A Friend of Caesar

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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 C?sar
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, ?n. 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 C?sar." The Age of C?sar 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. Pr?neste 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 Bai? 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
Pr?neste
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. For this spot was near "cool Pr?neste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Pr?neste, with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views