BMCR 2009.07.29: Westall on Billows, Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome. Roman Imperial Biographies

Richard A. Billows, Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome. Roman Imperial
Biographies.  London/New York:  Routledge, 2009.  Pp. xv, 312; 6 p. of
plates.  ISBN 9780415333146.  $120.00.

Reviewed by Richard Westall ([email protected])
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Richard Billows has written a detailed and engaging biography of Julius
Caesar that is primarily aimed at an audience unacquainted with the
Graeco-Roman world and Classical scholarship.  For this reason, the
work is not merely a biography, but also an account of the period in
which Caesar lived.  Structured accordingly, this work is dedicated to
providing a rather meticulous chronicle of the political and military
history of the last century of the Republic, with some attention to the
period's socio-economic realities, as viewed through the lens provided
by the life of Caesar.

This book is divided into ten chapters of more or less equal
dimensions.  After a prologue, in which Billows sets the stage by
asking how Caesar came to cross the Rubicon and unleash a civil war,
the first chapter is dedicated to setting forth the background for the
histoire e/ve/nementielle of the first century BCE.  The second chapter
treats of the early years of Caesar's life and recounts the political
and military history of the 90s and 80s BCE.  The third chapter deals
with the 70s BCE, providing a contrast between Caesar's traditional
entry into Roman politics and the meteoric rise of Pompeius Magnus.
The fourth chapter recounts the events of the 60s BCE, investigating
Caesar's involvement -- or lack thereof -- with figures such as
Pompeius and Catilina.  The fifth chapter focuses exclusively upon the
events of Caesar's first consulate in the highly controversial year 59
BCE.  The sixth chapter follows Caesar abroad so as to narrate the
conquest of Transalpine Gaul in the years 58-50 BCE.  The seventh
chapter provides a narrative for the political manoeuvres that
transpired at Rome during this same period.  The eighth chapter
provides a respite from the increasing tension of the political and
military narrative by focussing upon the literary contributions of
Caesar, providing a brief analysis and contextualization of Caesar's
oeuvre.  The ninth chapter resumes the progression of histoire
e/ve/nementielle with an account of the civil war fought in the years
49-45 BCE.  The tenth and final chapter narrates the events leading up
to Caesar's assassination, offering an analysis of that event.  An
epilogue highlights the lasting influence exerted by Caesar even in
death, arguing for his unique position in history as the charismatic
leader of a political and social movement.  The life of Caesar proves a
vehicle for narrating the political and military history of the late
Republic, whereas that traditional historical narrative in turn affords
a proper understanding of Caesar.  This is biography in the best of the
Classical tradition, and as it must be written -- if the endeavour is
to be attempted at all -- for any figure in the Graeco-Roman world.

Billows has written a learned book that is alternately a pleasure to
read and quite frustrating.  The narrative is replete with details, but
proves anything other than tedious.  The analyses that accompany this
narrative are clear and frequently appealing.  The documentation is
focussed upon ancient literary sources rather than modern treatments.
In short, this "biography" of Caesar will prove of interest and
possible use for a general readership as well as for Classicists
perhaps wishing to round out or review what they know from prior study
of the subject.  But the lack of direct citation of the sources is
troubling, for it is always the authorial voice of Billows that readers
hear.  Exemplary is the fact that Caesar left extensive writings, but
not once are readers given a direct quote from this invaluable source
as to the man's actions and personality.[[1]]  Moreover, Billows is
capable of indulging in historical fiction with alarming ease and lack
of sufficient notice for the unwary reader.  So, for example, he
provides guest-lists for two dinner-parties held on the eve of Caesar's
assassination.  That attended by Caesar is imagined as having included
Cleopatra.[[2]]  That held by C. Cassius is entirely hypothetical.
Only in the end-notes does Billows notify his readers of the nature of
this historical reconstruction (pp. 282 nn. 1-2).  Undergraduates and
the ingenuous will have a field day with items like this.

Readers are advised against looking to this work for any particularly
new insights into the world of the late Republic.  Billows is open to
the critical ideas of an "outsider" such as M. Parenti (as regards the
credibility of Cicero and later sources for the so-called "Catilinarian
conspiracy") and advances credible (to a certain degree) reasons for
viewing the political history of the last century of the Republic as
dominated by two opposed political movements:  optimates and populares.
But, as is the case with all recent works of this sort dedicated to
Caesar, he shows himself by and large willing to repeat what is to be
found within the modern vulgate.  Hence, to cite but one example,
Billows writes that "Caesar and his officers were enormously enriched"
by their conquest of Gaul in the 50s BCE (p. 164).  The wealth of Gaul
was described in glowing terms by contemporaries, and many of those who
associated with Caesar did so for the sole purpose of being "covered in
gold".[[3]]  But the account of Billows, like that of most of his
predecessors from Mommsen onwards, accepts this evidence at face value.
In the wake of the Bernard Madoff scandal and similar situations, we
would do well to exercise a critical spirit and express scepticism over
Caesar's financial gains from his arduous campaigning in the north.  In
a passage that has been consistently overlooked by modern scholars,
Suetonius relates that Pompeius believed Caesar to be financially
insolvent on the eve of civil war and for this reason to be desirous of
a conflict.[[4]]  Even had the Romans maintained accounts as is done
today and even if these survived, the situation would be complicated,
as the proposed modern parallel with Madoff shows.  Nevertheless, such
a critical questioning of the evidence and hypotheses of this sort are
what we might expect of a work that seeks to revolutionise our vision
of the late Republic and prove a lasting contribution to the field.
Billows has written a book that is highly readable and competently
fashioned, but it is unlikely to prove a standard work of reference as
was the case with R. Syme's Roman Revolution, M. Gelzer's Caesar, or
E.S. Gruen's The Last Generation of the Roman Republic.  On the other
hand, introductions -- as this book is described on the back cover --
are perhaps not the place for the elaboration of new ideas nor poised
to become classics in their fields.

Indeed, it may be questioned whether there was need of yet another
biography of Caesar.  It might have been thought that the market is
already saturated.  No fewer than nine books dedicated to Caesar's life
(or death) have appeared in English in the last decade, one of these
also published by Routledge![[5]]  Of these works, two distinguish
themselves for their being accessible to general readers and for their
being written in a style that is equally engaging:  Goldsworthy has
shown a talent for the description of military encounters whereas Tatum
is quite good at providing a tableau of the political situation.  In
the midst of this abundance, Billows's work struggles to distinguish
itself.  Moreover, the price of this book in the hard-cover edition
(and in that for "kindle") will make it inaccessible to the general
public.  The price of $120.00 -- which comes to nearly $0.36 per page
-- seems disproportionate to production costs, and is most certain to
curtail the work's diffusion.  Was yet another biography of Caesar
opportune?

The question becomes all the more acute when Billows's work is compared
with the "classics" produced by his predecessors in the twentieth
century.  The most important of these are Meier and Gelzer, both
available in English translations.[[6]]  Written in the same style and
available in paperback format, Meier's biography of Caesar suffers from
the absence of footnotes, which is no great loss for a work aimed at
the general public.  The biography of Caesar written by Gelzer, on the
other hand, is written in a style that is perhaps less "lively", but
has a wealth of documentation that far surpasses what is provided by
Billows  For example, Billows mentions a six-line poem by Caesar in
which he compared the comic playwrights Menander and Terence (p. 35).
The poem is not cited, either in the original Latin or in English
translation.  Moreover, without any supporting proof, the piece is
cited as an example of the juvenilia written by Caesar.  Turning to
Gelzer's biography, we find not only an ampler bibliography on the
subject, but also citation of the original poem and the thesis advanced
-- convincingly for this reviewer -- to the effect that the poem
belongs to Caesar's later years.[[7]]  Gelzer's work was last revised
in German for the sixth edition of 1960, upon which edition the English
translation of 1968 is based.  Despite its obvious lack of reference to
the last half-century of scholarship, however, that treatment
indisputably remains the standard scholarly biography of Caesar.
Without the scholarly apparatus of footnotes -- ever to be preferred to
the solution of end-notes adopted in the present instance -- and
reference to modern treatments of various points of detail, Billows's
work cannot expect to replace that written by Gelzer.  There is urgent
need of an updated version of Gelzer, but Billows's book does not meet
this need.

Billows places a great deal of interpretative weight upon what he
identifies as the two political movements of the late Republic:  the
optimates and the populares.  The thesis is seductive and not without a
certain appeal.  However, questions obtrude upon this reconstruction.
What is the Latin or Greek for "political movement"?  In the absence of
a linguistic description, can such a social phenomenon be said to
exist?  The reviewer has grave doubts, in view of the last
half-century's research into the language of politics and the
democratic nature of the Republic.[[8]]  By the standards of the
contemporary Anglo-American world, the political landscape of ancient
Rome was extraordinarily fragmented and highly susceptible to rapid
changes of allegiance.  Moreover, the factiones identified by our
sources cannot be equated with "political movements", as the very
notion is part of a denigratory rhetoric aimed at the destruction of
political opponents and the positive political identities of optimates
and populares are far more nebulous than the word "movement" would
imply.  Hence, Billows's attempt to resuscitate the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century notion of political parties fails to convince despite
its aesthetic appeal.

Billows deals with military campaigns in summary fashion, thereby
avoiding the problems that emerge when one enters into the details.  It
is as though Caesar's enemies were mere cannon-fodder waiting to be
killed so as to illustrate his greatness as a general.  Unwary readers
will be surprised to find that there is a long-running debate over the
location of the battle of Pharsalus.  And they will come away with no
idea of what John Keegan has evocatively termed "the face of battle".
Popular images from cinema and cable television are all too likely to
fill this lacuna for Billows's readers.  That is a shame, for the
details of military life reveal much about the nature of the Roman
achievement and the limits to which it was subject.[[9]]  Similarly,
soldiers fill the legions of Caesar and his contemporaries as if by
magic.[[10]]  There is no sense here of the disruption caused by
mobilization, such as what has been experienced in the United States
and (to a lesser degree) Great Britain in the wake of the attack upon
the Twin Towers.  Yet, some 50 legions under arms in the early 40s BCE
surely affected in visible fashion the human landscape of the towns and
countryside of Italy.

Billows is primarily concerned with political and military history, but
he does incorporate some of the more important findings of social and
economic history into his narrative and analyses.  Hence, he shows
great sophistication in his treatment of the interest of various
members of the gens Iulia in extending the Roman franchise to the
citizens of the various city-states of the Italian pensinsula (e.g. p.
40).  Similarly, he exhibits commendable caution in accepting the
testimony of Cicero and later authors as regards the programme behind
the so-called "Catilinarian conspiracy" (pp. 88, 94-96).  Yet, he shows
a dismaying tendency to relate statistics from ancient authors as
though they possess the same empirical value as statistics used in most
of the Western world today, even though frequently using qualifiers on
the order of "reportedly" or "said to have numbered".  As was well
shown at the outset of the last century and as has been recently
re-stated with great clarity and force, the Graeco-Roman use of numbers
is better described as rhetorical rather than empirical.[[11]]  Whether
dealing with the claim that the Senate had 300, 600, or 900 members
(e.g. pp. 36, 52, 241) or the allegation that Caesar purchased for HS
100,000,000 the land upon which he built the Forum Iulium (p. 177), the
historian needs to be aware that certain figures recur too frequently
in the literary sources to be anything other than conscious rhetorical
representations.[[12]]  Likewise important and neglected is the need to
contextualize those few numbers transmitted by the sources.  How many
readers are likely to understand the value of 1,300 talents (p. 63)?
Even a minimalist table for currencies in an appendix would have been
of use.

The most serious and extraordinary omission from this work is any
reference whatsoever to the epigraphic or archaeological evidence.  The
evidence of monuments, funerary deposits, and coins would have
manifestly enriched Billows's narrative, as is shown by a comparison
with W.J. Tatum's biography of Caesar and the recent exhibition
dedicated to Caesar in Rome, Italy.[[13]].  The testimony of
inscriptions would have been no less eloquent an addition to this work.
As it stands, the reviewer can find only four instances in which
reference is made to the epigraphic evidence and even that is
extraordinarily perfunctory (pp. 265 nn. 11-12, 268 n. 39, 280 n. 23).
Yet, without the evidence of the Fasti, we should not know the date of
the battle of Pharsalus.[[14]]  Without the evidence of inscriptions
from the Greek eastern Mediterranean, we should not know how
contemporaries in the provinces viewed Caesar's victory at Pharsalus,
praising him as a "saviour and benefactor"[[15]] and instituting a new
era commencing with that victory.[[16]]  Instances of epigraphy's
contribution to our knowledge of ancient history are legion, their
absence from this work altogether baffling.  It is as though the last
two centuries of scholarship had never transpired.

The production of this biography is overall of high quality.
Copy-editing was excellent, even if one might quibble about using forms
such as "Chalkedon" and "Kyzikos" in a work dedicated to Roman history.
Errors such as "Roscius of America" (pp. 267 n.65, 289) and
"Herrenius" (p. 290) are fortunately extremely rare.  Yet, in view of
the size of Routledge, the publisher's inability to use appropriate
diacriticals in the (surprisingly few) French and German titles
appearing within the bibliography is not only annoying, but also
inexplicable.  The only evident problems emerge in the genealogies and
maps provided at the outset (pp. xvii-xxii).  On the one hand, unwary
readers may assume that Octavian was the natural son of Julius Caesar
or find various marriages hard to reconstruct.  On the other hand, it
would have made more sense to provide two maps for the Forum Romanum
and environs (pre-54 and post-46), to indicate Dyrrachium and
Antioch-on-the-Orontes rather than Philippi and Actium, and to
eliminate infelicities on the order of "Temples of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus" and "Homea Galbana".  Perhaps, in view of the Barrington Atlas
of the Classical World, the failure to show readers the location of
most of the cities and regions mentioned in the text is not an
irremediable loss.  However, geographical notions within the written
text are not always as clear or correct as they might be.  Hence, the
central Italian city of Corfinium -- located roughly 150 km due east of
Rome -- is described as being situated "in the northern Appenine
region" (p. 205).  Knowledge of that fact is crucial to a proper
understanding of the diverse strategies followed by the protagonists in
the first months of 49 BCE.  These errors and infelicities reflect as
much Billows's lack of attention to the artistic and archaeological
evidence as any failing on the part of the publisher.

"Light" reading for lovers of ancient history, Billows's biography of
Caesar is appropriate to a general audience wanting detail but lacking
a basic knowledge of the subject.  It may even prove of use to those
desperately seeking to put lecture-notes into order at the last minute.
Stylistically a pleasure to read and crammed full of details, it has
something to offer these categories of readers.  However, it was never
intended nor should be misconstrued as a serious contribution to
scholarship on the subject.  The work of Gelzer endures.


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Notes:


1.   Cf. p. 261, the sole instance, where it is Cicero's judgement of
Caesar that is cited.  A similar criticism was expressed some years ago
with regard to CAH Vol. 14:   F. Millar, "Emperors need their voices",
Times Higher Education 14 Sept. 2001
(http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/) .

2.   A tempting and natural question arises:  What did Cleopatra have
to say to Calpurnia on this occasion?  That would most certainly have
been an interesting conversation, as the reviewer has had the chance to
witness in modern Rome and elsewhere.

3.   E.g. C. Trebatius Testa, as is indicated by the humorous language
at Cic. Fam. 7.13.1:  Audi, Testa mi:  utrum superiorem te pecunia
facit an quod te imperator consulit?  Moriar ni, quae tua gloria est,
puto te malle a Caesare consuli quam inaurari.

4.   Suet. Iul. 30.2.

5.   M. Griffin, ed., A Companion to Julius Caesar (Oxford 2009); W.J.
Tatum, Always I Am Caesar (Malden 2008); P. Freeman, Julius Caesar (New
York 2008); L. Canfora, Julius Caesar:  The People's Dictator, tr. M.
Hill and K. Windle (Edinburgh 2007) [= Giulio Cesare:  il dittatore
democratico (Bari 1999)]; A. Goldsworthy, Caesar:  Life of a Colossus
(New Haven 2006); A. Kamm, Julius Caesar:  A Life (London 2006); J.
Osgood, Caesar's Legacy:  Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman
Empire (Cambridge 2006); G. Woolf, Et tu, Brute?  The Murder of Caesar
and Political Assassination (London 2006); M. Parenti, The
Assassination of Julius Caesar:  A People's History of Ancient Rome
(New York 2003); P. Southern, Julius Caesar (Stroud 2001); R. Jimenez,
Caesar Against Rome (New York 2000); idem, Caesar Against the Celts
(New York 1996); cf. M. Wyke, ed., Julius Caesar in Western Culture
(London 2006).  With the exceptions of Griffin 2009 and Freeman 2008,
these all appear within the bibliography provided by Billows.
Naturally, a similar profusion can be discerned within French, German,
and Italian publications.  Worthy of being drawn to readers' attention
are two works in particular that offer sound, detailed introductions:
Y. Le Bohec, Ce/sar chef de guerre:  Ce/sar strate\ge et tacticien
(Paris 2001); E. Baltrusch, Caesar und Pompeius (Darmstadt 2004).

6.   C. Meier, Caesar:  A Biography (New York 1982); M. Gelzer, Caesar:
Politician and Statesman, tr. P. Needham (Cambridge, Mass. 1968).

7.   Gelzer, op. cit., p. 140 n.1 (= pp. 126-127 n. 158 in the German
edition of 1960).

8.   E.g. J. Hellegouarc'h, Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des
partis politiques sous la Re/publique (Paris 1963); F. Millar, The
Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor 1998).

9.   P. Erdkamp, Hunger and the Sword:  warfare and food supply in
Roman Republican wars (264-30 B.C.) (Amsterdam 1998); J. Roth, The
logistics of the Roman army at war (264 B.C.-A.D. 235) (Leiden 1998).

10.   Cf. P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (Oxford 1971);
N. Morley, "The transformation of Italy," JRS 91 (2001) 50-62.

11.   W. Scheidel, "Finances, Figures and Fiction," CQ 46 (1996)
222-238; E. Woelfflin, "Sescenti, mille, centum, trecenti als
unbestimmte und runde Zahlen" Archiv fuer lateinische Lexikographie und
Grammatik 9 (1896) 177-192; idem, "Zur Zahlensymbolik," loc. cit.,
333-351; idem, "Das Duodecimalsystem," loc. cit., 527-544.

12.   The reviewer admits to a similar "sin of youth", in "The Forum
Iulium as Representation of Imperator Caesar," Roemische Mitteilungen
103 (1996) 198-224, but finds incomprehensible Billows's lack of
awareness of contemporary historiographic debates.

13.   Giulio Cesare : l'uomo, le imprese, il mito [esposizione Chiostro
del Bramante, Rome, 23 ottrobre 2008 - 3 maggio 2009], a cura di
Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milano 2008).

14.   Inscr. Ital. 13.1.190f., 208; characteristically absent from the
chronological table provided by Canfora 2007/1999.

15.   A.E. Raubitschek, "Epigraphical Notes on Julius Caesar," JRS 44
(1954) 65-75.

16.   W. Leschhorn, Antike Aeren: Zeitrechnung, Politik und Geschichte
im Schwarzmeerraum und in Kleinasien noerdlich des Taurus.  Historia
Einzelschriften Heft 81.  Stuttgart 1993.