The Caesar of Paris Read online

  In the late sixth century B.C.E., the last kings of Rome, the Tarquins, built the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus at the summit of the Capitoline. After the Tarquins’s expulsion from Rome, the Temple was dedicated to the Capitoline Triad—Jupiter, chief god of the Roman pantheon, his wife Juno, and Minerva, goddess of wisdom, on September 13, 509 B.C.E., the first year of the Roman Republic. Decorated lavishly in Etruscan style, the shrine became Rome’s religious and political center, copied in new cities across the Republic.

  As pontifex maximus, head priest of the state religion, Julius Caesar now paid homage to the god who had endowed him with power. After Caesar laid the victory wreath and a laurel branch in the lap of Jupiter’s painted terra-cotta statue, two white bulls with garlands and gilded horns were sacrificed to Rome’s state god.

  Over the next month, Caesar would also mark his victories over Egypt, Asia Minor, and Africa, part of a civil war begun when the republican opposition fled Rome under Pompey Magnus. After defeating Pompey at Pharsalus in northern Greece, Caesar pursued his rival to Egypt. It’s there that the fifty-two-year-old commander fell for the captivating twenty-one-year-old Cleopatra, with whom he had a son, Caesarion. After spending just a few weeks in Rome at the end of 47 B.C.E., Caesar departed for North Africa to deal with his rivals Scipio and Cato. In 46, Caesar left for Spain where he defeated Pompey’s sons Gnaeus and Sextus.

  Julius Caesar’s sensational homecoming was part of a long tradition that dated back to Romulus, Rome’s mythical founder. The triumph, one of ancient Rome’s most important institutions, was the ultimate honor. Awarded by the Senate to generals for major victories, the rules required a triumphator to have defeated a foreign enemy with at least five thousand enemies killed in a single battle. The tradition of the four-horse chariot, or quadriga, introduced by Rome’s Etruscan kings continued after the founding of the Republic. Pompey tried replacing the horses with elephants in 61 B.C.E., but his chariot got stuck in the porta triumphalis.

  The quadriga, from the Latin for four (quad) and yoke (iugum), was also used in Roman chariot races in the Circus Maximus. Skilled charioteers could earn top dollar, but controlling the four-horse vehicle was challenging. The reins of two horses were bound around the body of the driver, who was highly motivated not to crash.

  With Rome’s sack of the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 B.C.E., followed by its victory over Pyrrhus in 275 B.C.E., spoils were added to the Roman triumph, including gold statues and painted panels. Plutarch tells us that Lucullus’s triumph over Mithridates showcased “a large gold statue of Mithridates himself, six feet high, a long shield set with stones, twenty loads of silver vessels.”8

  Subsequent Roman generals followed suit, returning from foreign conquests with tons of silver coin, bullion, and luxury objects. As part of their triumphs, they paraded their war booty through Rome, often selling the loot to finance buildings and future military campaigns.

  As Rome expanded across the Mediterranean during the Punic Wars (264–146 B.C.E.), triumphs became more frequent. So did a building spree of public monuments along the triumphal route by returning generals. These columns, arches, porticoes, and temples helped make the triumph a central institution of Roman society.9

  Parading war booty through the streets of Rome reached new heights when M. Claudius Marcellus returned in 211 B.C.E. after capturing the celebrated Greek city of Syracuse. Because Marcellus’s army was still in Sicily, the Senate offered him an ovation rather than a full triumph. The ovation, from the Latin word ovis for the sheep sacrificed at the end of the procession, was bestowed in lieu of a triumph if a defeated rival was seen as inferior or if less than five thousand enemies were killed.10

  Rather than riding a chariot, Marcellus walked, accompanied by flautists. In lieu of the triumphator’s traditional costume of a laurel wreath and gold embroidered purple toga, the general wore a wreath of Venus’s myrtle and his magistrate’s toga. Marcellus’s procession began with an allegorical painting of Syracuse made prisoner. Spanish and Syracusan allies with golden wreaths followed along with eight elephants. Enemy artillery designed by the renowned scientist Archimedes was paraded along with silver, gold, royal ornaments, statuary, paintings, and opulent furniture. According to Plutarch, Marcellus showed off “many of the most beautiful public monuments from Syracuse, realizing that they would both make a visual impression in his triumph and also be an ornament for the city.”11

  The Greek art booty earned Marcellus a reputation as a man of culture, and he is credited with turning elite Romans into collectors of Greek art. But the pilfering of sculptures from Syracuse’s temples also caused a protest. As Ida Östenberg explains, because statues were believed to embody the gods they represented, taking statues from temples was seen as not just stealing from the gods, but stealing the gods themselves from their abodes.12 A year after Marcellus’s ovation, a delegation from Syracuse arrived in Rome complaining that the gods themselves had been carried away and accusing the general of rejecting peace offers so that he could occupy and loot the city. After great debate, the Senate ultimately supported Marcellus.

  Anti-looting sentiment continued when M. Fulvius Nobilior emptied the Aetolian city of Ambracia of its sculptures and paintings, many from the palace of Pyrrhus. Livy and Cicero criticized Verres for plundering Sicily; his art seizures, including famous temple paintings, were sent to a storehouse in Messana while a ship was built to transport the statues, tapestries, gold rings, decorated goblets, and elegant furniture to Rome. Again, the Senate upheld ius belli, the rights of war, allowing Rome’s generals to confiscate everything as long as a city had been captured in a justly fought war.

  After Titus Quinctius Flamininus defeated Macedonia’s Philip V in 197 B.C.E., Livy tells us that “gold and silver, worked, unworked, and coined was carried in procession.” “The unwrought silver came to 43,270 pounds, while wrought silver included vessels of every sort, most embossed, some works of outstanding craftsmanship. . . .” Eight years later, Livy reported on a staggering parade of loot from Scipio’s victory over Antiochos III. In addition to silver and gold, the haul included 1,200 ivory tusks, gold crowns, coins, and engraved silver vases.13

  Rome’s looting reached its height after 146 B.C.E. when Scipio Aemilianus captured Carthage and Lucius Mummius captured mainland Greece, including Athens. Greek masterpieces poured into Rome, along with Greek architects, sculptors, and painters. Around this time, returning military leaders began building marble Greek-style temples in the Campus Martius, often decorated with war booty.

  Greek art had a dramatic impact on Roman society. As Paul Zanker writes, Rome’s appropriation of Greek culture led to an enthusiasm for Hellenistic art and “paved the way for the development of a new and specifically Roman system images.”14 During the early Republic, triumphs had functioned as purification rituals and moments of glory for Roman generals returning from war. By displaying show-stopping booty from Syracuse and Carthage, Marcellus and Scipio Africanus turned the triumph into a powerful propaganda tool.

  War spoils introduced Romans to new art genres and materials, like bronze and marble statues, paintings, arms and armor, gold and silver tableware, pearls and gemstones, and textiles woven with gold. Pliny reports that during Pompey’s 61 B.C.E. triumph, he presented variegated agate Myrrhine ware for the first time, dedicating the beautiful bowls and cups to Jupiter Capitolinus.

  In February 44 B.C.E., two years after his extravagant triumphs, Julius Caesar was named Rome’s dictator for life. Rumors flew that he wished to be king—Rome’s first in nearly five centuries. With Cleopatra beside him in the capital, Caesar was preparing an offensive against the Parthians (modern Iran) when he was attacked outside the Senate House in the Forum on March 15, the Roman calendar’s Ides of March. L. Junius Brutus and his fellow regicides stabbed Caesar to death at the foot of a statue of his rival Pompey, then fled to the Capitoline’s holy Temple of Jupiter.

  To Brutus and his coconspirators, Caesar’s power grab represented an ominou
s threat to republican liberty. But Caesar’s assassination triggered a civil war resulting in Rome’s transformation from a republic to an empire by his great-nephew and heir, Octavian (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus). The first order of business for the triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus was to avenge Caesar’s murder. After a lengthy battle in Macedonia, Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. The same fate awaited the popular general Mark Antony in Alexandria.

  When Octavian returned to Rome in 29 B.C.E., he celebrated a triple triumph over three days in mid-August for victories in Dalmatia, Actium, and Egypt.15 As Rome’s first emperor, Octavian took the name Augustus, and turned the triumph into a glorification of imperial power and authority. Not wanting to be upstaged by his military commanders, Augustus decreed that only members of the imperial family could celebrate triumphs.

  Early in his reign, Augustus transformed an ancient temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius into a Hellenistic-style museum for Greek art booty. Among the masterworks installed inside were a cedar-wood Apollo from Seleucia, a dozen statues by Rhodian sculptor Philiscus, Athenian sculptor Timarchides’s Apollo Citharoedus (harp player), a group sculpture of Niobe and her children by Praxiteles or Scopas, and a picture by Aristeides of Thebes.16

  Rome’s zeal for Greek art continued to grow during the Augustan era, with the wealthy competing with the ruling class for statues, bronzes, and silver for their luxurious homes. “This obsession with the past remained a characteristic of artistic culture throughout the . . . whole Julio-Claudian epoch,” writes Ranuccio Bandinelli. “It also crops up again later, giving rise to a series of ‘neo-classical’ movements which form a basic ingredient in all Roman art up to the time of Constantine and Theodosius . . .”17

  A canon of the most famous Hellenistic works, the opera nobilia, inspired Roman copies for public monuments and private homes. Especially prized were statues of athletes by Polykleitos and Aphrodites by Praxiteles and paintings by Zeuxis. Soon, Roman connoisseurs were not just commissioning copies, but were having artists combine elements from various periods to create a uniquely Roman style. Marble furniture and table legs were often carved with mythological figures based on Greek originals.18

  In 71 C.E., Romans were treated to a jaw-dropping display of war spoils when Flavian dynasty founder Vespasian and his son Titus paraded treasures taken from the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Among the shimmering booty was the seven-branched Menorah, table of the shewbread, and sacred silver trumpets. “Silver and gold and ivory in masses, made in all kinds of forms, might be seen, not as if carried in procession, but flowing so to speak like a river . . .” wrote Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.19

  Following a triumph, many of the spoils were put on public display in theaters, porticoes, and temples, joining other looted objects. In this way, the triumphator ensured his legacy for future generations. Many looted objects found a permanent home in the Roman Forum, the city’s bustling hub, which John Henry Merryman calls “the world’s first great outdoor art museum.”20

  In its final centuries, Rome remained the symbolic heart of the Empire but it lost its prominence as capital. In the late thirrd century, the imperial court moved to Milan, followed by Ravenna in the early fifth century. In between, Constantinople stole much of Rome’s thunder. In 410, Rome was sacked and plundered by Alaric and the Goths; Gaiseric and the Vandals followed in 455.

  During the ensuing Gothic and Byzantine periods, it was standard practice for victors to strip the treasures of the vanquished. From Ravenna, Byzantine emperor Justinian dispatched his general Belisarius to Carthage in 535 to defeat the Vandals and capture the loot they had stolen from Rome.21 During this period, war spoils lost their original political function, becoming instead a way to bankroll military campaigns.

  Art plunder as cultural enrichment reemerged in the Renaissance. When the Gonzagas seized Mantua in 1433, they saw themselves as modern Caesars. In the latter part of the century, Francesco II Gonzaga commissioned Andrea Mantegna’s The Triumphs of Caesar for the halls of the massive Ducal Palace in Mantua. Drawing on ancient texts by Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius, Mantegna reimagined Caesar’s famous triumphs on nine monumental tempera on canvas panels, concluding with Caesar in his chariot.

  The epic cycle, which took the artist at least six years, was among the most celebrated, copied works of the sixteenthth and early seventeenth centuries. To legitimize their own reigns, European rulers ordered reproductions in engravings, friezes, paintings, tapestries, and porcelain. (Acquired by England’s Charles I in 1629, The Triumphs of Caesar has been displayed since at Hampton Court Palace.)

  The staging of Roman-style triumphs continued. After leading the papal armies, Pope Alexander VI’s son Cardinal Cesare Borgia made a triumphal entry into Rome in 1500. Pope Julius II (1503–13), known as the warrior pope for his efforts to expand the papal empire, fashioned himself as an imperial Caesar, a triumphator. Italy’s foreign invaders—from France’s Charles VIII and Louis XII to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V—also appropriated the Roman triumph.

  In France, Henri II’s spectacular entry into Rouen in 1550 was compared to Pompey’s third triumph, “magnificent in riches and abounding in the spoils of foreign nations.”22 A triumphal arch made for Louis XIII’s royal entry into Paris in 1628 carried a depiction of Pompey.23 In the seventeenth century, Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus turned his court into a “cultural center” with plundered European artworks.24

  But nothing, not even the plunder of Syracuse or Athens, matched what came next.

  Rain did not deter Parisians from turning out in force for the start of the two-day Festival of Liberty. The date had been chosen for its symbolic associations. July 27, 1798, marked the fourth anniversary of the Republic’s Directory government, and with it the fall of Robespierre and the end of the infamous Terror that followed the French Revolution.

  That morning, on the Quai du Louvre by the Museum of Natural History, forty-five cases were loaded onto wagons decorated with garlands and tricolors. To the sound of marching bands, the procession began, with the first wagons hauling a collection of natural specimens and exotic trees from Trinidad. Camels, ostriches, caged lions, gazelles, and a bear from a German zoo followed, evoking the animals of ancient’s Rome’s triumphs and gladiator games. Following a detachment of troops came half a dozen wagons filled with rare books, manuscripts, and medals.

  After a banner reading, “The Arts seek the land where laurels grow,” twenty-five wagons rumbled by. Big floats bore two enormous statues representing the Nile and Tiber rivers. Wooden packing cases housed many of the world’s most coveted antique marble statues, including the Laocoön, the Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, and the Dying Gaul. On the cart carrying the Apollo Belvedere and Clio, the inscription read: “Both will reiterate our battles, our victories.” Another banner read: “Monuments of Antique Sculpture. Greece gave them up; Rome lost them; Their fate has twice changed; it will not change again.”25

  Six horses drew the next wagon sporting the banner: “Horses transported from Corinth Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice and from Venice to France. They are finally in a free land.”26 The precious cargo, four bronze horses, had stood watch over Venice’s St. Mark’s Basilica since their looting by the Venetians from Constantinople nearly six centuries earlier. St. Mark’s medieval lion followed.

  Bringing up the rear were two wagons packed with painted masterpieces of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The banner read: “Artists, hurry! Your masters have arrived.”27 Among the precious cargo was Raphael’s final work, Transfiguration, removed from the altarpiece of San Pietro in Montorio. According to Renaissance art critic Giorgio Vasari, when the thirty-seven-year-old artist died suddenly in 1520, the painting was placed at the head of his funeral procession “breaking the heart of all who look upon it.”28 Vasari called the painting “the most famous, the most beautiful and most divine.”29

  Also inside the crates was Paolo Veronese’s Wedding at Cana from Venic
e, three of his canvases from San Sebastiano, and two from the Doge’s Palace.30 From the Vatican painting gallery came The Mass of Saint Gregory by Andrea Sacchi; from the papal Roman summer residence, the Palazzo del Quirinale, came Nicolas Poussin’s The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus and Guercino’s Saint Petronilla.

  After passing the Botanical Gardens, the procession of masterpieces wound its way along the Seine. By late afternoon, the wagons and marching bands arrived at the Champs de Mars, Paris’s version of Rome’s Campus Martius. There, before an imposing Altar of Victory, an antique bust of Julius Caesar’s assassin Brutus was placed on a pedestal. As Patricia Mainardi explains, the inscription, “Rome was first governed by kings: Junius Brutus gave it liberty and the Republic,” was a reference to the recent overthrow of the Bourbon kings by the French Republic.31

  The Directory had commissioned a special festival song; lyrics were handed out to the crowd. Accompanied by cavalry and military bands, Parisians sang the refrain: “Rome is no more in Rome. It is all in Paris.”32

  Among the spectators that day were the Goncourt brothers who raved: “And as if twenty-nine carts of divine monuments were not enough, more carts followed laden with plants, fossils, animals, bears from Bern, lions, camels, African dromedaries, carts with manuscripts, coins, musical scores, and books. . . . The Eternal City itself had never seen such a colossal spectacle, nor had any emperor’s victory parade passing through its proud streets ever brought in its triumphant wake an army of such prisoners.”

  The reenactment of a Roman triumphal procession was made possible by France’s military sensation, twenty-six-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte.