Free Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford Page B

out of doors, and at once, that same night, went home and told their husbands the story.
     
    The scandal, which rocked Rome (inured to scandal as that city was), became transformed into a matter of politics, revolving around the question as to which court should be responsible for trying Clodius. Caesar’s position was an awkward one, and if Clodius (as some have suggested) had been acting at the instigation of Caesar’s enemies he could hardly have embarrassed him more. It was not the matter of his being perhaps the Cuckolded husband—such were common enough, and Caesar often responsible—but the fact that the attempted adultery and the sacrilegious intrusion into the rites of the Bona Dea had taken place in the house of the Pontifex Maximus. Because of his position Caesar’s wife was herself playing the role of a priestess at this gathering.
    What would Caesar do? The answer was, curiously enough as it then seemed, relatively nothing. True, he divorced his wife Pompeia, on the grounds that members of his household must be above suspicion: a remark that has often laughingly been quoted against him, but which was completely justified because of his status as the high priest of the Roman religion. At the trial of Clodius, Cicero, as defendant of Roman morality, very naturally spoke vehemently against the accused. Caesar, the injured husband—to most people’s astonishment—said that he had no knowledge of the affair. The fact was that he and Crassus had come to the conclusion that the rake Clodius was exactly the kind of man they needed to replace Catiline in working upon the passions of the Roman mob. Where Catiline had failed them, Clodius might succeed. Crassus, in fact, seems to have advanced Clodius enough money to bribe the majority of the jurors so that, despite his own feeble defense (which Cicero demolished), thirty-one of the jurors voted for his acquittal as against twenty-five who, true to their consciences or responding to Cicero’s oratory, pronounced him guilty. Despite the scandal, Caesar came out of the affair quite well, for he had probably long wanted to divorce Pompeia since she was childless. Also Clodius was now beholden to both Crassus and Caesar, Crassus for money and Caesar for his denial of any knowledge of the background for the charge.
    For some reason or other—perhaps because of the trial of Clodius—the allotment of the praetorial provinces was delayed until March that year. Caesar could now look forward to the rewards of his position, for he had drawn the governorship of Farther Spain—where he had served before as quaestor. His troubles were far from over, however, for his creditors in Rome began to press him so hard that it was even doubtful whether he would be able to get away to the province where he hoped to restore his finances. Once again Crassus came to his rescue, enabling Caesar to escape his most urgent creditors and assume his command. The province comprised Baetica, the Romanized and peaceful southern part of the peninsula, and Lusitania, western Spain and the mountainous spine of Portugal. The latter was scarcely settled and was a constant source of trouble to both the governors and the governed in the south. Caesar looked to it with anticipation as possibly providing him with the type of military success that could make a governor’s fame and fortune. He badly needed some military glory to counterbalance the great sun of Pompey that had risen in the East.
     
     

 
    9
     
    Pompey and Caesar
     
    OVERSHADOWING all these events in Rome, dwarfing the intrigues of Crassus and Caesar and the Clodius scandal, loomed the immense figure of Pompey the Great. Pompeius Magnus seemed at that time so much more distinguished than any other Roman. Yet, in fact, as any study of his life reveals, his career was hardly different from that of any conspicuous Roman of the time. It was only his outstanding successes, first in Africa against the last of the Marians, then against