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Authors: Anthony Everitt
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Egyptian soil.
Caesar arrived in Alexandria on October 2 in hot pursuit. To his public disgust, but also his private relief, he was presented with Pompey’s head. He refused to look at it and shed a well-judged tear; but he accepted the dead man’s signet ring as evidence to send to Italy. Roman public opinion was saddened, but not surprised, when it learned a month later of the death. As Caesar remarked of Pompey during the campaign in Greece, “He does not know how to win wars.”
It was at this high point of his great-uncle’s career that Gaius stepped out from the shadows of childhood and joined the adult community.
III
A POLITICAL MASTER CLASS
48–46 B.C.
----
The ceremony was a crucial rite of passage. Before leaving his house, Gaius dedicated a key symbol of his childhood to the lares, the divine spirits that protected a home. This symbol was the bulla, an amulet, usually made of gold, that hung around his neck. After the dedication, he offered the lares a sacrifice at the small altar and shrine in their honor in the main hall, or atrium.
Surrounded by his family, friends, and supporters, the young man stepped out of doors and walked to the Forum, Rome’s main square in the city center, where he exchanged his boy’s toga with the red stripe for the pure white gown of manhood, the toga virilis . (Only if he was elected to the Senate or to a priesthood would a man again be entitled to sport the red stripe.)
While Gaius was putting on the toga, he tore his undertunic on both sides, so that it fell to his feet, leaving him naked except for a loincloth. On the face of it this was a bad omen, but with some presence of mind, he quipped: “I shall have the whole Senatorial Order at my feet.” This boyish comeback is almost certainly an invention, although it has a certain astuteness characteristic of the man into whom he grew.
Gaius had been taught to understand the importance of religious ritual; he would grow up to become a devout and superstitious traditionalist. For the Romans, religion had little to do with individual spirituality or with theological doctrine; rather, its task was to ensure that the gods were not offended and that their intentions were identified and publicized. The chief mechanism for these purposes was a complex web of rituals, including animal sacrifice.
It is hard to exaggerate the centrality of the ceremonial killing of animals to Roman religion. Animal sacrifice was a common feature of daily life, the means by which anyone could give thanks to the gods, ask them for a favor, or find out what their wishes were. Domestic animals—lambs, or young steers, or chickens—were killed in large numbers, their throats slit with a special knife and their blood gathered in a shallow dish for pouring on the altar. The meat was cooked, formally offered to the relevant god, and then eaten. Altars swam in the detritus of death.
Religious ceremonies had to be conducted with absolute accuracy; if a mistake was made or if there was some interruption—for example, if a rat squeaked or a priest’s hat fell off—the entire procedure had to be repeated.
In the earliest times, the Romans were animists; that is, they believed that numina, spirits, lived inside all natural objects—trees, rivers, dwellings. As time passed, they settled on a list of named deities, who looked and behaved like humans. Most of them were taken to have counterparts in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. Rome’s Jupiter was the same as Zeus; Juno, Hera; Minerva, Athena; Mercury, Hermes; Venus, Aphrodite; Mars, Ares; and so on. Apollo was the same in both languages. As the Republic’s horizons expanded, equivalences were found with the deities of other, non–Greco-Roman cultures.
There were few corners of a Roman’s life—whether public or private—that were not governed by ritual. Every home had a shrine to its lares and to its penates, the deities of the household stores.
In public life, a priest-king,
Caesar arrived in Alexandria on October 2 in hot pursuit. To his public disgust, but also his private relief, he was presented with Pompey’s head. He refused to look at it and shed a well-judged tear; but he accepted the dead man’s signet ring as evidence to send to Italy. Roman public opinion was saddened, but not surprised, when it learned a month later of the death. As Caesar remarked of Pompey during the campaign in Greece, “He does not know how to win wars.”
It was at this high point of his great-uncle’s career that Gaius stepped out from the shadows of childhood and joined the adult community.
III
A POLITICAL MASTER CLASS
48–46 B.C.
----
The ceremony was a crucial rite of passage. Before leaving his house, Gaius dedicated a key symbol of his childhood to the lares, the divine spirits that protected a home. This symbol was the bulla, an amulet, usually made of gold, that hung around his neck. After the dedication, he offered the lares a sacrifice at the small altar and shrine in their honor in the main hall, or atrium.
Surrounded by his family, friends, and supporters, the young man stepped out of doors and walked to the Forum, Rome’s main square in the city center, where he exchanged his boy’s toga with the red stripe for the pure white gown of manhood, the toga virilis . (Only if he was elected to the Senate or to a priesthood would a man again be entitled to sport the red stripe.)
While Gaius was putting on the toga, he tore his undertunic on both sides, so that it fell to his feet, leaving him naked except for a loincloth. On the face of it this was a bad omen, but with some presence of mind, he quipped: “I shall have the whole Senatorial Order at my feet.” This boyish comeback is almost certainly an invention, although it has a certain astuteness characteristic of the man into whom he grew.
Gaius had been taught to understand the importance of religious ritual; he would grow up to become a devout and superstitious traditionalist. For the Romans, religion had little to do with individual spirituality or with theological doctrine; rather, its task was to ensure that the gods were not offended and that their intentions were identified and publicized. The chief mechanism for these purposes was a complex web of rituals, including animal sacrifice.
It is hard to exaggerate the centrality of the ceremonial killing of animals to Roman religion. Animal sacrifice was a common feature of daily life, the means by which anyone could give thanks to the gods, ask them for a favor, or find out what their wishes were. Domestic animals—lambs, or young steers, or chickens—were killed in large numbers, their throats slit with a special knife and their blood gathered in a shallow dish for pouring on the altar. The meat was cooked, formally offered to the relevant god, and then eaten. Altars swam in the detritus of death.
Religious ceremonies had to be conducted with absolute accuracy; if a mistake was made or if there was some interruption—for example, if a rat squeaked or a priest’s hat fell off—the entire procedure had to be repeated.
In the earliest times, the Romans were animists; that is, they believed that numina, spirits, lived inside all natural objects—trees, rivers, dwellings. As time passed, they settled on a list of named deities, who looked and behaved like humans. Most of them were taken to have counterparts in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. Rome’s Jupiter was the same as Zeus; Juno, Hera; Minerva, Athena; Mercury, Hermes; Venus, Aphrodite; Mars, Ares; and so on. Apollo was the same in both languages. As the Republic’s horizons expanded, equivalences were found with the deities of other, non–Greco-Roman cultures.
There were few corners of a Roman’s life—whether public or private—that were not governed by ritual. Every home had a shrine to its lares and to its penates, the deities of the household stores.
In public life, a priest-king,
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