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By Root 812 0

in Gaul and Egypt and over Pharnaces in Asia Minor and Juba in Africa. The number of enemies killed, excluding citizens, was claimed to be 1,992,000. Money to the value of 65,000 talents was carried in the parade. Games and shows were also staged. AS a personal tribute Caesar promoted a gladiatorial display in memory of his still much-missed daughter, Julia, and a public banquet with 22,000 tables. It was ill omened to triumph over Roman citizens and Pharsalus was passed by in silence, but the crowds showed their disapproval of painted representations of the deaths of the Republican leaders in Africa: Cato was depicted tearing himself apart like a wild animal. There were groans as the images passed along the streets. The all-conquering war leader had not yet registered how long a shadow Cato was to cast. Another incident alarmed superstitious Romans: the axle on Caesar’s chariot broke just opposite, of all places, the Temple of Fortune. AS atonement for the portent, he climbed the steps of the Capitol on his knees.

The public mood was unsettled. There were complaints about the amount of blood shed at the Games and the soldiery, annoyed by the extravagance, rioted. Caesar reacted with extraordinary fury: he grabbed one man with his own hands and had him executed. Two other soldiers were sacrificed by priests to Mars and the heads displayed outside his official residence, the State House. This was highly unusual: the most recent previous human sacrifice was reported to have been conducted by Catilina in the 60s to bind his fellow conspirators to his cause and before that one had to go back to the darkest days of the war against Hannibal more than one and a half centuries earlier. Perhaps the threat of a mutiny in the center of Rome was such a serious matter that the most extreme measures were required: alternatively, the soldiers’ offense may have broken some religious taboo. One way or the other the disinterested observer might have wondered about the stability of the regime.

The Forum of Julius, which had been under construction on the far side of the Senate House at Caesar’s expense since 54, was officially opened. It put the old Forum somewhat in the shade and eclipsed, both by its location and its extent, Pompeius’s theater beyond the pomoerium on the Field of Mars. Controversially, a gold statue of Cleopatra was erected next to one of Venus, whose temple was one of the Forum’s key features. About this time the Egyptian queen appeared in Rome in person with her court and her brother and co-Pharaoh, the thirteen-year-old Ptolemy XIV. Her motives for leaving her kingdom for what turned out to be an eighteen-month stay were probably mixed. She and Caesar no doubt wanted to continue their affair, but she also knew that her throne depended on her lover and the favor of Rome’s ruling class. Egypt was the last great imperial prize for the all-conquering Republic, and the danger of annexation was real. Cleopatra was prepared to devote all her personal charms to maintaining her country’s independence.

She also brought Caesarion with her, whose name drew scandalous attention to her liaison with the Dictator. She stayed in a garden villa of Caesar’s on the far side of the Tiber, where she must have held court with Egyptian splendor. Caesar was probably too busy to spend much time with her. She seems to have mixed on social terms with leading Romans, although she cannot have had much sympathy with antiauthoritarian attitudes. Cicero had some dealings with her and soon came to dislike her.

The Senate voted Caesar unprecedented honors, the most important of these extending his Dictatorship for ten years and the Controllership of Morals for three years and according him the right of nominating officeholders for election.

In the past, the Senate had been more or less a gentleman’s club, with a few New Men like Marius or Cicero added to the mixture from time to time. Caesar, wisely acknowledging the multicultural composition of both the Empire and the city of Rome itself, resumed the old custom of opening citizenship and power to