Et tu, Brute?
The Daily Telegraph, Monday 24 March 2003
By Tom Leonard, Media Editor
Julius Caesar was rather less surprised to find his great friend plunging
a knife into his body than has always been assumed, according to
experts who subjected history's most notorious political assassination
to a modern police investigation. A team of forensic pathologists,
psychiatrists and profilers, whose analysis of the 2,000-year-old
killing is revealed in a television
documentary tonight, have challenged
the traditional belief that Caesar was unaware of the plot by senators
to kill him. They have argued that, in fact, he engineered and welcomed
his death. The investigation was led by Col Luciano Garafano, commander
of the Italian Carabinieri's northern forensic investigation unit,
and assisted by a leading criminal psychologist at Harvard. Visiting
the murder scene and analysing Caesar's autopsy report, conducted
by a physician named Antistius and the first recorded autopsy in
history, Col Garafano conducted experimental simulations to assess
the dynamics of the assassination. Drawing also on his experience
of gangland killings, he concluded that only between five and 10
conspirators could have stabbed him, not the greater number recorded
in many texts. Moving on to the final 24 hours of Caesar's life,
Col Garafano queried his behaviour on the morning before the murder.
Caesar ignored his wife's pleas that he not attend the Senate and
the warnings of a soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March".
He dismissed his bodyguard for his fateful walk to the Senate and
a warning note was found in Caesar's hand after his death which he
had not bothered to open. Col Garafano took the evidence to Prof
Harold Bursztajn of Harvard Medical School in America, one of the
world's leading forensive psychiatrists and criminal profilers. He
shared Col Garafano's scepticism as to why a general who was famously
well prepared and informed of his enemies' every intention could
not have been aware of the murder plot. It is often assumed that
the crucial moment that convinced the conspirators that Caesar's
power threatened their republic came when he refused to rise from
his seat after the Senate elected to deify him. Col Garafano was
confused by two conflicting accounts - one, put forward by Plutarch,
blamed the incident on Caesar's epilepsy. The other put it down to
diarrhoea.
Prof Bursztajn diagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, an affliction which
can cause temporary loss of consciousness, extreme behaviour and
diarrhoea. The investigators concluded that if that were the case,
a man obsessed with his own image and dignity would not countenance
losing control in public. The choice faced by Caesar, who at the
age of 56 was already ancient by Roman standards, would have been
old age and increasing fits or a dramatic exit.
Both Col Garafano and Prof Bursztajn believe he chose the latter. "Is
it so out of the question to suppose that Caesar might wish to use the
conspirators' agenda to serve his own?" the professor asks in the
programme.
"He needed to find an executioner and the conspirators were his
perfect tool. We call it "suicide by cop" and it serves a very
specific personal and political agenda."
That agenda included guaranteeing a lasting reputation and ensuring his
dynasty would not be thwarted by the pro-republican senators, they
maintained. They claimed that the fact that Caesar changed his will
shortly before he was assassinated supports their theory. By naming
his nephew, Octavian, as his successor, Caesar ensured his dynasty
continued. "This is a man seeking to accomplish in death what
he wanted to accomplish in life," says Prof Bursztajn.
The Kindest Cut
Editorial
Retirement planning is difficult for dictators at the best of times.
For paranoid and psychopathic dictators, retirement is particularly
difficult. Tonight a television documentary will argue that Julius
Caesar was not surprised when his friend Brutus and half the Roman
Senate stabbed him, but had in fact played a part in engineering
this extraordinary political event. A retired Italian forensic police
officer and a psychiatrist from Harvard who specialises in criminal
profiling turn the conventional historical account of Caesars murder
on its head. Instead of being taken surprise by his assassins, Caesar
in effect courted the outcome. He normally knew what his enemies
were planning and was well prepared for them. Yet on the day he was
killed, he ignored his wives pleas to stay away from the Senate and
went there with out his bodyguard. The motive for his reckless behaviour,
according to this reconstruction of events that happened more than
2,000 years ago, is that the great general feared the frailties and
indignities of old age. Plutarch says Caesar had epilepsy, and other
contemporary accounts suggest that he was afflicted with diarrhoea.
At 56, Caesar was already quite old by the standards of ancient Rome.
As a military hero and a politician he was obsessed with his image
and placed great importance on his personal dignity. Allowing his
enemies to kill him would have enabled Caesar to avoid the public
humiliations of temporary loss of consciousness, extreme behaviour
and diarrhoea associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Assassination
in this account not only provided him with a dramatic exit but would
also secure his families succession and lead to the destruction of
his enemies. By co-operating with his killers, Caesar was sacrificing
himself for the future of his heirs and for what he regarded as the
good of Rome. Saddam, by taking on the full might of America and
Britain, may also be courting death rather than retirement. Marx
famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then
as farce. But at this grim stage, it is hard to see a Kenneth Williams
of the future portraying Saddam as a camp buffoon after the fashion
of his Caesar in Carry on Cleo.
