Killing Jesus: A History Read online

  When food began running out, the Gauls, under the legendary general Vercingetorix, allowed their women and children to exit the city so that the Romans might feed them. This was an act of dubious kindness, for it likely meant a life of slavery, but it was better than letting them starve to death inside the city. However, Caesar would not allow these innocents to cross over into the Roman lines. As their husbands and fathers looked on from within the city walls, unable to invite them back inside for lack of food, the women and children remained stuck in the no-man’s-land between armies, where they lived on grass and dew until they slowly perished from starvation and thirst. Adding insult, Caesar refused to allow their bodies to be collected for burial.

  But Caesar’s greatest atrocity—and the one for which his enemies in the Roman Senate have now demanded that he stand trial as a war criminal—was committed against the Germanic Usipetes and Tenchtheri tribes in 55 B.C. These hostile invaders had slowly begun moving across the Rhine River into Gaul, and it was believed that they would soon turn their attentions south, toward Italy. From April to June of 55 B.C., Caesar’s army traveled from its winter base in Normandy to where marauding elements of the Germanic tribes were aligning themselves with Gauls against Rome. These “tribes” were not small nomadic communities but an invading force with a population half the size of Rome’s, numbering almost five hundred thousand soldiers, women, children, and camp followers.

  Hearing of Caesar’s approach, the Germans sent forth ambassadors to broker a peace treaty. Caesar refused, telling them to turn around and go back across the Rhine. The Germans pretended to go along with Caesar’s demands, but a few days later they reneged on their word and launched a surprise attack. As Caesar’s cavalry watered their horses along what is now the Niers River, eight hundred German horsemen galloped directly toward them, with intent to kill. The German tactics were peculiar—and terrifying. Rather than wage battle atop their mounts, they leapt from their horses and used their short spears or battle swords to slit open the bellies of the Roman steeds, killing the animals, and sending the now foot-bound legions fleeing in panic.

  Caesar considered the attack an act of duplicity because it came during a time of truce. “After having sued for peace by way of stratagem and treachery,” he would later write, “they had made war without provocation.” In a dramatic show of force, Caesar launched a counterattack of his own. Placing his disgraced cavalry at the rear of his force, he ordered the legions to trot double-time the eight miles to the German camp. This time it was the Romans who had the element of surprise. Those Germans who stood their ground were slaughtered, while those who tried to run were hunted down by the disgraced Roman cavalry, who were bent on proving their worth once more. Some Germans made it as far as the Rhine but then drowned while trying to swim the hundreds of yards to the other side.

  But Caesar didn’t stop there. His men rounded up all remaining members of the German tribes and butchered them—old men and women, wives, teenagers, children, and toddlers—yielding a killing ratio of eight Germans for each legionary. Generally, the Roman soldiers are educated men. They can recite poetry and enjoy a good witticism. Many have wives and children of their own and could never imagine such barbarous cruelty being visited on those they love. But they are legionaries, trained and disciplined to do as they are told. So they used the steel of their blades and the sharpened tips of their spears to pierce body after body after body, ignoring the screams of terrified children and the wails and pleas for mercy.

  Caesar’s revenge began as an act of war but soon turned into a genocide that killed an estimated 430,000 people. And just to show the Germans living on the other side of the Rhine that his armies could go anywhere and do anything, Caesar ordered his engineers to build a bridge across that previously impregnable river. This they accomplished in just ten short days. Caesar then crossed the Rhine and launched a brief series of attacks, then withdrew and destroyed the bridge.

  Rome is a vicious republic and gives no quarter to its enemies. But these brutal offenses were too much, even for the heartless Roman leadership in the Senate, who called for Caesar’s arrest. Cato, a statesman renowned not just for his oratory but also for his long-running feud with Caesar, suggested the general be executed and his head given on a spike to the defeated Germans. The charges against Caesar were certainly not without merit. But they stemmed as much from political rivalry as from the slaughter on the banks of the Rhine. One thing, however, is clear: Caesar’s enemies wanted him dead.

  * * *

  In 49 B.C., nearly six years after that massacre, Gaul is completely conquered. It is time for Caesar to return home, where he will finally stand trial for his actions. He’s been ordered to dismiss his army before setting foot into Italy.

  This is Roman law. All returning generals are required to disband their troops before crossing the boundary of their province, in this case the Rubicon River. This signals that they are returning home in peace rather than in the hopes of attempting a coup d’état. Failure to disband the troops is considered an act of war.

  But Caesar prefers war. He decides to cross the Rubicon on his own terms. Julius Caesar is fifty years old and in the prime of his life. He has spent the entire day of January 10 delaying this moment, because if he fails, he will not live to see the day six months hence when he will turn fifty-one. While his troops play dice, sharpen their weapons, and otherwise try to stay warm under a pale winter sun, Caesar takes a leisurely bath and drinks a glass of wine. These are the actions of a man who knows he may not enjoy such creature comforts for some time to come. They are also the behavior of man delaying the inevitable.

  But Caesar has good reason to hesitate. Pompey the Great, his former ally, brother-in-law, and builder of Rome’s largest theater, is waiting in Rome. The Senate has entrusted the future of the Republic to Pompey and ordered him to stop Caesar at all costs. Julius Caesar, in effect, is about to begin a civil war. This is as much about Caesar and Pompey as it is about Caesar and Rome. To the winner goes control of the Roman Republic. To the loser, a certain death.

  Caesar surveys his troops. The men of Legio XIII stand in loose formation, awaiting his signal. Each carries almost seventy pounds of gear on his back, from bedroll to cooking pot to three days’ supply of grain. On this cold winter evening, they wear leather boots and leggings and cloaks over their shoulders to keep out the chill. They will travel on foot, wearing bronze helmets and chain mail shirts. All protect themselves with a curved shield made of wood, canvas, and leather, along with two javelins—one lightweight, the other heavier and deadlier. They are also armed with double-edged “Spanish swords,” which hang from scabbards on their thick leather belts, and the requisite pugiones. Some men are kitted out with slingshots, while others are designated as archers. Their faces are lined and weathered from years of sun and wind, and many bear the puckered scars from where an enemy spear plunged into their bodies or the long purple scar tissue from the slash of an enemy sword cutting into biceps or shoulder. They are young, mostly between seventeen and twenty-three years of age, but there are some salt-and-pepper beards among them, for any male Roman citizen as old as forty-six can be conscripted into the legions. Young or old, they have endured the rugged physical training that makes the stamina of legionaries legendary. New recruits march for hours wearing a forty-five-pound pack, all the while maintaining complicated formations such as the wedge, hollow square, circle, and testudo, or “tortoise.” And all Roman legionaries must learn how to swim, just in case battle forces them to cross a river. Any moment of failure during this rigorous training means the sharp thwack of a superior’s staff across one’s back.

  Once a conscript’s four months of basic training are finished, rigorous conditioning and drilling remain part of his daily life. Three marches of more than twenty miles in length while wearing a heavy pack are required from every man each month. When the long miles in formation are done, the legionary’s unit is required to build a fortified camp, complete with earthen ramparts and
trenches.

  So it is that the tough, loyal, muscled men of Legio XIII are drilled in the art of battle strategy, intuitively able to exploit an enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, and proficient in every weapon of their era. They live off the land, pooling their supplies of grain and any meat they can forage. They have built roads and bridges, delivered mail, collected taxes, served as police, endured the deep winters of Gaul, known the concussive sting of a slingshot-hurled rock bouncing off their helmets, and even played the role of executioner, driving nails through the hands and feet of escaped slaves and deserters from their own ranks who have been captured and condemned to crucifixion. The oldest among them can remember the uprising of 71 B.C., when seven thousand slaves, led by a rebel named Spartacus, revolted, were captured, and were crucified in a 240-mile line of crosses that stretched almost all the way from Naples to Rome.

  It is Caesar to whom these men have sworn their allegiance. They admire how he leads by example, that he endures the same hardships and deprivations during a campaign that they do. He prefers to walk among the “comrades,” as he calls his troops, rather than ride a horse. Caesar is also well known throughout the ranks for his habit of rewarding loyalty and for his charisma. His men proudly boast of the many women he has had throughout Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and they even make fun of his thinning hair by singing songs about “our bald whoremonger.” Likewise, Caesar gives his legions free rein to chase women and gamble when they are off duty. “My men fight just as well when they are stinking of perfume,” he says.

  Caesar crossing the Rubicon

  But in the end, the legionaries fight, first and foremost, for one another. They have trained together, cooked meals together, slept in the same cramped leather tents, and walked hundreds of miles side by side. No thought is more unbearable than letting down their commilito (“fellow soldier”) on the field of battle. They call one another frater (“brother”), and the highest honor a legionary can earn is the wreath of oak leaves known as the corona civica, awarded to those who risk their lives to save a fallen comrade. That Julius Caesar wears such a crown is testimony to his soldiers that their commander is not a mere figurehead, but a man who can be trusted to wage war with courage and distinction.

  But while it is Caesar who will lead the legion into battle, it is his men who will engage the enemy. Theirs is not a compassionate profession, and these are not compassionate men. They are legionaries, tasked with doing the hard, ongoing work of keeping Rome the greatest power in the world.

  In the growing darkness, Caesar now addresses his army, reminding them of the significance of crossing from one side of the Rubicon to the other. “We may still draw back,” he tells them, though all within earshot know that the moment for retreat has long since passed. “But once across that little bridge, we shall have to fight it out.”

  Legio XIII is not Caesar’s favorite—that would be the Tenth. But, like his other troops, those soldiers are still scattered throughout Gaul. Waiting for them would ruin his plans for a lightning-fast march straight into the heart of Rome.

  Julius Caesar may be nervous as the temperature continues to drop and men shiver in the dampness, but any fear is offset by the awareness that each and every soldier in Legio XIII is a killing machine.

  Problem is, so are the men they will be fighting. Caesar is about to pit Roman against Roman, legionary against legionary, frater against frater.

  The time has come. Caesar stands alone, gazing over to the other side of the Rubicon. His officers huddle a few feet away, awaiting his orders. Torches light their faces and those of Legio XIII.

  “Alea iacta est,” Caesar says to no one in particular, quoting a line from the Greek playwright Menander: “The die is cast.”

  Caesar and his legion cross into Italy.

  * * *

  What follows is not just a Roman civil war, but also the first world war in history. The entire Mediterranean rim soon becomes a battleground, its plains and deserts filled with legionaries, its seas brimming with warships conveying these men from one land to another. The fighting is brutal, often hand to hand. The fate awaiting prisoners of war is torture and death, leading many to commit suicide when a battle has been lost rather than submit to the victors. Caesar takes Rome within two months, only to find it abandoned. Merely capturing Rome is not enough. He must have total victory. Pompey has fled, and Caesar gives chase across the Mediterranean, to Egypt.

  As he wades ashore to meet with Ptolemy XIII, the teenage king of Egypt, Pompey—the great general, architect, builder, and prodigious lover who was married five times, and who was three times given the privilege of riding in triumph through the streets of Rome after epic battlefield conquests in his youth—is stabbed through the back with a sword, and then stabbed several more times for good measure. Not wanting his murderers to see his expression at the moment death arrives, Pompey pulls the hem of his toga up over his face. His murderers quickly cut off his head, and leave his corpse on the sand to be picked apart by shorebirds. Thinking it will please Julius Caesar, the Egyptians bring him Pompey’s severed skull. But Caesar is devastated. He weeps, and then demands that the rest of the body be retrieved so that it might be given a proper Roman burial.

  But Pompey’s murder is not the end of the war, for his outraged allies and sons soon take up his cause. In the end, Caesar will win the civil war and take control of the Roman Republic, much to the joy of its common citizens, who revere him. Yet four years of conflict will pass before that day arrives. In the meantime, Julius Caesar will command his legions in locales ranging from Pharsalus, in central Greece; to Thapsus, in Tunisia; to the plains of Munda, in present-day southern Spain,1 and his legend will only grow larger.

  Caesar’s conquests, however, are not only on the battlefield.

  * * *

  The year is 48 B.C. A civil war is taking place in Egypt at the same time as the civil war in Rome. On one side is the twenty-one-year-old Cleopatra. On the other is her thirteen-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII, who is being advised by a conniving eunuch named Potheinos. Ptolemy has succeeded in driving Cleopatra from her palace in the seaside capital at Alexandria. The troubles in Italy then intervene when Caesar chases Pompey to Alexandria. It is Potheinos, thinking to ally himself with Caesar, who has Pompey beheaded on the Egyptian beach just moments after the Roman is assassinated while coming ashore to align himself strategically with Ptolemy XIII.

  But Caesar is disgusted by Potheinos’s barbarous act, for he had planned to be lenient toward Pompey. “What gave him the most pleasure,” the eminent historian Plutarch will one day write of Caesar, “was that he was so often able to save the lives of fellow citizens who had fought against him.”

  Caesar moves into Egypt’s royal palace for the time being. But he fears that Potheinos will attempt to assassinate him, so he stays up late most nights, afraid to go to sleep. One such evening, Caesar retires to his quarters. He hears a noise at the door. But rather than Potheinos or some other assassin, a young woman walks into the room alone. It is Cleopatra, though he does not yet know that. She has slipped into the palace through a waterfront entrance and navigated its stone corridors without being noticed. Her hair and face are covered, and her body is wrapped in a thick dark mantle. Beguiled, Caesar waits for this stranger to reveal herself.

  Slowly and seductively, Cleopatra shows her face, with her full lips and aquiline nose. She then lets her wrap drop to the marble floor, revealing that she is wearing nothing but a sheer linen robe. Caesar’s dark eyes look her body up and down, for he can now clearly see much more than the outline of Cleopatra’s small breasts and the sway of her hips. The lust between them is not one-sided. In that moment of revealing, one historian will write of Cleopatra, “her desire grew greater than it had been before.”

  Cleopatra knows well the power of seduction, and she is about to bestow upon Caesar her most precious gift—intending, of course, to gain a great political reward. The bold gambit pays off immediately. That night, she and Caesar begin one of
the most passionate love affairs in history, a political and romantic entanglement that will have long-lasting effects on the entire world. Before the morning sun rises, Caesar decides to place Cleopatra back on the Egyptian throne—just as she had hoped. For Caesar, this means he is now aligned with a woman who owes her reign to the legacy of Alexander the Great, the omnipotent Macedonian conqueror he so admires. The confluence of his growing dynasty and Cleopatra’s is a powerful aphrodisiac. They speak to each other in Greek, although Cleopatra is said to be fluent in as many as nine tongues. Each is disciplined, sharp-witted, and charismatic. Their subjects consider them benevolent and just, and both can hypnotize a crowd with their oratorical skills. Cleopatra and Egypt need Caesar’s military might, while Caesar and Rome need Egypt’s natural resources, particularly her abundant grain crops. It could be said that Caesar and Cleopatra make the perfect couple, were it not for the fact that Julius Caesar is already married.

  Cleopatra, paramour of Caesar and, later, Marc Antony

  Not that this has stopped Caesar in the past. He has had three wives, one of whom died in childbirth, another whom he divorced for being unfaithful, and now Calpurnia. He sleeps with the wives of friends, often thereby gleaning information about colleagues. The love of his life is Servilia Caepionis, mother of the treacherous Marcus Junius Brutus—whom many believe to be Caesar’s illegitimate son.

  But Caesar’s most notorious affair was not with a woman. It is widely rumored that, in his youth, he had a yearlong affair with King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia.2 The sneering nickname “Queen of Bithynia” still follows Caesar.

  Lacking from Caesar’s many dalliances has been an heir. The number of his bastard offspring scattered throughout Gaul and Spain is legendary, but he had only one legitimate child, Julia—who, ironically, married Caesar’s rival Pompey—and she has long since died in childbirth. Calpurnia, Caesar’s current wife, has been unable to give him a child.