BMCR 2009.05.11: Perry on Wyke, Caesar: A Life in Western Culture

Maria Wyke, Caesar: A Life in Western Culture.  Chicago:  University of
Chicago Press, 2008.  Pp. ix, 287.  ISBN 0226921530.  $25.00.

Reviewed by Jonathan S. Perry, University of South Florida
([email protected])
Word count:  2321 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-05-11.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/05/20090511.html
-------------------------------

At the Lausanne Conference in late 1922, journalists clambered for the
first interview with Benito Mussolini, the new Premier of Italy.  In
his passionate expose/ of the past crimes and future plans of this
contemporary Sawdust Caesar, George Seldes passed along a gem from
Lincoln Steffens, who won the brass ring of a private audience with the
Duce.  According to Steffens, Mussolini held a revolver in his hand and
sharply scrutinized everyone with whom he came into contact, observing,
"'I was looking for the fellow that is out to shoot me.'"  To Steffens'
question, "'What makes you think you'll be shot?'," Mussolini
responded, "'History.'" But, he continued, "'if a dictator knows
history, the dictator can look out and--shoot first.'"[[1]] Mussolini
was, of course, singularly ruthless and singularly lucky in this
regard, surviving three attempts on his life in 1926 alone.  The most
surprising of these was a shot fired by Violet Gibson, a 50-year-old
Irishwoman who had been prompted by "supernatural forces" to kill
Mussolini.[[2]]  The bullet grazed his nose, and with deft medical
attention, the wound was bandaged and the patient declared fit for
travel the following day.  Insisting that Miss Gibson should be treated
leniently and commenting to an American journalist, "'The bullets pass,
Mussolini remains,'" Mussolini mounted a ship for Tripoli in Libya,
with the second ship in his entourage named...the Julius Caesar.[[3]]

Because Mussolini features so prominently in Wyke's "metabiography" of
Caesar, it is appropriate to consider the various lessons that one
historical story can give, at least to those who are forearmed with an
indestructible self-image...and/or a revolver.  Wyke offers, in her
latest work, an intriguing alternative to a standard, linear biography
of a man who hardly needs another.  In fact, she claims, this
metabiography is "not an exploration of a life at the time of living,
but of key resonances of that life in subsequent periods."  Instead of
rehearsing the "canonic events" in Caesar's life, each chapter, she
notes, "begins with an examination of how that event was first
articulated, whether by Caesar himself or by other classical writers.
Then I explore selected receptions in some detail, ones which in my
view best illustrate" the appropriations of Caesar's image in various
historical contexts.(19)

While this is a fascinating approach, with much to recommend it, the
book under review falls short of its intended target in three respects,
set out in this overall statement of purpose.  First, there seems to be
no reason for subjecting these particular episodes of Caesar's long and
eventful life to rigorous exploration--and some of these are only
vaguely and tangentially related to the career of Julius Caesar,
specifically.  Second, the principal danger of examining the
"reception" of Caesar's life in such widely varying places and times
(13th-century France, 16th-century Germany and England, post-Napoleonic
Italy, the Second Empire of Napoleon III, Fascist Italy, and even the
21st-century USA) is that each chapter misses the unique historical
forces and events that shaped these modern eras.  This leads to the
third major problem in the work: that it simplifies "the" approach to
Caesar in these eras, leading to distorted conclusions about what
Caesar's name and legacy meant, based on very little (and sometimes
very bizarre) evidence.  The result is an idiosyncratic view of
receptions that, at least in the author's view, "best" illustrate a
period's take on the figure, but with no attempt to demonstrate why
this is the case.

I shall substantiate these points by examining certain chapters in
detail, and especially those that seem to have been created
specifically for this book.  (It should be noted here that a great deal
of the material in this volume has been published more fully, and with
more ample documentation, elsewhere, and that the book under review
seems to have been designed for a wider readership.)[[4]]  However, at
the conclusion, I shall propose an alternative vision of "reception
studies," or at least a more fundamental conversation about what
precisely these studies entail, especially now that we seem to be in
the midst of a veritable "renaissance of reception," with new
monographs, conferences, and edited volumes proliferating every year.

After a brief chapter of introduction, each of the following eight
chapters focuses the reader's attention upon one event, or series of
events, in Caesar's life--or afterlife, in the case of his deification
(Chapter 9)--as seen through the lenses of its later interpreters.  At
several points, and especially in Chapter 6 (on Caesar's triumphs,
ostensibly), the argumentation wanders away from C. Julius Caesar, and
toward "Caesarism," conflating vague resonances of "Caesars" with this
one individual.  The result is often confusing, and obscures the fact
that modern commentators may, themselves, have been hazy on the precise
contours of Caesar's career--preferring instead to comment on those who
possess the power of "a" Caesar.

While most chapters cover unique elements of Caesar's biography, only
one addresses his early career (i.e. before the 50s BCE).  Chapter 2,
"Audacity and Adventurism: Capture by pirates, c. 74 BC" briefly tells
the story of Caesar's captivity, and revenge on his captors, as it
appears in ancient sources, but then moves quickly to an engraving of
the incident by Bartolomeo Pinelli, for his Istoria Romana, published
in 1818-9.  One might conclude, from this gap of coverage, that the
incident was of little interest in the intervening 17 centuries between
Plutarch and Pinelli, but no explanation is made here of why this
particular engraving--one of 100 for the entire book--has been chosen
for special attention.  Stating that Pinelli's "political sympathies
(during a period of nascent nationalism in Italy) are apparent," (27)
Wyke makes no mention at all of Napoleon Bonaparte, who is very clearly
the model for the Caesar standing in the pirate ship.  Rather than
seeing a "disdainful tyrant" and "an imperious captain" controlling his
current ship of state, one might conclude exactly the opposite: that
Pinelli was here expressing his admiration for Caesar's, and by
extension, for Napoleon's sangfroid.  In fact, Pinelli also produced a
watercolor of an allegorical Roma holding the little Re di Roma
(Napoleon II) in 1811--an item that is displayed today in the Museo
Napoleonico in Rome.

Leaving the 19th century behind, Wyke shifts abruptly to two novels
that mention the captivity of Caesar, published in 1999 and 2000, and
then to an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (during the course of
which we learn of the existence of "Xenites"), and then to a digital
strategy game called The Rise of Rome, released in 1998.  While popular
culture is, in itself, an important indicator of general attitudes,
there is no statement concerning why these particular references to the
incident were chosen, and not others, from the same period.  Indeed,
Colleen McCullough produced a widely read series of novels in the 1990s
and 2000s focusing upon Caesar's career, and the pirate episode is
reproduced in full in her 1994 Fortune's Favorites.  Moreover, a 2002
television mini-series entitled Julius Caesar dramatized the pirate
story in roughly 10 minutes, giving Caesar the chance to spar with his
pirate captors--in a scene that anticipates his (unintentionally
amusing) attempt to fight back, Rambo-style, during his assassination
in the film's final moments.  (To be fair, though, this film may not
have been released in the UK, unlike Xena, which, we are told, "was
broadcast on approximately two hundred stations across the States and
also shown in many other countries worldwide."(33)) Most disturbingly,
though, Wyke merely notes that references to the pirates "emerge" in
recent popular culture "over and over again" (28), but she offers no
explanation of why this should be the case, or what we should conclude
about popular attitudes to Caesar as a result.

The reader continues to be bombarded with disconnected, albeit
interesting, details in the following chapter, on "Courage, Cruelty and
Military Acumen: War in Gaul, 58-51 BC."  While she makes the important
point that Napoleon III could glorify both Caesar and Vercingetorix,
with his sponsorship of excavations at Alise-Sainte-Reine, she does not
adequately account for the shifting interpretations of Caesar in Third
Republic France and beyond.  While Wyke may not have space to repeat
the detailed arguments of Amalvi, King, or Hemmerle on this theme [5],
she should note the essential paradox that can be found in most Western
European nations, including Italy, in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries: the legacy of the Roman Empire could also be celebrated
through the "barbarians" who resisted Rome's legions.  Thus, the
Germans, with their Kaiserreich, also had their Hermannsdenkmal in
Detmold (erected in 1875, with its sword pointed at France), the
British, with Britannia ruling the waves, also had their Boadicea along
the Thames (sculpted by Thornycroft in 1902), the Portuguese their
Viriathus (installed by a Spanish sculptor in Portuguese Viseu in
1940), and the Italians had both their Caesars and Spartacus, who
encounters Caesar in a memorable scene of Raffaello Giovagnoli's 1874
novel Spartaco.  In an age of rival nationalisms, both the Romans and
their opponents could thus be subjected to a procrustean couch--all in
the name of national glory, and with the vague notion that "Roman"
images would lend cultural cachet to whatever position one wished to
adopt.  Moreover, the cultural politics of Aste/rix deserve fuller
attention than is offered here.  In the cartoons, Jules Ce/sar is
probably meant to be an American, but the specific context of Charles
De Gaulle's rise in 1958, and Aste/rix's first appearance in 1959,
should be addressed.  In this context, one might also add a small line
from Vadim's Les liaisons dangereuses.  In this film, produced in 1959,
Jeanne Moreau coyly comments on an American, "Il est venu, il a vu, il
a vaincu."

While Napoleon III features prominently in Wyke's interpretation of
"Caesarism," Mussolini is by far the most referenced figure in the
book, with his image forming the core of Chapters 4 (on the Rubicon
crossing) and 7 (on the dictatorships).  Nevertheless, as in her more
detailed articles on the subject, Wyke may here be exaggerating the
importance of Julius Caesar, specifically, in the crafting of
Mussolini's self-image.  It is easy to be misled here, especially given
the powerful images furnished by Fellini, in both Amarcord and Roma, of
a childhood in Rimini (Ariminum).  This town was, of course, host to
Caesar on his first night after crossing into Italy, and one should
also note, as she does not, that Mussolini himself hailed from
Predappio, very near the Rubicon crossing.[[6]]  While one might
conclude that the famous--and, as she rightly points out, largely
fictitious--Marcia su Roma in 1922 was made in emulation of Caesar, the
Fascists themselves preferred to connect the March to that of Octavian,
in 43 BCE.  Such linkages are particularly pronounced in the works of
Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of Education for the regime, 1936-1943.[[7]]

The Fascists' motive in drawing the connection to Octavian, rather than
to Julius Caesar, is obvious--Mussolini (mistakenly, it turned out)
declared that, "I shall die a natural death,"[[8]] and Caesar's final
act, falling under 23 stab-wounds, was not something any wise
politician would willingly emulate.  This is particularly clear in
Mussolini's archaeological politics: he turned his archaeologists'
attention away from the Largo Argentina, after desultory excavations in
1926-1929, and toward projects like the vigorous "sventramento"
(gutting) and "isolamento" (isolating) of Augustus' Mausoleum.  The
reason for this feverish activity was the Bimillenary celebration of
Augustus' birth, due to commence on 23 September in Fascist Year XV
(1937).

This leads to what should be the culminating chapter of the book,
Chapter 8, on the legacy of the Ides of March.  Wyke here comments, as
one would expect, on Shakespeare's tragedy and contemporary productions
of it, especially the 2005 New York revival, complete with modern
dress, metal detectors for errant knives, and post-9/11 musings on
Homeland Security and "patriotism" under the Bush-Cheney
Administration.  Nevertheless, the best portions of this chapter are an
analysis of Orson Welles' 1937 staging of the play--with updated
Fascist costumes for Caesar and his minions--and a commentary on the
poignant, though often cut, scene of the mob's mistaken vengeance on
Cinna the Poet.  The assassination is the defining moment in Caesar's
life, and deserves its own treatment--in fact, it has already received
one, in Greg Woolf's remarkable Et Tu, Brute.[[9]]  Woolf does
precisely, in his final chapter, what Wyke attempts to do here--but he
pays much closer attention to the ironies, paradoxes, and complexities
of glorifying an assassin, and builds on Lily Ross Taylor's comments on
"Catonism," as well as "Caesarism."  The state motto of Virginia
remains "Sic semper tyrannis," despite Booth's ridiculously
inappropriate use of it in April 1865--and yet it also underscores the
fact that "reception" is a tricky business, in any historical period.

Wyke has made signal contributions to the important field of reception
studies, but perhaps it is time to re-evaluate and reassess the current
trajectory of this scholarship.  This is a particularly urgent matter
if, as I am suggesting here, we classicists may be misunderstanding
what our colleagues in modern historical fields take for granted.  For
only two of many examples, an expert in 20th-century cultural history
would probably point to the political leanings (right-wing) of
Kladderadatsch, with an illustration from it profiled on p. 177, as
well as the specific events being referenced in the image, from
February 1926 (after Mussolini's declaration of his constitutional
position on 24 December 1925).  An early modernist or an art historian
would surely alert us to the fact that Melchior Feselen (p. 52) was
inspired by the Sack of Rome in 1527 in his drawing of the siege of
Alesia in 1533 (and in another sketch of the siege of Rome by Lars
Porsenna, from 1529).  Accordingly, a better approach to this sort of
study might be to explore a historical figure like Caesar against the
backdrop of only one carefully delineated place and period--bearing
constantly in mind the full measure of this wider context and expecting
that "receptions" of any figure are bound to be internally
inconsistent, even within one culture.


------------------
Notes:


1.   George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and
Fascism, New York: Harper Bros., 1935, p. 224.

2.    On Gibson's interrogation and motivations, see Enrico Ferri, "A
Character Study and Life History of Violet Gibson, who attempted the
life of Benito Mussolini, on the 7th of April, 1926," translated by
Mary Flint Cassola, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law
and Criminology 19 (1928): 211-219.

3.   Seldes, p. 227, and "Mussolini Trionfante," Time Magazine 19 April
1926.

4.   Portions of Chapters 4, 7, and 8 (on Caesar and Mussolini) are
built on her "Sawdust Caesar: Mussolini, Julius Caesar, and the drama
of dictatorship," in Michael Biddiss and Maria Wyke (eds.), The Uses
and Abuses of Antiquity, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 167-186; Chapter 5
(on Caesar and Cleopatra) covers much of the same ground explored in
Ch. 8 of her The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations,
Oxford, 2002; and a significant portion of Chapter 7 (on Caesar and
George W. Bush) is derived from her "A Twenty-First-Century Caesar," in
M. Wyke (ed.), Julius Caesar in Western Culture, Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2006, pp. 305-323.  Moreover, the contributions of other scholars to
both the 1999 and the 2006 edited volumes stand behind many of the
specific arguments developed throughout this book.

5.   C. Amalvi, "De Vercinge/torix a\ Aste/rix, de la Gaule a\ De
Gaulle, ou les me/tamorphoses ide/ologiques et culturelles de nos
origines nationales," DHA 10 (1984): 285-318; Anthony King,
"Vercingetorix, Asterix and the Gauls: Gallic symbols in French
politics and culture," in R. Hingley, Images of Rome: Perceptions of
ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the modern age,
Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2001, pp. 114-125; and
Oliver Benjamin Hemmerle, "Crossing the Rubicon into Paris: Caesarian
Comparisons from Napoleon to De Gaulle," in Wyke (2006), pp. 285-302.

6.   On Rimini, see especially Ray Laurence, "Tourism, town planning
and romanitas: Rimini's Roman heritage," in Biddiss/Wyke (1999), pp.
187-205.

7.   Among many other works, Giuseppe Bottai, "L'Italia d'Augusto e
l'Italia d'oggi," Roma 15 (1937): 37-54.

8.   Seldes, p. 228.

9.   Greg Woolf, Et Tu, Brute?: The Murder of Caesar and Political
Assassination, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, esp. Ch.
4, "Aftershocks."