We do not know what Julius Caesar looked like, we are mistaken with his name and we attribute amazing abilities to him: the author of the book "Here Was Rome" debunks several popular myths about the most famous hero of ancient history …
Julius Caesar is probably the most famous character in ancient, and indeed all ancient history. Only Alexander the Great can compete with him. Countless volumes of scientific works, popular biographies and fiction have been written about Caesar.
In the movies, he was played by such outstanding actors as John Gielgud, Rex Harrison, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Kieran Hinds. Sooner or later, a husk of myths and legends grows around any outstanding historical personality. Caesar did not escape this either.
Myth 1. His name was Caius Julius Caesar
Let's start with the name. Caesar, like almost every Roman boy from a good family, had three names: first, prenomenus, or personal name (Gaius) - there were very few of them in ancient Rome, Guy was among the most common; secondly, nomen, or generic name (Iulius), and thirdly, cognomen, originally a nickname with some kind of dictionary meaning, attached to the branch of the genus and became hereditary (Cicero - Goroshina, Naso - Nosaty).
What the word Caesar meant is unknown. There were many explanations: Caesar himself claimed that this was an "elephant" in the "Moorish language", and Pliny the Elder raised the word to the verb caedo, "cut, cut", claiming that the very first Caesar (not ours, but one of his ancestors) was born from a cut uterus, that is, as a result of a procedure later known as "caesarean section".
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Thanks to the glory of our Julius Caesar, his cognomen in various forms entered many languages of the world as a synonym for a ruler - Caesar, Kaiser, Tsar.
The variant of Kai (and not Guy) Julius Caesar has existed in everyday speech for a very long time. It is also found in literature: for example, in the fantastic story "Ghosts" by Turgenev, in "The Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov, or in "White Guard" by Bulgakov. A search in the corpus of Russian literature gives 18 results for the query "Kai Yuliy" versus 21 - "Gai Yuliy", almost equally.
Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy recalls an example from the "Logic" of the German Kantian philosopher Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter: "Kai is a man, people are mortal, therefore Kai is mortal" (in Kiesewetter: "Alle Menschen sind sterblich, Caius ist ein Mensch, also ist Caius sterblich"). This is also, of course, "Kai" Julius Caesar.
In languages with graphics based on the Latin alphabet, the variant of Caius instead of Gaius also continues to be found - not only in novels, but also, for example, in the books of the modern British popularizer of antiquity, Adrian Goldsworthy. This spelling is the result not so much of a misunderstanding, but of a kind of ancient Roman idea of fidelity to traditions.
Although the sounds [k] and [g] were always different in Latin, this difference was not initially reflected in writing. The reason was that in the Etruscan (or some other North Italian) alphabet, from which Latin developed, there was no stop [g].
When the amount of written information began to increase, and literacy spread (in antiquity, in principle, there were not so many free people who could not read and write at least at a primitive level), it became necessary to somehow distinguish letters denoting dissimilar sounds, and they added tail.
As the linguist Alexander Piperski notes, the letter G is an innovation with a diacritical mark like the letter E, only more successful in the historical perspective. The letter E, as you know, was popularized by Karamzin, and Roman lovers of antiquities recorded that G introduced into the alphabet a certain Spurius Carvilius - a freedman and the first owner of a private primary school in Rome - in the 3rd century BC. e.
The large letter C for the sound [g] was often used as the initials of the names Guy and Gnei (C and CN, respectively). Such initials were found in dedicatory inscriptions, on tombstones, and in other contexts of increased importance.
The Romans were very neurotic about such things and preferred not to change anything in them. Therefore, in the inscriptions from the 2nd century BC. e. we often see the letter G where it should be (for example, in the word AVG, abbreviation for Augustus), but the name Guy is abbreviated in the old fashioned way as C. The same with the name Gnei, which is abbreviated as CN (however, the form "Knei ", As far as we know, is not found anywhere in Russian).
Most likely, it was this ambiguity that caused the bifurcation of the popular Roman name into the correct Gaius and the erroneous Kai. Kai from Andersen's "The Snow Queen" most likely has nothing to do with Caesar - this is a common Scandinavian name, and there are many other etymological hypotheses about its origin, mainly going back to the Frisian languages.
Myth 2. We know what he looked like
Let's take a look at some sculptural portraits.
The first is the so-called Tusculan portrait, excavated in 1825 by Lucien Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I). It is kept in the Museum of Antiquities of the city of Turin. Several other sculptural images stored in the National Roman Museum, the Hermitage, the New Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, etc. belong to the same type.
Tusculan portrait from the Turin Museum of Antiquities. Dates back to 50-40 years BC.
A copy from the Tuskulan portrait. 1st century BC e. - 1st century AD e.
Copy from a Roman original of the 1st century A. D. e. Italy, XVI century.
The second common type of portrait of Caesar is the so-called bust of Chiaramonti (now kept in the Vatican Museums). It is adjoined by another bust from Turin, sculptures from Parma, Vienna and a number of others.
Bust of Chiaramonti. 30–20 BC
The famous "Green Caesar" is kept in the Berlin Antique Collection.
"Green Caesar" from the exposition of the Old Museum. 1st century BC e.
Finally, in the fall of 2007, another alleged bust of Julius Caesar was raised from the bottom of the Rhone River near the French city of Arles.
Bust of Julius Caesar of Arles. Approximately 46 BC e.
It is noticeable that even within one type the portraits are not very similar to each other, and if one compares one type with another, it is not at all clear how it can be the same person. At the same time, the ancient Roman portrait sculpture was distinguished by a very high level of realism and consistently achieved portrait likeness.
To be convinced of this, it is enough to look at the numerous portraits of later emperors - Augustus, for example, or Marcus Aurelius. They cannot be confused with each other or with anyone else.
What's the matter? The fact is that almost all of the antique sculptural portraits that have come down to us are not signed and their attribution is a highly conjectural matter. Signed portrait images were found only on coins, and Caesar was the first of the Romans whose image appeared on coins during his lifetime (this happened in 44 BC, and already on March 15 of this year, in the memorable Ides of March, he was killed).
Denarius Caesar, minted by the mint official Mark Mettiy, became the model for all later coins of the imperial period.
Obverse of Mark Mettius' denarius depicting Julius Caesar 44 BC e.
The 55-year-old Caesar was depicted on denarius with realism characteristic of the late republican era: a very long neck with folds, a protruding Adam's apple, a wrinkled forehead, a thin face, in some versions - wrinkles in the corners of the eyes, a wreath, which, according to rumors, Caesar camouflaged bald head.
Still, a coin is a special genre, and attribution of a sculptural bust on the basis of a stylized numismatic picture is an unreliable business.
Of course, the archeologists from Arles wanted as many people as possible to know about the Roman bust of outstanding quality - which is undoubtedly a rare find - and this should also help finance the work. And for this purpose, the "bust of Julius Caesar" is more suitable than the "bust of an unknown Roman." With the same caution, one must treat all the other sculptural images of Julius Caesar.
In the way the public imagines a particular character, reputation is often more important than credibility. If you google the Emperor Vitellius, the first thing you'll see is a bust from the Louvre depicting an obese, arrogant man with a triple chin.
Bust of a man (pseudo-Vitellius). A copy from an earlier sculpture. XVI century.
This correlates well with the image of the emperor, who, according to Suetonius, "was most distinguished by gluttony and cruelty." But the surviving coins show a completely different face - a man, too, not thin, but certainly not snub-nosed.
Denarius of Emperor Vitellius. 69 years old.
Myth 3. He could do several things at the same time
Have you ever heard from your mother or grandmother "Do not read while eating, you are not Guy (or Kai) Julius Caesar"? At the heart of this warning is the notion that Caesar could do several things at the same time and that this kind of multitasking was unique to most people.
First, this meme is the most widespread in Russia. In Western European cultures, there is no such stable expression, although the fact itself is known and sometimes mentioned. However, it is not easy to find it in the sources.
Suetonius in the life of Caesar does not say anything about this. Plutarch, referring to a certain Oppius, notes that Caesar "during the campaign also practiced dictating letters, sitting on a horse, taking simultaneously two or even … even more scribes."
This remark is inserted between the mention of dashing physical dexterity (“He knew how, by pulling his hands back and folding them behind his back, to launch the horse at full speed” - if it seems to you that this is not so difficult, I remind you that ancient horsemen did not use stirrups) and a story about the invention of SMS (“They say that Caesar first came to the idea of talking with friends about urgent matters through letters, when the size of the city and exceptional employment did not allow meeting in person”).
Julius Caesar dictates his sayings. Painting by Pelaggio Palaggi. XIX century.
Pliny the Elder speaks in more detail about this feature in his monumental work Natural History. He finds the mental alertness that distinguished Caesar unprecedented:
“It is reported that he could write or read, and at the same time - dictate and listen. He could dictate to his secretaries four letters at a time, and on the most important issues; and if he was not busy with anything else, then seven letters each”.
Finally, Suetonius, in his biography of Augustus, notes that Julius Caesar "read letters and papers or wrote answers to them" during circus games, for which he was criticized - and Augustus made efforts not to repeat this PR mistake of his adoptive father.
We see that we are not talking about real parallel processing, but (as it happens with computers) about fast switching from one task to another, about competent distribution of attention and prioritization.
The life of a public person in antiquity posed tasks for his memory and attention that were incomparable with those that modern people have to solve: for example, any speech, even hours long, had to be memorized (opportunities for improvisation, of course, existed, but the general outline in any case had to keep in mind). Nevertheless, even against this background, Caesar's abilities made an indelible impression on his contemporaries.
Napoleon Bonaparte, whose desire to imitate and surpass Caesar is well documented, was also famous for his ability to dictate up to seven letters at a time and, according to the memoirs of one of his secretaries, Baron Claude François de Meneval, attributed this superpower to his masterly technique, which in modern managerial jargon is called compartmentalization …
“When I want to distract myself from some business,” Napoleon said, according to Meneval, “I close the drawer in which it is stored and open another. The two things never mix, they don't bother or tire me. When I want to sleep, I close all the drawers."
This system with spatial visualization of topics or tasks also dates back to the times of classical antiquity.
Bonus. Where was Julius Caesar killed?
Caesar was killed on his way to the Senate meeting. This fact, combined with Shakespeare's authority (which places the scene of the assassination somewhere near the Capitol - that is, perhaps on the Forum, over the western part of which Capitol Hill rises), gives many the mistaken impression that he was killed directly in the Senate building …
Death of Julius Caesar. Painting by Jean Léon Jerome. 1859-1867.
The Senate building stands at the Forum even now and is even called the Julia Curia. But at the time of Caesar, he was not there: the old curia burned down during the riots preceding his reign, he ordered to build a new one, but did not have time to see it (it was completed under Augustus; the building that has survived to this day is even later, during the time of the emperor Diocletian) …
While there was no permanent place for meetings, the senators gathered wherever they could (this practice has always existed and did not stop after the construction of the curia). In this case, the meeting place was the portico of the recently erected Teatro Pompey; there the conspirators pounced on Caesar.
Today this point is located in a square called Largo di Torre Argentina. On it in the 1920s, the ruins of four very old temples of the Republican era were discovered.
Under Augustus, the place of Caesar's murder was walled up like a cursed one, and a public toilet was arranged nearby, the remains of which can be seen today.