It is hard otherwise to explain the remarkable authority of a man who in the mid-sixties BC had only just turned thirty, and held no office higher than the quaestorship. At an age when most senators would sit in respectful silence to listen to their seniors, Marcus Porcius Cato had a voice that boomed out across the Senate House floor. Rough and unadorned, it appeared to sound directly from the rugged, virtuous days of the earliest Republic. As an officer, Cato had ‘shared in everything he ordered his men to do. He wore what they wore, ate what they ate, marched as they marched.’14 As a civilian, he made a fashion out of despising fashion, wearing black because the party set all sported purple, walking everywhere, whether in blazing sunshine or icy rain, despising every form of luxury, sometimes not even bothering to put on his shoes. If there was more than a hint of affectation about this, then it was also the expression of a profoundly held moral purpose, an incorruptibility and inner strength that the Romans still longed to identify with themselves, but had rather assumed were confined to the history books. To Cato, however, the inheritance of the past was something infinitely sacred. Duty and service to his fellow citizens were all. Only after he had fully studied the responsibilities of the quaestorship had he been prepared to put himself up for election. Once in office, such was his probity and diligence that it was said he ‘made the quaestorship as worthy of honour as a consulship’.15 Plagued by a sense of its own corruption as it was, the Senate was not yet so degenerate that it could fail to be impressed by such a man.
To the grandees of the previous generation in particular, Cato served as an inspiration. They were quick to see in him the future of the Republic. Lucullus, for instance, eager to hand on his torch to a successor, chose to celebrate his divorce by marrying Cato’s half-sister. His new bride was an improvement on the old one only in the sense that her affairs were not incestuous, but the unfortunate Lucullus, once again saddled with a party girl for a wife, forbore for years to divorce her, out of respect for Cato. This did not mean that Cato himself was prepared to extend any special favours to his brother-in-law; far from it. If he believed that the good of the Republic was at stake, he would prosecute Lucullus’ friends, and indeed take on anyone whom he believed required a lesson in virtue. On occasions he even went so far as to lecture Catulus. Cato was not prepared to take part in the intrigues that everyone else took for granted, a display of inflexibility that would often baffle and infuriate his allies. Cicero, who admired Cato deeply, could nevertheless bitch that ‘he addresses the Senate as though he were living in Plato’s Republic rather than the shit-hole of Romulus’.16 Such criticism seriously underestimated Cato’s political acumen. Indeed, in many ways his strategy was the polar opposite of Cicero’s, who had made an entire career out of testing the limits of compromise. Cato moved to the rhythms of no one’s principles but his own. Drawing his strength from the most austere traditions of the Republic, he fashioned himself into a living reproach to the frivolities of his age.
It was a deliberate tactic on Cato’s part to make his enemies, in comparison to his own imposing example, appear all the more vicious and effeminate. Chasing after women and staying out drunk were not expressions of machismo to the Romans; the very opposite, in fact. Indulgence threatened potency. Gladiators, in the week before a fight, might need to have their foreskins fitted with metal bolts to infibulate them, but citizens were supposed to rely on self-control. To surrender to sensuality was to cease to be a man. Just as domineering women such as Clodia might be portrayed as vampires, ‘sapping’17 the appetites of those who succumbed to their charms, so gilded rakes like Clodius were savaged as creatures less than women. With unwearying relish, the same charge was repeated time and again.
Yet for all that this abuse reflected deeply held prejudices, there was something nervy and shrill about it. No Roman ever bothered striking at an enemy he did not fear. The signs of effeminacy were also the signs of knowingness, of superiority, of savoir faire. Fashion served the function it has always done: of distinguishing those who followed it from the common herd. In a society as competitive as the Republic this gave it an obvious and immediate appeal. Rome was filled with ambitious young men, all of them desperate for marks of public status. To be a member of the smart set was to sport precisely such marks. So it was that fashion victims would adopt secret signals, mysterious gestures such as the scratching of the head with a single finger. They grew goatees; their tunics flowed to the ankles and wrists; their togas had the texture and transparency of veils and they wore them, in a much-repeated phrase, ‘loosely belted’.18
This, of course, was precisely how Julius Caesar had dressed in the previous decade. It is a revealing correspondence. In the sixties as in the seventies, Caesar continued to blaze a trail as the most fashionable man in Rome. He spent money as he wore his toga, with a nonchalant flamboyance. His most dandyish stunt was to commission a villa in the countryside and then, the moment it had been built, tear it down for not measuring up to his exacting standards. Extravagance such as this led many of his rivals to despise him. Yet Caesar was laying down stakes in a high-risk game. To be the darling of the smart set was no idle thing. The risk, of course, was that it might result in ruin – not merely financial, but political too. It was noted by his shrewder enemies, however, that he never let his partying put his health at risk. His eating habits were as frugal as Cato’s. He rarely drank. If his sexual appetites were notorious, then he was careful to choose his long-term partners with a cool and searching caution. Cornelia, his wife, had died back in 69 BC and Caesar, looking for a new bride, had fixed his eye on Pompeia, the granddaughter of Sulla, no less. Throughout his career, Caesar was to prove himself keenly aware of the need for good intelligence, and this was as evident in his selection of mistresses as in his choice of a wife. The great love of his life was Servilia – who just happened to be the half-sister of Cato, and therefore the sister-in-law of Lucullus. Just for good measure, she was also Catulus’ cousin. Who knows what family confidences Servilia may have whispered into her lover’s ear?
No wonder that Caesar’s enemies grew to be wary of his resources of charm. Just as he thought nothing of blowing a fortune on a single pearl for Servilia, so he mortgaged his future to seduce his fellow citizens. More outrageously than anyone had ever done before, he translated the party spirit into the dimension of public life. In 65 BC, at the age of thirty-five, he became aedile. This was not a magistracy that it was obligatory for would-be consuls to have held, but it was popular all the same, because aediles were responsible for the staging of public games. As such, it was an opportunity tailor-made for a showman such as Caesar. For the first time, gladiators were adorned in silver armour. Glittering magnificently, over three hundred pairs of them fought it out for the entertainment of the citizenry. The display would have been even more dazzling had not Caesar’s enemies rushed through legislation to limit the numbers. Senators could recognise a shameless bribe when they saw it. They also knew that no bribes were ever offered without an expectation of a return.
In the great game of personal advancement Caesar’s profligacy was a high-risk but deliberate gambit. His enemies might condemn him as an effeminate dandy, but they also had to acknowledge him as an increasingly heavyweight political contender. Caesar himself, every so often, would rub their noses in this fact. As aedile, he was responsible not only for the games, but for the upkeep of public places. One morning Rome woke to find all the trophies of Marius, long a non-person, restored. The Sullan establishment was appalled. After Caesar had coolly admitted his responsibility, Catulus went so far as to accuse him of assaulting the Republic with a battering ram. Caesar, playing the innocent, responded with outrage himself. Had Marius not been just as great a hero as Sulla? Was it not time for the rival factions to bury the hatchet? Were they not all citizens of the same republic, after all? The mob, assembling in Caesar’s support, roared out its answer: ‘Yes!’ Catulus was left to splutter impotently. The trophies stayed in place.