#tertulla

[sforzesco]

ladies of the conspiracy

porcia and tertulla! I have some thoughts about their appearances in the scraps of the historical conspiracy that are visible (since it's like. the nature of conspiracy, even one as widely known and studied as the one leading up to the assassination of caesar, means that there's a gap in visibility with the details etc) that I'll have to try and pin down later, but for now, I think we should give them a dagger too

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Junia too, the niece of Cato, wife of Caius Cassius and sister of Marcus Brutus, died this year, the sixty-fourth after the battle of Philippi. Her will was the theme of much popular criticism, for, with her vast wealth, after having honourably mentioned almost every nobleman by name, she passed over the emperor. Tiberius took the omission graciously and did not forbid a panegyric before the Rostra with the other customary funeral honours. The busts of twenty most illustrious families were borne in the procession, with the names of Manlius, Quinctius, and others of equal rank. But Cassius and Brutus outshone them all, from the very fact that their likenesses were not to be seen.

Tacitus, Annals III.76

[catoswound]

who up romancing they political rival

[katabay]

to follow up crasso, pompeyo, and cesar: a "newspaper article" on cassio and brutus!

in a shoutout to both shakespeare and his historical counter part (regarding the thematic importance of his eye sight) cassio's got glasses! his eyes are sensitive to bright lights (fucking RIP buddy) so he wears sunglasses all the time. this is a surprise tool that will help us later. not him, tho.

EDIT: AH. It should read: a very public falling out. oh well! next time I'll proof read it, probably. I just wanted to draw Cassio 😔

[attila-werther]

the adventures of cassius minor aka what absolutely uncalled for unhinged shit will messalla say this time

[stcantarella]

hello my name is marcus licinius crassus i was born in 639 auc my wife is tertulla my sons are marcus and publius. i have been in the trenches of financial debt recently because gaius julius is utterly incapable of financial planning and prudency and keeps spending all of it on electoral bribes. please send me 2 million sesterces if you dm me i will give u my paypal

YES MR CRASSUS ANYTHING FOR YOU MR CRASSUS

[sregan]

On 'Megalopolis'

I have seen 'Megalopolis: A Fable'. My assessment in one word is that it's 'striking'. It's a striking film - which is not necessarily to say that it is a 'good' film. It may be an 'important' film, insofar as it's likely the last film by the creator of 'The Godfather', 'The Conversation' and 'Apocalypse Now', and self-funded.

It's also a very strange film. In almost every scene there's something bizarre - not necessarily in the sense of worldbuilding but in terms of the directorial choices made.

For some reason 'Megalopolis' was not marketed as a work of alternate history, which I think could have brought in more attention, but a 'fable', with a heavy-handed opening monologue about the similarities between the modern USA and Rome. It's ostensibly set in the 21st century in 'New Rome', a modern city with Roman affectations - though it's also mentioned at times that it's still in the United States of America and that Elvis existed in this reality.

The best analogy I can make is that it feels like one of those adaptations to film of a Shakespearean play but set in the modern day, where much of the dialogue has been updated but the main speeches have been left in the original language (indeed, sections of dialogue from Hamlet and The Tempest appear unmodified); but without the source play.

'Megalopolis' is - though few critics seem to be crediting this - a loose adaptation of the life of Lucius Sergius Catilina, somewhat annealed with Julius Caesar (furnishing protagonist Cesar Catalina as played by Adam Driver). The real Catalina is a rival of Cicero (here Mayor Cicero as played by Giancarlo Esposito), prosecuted for an affair with a vestal virgin by Publius Clodius Pulcher - here Clodius Pulcher as played by Shia Labeouf - and accused of killing his wife in order to marry Aurelia Orestilla, the daughter of the consol (who has been merged with Cicero to create Julia Cicero, the Mayor's daughter, as played by Nathalie Emmanuel). All this happens in the film.

The real historical Catalina, of course, was the mastermind behind the Catalinarian Conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow Cicero and Hybrida and seize power. In the first of many changes, Coppola changes this to make Clodius the leader of the plot and Cesar Catalina innocent. While the historical Crassus uncovered the plot and told the Senate, Jon Voight's Hamilton Crassus is betrayed by his unfaithful trophy wife (clearly a reference to Tertulla) and Clodius in a 'Dallas' spoof sideplot, but eventually gets the upper hand and backs Catalina with his wealth.

At this point we should address the elephant in the room. In 'Megalopolis: A Fable', Cesar Catalina is an architect who wishes to build a new shining city, the titular Megapolis, using a revolutionary new metal he has developed, Megalon. This makes startling sense when you realise Coppola has long dreamed of adapting Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'. Cesar is clearly intended to be a mix of Howard Roark and Henry Rearden from Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', a visionary steelmaker who has developed 'Rearden Metal'.

However, Megalon may have a dark secret - Mayor Cicero says it's rumoured he used his dead wife's body to manufacture the metal. While the introduction of this rumour is cack-handed (Cicero just whispers it to Cesar at an event), it's at least an intriguing take based on a real historical rumour. This in combination with the source material - a scheming politician who launches a coup - might make you wonder if Coppola is playing Sympathy for the Devil here and will reveal Cesar as a villain protagonist (as far as I can tell, he doesn't intend this).

Cesar also has the ability to stop time. Very literally; he can talk to Time (capital T) and tell it to do things. The first scene of the film - which may be Cesar attempting suicide or testing this power for the same time - sees Driver's character on the roof of the Chrysler Building, teetering on the edge. As he begins to tip forward, he intones 'Time: stop!' and finds his body hovering in mid-air, allowing him to cautiously wuxia-float his way back onto the building (remember this).

This may all sound rather Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but never fear - this power, which seems like it should be the metaphorical crux of the entire film (timestop as a metaphor for stagnation in a dying empire?), is largely irrelevant other than leading Julia to investigate him and then join his agency.

Oh yes, that's another thing that radically alters the dynamic from a hypothetical Francis Ford Coppola's Fountainhead; Cesar isn't a private architect but the head of a government agency, the Design Authority. We aren't told how he came into this role but he begins the film with his own staff, security, and lavish office, which makes him feel like much less of an underdog.

Cesar's Design Authority is pulling down slum buildings to replace them with his utopian Megalon developments - the plot can't quite decide whether he's doing this inside the law, but the result seems to be people forced onto the street - a clear nod, you might think, towards gentrification, although later plot points make this murkier.

Julia sees Cesar using his time stop ability during a demolition, seemingly to judge whether the collapse is safe (though what he would be able to do if it wasn't is unclear). Frustratingly we never see what this looks like to 'normal' people; Julia is the only person other than him to be able to manipulate time and we only ever see it from one of their perspectives. More on this later.

Esposito's Mayor Cicero is initially introduced as a hollow populist, who wants to use the demolished plots of land for crowd-pleasing moneymakers such as a casino. He shows off a slick model of the proposed pleasure palace, which seems to get the approval of the gathered journalists. Cesar, meanwhile, gives a philosophical speech urging grander ambitions ("Don't let the present get in the way of forever!") and offers to go through his design documents. I'm uncertain whether we are supposed to understand this to be what it looks like - that Cesar does not have people skills and finds it hard to communicate his genius - because Driver is given all sorts of quippy Tony Stark-like lines and business as he arrives to the meeting and otherwise reads as charming and personable.

This scene includes one of the most sophomoric film-school student lines in the film. When Cicero menacingly brings up Cesar's wife's death, he says: "Well, as you were the prosecutor in that case, you know I was found not guilty."

At this point Cesar is involved with Plaza's journalist femme fatale (name, I kid you not, 'Wow Platinum') but - I'm unsure whether we actually see them break up on screen - she falls for billionaire Crassus and Cesar becomes involved with Julia who, after mentioning she saw him stop time, receives work with his agency (much to her father's chagrin).

Before it's fully established that she has fallen for him, she follows him and sees him buy flowers and visit what I think is supposed to be his wife's home; we see him place them by her bedside and stroke her hair - she seems to be comatose rather than dead, but when Julia sees the same scene Cesar is alone, seemingly hallucinating. Julia somehow knows Cesar is hallucinating his wife and whispers "He still loves her!". This is one of many elements of 'Megalopolis' that make me think that despite being a self-funded auteur project, the narrative was muddled in the edit and a more coherent through-line must have existed at some point. If this scene came after Julia and Cesar were an item, it might have some emotional weight.

The chapters of the films are introduced with narration by Lawrence Fishburne, serving as Cesar's faithful chauffeur (an element that, perhaps, lets on that Coppola has been pitching this film for fifty years). The 'Bread and Circuses' chapter sees a lavish wedding for Crassus and Wow (sic.), with a Ben Hur-style chariot race and Pro Wrestling-themed gladiators. The effeminate villain Clodius appears, crossdressing after the style of the historical Caligula.

In a scene clearly intended to take aim at religious right virginity pledges, a 'vestal virgin' pop star is used to raise money by encouraging the wealthy to financially 'support' her pledge of virginity. However, as the bidding reaches 100 billion, Clodius bribes the AV technician to display on the jumbotron (!) a sex tape of the 'virgin' and Cesar, resulting in a scandal.

In a sequence clearly inspired by Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis', an intoxicated Cesar - presumably having seen the jumbotron but it's not entirely clear - hallucinates his arms moving in the shape of a clock. I initially thought this whole sequence (intercut with a gymnastic display which appears to go wrong) was intended to represent the aghast Cesar's powers going out of control and causing mayhem, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead his limo is stopped by police and he is arrested for corrupting a minor and statutory rape - a genuinely bold choice of peril for a protagonist and one I don't think would fly in any major studio production post-Harvey Weinstein!

Julia is oddly certain he must be innocent - again, the two are not clearly an item at this point; he's her boss - and investigates, finding that VanderWaal's vestal virgin's birth certificate was fabricated and she was in fact born out of the country six years earlier, meaning she was 23 at the time of the tape, not 17. Interestingly, in the newspaper montage showing Cesar being cleared, a voiceover also mentions the footage was found to be edited and fradulent, begging the question of why the birth certificate was even important - I can only think this VO was added after principal photography and originally the character did sleep with a girl he believed to be underage.

Again, an odd scene order - after being cleared, Julia finds a distraught Cesar on top of an under-construction building (what this is is unclear as none of his Megalon buildings use girders like this but it's a repeated location - put a pin in that). He has lost his confidence in his ability to command time and she coaxes him into regaining his mojo; he is able to stop time again with the formula 'For the sake of Julia, Time, please stop'. Again, this feels like it should have more narrative weight than it does; he 'loses' his powers for all of one scene and it doesn't impact his career or plans. It also feels like it should have come before the formal resolution of his legal woes. The hero losing his supernatural powers at the start of the second act and needing either to regain his confidence to use them or learning he must not rely on them is a well-worn superhero trope and it almost feels like Coppola felt compelled to include it since he had a super-powered protagonist but didn't understand or care to put it to any more significant use.

I forget where the scene takes place where he meets Wow again; she attempts to seduce him and offers him Crassus's bank, which she says she will steal away from him. He rebuffs her and in one of the worst pieces of professionally produced cinema I have ever seen, we fade to and from a closeup of the car's wheel driving over the coat he gives her. It wasn't even necessary to cut in - the coat is clearly visible and the audience expects the action from the way she throws it down - and the cut is executed horribly; it genuinely feels like a mistake, like a misplaced clip in Final Cut Pro.

Shortly thereafter, Cesar is approached by a young boy who asks him to sign an autograph. Utterly bafflingly, Nathalie Emmanuel is given the line of dialogue 'Cesar would never say no to a child'. This is a couple of scenes after he is accused of statutory rape; if it was meant to be delivered with wry humour, no-one told Emmanuel. In any case, the child shoots him in the face, having been revealed as an agent of Clodius.

We then get an abstract montage of what may be Cesar's dying hallucinations, with the repeated refrain (I think I remember this correctly:) "I will not give death dominion over my thoughts". It would not be unreasonable for one of the following to happen:

a.) Somehow Cesar is able to not just stop time but reverse it. We see a flower shrinking back into a bud and I was fully expecting to see the clip of his blood flowing on the street reversing. He has regained his powers and now has new incredible mastery. Or:

b.) The damage to his brain means Cesar cannot use his powers. Julia must step in and make the leap of faith - Cesar is injured now but was not so in the past. 'Time: Heal all wounds!').

Neither of these happen.

Instead, we see snippets of what seems to be a mostly cut scene where Julia and the scientist character replace the missing portions of Cesar's skull and brain with Megalon. This seems to be a triumphant return and we see him awake, bandaged but cogent.

In the next scenes, a slurring and seemingly brain-damaged, still bandaged Cesar who repeatedly shouts "No, no, no!" for some reason forces his way into Crassus's mansion to find out why the billionaire's bank has frozen his accounts. This is revealed to be a scheme of Wow at the behest of Clodius. She once again attempts to seduce Cesar (even after he reveals his horrific transparent gold skull-face) but is forced to stop when Crassus arrives.

After this, Wow turns her seductive attentions to Lebeouf's Clodius and persuades him to get Voight's character to sign over control of the bank in a rather shoddy bathhouse scene that I think is intended to show Crassus having a heart attack and aides rushing to his rescue, but which I initially believed showed him being stabbed by Clodius's accomplices. When Wow seduces Clodius she cuts his hair (something Crassus told Clodius to do) in silhouette which should clue you in she's playing the role of Delilah.

At this point we should mention that Clodius has his own sub-plot where he has been repeatedly seen trying to build cred among the mob protesting Cesar's project. The mob is, I would guess, the ultimate antagonist of the film, and Coppola is strikingly loose with his real-world targets here. The mob resembles Black Lives Matter and anti-gentrification protesters and Clodius says they are 'immigrants' whose vote can be bought; they carry SPQR flags that resemble the hammer and sickle; their slogans suggest far-left sympathies; but Clodius gives a literal stump speech on a tree stump which has been cut into the shape of a swastika (real subtle there) and his minion now has a forehead tattoo of the Black Sun, a real-world fascist symbol (I think he also said something along the lines of 'We will make New Rome great again', though I may be misremembering). You might be tempted to think that, given his historical intrigue with Rand's Objectivism, Coppola views the masses as generically 'collectivist', subsuming fascism and communism. If so, Cataline is a bizarre choice for a hero, as in the real world it was he who whipped up a mob to attack the Roman Senate, and Caesar who led the 'populists', while Cicero favoured the optimates (aristocracy). We'll talk more later about Cesar Catalina's philosophy, such as it is, in 'Megalopolis'.

As New Rome collapses in riots, Crassus, who is revealed to be less senile than previously suggested, confronts his wife and nephew in an absolutely hilarious scene where he lifts his suggestively tented blanket to reveal a tiny bow and arrow, which he uses to kill first Wow in a comedic spout of blood and then repeatedly plink a fleeing Clodius in the backside with arrows; each time it cuts back to Crassus he has another arrow (barely) drawn with no indication where they are coming from, like a YouTube Poop. I think, generously, this was meant to be slapstick comedy, even if the context is very dark (aging billionaire murders his cheating wife).

Mayor Cicero semi-reconciles with his daughter (who has since had Cesar's child) on the train as they are evacuated for their safety.

In the climax - I feel sure it's the climax - of the movie, the mob gathers at the gates of Megalopolis, but an apparently fully healed Cesar appears, projected on the golden leaves of his utopian city, and addresses them. The speech is every bit as dense, philosophical, and frankly unrousing as his opening debate, but this time it wins the crowd around and suddenly they are no longer the collectivist menace but the upstanding majority who are now delighted to live in his city as the gates open.

Crassus declares he is throwing his entire wealth (and 'the patents to Megalon', which I guess he somehow acquired when the bank froze Cesar's funds) behind the project, so all's well that ends well? The mob turn on Clodius when they find out 'he owns the bank' (except that no, we've just established he doesn't) and shockingly string him and his henchman up, Mussolini-style; while the camera cuts away quickly it's pretty clear they have stoned him to death.

As New Year dawns, Cesar persuades Julia to try stopping time herself for the first time. She does so, but surprisingly *everyone* freezes except the baby, who has clearly also inherited the power. The End. Someone in the row behind me chuckled.

To be clear, this lends the plot a degree of cogency you simply don't get in the theatre. It's clear to me much of the movie ended up on the cutting room floor - there are fully acted, costumed scenes with different dialogue that appear in the facets of the Megalon crystal as Cesar works but are not in the movie. I think the order of scenes may have been dramatically changed and possibly the ending altered, which is why Driver's character appears fully healed without explanation but only as a projection in the final speech.

The central conceit, time stop, is not used except indirectly as something one character sees to make her intrigued in Cesar, and later as evidence that he has his confidence back after a single scene where he can't use it. Losing it doesn't set back his plans and we barely get a sense of how he uses it in his work normally. An architect who literally has all the time in the world is an intriguing concept and one could easily imagine eyecatching scenes where buildings seem to erect themselves in a blink of an eye, or where from the perspective of a normal human he flashes around a room, drawing up plans and blueprints at seemingly superhuman speed. Indeed, I was fully expecting at least one scene where Driver appears where he shouldn't be, revealing he has been listening in on a conversation or confronting someone in a secure location, because he can stop time to get into any location or do anything.

But we don't see this - we don't even, unless I missed it, get a line like 'Cesar always finishes his projects ahead of schedule - what's his secret?'. Time stop also doesn't work consistently; the first time we see it, Cesar's own body is part of the timestop; he can seemingly think in normal time but his body is suspended on the brink of falling. But later, it's clear that people who use timestop move normally and are affected by gravity (when Julia drops her purse on the girder it slows and stops when it gets a certain distance from her).

The secondary conceit, Megalon, is barely defined. It's a miracle metal that allows things like flowing moving walkways and roofs that fold in like flower petals when it rains. It also bonds with living cells and is eventually replaced with healthy tissue. It sometimes reflects his wife's face, and in the medical montage I think they put some of the wife's hair into the implant, which suggests to me Megalon *is* partially a ghoulish necromantic substance that harnesses his wife's unquiet spirit - but incredibly this isn't addressed in the final narrative other than a dreamlike sequence where he hears his wife telling him 'Go to her', apparently permission for him to move on. Again, it feels like a late-era MCU production cut to hell by studio interference - except there's no studio.

There's also an ambiguous line where Mayor Cicero seems to admit *he*, not Cesar, killed her - I think the intent of this line is he is willing to publicly admit he tampered with evidence to convict Cesar if Cesar breaks up with his daughter. Cesar later tells Julia his wife killed herself because of his obsessive focus on work and we have no reason to doubt him.

It's all such a weird missed opportunity - clearly you're meant to initially wonder if Cesar did kill his wife. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it newspaper headline that says the death was a 'Hitchcockian mystery' - which suggests a locked-room murder. Now, who can enter a room, kill someone, and leave to have an alibi elsewhere, all in the blink of an eye? Surely, surely this was intended to be explored at some point; less Chekhov's gun being visible over the fireplace and more being shoved up your nostril in the first act.

The tertiary conceit - New Rome itself - is intriguing as a stylistic choice. It's overtly a fable so it would seem churlish to ask how this Roman city-state exists in a world where both the USA (of which it's seemingly a part) and USSR existed. The limits of the budget are visible in the lack of stylisation in some areas (extras' costumes, cars, offices) but I didn't find it too offensive. I did notice that the architecture we see associated with Cesar early in the film is clearly Art Deco, but the Megalon structures later in the film are postmodern sweeping leaf-life structures, as though Coppola changed his mind about what the future looks like some time in the fifty years since first conceiving the movie.

The central conflict of the film is thornier. You might assume that Cicero represents populist, 'need'-based politics ("People need help now," the mayor says, objecting to Cesar's grand vision of a better city), while Cesar is a Randian rugged individualist, except that's not quite what we're shown in the final cut.

The Mayor's character isn't consistent - by the midway point he's become a law and order figure while the sleazy collectivist mantle has been passed to Clodius and the anti-gentrification rioters. And Cesar being a government official mixes the message on 'lone genius architect' - where we do get an insight into the philosophy of Cesar Catalina, it's also not especially Randian. The character talks repeatedly about the need for 'debate' - that even starting to talk about what we should do, or agreeing that we should talk, is already utopia. He responds to the Mayor by suggesting that 'people's futures' are as important as their present. I also think at one point he says civilisation was a mistake, which is a startling remark from a protagonist but which seems to be something Coppola has floated in real life (seemingly believing there was a utopian matriarchy before history). So at best I think you can argue he takes a broadly long-term-self-interest rationalist view and is being contrasted with the short-term populist Mayor and the short-term instant-gratification rioters.

He also briefly (as in, a single line) advocates for debt nullification, which was a position of the real Cataline, but which doesn't really seem to gel with anything else in the movie - we never get the sense that Cesar hates Crassus lending money and aren't shown the effects of usury on the people.

The cast of actors - including John Voight, and DB Sweeney who starred in the ill-fated Atlas Shrugged adaptation - makes me think it was sold as a rightish-wing endeavour, but I can't imagine the apparent both-sidesism on display will satiate red-blooded culture war types.

Certain aspects of the film also felt quite dated - the use of sapphism to shock and titilate (and the curious line where Cesar, challenged by a gossip columnist to confirm he prefers women, insists 'Everyone prefers women. Even women prefer women'); contrasted with the effete, crossdressing villain Clodius.

What's most striking (I said it was the salient word) about 'Megalopolis' is how much potential each element has relative to how it's actually used on-screen. Some of this is the tight budget constraints necessitated by Coppola burning through his own money to fund the film - the SFX were generally decent though I noticed at least one truly shoddy effect where characters walk into an idyllic field which is clearly a separate plate, and their bodies are sliding left-to-right as though walking on ice.

How might I re-imagine 'Megalopolis'? Keeping most of the beats and trying to refine the message rather than changing it:

- Cesar as a private architect, not a government agency. Put Crassus in the role of a Gail Wynand; a wealthy man and potential patron.

- Cesar has built a reputation as the man who always has time - he finishes every project ahead of schedule and under budget; his demolitions always proceed flawlessly and his staff have no idea how he does it.

- The Mayor champions sweetheart deals with contractors for cheap, trashy buildings that will fall down in thirty years (this might have been in the script at some point as Cesar calls him a 'slum lord') while Cesar wants to use Megalon to create an Art Deco utopian development.

- Julia sees Cesar stop time and he offers her a job. He demonstrates how when his staff see him flash around at super-speed he is really doing all the laborious work of drawing up plans in real time, totally alone as he previously had no-one who could do what he did.

- The press casts doubt on Megalon, with the unions pushing for proven materials like concrete and steel. A ghastly rumour emerges that Megalon contains human DNA. Cesar gives a speech, asking what would happen if the first architects using steel had faced the same resistance. What about fire?

- Julia proves her worth by securing a contract for Cesar to redevelop a large slum after a devastating fire, elbowing out her father's friends who want to use the same cheap cladding that caused the fire in the first place (anticipates and deflects viewer criticism about safety).

- Romance develops with Julia and Cesar. Scenes where they go out into the city and stop time together. Julia is pregnant.

- Clodius undermines Cesar by throwing red tape in his way. Cesar appears in his home and confronts him, showing a sinister edge, but ultimately leaves. Clodius uses this to deduce Cesar's time powers.

- Crassus's wedding is a huge event with (as in the film), chariot races and gladiatorial games. Cesar, Mayor Cicero, Julia and Clodius all attend.

- Instead of the vestal virgin scandal, Cesar is publicly accused of killing his first wife and the shock causes him to lose his control over time, causing chaos throughout the city. Unable to continue his work he locks himself away in his office.

- Time is frozen throughout the city; Cesar is subconsciously holding everything together so it doesn't change or decay (timestop as metaphor for stagnation!). Time only passes for objects if someone is holding them and if you drop them they freeze in place. If someone dies they freeze in place. We see how the city is surviving in this odd apocalypse.

- Julia investigates with a more murder-mystery focus - it's a locked-room murder and Cesar has an ironclad alibi, but a time manipulator could easily make it happen.

- She keeps digging however and a financial motive emerges for Clodius. She confronts Crassus who admits he covered up for his nephew; everything that looked supernatural about the death was possible with enough money. Facing disgrace he throws himself from the top of his skyscraper and his body freezes on the point of impact.

- Julia finds Cesar who tells her he did use his wife's body to create Megalon but insists that he found her dead. Why? Because love holds everything together (we're leaning into the cheese; amazingly I don't think they try to explain this in the real movie). Having expiated himself, Time once again hears his entreaties and begins flowing normally ("You can move on").

- Julia and Cesar brave the streets to reach the Mayor to clear his name and a mugger shoots Cesar. However, with his new mastery, he is able with a 'kick start' from Julia to turn back time and repair his own damaged brain.

- Mayor Cicero is reconciled to his daughter and meets his granddaughter for the first time.

- Clodius learns of his uncle's death and, blaming Cesar, whips up a mob to storm the construction site, but in a flash of an eye the city is completed before them as Cesar's expanded powers let him include entire construction crews in his timestop.

- Cesar emerges and gives a speech; reflecting that every one of them wanted someone else to provide for them but were ready to use violence to take what wasn't theirs, trusting there existed someone who was willing to be robbed; the city is complete, but none of them will live in it. 'Others, who saw and believed, will come, and they are welcome'.

- Clodius and his most devoted followers attack but the city itself folds in to protect Cesar, showing his wife's spirit in the metal recognises her murderer, and Clodius sinks into the ground.

- New Year's, magic baby, yada yada.

[theantonian]

Antony defends his relationship with Cleopatra in a vulgar letter to Octavian

Antony was so angry at Octavian's continuous defamation of his private life that he impulsively wrote a letter to Octavian in which he hotly defended his relationship to Cleopatra and asked how his colleague could dare to criticise him in that regard when he himself was notorious for his loose morals.

He mentioned several of the young man's mistresses by name, "What has come over you? Why are you changed towards me? Is it because I lie with a Queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with me? Have I not done so during these last nine years?" You do not sleep with Drusilla only" he wrote. "When you read this letter, if you still have your health and strength, you will probably be dallying with Tertulla, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titiscenia, or all of them together, for what do you care where, or upon whom you spend your manly vigour?"

His reply made short work of his immoral behaviour and likely created issues with Livia, who, it is fair to assume, being the dominating woman that she was, would not have appreciated the humiliation of having her husband's conjugal infidelity exposed.

I find it really sweet as well as sexy that Antony calls Cleopatra his wife, claims her as his even in such a vulgar context.

[xxmarvelouslifexx]

Thank you jlrrt for the additions. So many horrid men to look into. Great point about the lack of women, I meant to add a tag saying they deserved their own list. But shout out to Cornelia Cinnae, Pompeia, Calpurnia, Servilia Caepionis, Tertulla, Mucia Tertia, and probably many more.

Sulla's harem gets a lot of attention (rightfully so) But what about Caesar's harem?

Marcus Antonius (whore)

Gaius Trebonius (dog-coded)

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (dog)

Marcus Junius Brutus (daddy issues)

Gaius Octavius (granddaddy issues, allegedly)

Publius Cornelius Dolabella (not even sure what was going on here tbh)

[mjvnivsbrvtvs]

something out of the brutus+antony/cleopatra alliance story bc I’m tired of looking up the leges juliae and crave personal interactions between the last vestiges of rome

Antony looks increasingly frustrated, so Brutus holds his hand out. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Let me line your eyes, and you can help me write this letter to my sister.’

He holds the letter out to Antony, who, after a moment, slides the kohl jar over to Brutus with a bemused expression on his face.

‘You’re a man of hidden talents,’ says Antony after a moment, as Brutus begins to trace the edges of his eyes with kohl. ‘Shame I didn’t know this about you back when we still lived in Rome.’

‘Well, you’re discovering them now,’ replies Brutus, biting the inside of his cheek. It’s been years since he’s done this for his sisters, and while it’s not necessarily like he’s forgotten how, it still takes him a minute to remember the motions. ‘Don’t blink.’

[sforzesco]

tfw you get the praetorship your boyfriend brother in law is more qualified for and now he won't talk to you and also your sister thinks your suffering is funny as hell

society6 | ko-fi | twitter (pillowfort, cohost) | deviantart

[catoswound]

hello. would crassus call his wife tertulla or something else. genuine question

[attila-werther]

headache finally tapering off but I have to get up early :(( I want to post about calamus!!!

[thetwelvecaesars]

hi again :) I read in Suetonius that Servilia prostited her daughter to Caesar. Would it be wrong to allude to it in a novel?

Hello again @cleopatrasdaughter! I see that you discovered I’m a writer! I like helping people with their story problems.

Now, alluding to the idea that Servilia prostituted her daughter to Julius Caesar is your choice. Because asking someone if it’s ‘wrong’ is always going to get  you different replies. This is due to the fact no one has the same morals. Morals are subjective and vary between every single person in the world. Even my view that morals are subjective is subjective.

So, I looked this up and Suetonius writes:

 “And in fact it was thought that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter Tertia to Caesar” (Suet. Caesar, 50).

I also took the liberty to look up more on Servilia’s daughter on Wiki and found this:

“She [Junia Tertia or Tertulla] was first said by some to be the natural daughter of Julius Caesar, her mother’s lover at the time of her birth. Later on it was said that Servilia offered her up to Caesar when his interest in her mother began to wane – although the former rumour, that his interest in her was paternal, seems the more likely to be true (as it is unlikely that both were true at once: incest not being a vice that Caesar was ever accused of even by his worst enemies). Either could have been the reason for Cicero to remark, at an auction where Caesar had sold goods to Servilia at reduced prices, that they had been discounted by a third (tertia)”[2] (Wikipedia - the author’s unknown.).

Now, some might think you’re ‘ruining’ the reputation of Julius. But I personally, wouldn’t worry too much about that. Since the first line from Suetonius is IN a prime source, it’s free to play with in my own personal ‘rule’ book. I’ve taken 1 liners from the prime sources and ran with them in my own novels. It’s also what you feel comfortable writing. I personally think it is up to you what your limits are. History can get ugly. Fast.

Trust me.

Now, the one thing I would take into account is, as long as a reader can FIND evidence in a prime source for the things you write in your novel, use it. If not, make it reasonable and believable for the historical figure to do; just as any other character.

I will personally advise though, If you ARE running wild with or without the prime sources, figure what your theories are for this novel are so you can write an author’s note about it at the end of your book. Or something. I personally find that if something is going to be alluded to or changed in a historical novel, do it for a reason. Don’t JUST put it in there to put it in there. Historical fiction shouldn’t be the new HBO.

Happy writing!

TTC

[beckylower]

New Release Wednesday: The Third Daughter by Fiona Forsyth

New Release Wednesday: The Third Daughter by Fiona Forsyth

Rome, 68 BCE. Julius Caesar begins his controversial career in government. At the same time, a third daughter, Tertulla, is born to the Junius family on the Palatine Hill. Tertulla grows up under the guidance of her brother, Marcus Brutus, and her mother Servilia, but when she discovers that her mother is Caesar’s mistress, she begins to wonder who her father might be. Through civil war and the…

[eternityendures-archive]

on faithfulness in livia and augustus’s marriage

“...at once took Livia Drusilla from her husband Tiberius Nero, although she was with child at the time; and he loved and esteemed her to the end without a rival.” --Suetonius, Life of Augustus  

Okay okay okay--so this meta isn’t exactly about a muse I write on this bog. However, it’s extremely important to me that I write about it, so I’m about to settle down and tell you about how Augustus isn’t unfaithful to Livia. 

( For those of you not as familiar with Roman history, I will switch back and for between ‘Augustus’ and Octavian; they are the same man, at different times in his life. The distinction is unimportant to understanding the purpose of this essay. )

Further, Suetonius is not always the most reliable; he certainly isn’t shy with sharing rumors. However, he is one of the best accounts that we have sharing Augustus’s character directly, rather than through anecdotes, so I’m going to quote him on that. I will also quote some of the rumors he has shared. 

Something else I do want to mention before I really get into this is that most historians tend not to deconstruct these rumors in the same way they do others. I’ve read one biography of Augustus, one of Livia, and skimmed part of another biography I bought about Augustus just today--none of these give these rumors the full treatment I think they deserve. 

There are some important questions I believe we should consider when looking at rumors in this time, and certainly questions that often get asked of other rumors. What could someone gain by spreading these rumors/what could the intended purpose be for these rumors? What is the context? What is the character and history of this person? Overall, do we have any proof that these rumors are true? 

I aim to deconstruct these rumors in this manner and come to the conclusion stated above. 

What are the rumors themselves? 

First, that Augustus was prone to infidelity, although some would claim only in order to gain information from enemies. As Suetonius charges: “That he was given to adultery not even his friends deny, although it is true that they excuse it as committed not from passion but from policy, the more readily to get track of his adversaries' designs through the women of their households.”

However, immediately after making such a claim, all of his immediate rumors come from Mark Antony; Octavian’s rival for power. 

“Mark Antony charged him, besides his hasty marriage with Livia, with taking the wife of an ex-consul from her husband's dining-room before his very eyes into a bed-chamber, and bringing her back to the table with her hair in disorder and her ears glowing; that Scribonia was divorced because she expressed her resentment too freely at the excessive influence of a rival1; that his friends acted as his panders, and stripped and inspected matrons and well-grown girls, as if Toranius the slave-dealer were putting them up for sale. 

“Antony also writes to Augustus himself in the following familiar terms, when he had not yet wholly broken with him privately or publicly: "What has made such a change in you? Because I lie with the queen? She is my wife. Am I just beginning this, or was it nine years ago? What then of you — do you lie only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you read this letter you have not been with Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it matter where or with whom you take your pleasure?"

And the context for these claims? 

Claims made by Antony, whom, I will repeat again, was Octavian’s rival, although not always one that was named, are hardly able to be trusted. Suetonius, by ascribing them to Antony, is admitting that they are just that: rumors. 

Octavian, at the time of the quoted letter, had launched a propaganda war against Antony for his connection with Cleopatra. Much of this propaganda was about Antony’s rejection of his sister, Octavia, as his wife, and his assumption of Cleopatra as a partner instead. In short, a lot of it attacked his relationship with a foreign woman, and used his sexuality as a weapon against him. 

Antony’s letter is a retaliation of the same manner; made public and assuming a personal tone, he name-checks specific women in an attempt to make himself seem knowledgeable of Octavian’s personal affairs, although the two were hardly friends enough for Antony to know such information first-hand. 

His hasty marriage to Livia will be explained later and in more detail, and his other claims are so outright ridiculous as to be easily dismissed as an attempt to discredit his rival. 

The first claim, giving no names and claiming only that his friends did not deny that he was unfaithful, but only with political adversaries, does not have much weight. Plus, it’s Suetonius. 

And the character of Octavian?

What we know about Augustus from accounts of his character and life is that he was not hypocritical. He publicly condoned fidelity, and when his daughter was caught being unfaithful to her husband, he punished her with banishment. 

Suetonius writes that “After Julia was banished, he denied her the use of wine and every form of luxury, and would not allow any man, bond or free, to come near her without his permission, and then not without being informed of his stature, complexion, and even of any marks or scars upon his body. It was not until five years later that he moved her from the island to the mainland and treated her with somewhat less rigour.”

There is a cultural precedent for infidelity, but that does not mean that we can confer upon Augustus these traits. His marriage with Livia, including the circumstances at the beginning, indicates a deep devotion, affection, and love. 

First, we have their hasty marriage. Whether or not they were together before their divorces, we know that the marriage caused more than a little political scandal. Enough, at the least, for Antony to mention it when attempting to smear Octavian politically. 

They met while both married to other people, while Livia and Scribonia were both pregnant, and when Scribonia gave birth, Octavian divorced her. He also had Livia’s husband, a man 27 years her senior and her cousin, divorce her ( and he did readily ) so they could become betrothed. He received special permission to marry her while pregnant with another man’s child and before the traditional waiting period between divorce and remarriage. They married three days after she gave birth to her second child by her first husband, who gave her away at the wedding.

As stated in Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, written by Adrian Goldsworthy, “Her aristocratic background and connections were valuable politically, but this was a long term advantage and there was no immediate political gain sufficient to justify the scandal of the bizarre episode that followed...[Octavian] was still just twenty-four and Livia not yet twenty.” (pg. 163)

When they were apart, they wrote letters to one another. Augustus addressed her as ‘my dear Livia,’ and the letters show a mutual respect and fondness for one another. As is later shown in her referencing these letters in a conversation with her son, Tiberius, after Augustus’ death, she kept these letters well after he had gone. 

She also accompanied him on military excursions ( uncommon for Roman wives ), was among his advisors, and controlled her own finances. They made multiple public displays of affection such as the erection and dedication of buildings and statues; statues of Livia, a temple to Concordia dedicated by Livia in honor of their marriage, and a portico named after Livia. 

Frankly, he is also noted at having to arrive at his own parties late and leave early for lack of time. It is likely that there were times he did not have the time to be intimate with his own wife, let alone find others with which to dally. 

Despite having aims to begin an Empire, and needing an heir to succeed him, Augustus and Livia never divorced, though their marriage was childless. Divorcing a woman because she was not providing an heir was not uncommon, as we later see the emperor Caligula do just that ( and even going so far as to wait until a woman has provided him an heir to marry her ). Their marriage lasted 51 years, and that is perhaps the best evidence towards a love between them. 

When Augustus died, he did so in her arms, kissing her and muttering these words:  "Live mindful of our wedlock, Livia, and farewell.”

And what is the purpose of such rumors? 

Rumors such as these would have an obvious goal in the eyes of political opposites; they make him look hypocritical. This is a man who is publicly upholding moral reforms, who is publicly against infidelity. To spread rumors that he himself is unable to remain faithful is to unsettle his basis for these moral reforms. 

Sexual rumors were made about Julius Caesar, his adoptive father and great uncle, as well as his contemporary, Marcus Antonius. It is clear that rumors along these lines were not out of the ordinary, and were quite on par with now public figures of power were talked about at the time. 

Frankly, the combination of shady sources for the rumors, our knowledge of both Augustus’s marriage and his character, and the context of the rumors indicate a man who was nothing but faithful to his wife. 

Do we have any proof?

No. The only source we have who is named is Mark Antony--a rival for power. All other stories are anecdotal; that the senate teased him about being unfaithful, that he had his wife bring him virgins to deflower, that he slept with his enemies wives to gain information. 

The only of these stories I believe may have some truth behind it is that the senate truly did attempt to call him out for supposed indiscretions; but the senate was comprised of the aristocracy, who were not above gossip themselves. They were not his friends--though they pretended to be--and they had no access to his personal life. 

In addition: none of these supposed mistresses ever came to light. No sexy letters were misplaced. No bastards were born and claimed as his. Even Julius Caesar had a scandalous incident involving a mistress--it could not have gone unnoticed. But instead, all we have are rumors. 

As Suetonius himself said:  he loved and esteemed her to the end without a rival.

1. This rival mentioned previously may actually have also been his third and final wife, Livia Drusilla, although history does not entirely make clear whether or not they were involved prior to being each divorced from their respective spouses. The influence she would have complained of in this instance would be political influence over Octavian, as many people would continue to complain of Livia for the rest of her life. If Octavian was indeed unfaithful to Scribonia in this case, it does not necessarily indicate habitual infidelity. In part because this particular ( possible ) mistress went on to be his wife for 51 years, and his marriage to Scribonia was entirely political. A lot of what we know about his marriage to Livia shows love where there was none in his second marriage, and certainly none in his first. 

[ingrid--writes]

Australian Ballet’s Spartacus exhibits the power of raw simplicity

Spartacus tells the story of a Thracian gladiator (Kevin Jackson) who channels his steely determination to spur on a rebellion against the aristocrat Crassus (Ty King-Wall) who owns his [Spartacus’] wife Flavia (Robyn Hendricks). A stock hero figure, Spartacus is beaten down in slavery, forced away from his wife and pushed to make the choice to slay his best friend. Lucas Jervies’ choreography expresses the inner turmoil Spartacus faces throughout his life when faced with hurdle after hurdle, representing well the oppressed slave figure.

Spotless white walls make the stage of Melbourne’s Arts Centre appear vaster than it is. The set of the Australian Ballet’s Spartacus, by Jerome Kaplan, is jarring, geometrical, and sparse, yet it is one of those situations where less is more. Utilising greyish monochromatic tones to represent the sad narrative and oppression in the society, Kaplan creates entrancingly simple imagery ridden with mystique. Prime examples are the steaming tubs of the bath-house, the vast gladiatorial arena and the ominous pillars upon which slaughtered slaves stand. All in tones of grey, Kaplan nevertheless manages to convey a wide range of moods.

The costumes, too, are minimal in coverage and colour. Dull, earthy tones hug the figures of the dancers. Exposed bare legs reveal the beautiful tension in their muscles. As a dancer myself, it is this raw exhibition of physicality and strength that stunned me the most in Spartacus; it is absolutely stunning to appreciate the toil and exertion that goes into such an intense and lengthy performance, but also relates back to the historical context of the work. Dealing with the theme of back-breaking slavery, the glorification of gladiatorial combat and inevitably, death which goes unmourned, Spartacus displays the incredible strength of the people whose lives were worthless, and their power in rebellion, through its focus on the beautiful physicality of the dancers.

The dancing itself is vulnerable and emotional. Symbolism in movement is used to portray the toxic class structure and the oppression of slaves as sub-humans; worthless. Tight, controlled movements juxtaposed with sustained and extremely expressive pas-de-deux pair with the unsettling music to create a constant undercurrent of intensity and drama. Although precision and unison in the corps-des-ballet is something the Australian Ballet often lacks, it is easy to overlook when the principal dancers demonstrate such beauty and grace. Amy Harris presents a venerable performance as the abandoned wife; her ability to tell a story with her body and her precise technique are a joy to watch, while the explosive passion and yearning which Kevin Jackson’s Spartacus provide an apt amount dramatic edge to the performance.

Male dominance is epitomised through the toxic masculinity of the villain Crassus, who abuses and torments his female slaves, rules over his domos and treats his wife Tertulla (Amy Harris) as a lesser being. By presenting Crassus as the bad and Spartacus as the good, Jervies elevates Spartacus’ morals and the respect and love with which he treats Flavia. Thus, when an iconic giant authoritarian hand representing the dictatorial aristocracy is pulled down by Spartacus and his men, the power of his resolve and morality is represented, as they take the opportunity and leap into fiery rebellion.

However as Spartacus and his army’s brief moment of freedom is interrupted by Crassus’ powerful forces, ending in bloodbath, the violence and gore is again glorified. The shockingly red blood that stains the dying bodies of the slaves offset the sparse greyness of all the sets. The death of the slaves is a sharp reminder that the world is a cruel place.

The Australian Ballet’s Spartacus is without doubt a beautiful piece of dance work. It seamlessly blends the traditional beauty of ballet with the harsh modernity of the set and costuming, and goes beyond to speak volumes about the pains of slavery in the past; but above all, the raw emotion and beautiful physicality demonstrated by the dancers are captivating and an excellent representation of the powerful nature of dance.