If so, then it would only serve to emphasise a glaring omission in accounts of Caesar’s childhood – mention of his father’s influence. By supervising her son’s upbringing so closely, Aurelia, model parent though she was, ran the risk of stepping on her husband’s toes. The freedoms granted to Roman women may have been exceptional by the standards of the age, but the authority of a Roman father was even more so. His powers of life and death did not end with the acceptance of a child into his household. His daughters, even once they had been married off, might well remain his wards, while his sons, no matter how old they grew, no matter how many magistracies they might win, never ceased to be his dependants. There was no father quite so patriarchal as a Roman one. As was invariably the case with the Republic, however, rights brought obligations. At the census every head of a household would be asked whether he had married for the purpose of having children. It was a citizen’s patriotic duty to contribute to his city’s future manpower. More immediate, however, and no doubt far more keenly felt, was a father’s duty to the prestige of his family. Status in the Republic was not inherited. Instead, it had to be re-earned over each successive generation. The son who failed to equal the rank and achievements of his ancestors, the daughter who neglected to influence her husband in the interests of her father or her brothers – both brought public shame on their family. It was the responsibility of the pater familias to ensure that such a calamity never occurred. As a result, child-rearing, like virtually every other aspect of life in the Republic, reflected the inveterate Roman love of competition. To raise heirs successfully, to instil in them due pride in their blood-line and a hankering after glory, these were achievements worthy of a man.
Caesar’s own ambitions were one day to consume the entire Republic. His father must have had some influence in fostering them. There were certain things in Rome that it took a man to teach. The young Gaius’ most valuable lessons would have come not at his mother’s feet but standing beside his father as he greeted political allies, or strolling across the Forum, or overhearing gossip at a senator’s banquet. Only by breathing in the subtle scents of power at first hand could a boy hope to develop a nose for the Republic’s manifold complexities. Caesar’s father was well connected, and his name would have opened many doors. In return he would also have held an open house himself. The Romans had little concept of private space. The town house of an aristocrat was less a domestic retreat than a stage on which he could pose and be admired, a projection in stone of how he wished to be seen. Distant from the centres of power the Julians’ mansion may have been, surrounded by the taverns and slums of the sloping Subura, yet it would still have provided Caesar’s father with a formidable headquarters. Suitors and clients would have thronged its hallway. The relationship of such dependants to their patron constituted yet another cross-current that had to be mastered by the aspirant politician. Exploited properly, the support of clients might prove crucial to his ambitions. A Roman aristocrat was always careful to look after his own. The more influential he became, the more clients would inevitably be drawn to his flame. After 92 BC, the year in which Caesar’s father became a praetor, his retinue would have begun to mark him out as a figure of consequence. But would it have been large enough to satisfy the expectations of his eight-year-old son?
These were immense. To an extent that was regarded as excessive even by Roman standards, Caesar never let slip a chance to insist on the respect due to his ancestry. His descent from Venus had been drummed into him from his earliest years. His family mansion wore the appearance of a shrine to the Julian name. Beyond a portico designed to echo the features of a temple, the walls of the atrium were hung with forbidding images, the wax death-masks of magistrates, bearing witness to the honours won by the family in the past. Painted lines connected the portraits, reaching backwards into time, towards a Trojan hero and, beyond him, a goddess. Foreign observers were in no doubt about the effect of such a spectacle on an impressionable child. ‘It would be hard to imagine a more impressive scene for a youth who aspires to win fame and practise virtue.’6 The Romans themselves described children’s spirits as blazing like flames at the sight.7 Correspondingly, however, an heir to a great mansion who proved himself unworthy of its heritage was a figure of scorn. ‘It is dreadful when men can walk by it and say, “Venerable old house, dear oh dear, what a let down your current owner is!”’8 In Caesar’s case, contemplation of his family’s ancient glories could only have emphasised its recent honour-famine. His father might have been a praetor, but he was not a consul. He might have been followed by a retinue of clients whenever he walked through the Forum, but he could not call on entire cities or even provinces filled with his clients, as the very greatest families could. Pompey’s, for instance, arriviste though it may have been, was able to mobilise a swath of territories in eastern Italy. The treacherous and brutal Strabo had been an exemplary parent. It was by studying a eulogy of his father’s achievements that Pompey had first learned to read. By contrast, we know nothing of the youthful Caesar’s reading, only what he wrote. The themes of these compositions must have been recognised by his contemporaries as significant, else the memory of them would not have been preserved. One was written ‘in praise of Hercules’,9 greatest of the Greek heroes, the secret son of Jupiter, whose achievements ultimately won him immortality. Another told the story of Oedipus.
Whatever Caesar’s precise views of his father may have been – and it is perilous to argue from silence – one thing is certain: a far more impressive role-model was readily to hand. Following his year as praetor, Caesar’s father was appointed to the governorship of Asia. This was a plum posting. Only some strong string-pulling behind the scenes could have fixed it. Mithridates was yet to launch his invasion, but Marius was already angling for some form of Eastern command. The sudden elevation of his in-law had the general’s fingerprints all over it. As first the Italians’ revolt and then civil war engulfed the Republic, Marius continued to serve as the patron of his Julian relations. Just before his death, during his bloodstained seventh consulship, he planned to shoehorn the young Caesar into the priesthood of Jupiter, a post that demanded a patrician and had been left vacant by the forced suicide of its previous incumbent. Since Caesar was only thirteen, the office had to be kept on hold for him, but already, just a child, he had been sucked directly into the vortex of the civil war.
In 84 Caesar’s father died – of what we are not told. In the same year Caesar himself set aside his bulla, draped his body in the heavy folds of a grown man’s toga and officially came of age. The consul Cinna, Rome’s strongman following Marius’ death, now moved fast. Caesar’s priesthood was officially confirmed. The sixteen-year-old must already have cut an impressive figure, because Cinna also offered him the hand of his daughter, Cornelia. Caesar was engaged at the time, but no young man was going to miss out on the chance of having the Republic’s supremo as his father-in-law. Marriage in Rome was a typically unsentimental business. Love was irrelevant, politics was all. Upper-class women, especially if they proved fertile, were prized stakes in the dice game of advancement. Because girls were far more likely to be exposed at birth than boys, there was a permanent lack of eligible fiancées. ‘Spinster’ is another modern word, like ‘baby’, with no equivalent in Latin. So keen were fathers to cash in on their daughters’ marriageability that girls would typically come of age some three or four years before their brothers. The moment a girl had celebrated her twelfth birthday she could expect to be veiled behind the traditional saffron of a bride. If a wife remained her father’s ward – and most wealthy women did – then her loyalty to her husband might at best prove shallow. Marriages could be formed and broken with dizzying speed, for a sudden reversal of alliances might require an equally sudden divorce. For as long as Caesar had Cornelia as his wife he could be confident of Cinna’s favour. A man did not need to love his wife to prize her all the same.