Free Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford Page A

“his goods were seized, he was man-handled,” and Caesar “had him thrown into prison.”
    As for Curius, he was deprived of the honors that he had hoped to gain by a denouncement of conspirators. Nor did Caesar stop there, but immediately used his rank and position against a man called Novius Niger who had been president of the court which had heard the charge against him. Novius had overstepped himself, for Caesar was a magistrate of higher rank. In the protection of his dignity and rank Caesar was as fierce as a wildcat and determined to be treated with respect.
    In that same year of plot and violence and intrigue there occurred an even stranger affair. This was the matter of Publius Clodius, an aristocrat of old family who has been described as “one of the most profligate characters of a profligate age.” His fierce opposition to Cicero and his “rake hell” character may well have endeared him to Caesar but he stepped beyond the acceptable mark—even in Rome—at the festival of the Bona Dea. The Good Goddess was above all the goddess of women, and was one of those many manifestations of the Great Earth Mother who had once dominated much of the Mediterranean for millennia. She had reemerged disguised in many forms but her chief characteristics were always the same: she represented the female principle, those areas of the female cycle, of childbirth, of all that side of life from which men were automatically debarred. She was described by Cicero as “a goddess whose very name is a mystery beyond the power of man to know,” and her worship was conducted by the Vestal Virgins. Every year on the occasion of her festival, which was always held in the house of a magistrate, all the men of the house were compelled to leave and the mysteries attaching to the Good Goddess were conducted by the women.
    In the year 62 the house chosen for this celebration was that of Caesar, and his wife Pompeia was, as it were, the hostess. Now Pompeia herself—and who can blame her knowing Caesar’s sexual conduct—was not noted for her faithfulness, while Clodius had a reputation that even in Rome was considered scandalous: he was believed among much else to have had incestuous relations with his sister Clodia whom the poet Catullus loved. On this occasion, possibly because he wished to prosecute a love affair with Pompeia or, equally likely, because it seemed amusing to invade a sacred festival, Clodius had himself disguised as a woman and slipped into the house of Caesar. The story, based on Plutarch’s account, has often been told but it seems worth including since it gives so much of the atmosphere of the Rome that Caesar knew:
     
    As Pompeia was at that time celebrating this feast, Clodius, who as yet had no beard, and so thought to pass undiscovered, took upon him the dress and ornaments of a singing woman, and so came thither, having the air of a young girl. Finding the doors open, he was without any stop introduced by the maid, who was in the intrigue. She presently went to tell Pompeia, but as she was away a long time, he grew uneasy in waiting for her, and left his post and traversed the house from one room to another, still taking care to avoid the lights, till at last Aurelia’s woman met him, and invited him to play with her, as the women did among themselves. He refused to comply, and she presently pulled him forward, and asked him who he was, and whence he came. Clodius told her he was waiting for Pompeia’s own maid, Abra, being in fact her own name also, and as he said so, betrayed himself by his voice. Upon which the woman shrieking, ran into the company where there were lights, and cried out, she had discovered a man. The women were all in fright. Aurelia covered up the sacred things and stopped the proceedings, and having ordered the doors to be shut, went about with lights to find Clodius, who was got into the maid’s room that he had come in with, and was seized there. The women knew him, and drove him