Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 9,001
The wind is turning ...!
On March 20, 44 B.C. in Rome, in front of a large crowd, the public funeral of the five days earlier during a Senate session in the theater of Pompey ...
... murdered sole ruler ("dictator for life") Gaius Iulius Caesar ...
... took place.
The funeral speech is given by the murdered man's close confidante, Marcus Antonius.
We don't know what it really looked like - both images here are said to have been created "after life". Both views, however, show the dominant chin and the certain brutal streak that the man who is described in the sources as "very strong" must have had.
Antonius was lucky because he was supposed to be killed together with Caesar - his life was saved by one of the leaders of the Caesar murderers, Marcus Junius Brutus ...
... stood up for him.
After the murder, Antonius barricaded himself in his apartment for days - then secretly negotiated with the Senate and confirmed all the titles, offices and endowments bestowed on the Senators by Caesar (without having any right to do so).
The senators thanked Antonius for the preservation of his property and decided that he should give the funeral speech for Caesar!
Well, on March 20th, Antonius, already an accomplished rhetorician, will be in top form!
In order to grab the people emotionally, he shows the torn and blood-smeared toga of the murdered Caesar ..:
We don't know whether it was the real toga or a skillfully prepared prop!
However, we know from the sources that Caesar in the last weeks of his life constantly walked around in the toga of the triumphant - and it was red and not white like the one Antonius showed the crowd! (And on a red toga the crowd couldn't have seen the blood so well ...)
Then Antonius reads out Caesar's testament, which had been fetched from the Vesta temple ...:
The most important part - for the devoutly listening people:
From his "private fortune", Caesar bequeathed to each of the Roman plebs (that was the lower and middle classes) the noteworthy sum of 300 sesterces!
That was a lot of money!
At that time a legionnaire received 1 sesterces pay per day, the daily work of a craftsman cost 1.5 sesterces, for a good mule you had to put 520 sesterces on the table, half a liter of country wine cost between 0.25 and 0.5 sesterces a mode of wheat (8.73 pounds) 4 sesterces!
I deliberately put "private assets" in quotation marks because Caesar had been destitute at the beginning of his career and had a huge pile of debts when he went to Gaul after his consulate.
He had robbed a substantial part of his "fortune" when the Gaul subjugated Gaul! You could write the same thing about the sole ruler that you wrote a few generations later about the governorship of Publius Quinctilius Varus ...:
"Poor he entered a rich country, rich he left a poor country."
Well, the crowds are cheering so carefully - the wind is starting to turn in Rome!
If the mood was still undecided immediately after the Caesar murder (with certain sympathies for the Caesar murderers, who claimed to want to restore the republic), the wind is now turning to "pro Caesar" (and of course pro Antonius, who is acting as his friend and administrator).
On this day Antonius is so permeated by his self-appropriate honesty that he neglected to open Caesar's will beforehand, to read it and - if necessary - to forge it!
Because now he cannot help but read out the last paragraph that the document contains:
In his will, Caesar declares that he has adopted a son and principal heir: his great-nephew Gaius Octavius.
"Gaius Who?" asks the people.
Nobody knows the tender, always ailing 15-year-old who attends the ceremony with a dreamy look and chews on his lower lip.
Well, they will soon get to know him, the later Augustus ...
For the time being, however, other things are important.
While Caesar's corpse is now flaring up in the fire, the plebs are pondering what to do with their 300 sesterces and the members of the upper class are whispering excitedly about Octavius, the leaders of the Caesar murderers, Gauius Junius Brutus and Marcus Cassius Lentulus ...
... hurry the pack sack over the horse, put yourself in the saddle and get you out of Rome! Go to the provinces where there are legions loyal to the Republic!
They both have two more years to live - and will each other at the end of October 42 BC. C.E. after the battle of Philippi (in Macedonia) lost against Marcus Antonius and Gaius Octavius (who now calls himself Octavian) with his own hands ...
For Marcus Antonis, the clock will continue to run for 14 years:
He will also die with his own hand in the palace of his lover Cleopatra in Alexandria on August 1, 30 B.C., so as not to fall alive into the hands of his current friend and later bitter rival for power, Gaius Octavianus ...
On March 20, 44 B.C. in Rome, in front of a large crowd, the public funeral of the five days earlier during a Senate session in the theater of Pompey ...
... murdered sole ruler ("dictator for life") Gaius Iulius Caesar ...
... took place.
The funeral speech is given by the murdered man's close confidante, Marcus Antonius.
We don't know what it really looked like - both images here are said to have been created "after life". Both views, however, show the dominant chin and the certain brutal streak that the man who is described in the sources as "very strong" must have had.
Antonius was lucky because he was supposed to be killed together with Caesar - his life was saved by one of the leaders of the Caesar murderers, Marcus Junius Brutus ...
... stood up for him.
After the murder, Antonius barricaded himself in his apartment for days - then secretly negotiated with the Senate and confirmed all the titles, offices and endowments bestowed on the Senators by Caesar (without having any right to do so).
The senators thanked Antonius for the preservation of his property and decided that he should give the funeral speech for Caesar!
Well, on March 20th, Antonius, already an accomplished rhetorician, will be in top form!
In order to grab the people emotionally, he shows the torn and blood-smeared toga of the murdered Caesar ..:
We don't know whether it was the real toga or a skillfully prepared prop!
However, we know from the sources that Caesar in the last weeks of his life constantly walked around in the toga of the triumphant - and it was red and not white like the one Antonius showed the crowd! (And on a red toga the crowd couldn't have seen the blood so well ...)
Then Antonius reads out Caesar's testament, which had been fetched from the Vesta temple ...:
The most important part - for the devoutly listening people:
From his "private fortune", Caesar bequeathed to each of the Roman plebs (that was the lower and middle classes) the noteworthy sum of 300 sesterces!
That was a lot of money!
At that time a legionnaire received 1 sesterces pay per day, the daily work of a craftsman cost 1.5 sesterces, for a good mule you had to put 520 sesterces on the table, half a liter of country wine cost between 0.25 and 0.5 sesterces a mode of wheat (8.73 pounds) 4 sesterces!
I deliberately put "private assets" in quotation marks because Caesar had been destitute at the beginning of his career and had a huge pile of debts when he went to Gaul after his consulate.
He had robbed a substantial part of his "fortune" when the Gaul subjugated Gaul! You could write the same thing about the sole ruler that you wrote a few generations later about the governorship of Publius Quinctilius Varus ...:
"Poor he entered a rich country, rich he left a poor country."
Well, the crowds are cheering so carefully - the wind is starting to turn in Rome!
If the mood was still undecided immediately after the Caesar murder (with certain sympathies for the Caesar murderers, who claimed to want to restore the republic), the wind is now turning to "pro Caesar" (and of course pro Antonius, who is acting as his friend and administrator).
On this day Antonius is so permeated by his self-appropriate honesty that he neglected to open Caesar's will beforehand, to read it and - if necessary - to forge it!
Because now he cannot help but read out the last paragraph that the document contains:
In his will, Caesar declares that he has adopted a son and principal heir: his great-nephew Gaius Octavius.
"Gaius Who?" asks the people.
Nobody knows the tender, always ailing 15-year-old who attends the ceremony with a dreamy look and chews on his lower lip.
Well, they will soon get to know him, the later Augustus ...
For the time being, however, other things are important.
While Caesar's corpse is now flaring up in the fire, the plebs are pondering what to do with their 300 sesterces and the members of the upper class are whispering excitedly about Octavius, the leaders of the Caesar murderers, Gauius Junius Brutus and Marcus Cassius Lentulus ...
... hurry the pack sack over the horse, put yourself in the saddle and get you out of Rome! Go to the provinces where there are legions loyal to the Republic!
They both have two more years to live - and will each other at the end of October 42 BC. C.E. after the battle of Philippi (in Macedonia) lost against Marcus Antonius and Gaius Octavius (who now calls himself Octavian) with his own hands ...
For Marcus Antonis, the clock will continue to run for 14 years:
He will also die with his own hand in the palace of his lover Cleopatra in Alexandria on August 1, 30 B.C., so as not to fall alive into the hands of his current friend and later bitter rival for power, Gaius Octavianus ...
