Julius Caesar’s two most famous assassins, Brutus and Cassius, were the son and son-in-law, respectively, of a Roman noblewoman named Servilia. And Servilia and Caesar were fucking. Not just a one off thing, either. They were having an affair for literally decades. Everyone knew it. Why did everyone know? Well, one time Caesar and Cato, who was Servilia’s brother, were having a debate (catfight) in the Senate and a servant came in and passed Caesar a note. Cato jumps up, all indignant, and announces that Caesar is committing treason right in the middle of the Senate. See that treasonous note he just got handed? (Like I said, it was a catfight.) And Caesar is like, well Cato, here’s the treasonous note, how about we read it aloud to the Senate, huh? It was a love letter from Servilia. And that’s the story of how Caesar made Cato stand there and listen to the sexts Cato’s sister sent Caesar get read aloud in front of the whole Senate.
I’ve always been privately convinced (on no evidence whatsoever) that Brutus and Cassius killed Caesar because they were so fucking embarrassed that he was fucking their mother/mother-in-law.
Ej you can’t just drop all the goss and then say there’s more without sharing
Oh boy. I guess I can’t back out now, can I? Ok, let’s do this.
So Brutus’s great-grandfather was named Quintus Servilius Caepio and he was a completely shit person generally and got two entire armies massacred because he was an elitist shithead and wouldn’t work with someone he thought was low-class but anyway. He was on campaign and he captured this huge hoard of gold at this town called Tolosa and sent it back to the Roman treasury. But then the caravan carrying the gold was hijacked by bandits and it all disappeared. Surprise! Caepio hired the bandits himself and stole all the gold. People were (understandably) pissed.
I was actually wrong in the tags, it wasn’t Brutus’s grandfather, it was his great-uncle. Anyway, so Roman citizens were allowed to vote, but the other Italians, who made up like half of the Roman armies, weren’t technically citizens and couldn’t vote. Which annoyed them. So Brutus’s great-uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus, basically got all the Italians to swear an oath that they would do whatever he said if he could get them citizenship. And he almost managed it. Only historical example I can think of of someone trying to take over a country by expanding democracy. Drusus got assassinated pretty fucking fast.
And then there’s Cato, which, don’t get me fucking started. The dude tore out his own intestines with his bare hands because he hate Caesar so much. I am not fucking joking.
So Caesar fucked everything. Everything. This wasn’t a secret or anything. The dude (probably) fucked the King of Bithynia when he was like 20 and the king was like 80. He made a habit of seducing the wives of his political enemies just to be an asshole. When he held a triumphal march through Rome, his soldiers chanted “Home we bring the bald whore-monger, Romans lock you wives away.” Caesar was basically the embodiment of Big Dick Energy and he made sure everyone knew it.
So Clodia was like the tabloid sensation of her day. She had lots of affairs, maybe killed her husband, and then she got involved with this guy Caelius. Eventually they broke up, so Clodia got Caelius prosecuted for attempted murder. You know, like you do. I don’t have time to get into all the juicy details, but let’s just say it involved accusations of incest, gleeful slut-shaming, and Cicero’s wife being bizarrely jealous.
As for Antony and Curio, they were friends and Cicero at one point (after Curio was dead, if I remember correctly) accused Antony of having had an affair with Curio when they were young men. It’s not clear if this is true, because on the one hand, it’s totally believable (if Caesar was the embodiment of Big Dick Energy, Antony was the embodiment of just Big Dick. Like, he had a really big dick and he liked to show it off to everyone) but on the other hand, Cicero hated Antony and was talking all kinds of shit about him at the time, so who the fuck knows.
Anyway, please buy my Roman tabloid, because the next issue will discuss that time Clodius dressed up in drag to sneak into Caesar’s house and Caesar’s mother organized all the Roman noblewomen to hunt him down.
I couldn’t resist 😂
I love you
The Catones were all fucking extra. There are two lines: the snobby line and the crazy line, all coming from Cato the Elder.
Cato the Elder was born an eighty year old crank, was a pillar of stick up the goddamn ass, stingy as fuck, and spent an uncomfortable amount of time really concerned about the state of Scipio Aemilius’s ass and how he was using it and telling everyone allllll about it. He was also an asshole who had no sense of humor but I bet though he was hilarious.
Case in point: he married a patrician Licinia, had some kids, got old, she died, and so it goes. As he was well into his seventies/eighties, he took one of his slaves as a semi-regular mistress and his son and his wife–a patrician Aemilia–threw a shitfit from hell.
This was a mistake.
So he got rid of her and then completely unrelated went to visit his own former slave that he’d freed, who had an eighteen year old gorgeous daughter Salonia. So maybe it is related. He asked for her hand in marriage, married her, and brought her home so they could all live together because fuck you, Cato Junior. Luckily, he was eighty and after fathering a son on that poor girl who did not deserve this shit died, but only after assuring his son by her was allowed to enter the Senate and left him sufficient property to qualify because fuck you Cato Junior, this joke never gets old.
As you can imagine, the Catones Licinianii and the Catones Salonianii (did I get the spelling right?) really didn’t get along.
Cato ‘My Intestines Hate You Caesar, Ask Them” is descended from that second marriage. Then again, Intestines!Cato married Caesar’s step-niece–really–divorced her to marry her to an elderly friend of his, Hortensius–really–then remarried her immediately after Hortensius died. No. Really. Really.
Elderly wealthy friend Hortensius.
Elderly wealthy friend Hortensius Orator who was father of Hortensia.
You want to know Hortensia.
She was the widow of Caepio Junior (aka Servilia’s brother, yeah), which is important here because as she was a widow and of age, she controlled her own fortune, and women in Rome did not pay taxes on their personal fortune. Keeping in mind that women weren’t allowed to stand for office, make war, decide policy, and while children were chattels of their fathers or male guardian and while married were chattel of their husbands, that’s fair.
During the trimvirate of Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus, they decided to tax the women of Rome to pay for their war against Caesar’s assassins.
Hortensia wasn’t pleased.
She then led a large group of women into the Forum Romanum, climbed up on the rostra, and threw the fuck down; you can read about what she said, bthough the exact speech isn’t around–yet–but the short version was fuck taxation without representation.
The triumvirs tried to make her and the other women leave the rostra; that so didn’t work. So they backed down.
Big Gay Dracula Does a Shitpost 