Julius Caesar.

Good.  Name me another one.

Um.  Some gladiator—no, I know: Pontius Pilate.

And Cicero?  Do you know what one scholar says about him?
“The influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature and ideas greatly exceeds that of any other prose writer in any language.” (Michael Grant)

But is that true?  He was just some orator, wasn’t he?

He is quoted (or was) in most of the controversies on law, politics, religion, education, literature, and philosophy that there ever were.

What do they quote?

His speeches such as Against Verres (an attack on misgovernment), the Philippics (an attack on tyranny). But even more, his essays like On Duties, On Old Age, and On the Nature of the Gods.
All the great thinkers and writers of Europe studied and imitated those for more than a thousand years. St. Augustine, St. Isidore, Thomas of Aquinas.

Yes, but now…

And then on a spring morning in 1345 Petrarch rediscovered his letters. And started the Renaissance.
“The Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.” (Zielinski)

What the devil was so great about his letters?

“We may search history until quite modern times without finding either a personality so intimately known to us as Cicero or a period so vividly real as the years that led up to the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC,” says L.P. Wilkinson in his translation of Cicero’s letters. “Both of these facts are due to the survival of nearly eight hundred of Cicero’s letters, together with more than a hundred written to him by others.”

But why didn’t somebody ever tell us about him?

Until the twentieth century high-school and college students all knew him. They called him Tully. They read  Contra Catalinam and On Old Age in Latin class and On Duties (“Tully’s Duties”) in philosophy.
In our time Cicero was thrown out  with the rest of classical studies.

But that was right, wasn’t it?  That’s all so far back. Those old subjects are of little relevance anymore. Philosophical speculation seems like just a word game.
In any case, I don’t want someone to tell me what my duties are.  I want to be free.

Then you might read Tully to see how best to do that.

How to be free?

Exactly. That was the biggest concern of his life. He lived through a civil war and couldn’t decide what to do—exactly the same dilemma people have had all through our last century in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, and many still have today.  The one between inefficient freedom and efficient dictatorship.  Cicero finally stood up to the tyrant and got himself killed for it, knowing that might happen.

You might also read his letters.  There’s nothing like them.  They shocked old Petrarch when he found them; they turned him off. They show such flagrant short-comings and were so different from the saintly Cicero legend.  “THIS was the real Cicero?  But we thought he was perfect?”

See The Cicero You Never Knew 2 and meet one of the most fascinating men who ever lived. He was so vain he was funny; a brilliant wise-cracker but he never knew when to shut up; a hero who was a scaredy-cat; Rome’s greatest orator but he sometimes got so nervous he shook when he had to speak.  He was so effective a speaker that he could spellbind great audiences, win hopeless cases, and bring tough men like Julius Caesar to tears.

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Monument to Cervantes' wife in Esquivias, Toledo, Spain

His wife was pretty and passably wealthy but he couldn’t stand her little town. How was he going to spend the rest of his life on a farm? He had wasted his youth first marching around Italy and then playing cards in an old Turkish bath in Algiers while he was a prisoner of the pirates. Would he waste the next best years being a country gentleman, hunting partridges and rabbits and husbanding vineyards?

Cervantes' wife's farmhouse in Esquivias, Spain

(See Cervantes’ House Restored)

Every chance he got he left the farm and went to Madrid to see old friends, including maybe his lover La Franca and their daughter.
But it seemed like it was always time to return to the damned farm.

Wasn’t he glad to see his young wife? No one knows. Perhaps he really loved her, perhaps he had only married her for her money. However that was, after nineteen months he pulled out of Esquivias.
“I’m going down to Seville to look for a job,” he told Catalina.

He had a good friend there, a former comic actor named Tomás. Tomás had decided that making monkey shines on a stage was never going to bring him much money so he left Madrid and went home to Seville, where he ran an inn now. It wasn’t just any inn—it was probably the most luxurious one in Seville. The best people in town stopped in there—nobles, rich empresarios, high government officials. “Come on down south and stay at my place,” Tomás had written to Cervantes. “Good jobs are dealt out here at my tables over drinks. I can introduce you to some very important people. Probably in less than a week you will nail something.” Cervantes had grown up in Seville and loved the booming city. It was the biggest, the busiest city in Spain at the time. “Save me a room,” he wrote Tomás. “I’m coming.”

He stayed at Tomás’s inn for two weeks. What kind of talk did he hear? Spain had just beaten the Portuguese in a decisive naval battle and everyone was euphoric—cocky. “That’s one enemy down,” said the men at the inn. “Now let’s go get those damned English.” They had heard about the execution of the Catholic Queen Mary Stuart and wanted revenge on the Protestants. “And we’re getting sick and tired of those English pirates, who have been getting away with murder for decades. It’s time to hang the whole lot—right boys?” And they would raise glasses of wine and vow to undo the English. King Philip saw that the whole country was in a mood of revenge and heroism and he decided to take advantage of it. “How many ships do you think we can assemble?” he asked the Duke of Alba. “The time is right to win back England for the Church.” For the Crown too.

One day while the inn was crowded with customers Tomás called Cervantes over. “See those two men by the window? The fat one is Antonio de Guevara. The King has just appointed him Head Comissary for a great Armada. That other fellow is Diego de Valdivia, Guevara’s adjutant. I’m going to introduce you to them. They are looking for commissaries to collect provisions for the fleet. The money is very good.”

The two nobles told Cervantes exactly what he would have to do. “The King needs wheat and oil to make the sailors’ biscuits. Of course the Crown cannot afford the huge sums necessary to pay for all that. But His Majesty is sure every Spaniard will want to cooperate in the undertaking, which the Almighty has surely ordained.”

“I see,” said Cervantes. “Requisitioning. The grain and oil will be collected by force.”

“Correct,” said the big Guevara. “Our commissaries will collect from each landowner an amount that we have fixed. You will simply go to his residence and present the official writ. Then at the granary you will supervise the actual transferral of the grain and oil to the King’s siloes. The Crown will pay you twelve reales a day.”

“And if the landowner or farmer refuses to open his bins?”

“As His Majesty’s commissary you will have full powers to oblige him to do so. Should the man refuse to cooperate, you will have him imprisoned.”

Cervantes was back on the farm when his offical appointment came through. What did he tell Catalina as he prepared to go south? Neither knew he would spend the next fifteen years collecting taxes in all the towns and villages of Andalucía. “Your mother wanted me to administer your family fortune, right?” he must have said. “Well, within two years I will double it—or my name is Charlie.”

He did and he didn’t. At one time he had thousands of maravedis in his hands but they disappeared mysteriously. “There are really only two ways he could have lost that money,” says a biographer. “Either he made bad investments or he gambled it away.”

Cards in the Spanish deck

“Cervantes must have been quite a card-shark,” says another of his biographers, “after all those years in the army and in the Turkish bath. In his stories he shows familiarity with all the games of the time.”
Perhaps at the gaming table they called him Charlie.

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The Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain)

“Gómez!”
“Sire?”
“Put my leg up.”

The servant stooped down to see that the board holding up the Emperor’s left leg was solid, then cranked it higher. The orthopedic chair was an invention of his doctor’s.
“And throw this damn shawl over my shoulders. It’s chilly this morning.”

That he couldn’t manage such a simple thing himself made the Emperor Charles cross. Gout had begun to ruin him years ago already but he would never get used to being an invalid.
And now an unspeakable sadness hit him when the servant drew back the drapes and he saw the brilliant day outside. I can’t walk in that sun anymore! I will never walk in that sun anymore!

Tranquilo, he told himself. You know what Soto would say: “Resignation, Sire”. Soto was his confessor.
Remember why you came to Yuste. You were going to renounce the world.
Yeah, but who is renouncing who? I don’t FEEL like renouncing the world, damn it!
…It’s not as though you had much choice, old man.

He popped a couple of marzapan horses into his mouth for consolation and swallowed them down after just one bite. His bite was no good because of his protruding Habsburg jaw. Unchewed food caused him endless problems of digestion and also occasional embarrassment during audiences.
“Are they out there?” he asked his servant.

“Senor Quijada and his son arrived early this morning from Cuacos, Sire. They have been waiting in the antechamber for some time now.”

“Send Quijada in alone. Tell the boy we won’t be long. Give him something to play with. Show him that silver ship from Amberes.”

Quijada barged in as soon as the door was open, went right up to the Emperor, and kissed his hand. “Sire.”
“How are you doing, old friend?” Charles asked.

Quijada was his mayordomo and Master of the Horse. He was closer to the Emperor than many of his royal relatives, though Quijada was from peasant stock. They had been together for thirty-odd years, through most of Charles’ wars, in camps as well as palaces, and Quijada had more than once saved the Emperor’s life, shielding him from crossbow bolts and escaping with him from enemy traps. For his service the Emperor had made him a knight and given him an encomienda near Valladolid.

Ruins in García del Campo (Valladolid) of Quijada’s castle

Quijada lived there in a castle with his wife and the boy and had not yet been to Yuste since Charles’ was installed.
“You’re getting too fat, Sire,” he told him now.

Quijada said what he thought and often said it without tact. Charles, who was surrounded by flatterers and pretty-spoken courtesans, liked Quijada for his blunt and truthful ways. He smiled. “I don’t get much exercise anymore. It’s not like our campaigns in Flanders when…”
“Who’s your doctor? Still that idiot Matisio?”
“He’s a great doctor.”
“He’s a coward. Why does he allow you to have all those damned sweetmeats?”
Quijada looked with disgust at Charles’ sweets table. “Gout is cured by closing your mouth, Sire. He knows that or ought to. So do you.”

The Emperor kept smiling. “Try one of these dried figs my daughter sent from Valladolid. Or one of her raisins.” He enjoyed teasing Quijada.
Suddenly he got serious. “What’s the boy like, Quijada?”

“He’s a good one, Sire,” said Quijada. “Quick to learn. Rides like a little elf and you should see him with a sword.
Not bad at books, either, they tell me, though you know I’m no judge there.”

Quijada was the only one in all of Spain who knew that the boy was the Emperor’s natural son by the daughter of a Salzburg comic.
When she had sent word that she was pregnant, Charles had quickly found her a husband and had them married. But after only three years the woman died and Charles gave the boy to the faithful Quijada to raise.
Not even Quijada’s wife knew. She assumed the lad was her husband’s own bastard. But she loved him and set about raising him as a great nobleman as soon as he turned up at the castle. She taught him French and Latin and court manners. Quijada himself saw to it that the boy learned riding and hunting and was skilled with weapons.

His enthusiastic report made the Emperor impatient. He had never met the boy. “Tell him to come in. I guess we’ve kept him waiting too long. Waiting is hard on a child.”
“Let him learn patience, Sire. That is also part of being a man.”
“You stay away for a few minutes, Quijada. I want to meet him alone.”

(Meet the boy in The Emperor Meets His Natural Son II)

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Lyons, France, an old engraving

After the thunder we heard such a tremendous, fearful noise reverberating in the skies that I was convinced it must be the Day of Judgement.

Hail clouds (Photo Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce)

I paused for a while, and there was a fall of hail, without a drop of water. The hail was bigger than pellets shot from a blow-pipe, and when it hit me was very painful: little by little its size increased, till it was like the bullets from a crossbow.  Realizing that my horse was terrified out of its wits, I turned round and galloped back furiously till I met up with my companions, who being frightened like me had taken shelter in a pinewood.

The hailstones grew to the size of large lemons. I sang a Miserere and while I was praying to God in this devout way a hailstone fell that was so large that it smashed a very thick branch from the pine under which I thought I was safe; another fall of stones crashed on to the head of my horse, which staggered as if to fall; and one of them struck me, though not directly or I would have been killed.

A large hailstone, about 6 cm (2.36 in) in diameter (public domain photo)

In the same way one of them fell on poor Lionardo Tedaldi who, as he was kneeling down like me, was forced on to his hands. At this, seeing that the branch could no longer protect me and that one must do something else as well as saying the Miserere, I hurriedly began to gather up my clothes over my head. For Lionardo, who was screaming for Jesus to rescue him, I said that Jesus would help him if he helped himself.  I found it more difficult looking after him than after myself.

The storm continued some while, and then stopped: we had all been given a pounding, but we remounted our horses as best we could and rode on towards our next stopping-place, showing each other the scratches and bruises we had received.

Then a mile in front we found a spectacle of ruin so much greater than our own misfortune that it defies description.

All the trees were stripped and smashed; all the animals around had been killed, as well as a good number of shepherds.  We saw a mass of stones which were so large that it was impossible to get both your hands around them.  So we reckoned that we had escaped lightly and realized that our calling on God and singing Misereres had afforded us better protection than we would have got from our own efforts. So, giving thanks to God, the next day we pushed on to Lyons…

From The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by George Bull, Penguin Books Ltd., London,  1956,  p. 309

Cellini’s statue of Perseus, Piazza della Signoria, Florence (a public domain photo by Jrousso)

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And where is his scarlet robe—the one he always wore in battle so his soldiers would recognize him?

Perhaps he gave it to an aide before hopping off the little boat, which was sinking because too many soldiers were jumping into it. The historian Appian says the Alexandrians captured the robe and hung it up as a trophy.

How did he get into such a mess?  Where was he going?

He was making for one of the larger Roman ships that lay farther out.
As soon as he reached it, he ordered them to send lifeboats back to save as many men as they could. He had lost the battle.

What battle?

He was trying to control the harbor of Alexandria, to close one of the exits to enemy ships. His troops from Syria would be coming in and he had to make sure they would land safely.

He and his soldiers were in real trouble.  They were boarded up in a corner of the city, trying to hold off the attack of the entire Egyptian army.  There wasn’t enough food and even their drinking water was poisoned.
They had only one chance of surviving: reinforcements from Syria. He had sent out a call for more troops  as soon as he arrived in Alexandria, and now they were on their way and he had to secure the harbor for them and keep command of the sea.

But how could he do that if he had only a few men and boats?

To start with, he set fire to the Egyptian warships in the dockyards—that was the only way to prevent their being used against the incoming Roman troop ships.  There were perhaps a hundred, many of them huge quadriremes and quinqueremes,  fully equipped for battle.  (The fire got out of control and burned down the most valuable building in the world: the Library of Alexandria, with its five hundred thousand scrolls.)

Then he hurried to seize the causeway  that led from the docks to the Island of Pharos, where the Great Lighthouse stood.  There was an opening in the causeway for ships to pass through on their way out to sea.  He built a little fort there and began filling the passage with big rocks to block it. The Alexandrians came to resist him with all their might.

To fight them Caesar quickly landed more troops from boats along the causeway but there wasn’t enough room for so many soldiers to deploy and they stumbled over each other and blocked their own retreat as the enemy came charging. They all ended up jumping back into the little boats.

Caesar himself describes the moment of great danger [he writes of himself in the third person] : “As long as he was able by exhortation to keep his men by the bridge [over the opening] and the fortification, Caesar was exposed to the same danger; when he saw that they were all giving ground, he withdrew to his own vessel.  He was followed by a crowd of men who began forcing their way on board and made it impossible to steer the ship or push it off from land; whereupon Caesar, who had guessed that this would happen, jumped overboard and swam out to the ships standing farther off. From there he sent small boats back to pick up his men in difficulties and saved a considerable number.  As for his own ship, it sank under the pressure of numbers and was lost, with all the men on board.” (Civil War 21.6)

And the little detail of his holding his papers out of the water as he swam?

That comes from Plutarch. He calls it a “story” to show that he took it only for what it was worth, viz., the color.  “This was the time when, according to the story, he was holding a number of papers in his hand and would not let them go, though he was being shot at from all sides and was often under water. Holding the papers above the surface with one hand, he swam with the other.”
(Life of Caesar, section 49)

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Bust of Trajan (reign 98–117 ), in the Glyptothek, Munich (public domain photo by User:Bibi Saint-Pol)

The Emperor Trajan had appointed him governor and sent him to Bithynia in 112 AD. His job was to go out there and solve the problems that arose; and if he had any doubts he was supposed to write back and ask for advice.

“I have never been present at an examination of Christians,” he wrote to Trajan. “Consequently, I do not know the nature or the extent of the punishments usually meted out to them, nor the grounds for starting an investigation and how far it should be pressed….

“For the moment this is the line I have taken with all persons brought before me on the charge of being Christians. I have asked them in person if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished…

Cover of a book by John Beckwith,  showing an early Christian depiction of The Last Supper.

“I considered that I should dismiss any who denied that they were or ever had been Christians when they had repeated after me a formula of invocation to the gods and had made offerings of wine and incense to your statue (which I had ordered to be brought into court for this purpose along with the images of the gods), and furthermore had reviled the name of Christ: none of which things, I understand, any genuine Christian can be induced to do…..

“[Some declared] that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: that they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery, to commit no breach of trust, and not to deny a deposit when called upon to restore it. After this ceremony it had been their custom to disperse and reassemble later to take food of an ordinary, harmless kind; but they had in fact given up this practice since my edict, issued on your instructions, which banned all political societies. This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they call deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.”

The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer, a painting by Jean-Léon Gérômey (public domain photo)

“I have therefore postponed any further examination and hastened to consult you. The question seems to me to be worthy of your consideration, especially in view of the number of persons endangered…It is not only the towns but villages and rural districts too which are infected through contact with this wretched cult. I think though that it is still possible for it to be checked and directed to better ends, for there is no doubt that the people have begun to throng the temples which had been almost entirely deserted for some time…It is easy to infer from this that a great many people could be reformed if they were given an opportunity to repent.”

Pliny, Letter 96, Book 10

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But more astounding and a much greater achievement was what Hannibal did AFTER that.

Though he was never able to seize Rome itself, he led his small army of mercenaries around Italy for nearly twelve years, living off the land, with no real base of operations or help from Carthage; and he beat every Roman army ever sent against him, sometimes two at a time. He was one of the most astute men who ever lived. The best Roman general, Fabius, decided that the only way to deal with him was to stay out of his reach.

Hannibal’s most famous trick was the one he used in Campania to get his army out of a trap. His army was in a valley locked in by mountains and Fabius’s army was all around him. There was only one way out: a pass through the mountains; and it was heavily guarded by Roman troops. What did Hannibal figure out? Along a path that ran parallel to the mountain road he stampeded a herd of cattle at night with flaming torches on their horns. The guards, thinking the cattle were Hannibal’s soldiers, rushed to confront them, abandoning their positions on the mountain. While they were dealing with the animals, Hannibal quickly sent his army through the pass and got free.

If that had been old America and Davy Crockett, he might have told everyone the cattle ruse was an old Indian trick he’d learned from them when he was a boy.
Hannibal learned it in Spain. At least he saw bulls with torches on their horns running through the streets during certain Celtiberian festivals.

But thinking of how to use them when they could help his army out of a jam–that was his genius.

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Or George Stubbs, an eighteenth-century specialist, who showed his race-horses scampering over green English lawns in a way he knew they didn’t, they couldn’t.

Even in 1878 when Muybridge came out with his famous photographic studies of a horse’s gallop, proving that the traditional artist’s pose was nonsense, painters went right on showing horses flying through the air like cows jumping over the moon. Here is a painting by Degas who had seen the Muybridge photos and pretended not to.

Why did all these artists insist on perpetuating the error? Couldn’t they find a compromise between truth and beauty?

When you sit on a galloping horse, it FEELS as though you fly—that your horse is constantly jumping into the air, its legs spread out in front and behind, all four hooves off the ground. It is the most exciting moment of a ride. A horse shown diving into the air also transmits the feeling of excitement and speed better than any other. Aesthetically it is also the most satisfying because of the symmetry. In all the other phases of the gallop the legs are messy, apparently disorganized.
So much for aesthetics.

In fact, few of those experts, artists or otherwise, probably knew that the pose was a fiction. Muybridge’s photos proved that everyone was wrong—those who claimed the horse constantly dived through the air and those who contended that there was no moment when its feet were all off the ground. The photos showed that the horse did indeed jump into the air but when it did, its legs were all tucked UNDER its body, not stretched out ahead. THAT was the moment the rider felt he was flying.

Muybridge’s famous photographs, 1878

See one of Muybridge’s movies here

Once the truth was out, realist artists could no longer do hopping horses with a good conscience. Of course there were still plenty of artists who thought a horse galloping should look the way it feels, science be damned. “We aren’t painting a real horse galloping but the IDEA of a horse galloping,” they said.
“Well, when I make a horse,” said Frederick Remington, the American artist, “I don’t turn him into a cat.” And he painted and sculpted horses in all the real phases of a gallop, a trot, and a canter.

“He runs like a dog,” said the merry-go-round horse makers. “Do you think that’s pretty?”

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Where is it?
Not far from Madrid, in a little town called Esquivias.

It is an old farmhouse, with a pretty patio recently made into a theater, and a stable for a dozen mules that has been turned into an exhibition hall.

See the pictures at the Casa de Cervantes webpage.

Shakespeare’s place was the fruit of a prosperous career. He bought it after retirement and settled down to enjoy himself. Cervantes didn’t build this old farmhouse or even buy it. It belonged to his wife’s parents.

At the time of his marriage, Cervantes was broke. He had recently come back to Spain after five years of captivity in Northern Africa, with a left arm that made him useless for manual work. He had been a soldier and the maimed arm was a battle wound. Now he was trying to make a living as a writer in Madrid, and he wasn’t doing very well.

In the “office” of his wife’s house, now conditioned with furniture from his time to look just as it must have looked in 1584, he wrote a novel, now unreadable, and some plays, now never staged. He didn’t stay long in Catalina’s comfortable house. Seeing that he wasn’t going to become a famous playwright, he decided to go south and look for work as a tax collector.
It would be twenty years before he wrote the first part of his great Don Quijote.

Don Quijote by Gustav Doré

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Julius Caesar was ambitious, says Plutarch, and he paid for it. The proud Romans could see, or thought they could see, that he would stop at nothing less than becoming their king. So they killed him.

Those were fine times for ambitious men. When Caesar was growing up he had half a dozen models of men so great their names and deeds would be remembered forever. One was his Uncle Marius. Marius, coming from nowhere, had become the savior of Rome. Twice. First he beat King Juba in Africa after no one else could. Then a few years later the Senate sent him to the Alps to try and save Rome from the barbarians who were coming with fire and sword, and he did. Dictator twice and consul seven times.

Then there was the great Sulla, the scowling aristocrat who freed all Asia, or swiped all Asia, from King Mithradates. Sulla was a genius out there on the battlefield. And when he came back to Rome, he was boss as long as he wanted to be. No one could stand up to him. Even young Caesar had to go and hide.

And what about Pompey? Caesar must have hated to hear of Pompey’s triumphs if he didn’t admire him. Pompey was famous with an army “before he had hair on his chin”, as Suetonius says. And he stayed famous because time and again when the Senate gave him a job to do, he did it and made it look easy. All except once.

All these men were busy being heroes while Caesar was a boy—Caesar, of so much talent. How was he not going to be ambitious?

And there was yet another Roman, one you usually don’t read about now in a summary of the times, but whose incredible victories in Spain surely made young Caesar dream and itch. His name was Quintus Sertorius.

When Sertorius beat Metellus, a good old general with a lifetime of experience at war, and made Pompey run for his life, people back in Rome started calling him the greatest general since Hannibal.

Most of what we know of his life comes now from only one source: a short biography by Plutarch. Plutarch likes to tell good stories, and they run away with him sometimes. He will let a fairy tale stand as long as it makes a pretty point. His people seem so clear, so recognizable, he might have made them up. Should we “believe” him?
Are we looking at the real Sertorius or only reading Plutarch’s fiction? Maybe his Sertorius is only like the character in a play.

See A White Doe Whispers to Sertorius

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