A Friend of Caesar

A Friend of Caesar, by William
Stearns Davis

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Title: A Friend of Caesar A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic.
Time, 50-47 B.C.
Author: William Stearns Davis
Release Date: April 24, 2005 [EBook #15694]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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A Friend of Cæsar
A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic

Time, 50-47 B.C.
By William Stearns Davis

"Others better may mould the life-breathing brass of the image, And
living features, I ween, draw from the marble, and better Argue their
cause in the court; may mete out the span of the heavens, Mark out the
bounds of the poles, and name all the stars in their turnings. Thine 'tis
the peoples to rule with dominion--this, Roman, remember!-- These for
thee are the arts, to hand down the laws of the treaty, The weak in
mercy to spare, to fling from their high seats the haughty."
--VERGIL, Æn. vi. 847-858.
New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers 1900

To My Father
William Vail Wilson Davis
Who Has Taught Me More Than All My Books

Preface
If this book serves to show that Classical Life presented many phases
akin to our own, it will not have been written in vain.
After the book was planned and in part written, it was discovered that
Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene,
"Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the
scene, "Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was
too characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why
such a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness
and Dawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books

necessarily take and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do
well; but the Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as
a help to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great age
of the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend of
Cæsar." The Age of Cæsar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, when
Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, and
social stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.
Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; but in
one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes," there is such a confusion of
accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slight
liberties.
W. S. D.
Harvard University, January 16,1900.

Contents
Chapter Page
I. Præneste 1
II. The Upper Walks of Society 21
III. The Privilege of a Vestal 37
IV. Lucius Ahenobarbus Airs His Grievance 50
V. A Very Old Problem 73
VI. Pompeius Magnus 102
VII. Agias's Adventure 117
VIII. "When Greek Meets Greek" 146

IX. How Gabinius Met with a Rebuff 159
X. Mamercus Guards the Door 172
XI. The Great Proconsul 198
XII. Pratinas Meets Ill-Fortune 217
XIII. What Befell at Baiæ 241
XIV. The New Consuls 262
XV. The Seventh of January 277
XVI. The Rubicon 302
XVII. The Profitable Career of Gabinius 329
XVIII. How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet 334
XIX. The Hospitality of Demetrius 364
XX. Cleopatra 387
XXI. How Ulamhala's Words Came True 409
XXII. The End of the Magnus 433
XXIII. Bitterness and Joy 448
XXIV. Battling for Life 464
XXV. Calm after Storm 496
Chapter I
Præneste
I

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years
after Romulus--so tradition ran--founded the little village by the Tiber
which was to become "Mother of Nations," "Centre of the World,"
"Imperial Rome." To state the time according to modern standards it
was July, fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The
fierce Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches
of woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the
atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the
pavement of the highway, and rose in dense, stifling clouds, as a mule,
laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged
reluctantly along.
Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from
being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come.