'By me, Mouse?'
'Bored by you, and disgusted by what has happened today.'
'Come,' he said, 'Vercingetorix played and lost. He's been the hell of a trouble to us. He knew the rules of the game. You can't blame Caesar for his triumph.'
'I don't,' I said, 'I blame him for…'
I paused.
'Be careful, Mouse,' Antony said. 'Be careful not to speak against the General.'
'Of course,' I said, 'one must never do that.'
Caesar: warts and all. Was he ever sincere? We would have died for him, died for his smile. All those of us who were his generals and lieutenants in Gaul felt the wand of the enchanter. We all feared him also, even Antony, who pretended to fear of no man. But I have seen him reduced to stammering and blushes by a cold look from Caesar. Even Casca could be abashed by him.
The first time I saw Caesar he was emerging from my mother's bedroom. I was a child at the time, perhaps nine or ten. It was a summer morning and I had woken early, and being unable to sleep again, had turned towards my mother for comfort. And as I approached her door, it opened, and this young man, whom I didn't know to be Caesar, emerged, in a short tunic. He stopped and smiled, and touched my cheek with his forefinger and then took my ear between thumb and forefinger and held me at arm's length.
'So this is Mouse,' he said, 'little Mouse of whom I have heard such fine things. They tell me you love Greek poetry.' I nodded.
'So do I, boy. We must discourse on it at some future and more propitious moment.'
Then he laughed, a laugh of pure merriment, and left me. I turned and followed him out of the house, watching him tip the porter, and my eyes lingered on him as he strolled away. Crossing the courtyard he tossed his folded toga over his shoulder. I had never seen a gentleman show himself in public in such a state of undress. I know now he took pleasure in advertising his conquests. I had no idea then why he had been in our house, and I did not understand that he was my mother's lover.
Of course he cared nothing for her. She, on the other hand, adored him. When I went through to see her, it was as if I was looking on someone I had never met.
In those days Caesar had not yet won a military reputation. He was known only for his debauchery and debts. But that too I learned later. When I heard men speak of Caesar in those terms, I could not connect the man so described with the magnificent carelessness of his manner. At the age of ten I became his slave even as my mother was. It was a secret we shared and kept from everyone, especially my father: our adoration of Caesar.
Later, I overheard my uncle ask him why he had not divorced my mother.
'On account of Caesar?' my father said. 'Dear boy, if every husband whom Caesar has cuckolded did that, Rome would be bereft of married couples. She is not likely to betray me with any other man. All us husbands make an exception of Caesar.'
Perhaps you see now why his soldiers sang in his Triumph:
Home we bring the bald whoremonger,
Romans, lock your wives away,
All his Gallic slaves and tribute,
Went his Gallic whores to pay.
And not only Gallic whores, that's for sure. Of course on one celebrated, but never fully explained, occasion, Caesar was on the other side, as it were, of the fence.
As a young man, when serving as an aide-de-camp to Marcus Thermus, the proconsul of Asia, Caesar was despatched on a diplomatic mission to King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Nobody knows exactly what transpired there, but I have heard Cicero (admittedly an inveterate and unreliable gossip) declare that 'Caesar was led by Nicomedes' attendants to the royal bedroom, where he lay on a golden couch, clad in a purple shifts Imagine that, my friends. Yes, indeed, that was how this descendant of Venus lost his virginity in Bithynia.' That may be nonsense, is almost certainly embroidered. But it was widely believed. The versifier Licinius Calvus published a little squib about
The riches of Bithynia's King
Who Caesar on his bed abused.
And once when Caesar was arguing in the Senate in defence of Nicomedes' daughter Nysa, and listing his own obligations to the King, Cicero, again, shouted out in his excitable provincial manner: 'Enough of that, if you please. We all know what he gave you, and what you surrendered to him in return.'
And it is true that there were certain Roman merchants in Bithynia at the time, who doubtless recounted what happened there; there is no good reason to suppose that their version was all lies.
Anyway, these things were widely bruited in Rome even when I was a boy, and that made Caesar appear in a curious fashion still more dazzling. Any other man would have been overwhelmed by the shame of it. Any other man would have hid his face and shunned public life. Not Caesar. He carried it off with the same swagger with which he could confront the son of the woman from whose bed he had risen. But I have often wondered whether he set himself to achieve the reputation he did win as a ladies' man precisely because of this stain on his honour. After all, nobody objects to a man who chooses to make love to boys, but to submit to the embraces of a man older than yourself is considered dishonourable in an adult. We call such a man a pathic, and generally despise him. That's true even of the Greeks, as you can read in Plato. Incidentally, Bibulus, who shared a consulship with Caesar in 59, actually described him in an edict as 'The Queen of Bithynia who once wanted to sleep with a monarch, but now wants to be one.'
Well, that comes closer to the point, of course.
What I am saying may appear evasive to any reader of this memoir — if I survive to finish it, and if it survives to find a reader — but I do not think the events in which I was concerned can begin to be understood if Caesar himself, in his manifold variety, is not at least offered for understanding.
Which leaves me with the question I can't answer: was there any other reason why the disgraceful episode with King Nicomedes did him so little lasting damage?
I once, years later, asked my mother if she believed Caesar had ever really loved her. She laughed.
'Of course not, darling,' she said. 'I adored him, but that was quite different. I couldn't even deceive myself at the time. I knew for instance that he was carrying on another affair simultaneously, with Postumia Sulpicius — a very silly woman by the way. No, Caesar wasn't like Pompey, who, it may surprise you to know, really adored the women with whom he was engaged. Of course, there was another difference. Pompey as a young man was really beautiful. You won't believe that, looking at him now; but he was so beautiful we used to say that every woman just wanted to bite him. Caesar was, I suppose, handsome, in a cold sneering sort of way, but it wasn't his looks that won him his successes, which, by the way, included Pompey's second wife, Mucia — or was she his third, I can't remember. Anyway she was the mother of three of his children, and Pompey thought she was absolutely secure. And so she was, till Caesar came along. He used to call Caesar 'Aegisthus', you know.' 'Aegisthus?'
'Oh, you are slow, Mouse. Aegisthus, the lover of Clytem nestra. Mind you, this didn't stop Pompey from marrying Caesar's daughter, years later. But you know that, of course. Poor girl.'
'Poor girl?'
'Well, Pompey was impotent by then, Mouse, besides being usually drunk by bedtime, they say. No, if you ask me there was only one woman that Caesar ever came close to loving, and I've never understood why.'
'Who was that?'
'Servilia. Your cousin Marcus' mother.' 'Servilia, that dragon?'
'She may seem a dragon to you, Mouse, but she's a very clever woman. She knew how to hold Caesar. He kept returning to her.'
'Well, I knew of course that they were allies, and that they'd had an affair. That was no secret. We used to make Markie weep about it when we were children. But all the same, that bore, with her constant talk about virtue and her relationship to the Gracchi. You really think he loved her?'
'Yes,' my mother said, 'which didn't stop her from prostituting your cousin Tertia for Caesar's delight.'
Tertia was a sweet little thing, not like her mother at all. She took to drink and died young. Perhaps my mother was right after all.
And of course Cicero, I remember, uttered one of his bons mots on the subject. When Caesar arranged two or three years ago to have some confiscated estates knocked down cheap to Servilia at what was supposed to be a public auction, Cicero said:
