The Ides of Marge
Peter Jones
Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!' But Shakespeare was wrong. Caesar did not cry out in Latin, but in Greek, and his words were lai su, teknon', lit. 'You too, child'. Moreover, it is just possible that the words should be read not as an anguished cry of disbelief but as a defiant insult: 'and the same to you, son'. If so, Caesar's final words were indeed prophetic. In three years, virtually all his assassins were dead. The political assassination of Margaret Thatcher bears some striking similarities to the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March 4413c. Caesar was a decision-maker. When by crossing the Rubicon in 49uc he committed himself to civil war with Pom- pey, his words sounded remarkably like `no turning back'. He generated tremendous loyalty. He was a populist, and had no time for senators who, in the final years of the Roman Republic, proved such wets against the ambitions of powerful dynasts like Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pom- pey and himself. When he defeated Pom- pey and became Rome's dictator, he needed them even less. But tradition dies hard. When Caesar said that the Republic was nothing but a name without form or substance, men did not forget. But Caesar was probably right. The Republic was at an end. Why indulge in silly formalities when he had a stranglehold on the machinery of government, plans to make himself dictator perpetuus (some thought he had kingship in view) and a dream of the future? As his biographer Plutarch says, 'he was always competing with himself, as though he were someone else, and struggling to make the future excel the past.' But the cry of the despised men in the purple-striped togas was for the restoration of the Republic, and Caesar had other fish to fry. He paid for it. The men who assassinated him worked from mixed motives. Some were bookish idealists (Brutus). Some were embittered by insults or refusals of promotion (Cas- sius). Cicero, who loathed Caesar but loved to see him as a power-broker, was not asked to join (not a risk-taker, says Plutarch). Certainly personal loyalty meant nothing. Cassius and Brutus had been on Pompey's side during the Civil War and owed their lives to Caesar's famous clemency, and Brutus became an especially close friend. Further, they were convinced they had the backing of the Senate and the people. Just remove Caesar and the people would be liberated', the Republic restored, to universal acclaim.
And they were wrong. How soon the `liberators' realised they were wrong is demonstrated by a letter of a fellow- assassin Decimus Brutus to Brutus (no relation) and Cassius written a few days after Caesar's funeral on 20 March 4413c:
You may ask what I advise. I think we must give way to fortune, leave Italy, go to live in Rhodes or anywhere under the sun. If things go better, we shall return to Rome. If moderately, we shall live in exile. If the worst happens, we shall take any and every means to help ourselves.
One reason is that the people now showed themselves in their true colours. Despite some discontent at Caesar's grow- ing despotism, they had generally loved his popular touch and admired his defiance of the Senate. His European policy of crushing Gaul and attacking Britain was also immensely appealing to them (Caesar boasted in his triumph of killing a million Gauls). Naturally the army felt outraged at the murder of the imperator for whom they had fought and died and who had now been killed by his own subordinates (De- cimus Brutus among them). At Caesar's funeral, riot and disorder broke out among both. Some 'liberation'.
Popular riot can be quelled, and it was. But the real problem — and the assassins clearly never considered this — was that the murder of Caesar did not remove Caesar's constituents, the men who had supported him and benefitted from his radical social and political legislation dur- ing his period as dictator. Cicero sees this point in a letter to Cassius dated 3 May 4413c: 'We have killed the king, but we are upholding the validity of his every regal nod . . . you and your friends must straighten out the whole tangle'. Did he expect Caesar's work of the last five years to disappear at the stroke of a pen? Moreover, in 44ac Marc Antony was Caesar's co-consul. At his death, he auto- matically took over the reins, and as a Caesarian who was the natural heir to Caesar's power, he was not about to undo everything his master had achieved. Bru- tus, Cassius and Decimus soon found themselves discreetly removed abroad. No wonder Cicero later said the conspirators should have killed Antony too.
Antony did not foresee a rival claimant. But Caesar had appointed an heir, Caius Octavius, grandson of one of his sisters, and at his adoption Octavius took the title C. Julius Caesar Octavianus. We know him as Octavian, but Romans almost im- mediately started calling him 'Caesar' (Cicero tells us prissily that he didn't), and it was this thrustingly ambitious, glory- hungry young man who destroyed the conspirators (Brutus committed suicide at Philippi), agreed to Cicero's murder, formed a triumvirate of self-interest with Antony and Lepidus, then asserted the primacy of Caesar's line to split the Senate against Antony, and finally destroyed him at the battle of Actium in 31Bc. But Octavian, soon to become Augustus, Rome's first emperor, was no fool. He had learned the lessons of history well. Unlike Caesar, he was both ruthless to his enemies and immaculate in his lip-service to tradi- tions of Roman government during an effective monarchy of over 40 years. Sir Brutus Howe had enough cause for resentment at his treatment over the years, but pleaded constitutional idealism — the Prime Minister's apparent inability to ' abide by Cabinet decisions. Like Caesar, Mrs Thatcher was always an autocrat in a hurry. Cassius Heseltine seemed to have made the transition that none of Caesar's assassins did, from traitor to saviour, from Cassius to Antony. But, like Marc Antony, he did not foresee the startling rise of Mrs Thatcher's young and ambitious adopted heir, Octavian Major, and he could never quite shake off that Cassius reputation. The Thatcher constituency has not dis- appeared with her demise.
What now? If history repeats itself, Sir Brutus must be shown no mercy. Cicero too must go: farewell, then, Lord Whitelaw. Antony Heseltine will form an alliance of mutual self-interest with Octa- vian Major and Lepidus Hurd, but it will not last, especially if the Tories lose the next election, when the party will turn on Heseltine with an awful fury. This may bring down Octavian Major too, if he does not keep his Antony at arms' length. But Major will demonstrate the same ruthless- ness that his Roman counterpart did, and while one cannot predict a Cleopatra to help Heseltine on his way down, his days too are numbered. Major meanwhile will consult everyone in sight and abide strictly by every Cabinet decision which he himself will, of course, fix.
One cloud darkens the horizon of this scenario. Mrs Thatcher has said that life begins at 65. That was not an assertion open to Julius Caesar.
Dr Peter Jones is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
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