David Blixt

New Covers for COLOSSUS

As we count down to the release of the new COLOSSUS novel, WAIL OF THE FALLEN, Creativia is re-issuing the first two novels with gorgeous new covers! Yesterday I shared the cover for STONE & STEEL. If you missed it, it's here:

Today I'm revealing the new cover for THE FOUR EMPERORS, again just beautiful:

And tomorrow I'll not only have the reveal of a new cover, but of a whole new novel! One I've been working on for the last two years, and that will be available to my Italian readers in just three weeks! Stay tuned!

New Books, New Covers, New Editions

I've been sitting on news about my next new novel for MONTHS - and still can't talk about it, even though it comes out in just a few weeks. I have so much to say, I've already constructed a new section of my website devoted to it. I'm chomping at the bit to tell you all about it, and I promise, I'll share it all here as soon as I have permission from my publisher. 

However, that doesn't mean I don't have tons of other news to share. 

First off, WAIL OF THE FALLEN is almost here! The third installment of the COLOSSUS series returns to the world of Judah and Asher ben Matthais as they struggle to survive the Roman siege of Jerusalem! 

Second, and no less important, four of my backlist books are getting beautiful new editions from Creativia! That's right. The first two COLOSSUS novels are getting new covers, and HER MAJESTY'S WILL is getting a new release with that same beautiful cover designed by artist Jay Fosgitt. Meanwhile the essay collection originally called ORIGIN OF THE FEUD is getting not only a new cover but a new name! I'll share that as soon as I'm able. 

That doesn't mean the old editions are going away. While the ebook editions will change, you can still get ahold of the classic print editions of each of these books. And that holds true for the next book in the COLOSSUS series, WAIL OF THE FALLEN. While the new deal with Creativia may delay the release of that one by a few weeks, fans of the old covers can pick up the new novel in print with the cover of your choice!

But for those new to the COLOSSUS series, these new covers are epic. I'm really pleased, as they blend the original idea with a dynamism that is perfect for this Roman/Judean epic. (Little thing, but wonderful - they retain the font structure of the new Star-Cross'd covers that were released last year). 

I'll have more soon. Until then, feast your eyes upon the first of the new COLOSSUS covers!

 

MoV 10th Anniversary Cover Reveal, Audiobooks, and More!

2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the release of The Master Of Verona. To mark the occasion, there's a new cover, new format - and, by popular demand, an audiobook! All of which drop in December.

First, take a moment to admire the gorgeous new cover by Kim Killion at The Killion Group. She's currently working on similar covers for the rest of the series, which will have an across-the-board facelift for the digital editions. Fans of the old covers, never fear, they'll remain on some print copies. But the larger trade paperback version of MoV coming in December will sport the new cover. 

So will the audiobook. I spent the Spring recording at the studio of my friend Judith West, and she's engineered a truly wonderful-sounding version of the story. It being my voice, I was afraid to listen to the finished product - only to find myself enjoying it! I'm sure I'll be hyper-critical of certain line deliveries and cadences, but I have to say, it was fun to listen to the story.

As if all of that isn't enough, there's an expanded edition of ORIGIN OF THE FEUD coming this month, and expanded markets for the ebooks of the Colossus series. I'm enjoying re-immersing myself in the world of Colossus, so I can finally finish the long-awaited third novel, WAIL OF THE FALLEN. 

I'll be back soon to blog more about all of this. So much is happening, it feels like a waterslide trying to keep track of it all. 

Give-Away Contest - Audiobook of STONE & STEEL!

Listen up, Quirites! Sordelet Ink is giving away 20 copies COLOSSUS: SWORD AND STEEL on Audible! Read by the inestimable Brian J Gill! All you have to do to enter is join the Sordelet Ink mailing list!

So what are you waiting for? This contest ends in a week! Visit www.sordeletink.com! (And, if you don't win, you can still get an audio copy by joining Audible! You can get it at Audible.com, or else on Amazon - click HERE!)

No More Kings

I should explain why I so love Roman history. Yes, I'm attracted to the life of Julius Caesar above all others. I adore good retellings of Marius and Sulla and Gracchus and the rest. But to me, there is a single moment in time that fascinates me, and always will.

You see, among all the astonishing achievements of the Roman Empire, the one that most amazes me is the fact that it even existed.

After Romulus founded the city, murdered his brother, and conducted the rape of the Sabine women, Rome was just another city. It was ruled over by a minor king, who was followed by his son, and his son’s son. Despite the ties to Aeneas and the kings of Alba Longa and such, it was just another small monarchy, like any other through the ages.

Oddly enough, in a city born from rape, it was a rape that led to the most remarkable moment in Roman – and indeed, to me, all – history.

In 509 BC Rome was under the rule of its seventh king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. The Tarquin’s son raped a distant kinswoman, Lucretia. She summoned four noblemen to call upon her, described the crime that had been committed, and then stabbed herself in the heart.

Here is how Shakespeare paints the scene:

Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
She throws forth Tarquin's name: 'He, he,' she says,
But more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak;
Till after many accents and delays,
Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,
  She utters this: 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he,
  That guides this hand to give this wound to me.'

Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast
A harmful knife, that thence her soul unsheath'd:
That blow did bail it from the deep unrest
Of that polluted prison where it breath'd:
Her contrite sighs unto the clouds bequeath'd
  Her winged sprite, and through her wounds doth fly
  Life's lasting date from cancell'd destiny.

One of the men present was named Lucius Junius Brutus. The nickname Brutus had been earned by his feigning of stupidity. But he had had to seem dull and brutish after his brother had been murdered on the order of the Tarqin, who had a nasty habit of murdering anyone who might rival him.

According to Livy, Brutus tore the knife from the dead woman’s breast and ran into the streets, calling for the overthrow of the Tarquin, who also happened to be his uncle on his mother’s side.  A notorious villain, the Tarquin lacked popular support, and thus both he and his son fled Rome as fast as their feet could carry them.

Again, the Shakespere:

When they had sworn to this advised doom,
They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence;
To show her bleeding body thorough Rome,
And so to publish Tarquin's foul offence:
Which being done with speedy diligence,
  The Romans plausibly did give consent
  To Tarquin's everlasting banishment.

This is the moment that amazes me. Because Brutus was related to the Tarquin, the people of Rome turned to him and began hailing him as the new king. At which moment Brutus said, “No. No more kings. Men can rule themselves.”

This is the basis on which our modern culture stands. And it’s this moment that’s so very revolutionary to me. True, other cultures had flirted with democracies, the notion wasn’t entirely new. But for a man being hailed as a king to turn away the crown was – and is – an astonishing act. An act of patriotism, of humility, of far-sightedness, of egalitarianism, and of honor. An act without precedent or peer. 

Here, according to Livy, is a retelling of the oath that Brutus had the people of Rome swear:

Omnium primum avidum novae libertatis populum, ne postmodum flecti precibus aut donis regiis posset, iure iurando adegit neminem Romae passuros regnare.

First of all, by swearing an oath that they would suffer no man to rule Rome, it forced the people, desirous of a new liberty, not to be thereafter swayed by the entreaties or bribes of kings.

Brutus meant it. Among the events that followed was a conspiracy to restore the monarchy. Among the conspirators were Brutus’ two sons. He had them put to death. Though he wept bitterly at their executions, the notion of self-determination, of autonomy, of self-rule, were more important to him than his own life, or the lives of his family. It was a remarkable act of self-abnegation, of sacrificing for the greater good. (below is a painting byJacques Louis-David entitled The Lictors Bring To Brutus The Bodies Of His Sons).  

Of all the amazing moments of Roman history, this is the one that stands out to me. Yes, the new government was far from perfect. An oligarchy of Senators is not much better than a king, as it’s still the wealthy above the poor, the entitled against the disenfranchised. But here we are, 2,500 years later, and this is the idea that still strikes a spark in men’s hearts, that kindles us to strive for something more that the random injustices of life. Men can rule themselves. For out of injustice rises a need for justice. Not just justice for the wronged, but for all.

That need for justice is more powerful than one’s property, family, or even one’s own life. Brutus died in battle against the Tarquin and his son, killing the son as he himself fell, thus preventing the family’s return to Rome.  

This is the Brutus I wish we remembered. I think his act of courage is among the greatest in recorded history. However much I love Marius and Caesasr and Augustus and the rest of the more known Romans, to me the greatest act in the whole history of Rome was the founding of the Republic.

Senatus Populusque Romanum

Looking at the US government of late, I can’t help but think of Rome. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore the parallels, all coming faster and faster. It took the Romans nearly 500 years to get to where we are in just over 200.

Our most dire peril, as I see it, is the breakdown of the rule of Law. When our lawmakers dislike the laws that came before them, and decide to subvert them, the whole system is endangered.

The greatest gift the Romans gave us wasn’t aqueducts or amphitheatres, or even art. It was Law. The Roman court system was the envy of the world. Yes, there were miscarriages of justice, when a jury was bribed or a judge threw out an air-tight case. But even the very concept of standing courts was new to the world, as was a selected jury of your peers (rather than the unwieldy Greek version of a court, when the whole city came together to pass judgment. The Roman way didn’t shut down the society).

At the dawn of the Republic, when the first Brutus threw out the Tarquin and set up a new system of government, there were four inalienable rights of citizenship:

1 – A Roman had the right to vote. After the overthrowing of a tyrannical king, this was a huge guarantee, and vital.

2 – A Roman had the right to own property.

3- A Roman had the right to marry. This was later expanded to include all legal contracts – basically a Roman had the right to sign a written contract, or enter a verbal one, and expect it to be upheld.

4 – A Roman had the right to be whole in his person. Technically this means he could be beaten with a rod, but not whipped or cut – nothing that broke the skin. But it also had the effect that he had recourse at law for any injustice or indult given him – assault, etc. This also ended up guaranteeing a citizen the right to a trial before he was punished. The right to a fair trial is enormously important.

Having come from tyranny, these rights were precious, and ferociously defended, becoming the cornerstones of Roman law (and of course I should mention that these applied to Roman male citizens. Women eventually could own property, but the rest of their rights were not nearly as protected. A man could divorce a woman on a whim, whereas a woman needed a reason, and proof).

These foundations got expanded over time, as rights do. First conceived to protect Patricians (the “fathers” of the country), they then spread to cover all citizens, even Plebians. As more and more people got the citizenship, and therefore the vote, the ideal of Roman law was respected the world over. People from other countries would travel to Rome to get justice in a Roman court. A will lodged with the Vestal Virgins in Rome was considered so safe than many foreign kings placed their wills in those holy hands. Roman justice was seen to be swift, and by-and-large fair.

What eventually happened, though, was that the lawmakers started to not like the eroding of what they saw as their rights. There were too many “new men” coming up to join their ranks (some were even of Italian, not Roman, birth!) In response, lawmakers began rigging the elections, so that their votes counted more than those of ordinary people. Then they started holding themselves exempt from certain laws. Then they started passing laws to circumvent other laws. Then Cicero had five Roman citizens executed without a trial.

For all our talk of Caesar crossing the Rubicon, it was this undermining of the law that was the beginning of the end for the Republic. A country’s laws are only useful when they are seen as applying equally to all people, high or low. 

I’m going to quote from my play Eve Of Ides, set the night before the assassination of Caesar:

CAESAR
The law is a breathing thing, Brutus. It cannot be static. When the Senate - a few hundred men of birth and wealth, making laws for people they despise - when they make laws that go against the wishes or interests of the people, they abrogate their authority.

BRUTUS
Is that how you see the Senate?

CAESAR
(laughing) I’ve been a member too long to see it as anything other than what it is - a collection of privileged fools who do nothing and obstruct everything. They’ll fight even the most basic, clear-headed notion because it was suggested by their political enemy. As if we were not all Romans. Picking absurd fights to protect some petty private interests, backing so deep into a political corner that my only viable solution is military. Lawmakers with a profound disdain for the law. That is how I see the Senate. Whereas you see it as you wish it to be - a just and wise body of men.

BRUTUS
The dreamer.

CAESAR
And the pragmatist.

This was a very reasonable view of the Senate in Caesar’s day. They routinely broke the law, violating their stated beliefs in order to protect their power and privileges, invoking Rome’s founders and traditions as a club to beat anyone who disagreed with them.

Does this sound at all familiar?

We must study Rome, not for simple love of history. Our own founders consciously based the government they created on the Roman system – two houses, a Senate and a House of Plebs; two consuls to run the executive branch; and a system of standing courts. With Rome as our model, it is imperative that we learn from Rome’s mistakes, not repeat them. Otherwise we’ll end up with too much power vested in the executive branch, a huge income disparity between the wealthy and the common man, and a military engaged in perpetual war.

Oh wait…

As I see it, we’re in the time of Gaius Gracchus. Gracchus, who tried to advocate for the rights of the common man above the elite. When he was opposed by a faction of backward-looking zealots calling themselves the Boni (the “Good Men”), who pulled the same parliamentary tricks as the Tea Party this last fortnight, Grachus said, “A tribune who diminishes the privileges of the people ceases to be a tribune of the people.” I couldn’t agree more.

Being in the time of Gracchus means we’re not doomed yet. But if Rome is a reliable roadmap, in about 100 years we’re destined for our own Nero, our own Galba, Otho, Vitellius, our own Year of the Four Emperors. That year, 69 AD, was a nightmare of unconstitutionality. But by then, the constitution of Rome was so badly trampled that it was virtually useless.

When law-makers live outside the law, the law ceases to have value. As Truman Capote said, “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have the protection of it.”

By the bye, I don’t have a soapbox in The Four Emperors. It’s just my attempt to tell an excellent and exciting story, a story worth telling. But history is more than a window into the past. History is a mirror, a window into ourselves. As I said in an interview last week, “We forget our history. That’s what literature can do – remind us not of where we are, but how we got here.”

Senatus Populaesque Romanum: “The Senate and People of Rome.” We forget the People at our peril. The same is true of history.

I’ll close with a lengthy exchange from the end of Act One of Eve Of Ides:

CAESAR
You of all men might understand. Seven civil wars in my lifetime. Seven. Add to that proscriptions, purges, and outright murder, and what do you have? Chaos. Rome is foundering. You must see that. Our customs and beliefs are dashing themselves against the facts of our times. The ideals of our founders are either ill-equipped for modern man, or else ill-served by him. The poor are frightened by the change, and they cling to the three staples of their lives - their gods, their games, and their bread. The Second and Third Classes want to join the First Class while the First Class wants to protect its exclusivity. We with the birth, the money, and the will to govern are expected - needed - to provide for the lesser among us. Else the Republic will fall.

BRUTUS
The Republic is eternal.

CAESAR
Nothing is eternal. Not even the gods. Without a firm hand, we will return to Pandora’s world - a world of chaos. It’s almost as though someone has defied the gods and shouted out Roma’s secret name into the open air, heralding our destruction.

BRUTUS
Is that the choice? Caesar, or chaos?

CAESAR
Not a palatable choice, I’ll confess. But you must see that a dictator is better than destruction.

BRUTUS
I’m not so sure. We cannot have a king - or a Caesar - and still be the people our forefathers envisioned.

CAESAR
But they couldn’t envision the state in which we find ourselves today! We’re no longer that tiny colony on the seven hills, desperate to survive the wolves. We have interests in foreign lands, far-flung peoples and places. Our wealth is great, our prestige greater, our enemies greater still. The sign-posts our ancestors planted should guide us to who we will become, not bind us to who we were. An example - from the time of our founding until a generation ago, the poor had no stake in the society. The army was filled with men of means - men with property have property to defend. But that changed when Marius saw Rome’s need for soldiers - an honest need, with the Germans coming for us like an avalanche. Lacking men, he drafted the poor. Practical. But fifty years on, what do we have? Professional soldiers coming home to find themselves rejoining the poor, wondering why they were called to fight for their country. Was it to join the Head Count and starve once discharged? Military training married to starvation births revolution. And not one of our civil civil wars, with Senators battling Senators. This will be a genuine uprising, with the people overthrowing the lot of us. As a consequence, Rome today needs wars, constant wars, foreign wars, until we are prosperous and equitable here at home. Without wars abroad, we sow the seeds of our own destruction here at home.

BRUTUS
Perpetual warfare? That’s a terrible solution!

CAESAR
Offer an alternative. Should we tax businesses? The poor? Women? That is the choice - wars of conquest, or taxation. War is both popular and profitable. We can try to replace it with arena games, but nothing matches the patriotic fervor of war, nor its ability to produce funds.

BRUTUS
We should just return to the old ways. Leave the rest of the world to fight each other. Remain above it.

CAESAR
We tried! We tried, but they came for us anyway! Carthage, Pontus, the Germans - we fought them and fought them until we saw the only way to keep them at bay was to conquer them. I am not saying I approve, Brutus. I’m saying this is where we are.

BRUTUS
Are we a nation of brigands, then? Foreign wars are theft writ large.

CAESAR
Whereas civil wars are not about wealth or land. They’re about our idea of ourselves. Most men are sadly incapable of defining themselves by what they are, so they rely on what they are not. Being Roman has to mean more than merely not being Greek or Aegyptian. If we cannot have a foreign foe to define us, we will create one within our own ranks. And the sides will forever line up between youth and learning on the one hand and tradition and dogged ignorance on the other. One side sees the need for change, while the other sees the passing of the old ways and resists.

BRUTUS
No illusion to which side you favor in that struggle.

CAESAR
There is value to our history, but it cannot dictate our future.

BRUTUS
Says the Dictator.

CAESAR
Says Caesar.

Ides of March - Thoughts on Caesar and Brutus

Being in both historical fiction and classical theatre, I've naturally spent a great deal of time thinking about Julius Caesar. So it's no surprise that, of the many projects I've worked on, one of my proudest achievements is a play starring Caesar and Brutus on the night before the Ides. It's called EVE OF IDES, and is on sale this week on Kindle for just 99 cents. 

Of course, my background is all Shakespearean, so my take on them is informed by Shakespeare's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JULIUS CAESAR, a thoroughly deceptive title - the play has nothing to do with Caesar's life, and all to do with his death. For a title character he has very little stage time (just five scenes in all, I think, including his ghostly appearance) and is dead halfway through the play. The play belongs to Brutus.

But it's still all about Caesar. 

It's taken me awhile to see that. As a huge fan of all things Roman, and a devotee of Colleen McCullough's marvelous MASTERS OF ROME novels, I love Caesar and I rail against the play because it doesn't do the man justice. Shakespeare portrays him as a self-important shell - deaf in one ear, prone to fits, suspicious, and constantly referring to himself in the third person. A formerly great man gone to seed, clinging to his reputation and dignity. 

But the play is all about Caesar nevertheless. It's about the way the man's life, and especially death, changed the course of the world. Caesar permeates every scene, and Shakespeare assumes we'll get all the references - who doesn't know the story of Cato's suicide, or that Antony was jealous of Octavius for inheriting Caesar's wealth? It's our own fault that we don't pay attention to history anymore, and Shakespeare doesn't waste time telling us things we should already know. His focus is on the ramifications of the great man's death, and who better to be our guide than the man that murdered him?

It's only recently that I've started thinking how very subversive the play's choice of protagonist is. For over 1600 years, Brutus was the villain. Dante puts him in Satan's mouth alongside Judas (and Cassius), the greatest betrayers of mankind being eternally devoured by the betrayer of God. Boccacio and Chaucer don't go quite so far, but they certainly exalt Caesar and condemn Brutus. 

So Shakespeare takes the villain and makes him a hero. It reminds me of the modern play THE TRIAL OF JUDAS ISCARIOT, where they explore Judas' possible motives for betraying Christ. Shakespeare single-handedly rehabilitated Brutus, and despite Antony's rising sarcasm in his claim that "Brutus is an honorable man," Shakespeare's Brutus is just that. 

The great flaw in Shakespeare's play, to me, is the lack of interaction between Caesar and Brutus. For men with such a tangled personal and political history, the play is remarkably silent regarding their past. 

Oddly, Caesar's character is better explored through a different playwright - George Bernard Shaw. His CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA shows Caesar four years before the assassination, and while he complains of his age, Shaw presents an excellent version of the great man - his humor, his confidence, his arrogance, his wit, his philosophy, and his utter practicality. Also the fact that he was balding, and embarrassed by it, and that he didn't like rich foods or wine. But most of all, Shaw presents his clemency. In this play it's Caesar who is the dreamer, and like Brutus he is disappointed in everyone around him. But unlike Brutus, he is not disappointed in himself. 

The relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra in the play is curiously platonic - very strange, considering she bore him a child and followed him to Rome to show the boy off.

Cogitating about Caesar, it's fast becoming my wish to find a theatre company somewhere and settle in to doing THE ROMANS, using the same cast to produce Shaw's CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, with my own play stuck in the middle. I'm sure this idea isn't new - in 1951, for example, Olivier and Leigh played the leads in back-to-back productions of C&C and A&C (which must have been weird, I think, having him switch from Caesar to Antony). But I'd still like to try it, and use a year in the theatre to explore the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

An apt and timely subject, I think, looking at the world around us... America has always had Caesar on the brain. DC was originally named "New Rome" and they tried calling the Potomac the Tiber. There's even a place in the Senate building for the eternal flame of the Vestal Virgins (which they have since reconsidered and no longer keep lit). 

At the Lincoln Memorial, Abraham Lincoln is seated in the pose of a Roman consul. And here's where the Caesar connection takes a strange turn. John Wilkes Booth was the son of noted British actor Junius Brutus Booth by his mistress. Booth himself debuted on stage in the role of Richmond in RICHARD III, the man who overthrows the tyrant Richard. He went on to play both William Wallace and Brutus himself. And of course, after he assassinated the president, Booth stole a line from the historical Brutus, one never mentioned in the play - "Sic Semper Tyrannis." It is also the motto of the stage of Virginia.  

So happy Ides of March! Remember, it's not just about the murdering. It's the getting together with all your friends and murdering a tyrant. 

Master of Rome

Today I am broken-hearted. Colleen McCullough has died. 

I throw a lot of love and attention towards Dorothy Dunnett, and often tell people that she's the pinnacle of the genre. But Colleen is probably the author who most changed my life. It is safe to say that huge swaths of my present existence would simply not be here without her influence. 

I discovered historical fiction through listening to the audiobook of THE FIRST MAN IN ROME on a road trip with my dad when I was 18. I was very "you've got to be kidding me, dad," but he insisted, and within minutes I was absolutely enthralled. She made me love history, Rome, and the genre all at once. She even made me regret dropping Latin in high school, and forced me to go back to supplement my meager rememberings. She gave me a sense of American history, through the eyes of Rome - our Founding Fathers were obsessed with Rome, and the Republican model. But most of all she made me see what could happen if you take real people and just write. Her Caesar is flesh and blood. Her Marius is so utterly tragic and brilliant, even at the end. And her Sulla - my god, I love her Sulla.

When discussing our favorite Romans, someone once remarked that I loved the butchers. I suppose that's true. Because she made me love them. 

Her MASTERS OF ROME books are a touchstone for me. I return to them often, they on a shelf just behind my head. I even got to meet her a dozen years ago. I wasted my question, and now I'll never get to ask the one I should have, which is "Who do you read?"

If Dunnett amazes me for her plots, her words, and her twists, McCullough amazes me with her detail, her research, and her willingness to tell everyone's story. And her sex. My god, her sex scenes! I'm a fade-to-black kinda guy, and Colleen makes me sweat. 

It's safe to say that both EVE OF IDES and the COLOSSUS series would not exist without her influence. And just last week I bought a new copy of SONG OF TROY to reread. 

Today the world is a little less perfect. Caesar would disapprove. 

To steal from two of her funeral orations - Caesar's for Julia, and Sulla's for his son:

"I say to you, people of Rome, mourn for her! Mourn her as I do! Mourn for her fate and for the sadness of an undeservedly sad life. Rome will be the poorer, as I and all my family are the poorer. We bury her now with great love and greater sorrow, and offer you gladiators for her funeral games."

Rubicon

On this day in 49 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar led a single legion, the Legio XIII Gemina, south over the Rubicon from Cisalpine Gaul to invade Italy. His own country. 

I never think of this as happening in January, though it was just at the start of the Roman New Year. But the seasons were out of joint with the calendar, something Caesar Dictator would eventually rectify, giving us the Julian Calendar. So it was spring, not winter, when Caesar crossed the waters of the River Rubico. 

While we naturally focus on the Ides of March to remember Caesar, this is the day that broke the Roman Republic. Pompey and Cato had forced Caesar to an impasse - either relinquish his rights and submit himself to trial for exceeding his authority in the Gallic Wars (which they accused him, with justice, of starting), or wage war on his own country.

For a man obsessed with his own dignitas, his personal share of honor and worth, it was never a choice. Yet the action of rebellion was not natural to him, and he first tried every legal means to beat his senatorial foes before resorting to the sword. Proving, to me at least, that marching on his country was an action he bitterly regretted, even as it happened. 

From my play EVE OF IDES:

 

BRUTUS
You have regrets? I thought you were impervious to them.

CAESAR

Hardly. (beat) You know, in a way the Rubicon was Cato’s greatest victory. In that moment, I lost something. I felt it go, like a broken thing inside me.

BRUTUS

What was it?

CAESAR

A dream. My dream. Of being the greatest Roman of all time. 

BRUTUS

You think you’re not?

CAESAR

Not the way I wanted. Until that moment, I had done everything properly. Served in the right number of campaigns, held every office in the proper year. I wanted to be consul a second time, then censor, then the elder statesman, possibly even Leader of the Senate. Primus inter pares. The first among equals.

BRUTUS

Now you are a god in Ephasus, a king in Aegypt, and Dictator of Rome. Undisputed ruler of the world. It’s not enough?

CAESAR

Too much... (shaking off his grim thoughts) I must thank Lepidus. This may be the best dinner conversation I’ve had in years. 

 

According to Suetonius, Caesar uttered the famous phrase "ALEA IACTA EST" ("the die is cast"). From another point in the play, when Brutus is contemplating his own end:

 

BRUTUS

....What was it you said when you crossed the Rubicon? "The die is cast."

CAESAR

That's not what I said.

BRUTUS

No?

CAESAR

Far too fatalistic. I was quoting Menander. Anerriphtho kubos. “Let the dice fly high!” I embrace risk.

BRUTUS

While I resign myself to fate. 

 

For more, pick up a copy of EVE OF IDES. 

 

SYNOPSIS: The night before his assassination at the hands of conspirators, Julius Caesar attended a feast. With him were Brutus, Cassius, and Antony. During the meal, Caesar was asked what he thought was the best way to die. Caesar answered, 'What does it matter, so long as it's quick?' Based on history and the works of Shakespeare, Eve Of Ides reveals the unexplored relationship between the main players of the age - Caesar, Brutus, and Antony.

EVE OF IDES tonight!

2058 years ago tomorrow, Julius Caesar was assassinated. On this, the anniversary of the eve of his murder at the hands of his political rivals, the Michigan Shakespeare Festival is having a one-night-only concert reading of my play, EVE OF IDES. Directed by Jan Blixt, the cast includes John Seibert as Caesar, Robert Kauzlaric as Brutus, Derek Ridge as Mark Antony, and Charles Sutherland as Varro, with Dan Helmer reading the stage directions and providing voices. 

It’s hard to think of any historical figure more redeemed with the stroke of a playwright’s pen than Brutus. Before Shakespeare’s play, he lived in an icy lake at the bottom of Hell. In The Inferno, Dante gives Lucifer three mouths, allowing the Devil to chew forever history’s greatest betrayers: Judas Iscariot, Caius Cassius, and Brutus. Right through the Renaissance, Brutus was a villain, the treasonous coward who killed perhaps the greatest military and political leader the world had ever known. 

Yet, in an act of brazen daring, Shakespeare turns Brutus into a hero. 

We all agree that Shakespeare’s play is Brutus’ story. For a piece entitled The Life and Death of Julius Caesar, it’s astonishing how little of Caesar there actually is — no Consulship, no pirate ship, no Gaul, no Civil War, no Pompey, no Cleopatra. We pick up at the end of the dictatorship, mere days before his death.  Alas, Caesar was far too successful in his life to be made into a tragic hero. So Shakespeare, in his brilliance, turns 1600 years of history on its head, transforming Caesar into a half-deaf epileptic narcissist. Instead he makes his play about Brutus, the honorable man. It is incedibly subversive, a remarkable feat of daring. 

If there is one glaring dramatic fault in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, it is the lack of interaction between Brutus and Caesar themselves. Shakespeare’s audience was much more knowledgeable about Roman history, so he could take for granted that the nuances would be understood. Today we are not so well informed of the great and twisted personal relationship these men had. We do not know why Brutus repeatedly says he loves Caesar, nor do we see how they got to the point where murder is necessary, where Brutus believes that it indeed ‘must be by his death.’ 

As I am always drawn to gaps in stories, this was a siren’s call I could not resist. 

The event is being held at the Kerrytown Concert House in my hometown of Ann Arbor. And the food for the event is being provided by Mani Osteria in downtown Ann Arbor (huge thanks to Adam Baru). If you're in Michigan, you can reserve your tickets here.

If you're not around, there's still a treat for you. To help promote the event, this week Amazon is giving away free Kindle copies of the play. You can get yours here. In return, I'd ask you to donate $5 (or more) to the Michigan Shakespeare Festival for their kindess in hosting the event. You can send your donations via Paypal here.