The Ides of March [antikvár]

Historical reconstruction is not among the primary-aims of this work. It may be called a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic. The principal liberty taken is that of transferring an event which took place in 62 b.c.—the profanation of the Mysteries of the Bona Dea by Clodia Pulcher and her brother—to the celebration of the same rites seventeen years later on December II, 45. By 45 many of my characters would have long been dead: Clodius, murdered by bullies on a country road; Catullus, though we have only St. Jerome's word for it that he died at the age of thirty; the younger Cato, a few months earlier in this very year, in Africa, resisting Caesar's absolute power; Caesar's aunt, widow of the great Marius, had died even before 62. Moreover by 45, Caesar's second wife Pompeia had long been replaced by his third wife Calpurnia. A number of the elements in this work which may most seem to have been of my contriving are indeed historical: Cleopatra arrived in Rome in 46, was installed by Caesar in his villa across the river; she remained there until his assassination when she fled back to her own country. The possibility that Junius Marcus Brutus was Caesar's son is weighed and generally rejected by almost every historian who has given extended consideration to Caesar's private life. Caesar's gift to Servilia of a pearl of unprecedented value is historical. The conspiratorial chain-letters directed against Caesar were suggested by the events of our own times. They were circulated [vii]