimate the impact you have had on the future.

To Julius Caesar; on bias, perspective and dinner parties

Book 2, letter 18

Part 4 of 4

To Julius Caesar; on bias, perspective and dinner parties

*

Summer strikes the anvil of the mountain and all the daylight hours are infernal. I stay indoors and write, or read, or sip iced tea and stare out the window, my brain slowly simmering in its juices.

I've been reading about the day you visited Cicero and had dinner with him at his villa near the beach. Your soldiers were encamped in the fields, orderly and disciplined, while the two of you talked of philosophy and literature. You and Cicero had been writing letters to each other for some time before this. You seem to have been good friends for a few years, before everything changed.  Before you changed.   I have been reading the Evelyn Shuckburgh translations of 1899 CE.  I don't have any of Cicero's letters to you, but I have this one that he wrote to Atticus.

CICERO TO ATTICUS

Tusculum, Aug. 26, B.C.45

It escaped my memory to send you a copy of the letter I sent to Caesar at the time. It was not, as you suspect, that I was ashamed of showing it to you, for fear I should seem too much of a flatterer; nor, I assure you, did I write otherwise than I should to an equal. For I have got a high opinion of those books of his, as I told you when we met. So I wrote without flattery, and yet I think he will read it with great pleasure.

I did a little digging and found that 'those books of his', that Cicero refers to, are the Anticato.  I was fascinated to discover that Cicero had written a panegyric in praise of Cato, that gruff stoic, and that you Caesar had written a counter article, heaping scorn upon the name of the recently dead senator. I remembered that Cato had committed suicide rather that live under your rule, Caesar. He preferred death, to living in a dictatorship. It is strange that when Cicero wrote in praise of a man who hated you completely, you responded in literary kind, not with violence, but with civil discourse. Is this an example of the clemency you are famous for, or was it that even then you thought Cicero might be of use to you if kept alive, dangling from a hook? I shouldn't be too quick to judge, there are a lot more letters to read, and unfortunately both your, and Cicero's articles on Cato are lost to us.

However, a translation of the letter Cicero wrote to Atticus about your dinner visit, is right here in my hands.

CICERO TO ATTICUS

Puteoli, Dec. 21, B.C.45

To think that my formidable guest leaves no regret behind! For indeed it passed off splendidly. However, when he reached Philippus on the evening of the 18th, the house was so full of soldiers that there was hardly a room left for Caesar himself to dine in. Two thousand men if you please! I was much disturbed as to what was going to happen the next day; and Cassius Barba came to the rescue and gave me guards. A camp was pitched in the fields, and the house put under guard. On the 19th he stayed with Philippus till one o'clock and admitted no one: at his accounts, I believe, with Balbus. Then he walked on the shore. After two he took his bath. Then he heard about Mamurra without changing countenance. He was anointed and sat down to dinner. He was undergoing a course of emetics, so he ate and drank at his pleasure without fear. It was a lordly dinner and well-served, and not only that, but

"Well cooked, and seasoned, and, the truth to tell,

With pleasant discourse all went very well." (A quotation from Lucilius.)

Besides his chosen circle were entertained very liberally in three rooms: and freedmen of lower degree and slaves could not complain of stint. The upper sort were entertained in style. In fact, I was somebody. (*) Still he was not the sort of guest to whom one would say: "Be sure to look me up on the way back." Once is enough. There was no serious talk, but plenty of literary. In a word he was pleased and enjoyed himself. He said he would spend one day at Puteoli and another near Baiae.

There you have all about my entertainment, or billeting you might say, objectionable, as I have said, but not uncomfortable. I am staying here a while and then go to Tusculum. As he passed Dolabella's house and nowhere else the whole troop formed up on the right and left of him. So Nicias tells me.

Translators notes: (*) Or, as Tyrrell suggests, "we were quite friendly together,"i.e.Caesar did not "assume the god"; or possibly even "we all felt we were in civilised society."

I love to read such things. I can truly see you as a living, breathing human being. A man who shaves and eats breakfast and scratches his chin and talks with friends and enemies and all the people in your life that fit between those categories. You are alive in my mind, and letters such as these from Cicero grant me a fresh perspective of you, Caesar. It is easy to look upon the life of a tyrant and discount all these little humanising details in order to justify a black and white view of them. It would be easy to just write you off as a bloodthirsty dictator, and certainly there is enough evidence that even that seems a generous description of your brutality, but people can never be summarised with glib adjectives. To do so would amount to a gross oversimplification, a falsehood.

So how do I avoid bias, how do I form a perspective broad enough to encompass the whole truth?

Questions without answers, I suspect.

With admiration and respect,

Morgan.

PS. I found this little gem in “The Memoirs of Augustus Caesar, nephew of Julius”.

[7] When Augustus Caesar was holding the funeral games for his father, a star appeared in the middle of the day, and Augustus declared that it was [the star] of his father. Baebius Macer said that a large star rose up in about the eighth hour of the day, and it was crowned with rays, like ribbons. Some people thought that the star was an omen foretelling the future glory of the young Caesar, but Caesar himself interpreted it as the soul of his father, and he placed a statue of him on the Capitol, with a golden crown on his head and this inscription on the base:"to Caesar the demi-god". Vulcatius the haruspex said in an assembly that it was a comet, which portended the end of the ninth saeculum and the start of the tenth saeculum. But because he had revealed this secret against the will of the gods, he would die immediately; and he collapsed in the midst of the assembly, before he had completed his speech. This is mentioned by Augustus in the second book of his Memoirs about his life.

So Caesar, were you really a God? If not when you were alive, you certainly are now, for your name is known in every nation upon the earth.

'til next time.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.

To Caesar: on bias, perspective and local democracy

Book 2, letter 18

Part 3 of 4

To Julius Caesar; on bias, perspective and local democracy

*

I sit by lamplight, smoking my pipe and listening to the faint whisper of rain on the tin roof. I think a lot about you Caesar, about what you mean to me, and to my world. I mean the entire world. What do you really represent? Are you the pinnacle of the Roman Republic, proof that the will of the people is absolute? Or are you proof that the will of the mob can be manipulated towards violence, towards endless wars to feed an insatiable societal hunger for blood? I'm sorry, comparative, 'either/or' questions are terribly misleading. Life is never a choice between just two options.

Is there even such a thing as historical proof?

How are beliefs and memories and ideas represented in the world? For instance, what does it mean, that we have ancient Roman style architecture in my home city in Adelaide, South Australia? We are a long way, through time and space, from Rome.

The monumental structure of Parliament House in my home state, has been the site of many gatherings of the mob, to protest and to attest significant events in the history of this tiny city on the southern edge of the world. I have a tendency to downplay the value of Adelaide, it seems such an insignificant place on the world stage, that grandstanding of any sort seems ridiculous. Yet South Australia has been the home of some important political movements. While reading about the history of the Adelaide Parliament House, I found this little reminder of something that I am very pleased to tell you about.

At the base of the West Wing steps is a plaque relating to women’s suffrage. In 1894 South Australia became the first colony in Australia to grant women the right to vote. It also became the first place in the world to give women the right to stand for parliament. On the centenary of women’s suffrage a time capsule, to be opened on the bicentenary in 2094, was placed in the vaults of Parliament House. The plaque notes the time capsule and the granting of parliamentary franchise to women.

We tend to think of ancient Greece as being the birthplace of Democracy, but it seems sometimes that democracy is born, and born again all over the world at different times and in different ways. South Australia has a proud heritage to build on in this regard.

 Live animal export protest

 Armistice Rally November 1918

 Arts industry funding rally 2018

Worker's Rally for better wages

*

In the morning, I am woken by a thunderstorm. I stand in the doorway staring out across the pond, watching the chaotic orchestration of dancing rain drops on the surface of the water. These stormy summer days in the borderlands are exquisite, listening to the sound of galahs winging their way joyfully through the falling sky, while the air is pink at dawn over the grey-brown rocky hills, and between the gum trees, along the green folds of the creek, frogs creak and croak a song of the divine living soil.

I have been reading Epictetus, perhaps I should quote something for you, from Discourses, Book I, Chapter 11:

“You see then, that you really must become a Scholsticus, an animal whom all ridicule, if you really intend to make an examination of your own opinions: and that is not the work of one hour or day, you know yourself.”

Bias and perspective and opinion and prejudice. A forest of mental concepts to get lost in, and your books Caesar, are strange territory to navigate through. Reading your works is an exercise in examining my own opinions, and in doing so, I find that so much of what I assume about both the past and the present, does not stand up to much scrutiny. Certainty is quickly replaced with doubt, which falls away to reveal only ignorance. Even with all the evidence we have, it seems impossible to be certain of anything.

Certainly, Julius Caesar, you were a man of controversy and influence.

You still are.

*