Rome is me by Santiago Posteguillo

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have always wanted to write about Julius Caesar. Since I was little, since that childhood trip to Rome with my parents when I was six years old. At that time I still didn’t know what writing meant, but that world of ancient Rome fascinated me.

I have always wanted to write about Julius Caesar. Since he was a teenager, he read the stories of Asterix and saw how Asterix and Obelix drove the legendary Roman leader out of his mind again and again. I believe that even, through jokes and humor, Goscinny’s scripts about Asterix exude that immeasurable admiration for the myth of Caesar.

I know that many will ask me why, if my obsession comes from so far back, I have not written about Julius Caesar before. The answer is simple: as I understand historical narrative, a neophyte, a non-expert on the subject, cannot wake up one day and write about this character as if he were writing any other novel. Julius Caesar simply doesn’t work that way. His life, his legend, his myth are too big for one to dare to approach if he does not first feel adequately equipped.

I have always wanted to write about Caesar, but I felt that I should deserve to write about him. Only after Scipio, Trajan and Julia, after two trilogies and a bilogy, only after having written more than 7,000 pages about ancient Rome, only after feeling that I am beginning to have a global understanding of the Roman world, only then have I felt with sufficient capacity to undertake what, without a doubt, will be my greatest literary challenge.

Many have written about Julius Caesar, even the greatest. Shakespeare himself created a masterful play about the assassination of the Roman leader and its consequences. Not even he, not even Shakespeare himself, dared to approach Caesar at the beginning of his literary production. Depending on the chronology we consider about his works, Shakespeare wrote about twenty-seven literary works until he dared to do so. Before, Shakespeare cultivated his style to provide him with literary resources, perfect language and unmatched drama on stage to narrate the greatest of historical stories. In no way do I compare myself to him; I’m just trying to illustrate that if even the greatest of writers thought long and hard before narrating Caesar, how much more so do I. I have only taken note of the intelligent prudence of the brilliant English bard.

I approach this novel by reconstructing in detail the first great public appearance of Julius Caesar in the forum of Rome, because I always wondered: when did Julius Caesar begin to be known as someone relevant to the Romans? His name has become equivalent to emperor or supreme leader in Spanish and in multiple languages. The word kaiser in German comes from Caesar, and the word tsar in Russian does too. But when was the first time that people in the Roman world used the word Caesar to hail someone as a leader, in his case, at first, Julius Caesar himself? That’s what this novel is about.

Rome is me narrates the first trial in which Caesar, then a lawyer of only twenty-three years, agreed to act as prosecutor in a process that seemed impossible to win, facing the all-powerful senator Dolabella. However, to narrate this little-known and never-before-fictionalized episode of his life, I have needed to explain where the young Caesar came from and who he was.

Those who read the novel will get to know Aurelia, the hero’s mother, the creator of his indomitable character; to her uncle Gaius Marius, the greatest of the Roman leaders of the time, consul up to seven times and an outstanding soldier who trained Caesar in the art of war; to Cornelia, Caesar’s first wife, with whom the young Roman was passionately in love until he was willing to risk her life for her; to the accused Dolabella himself, so that we know first-hand, one by one, the horrible crimes that he committed and that are being put on trial; Sulla, all-powerful dictator of Rome, mortal enemy of Gaius Marius and, consequently, of Caesar himself, who does everything possible and impossible to destroy the young Caesar before he becomes a dangerous enemy; and Titus Labienus, personal friend of the protagonist, loyal companion and constant support of Caesar during his first years of political life and military combat. The novel is a parade of singular characters, enormous in their goodness or their evil, among whom emerges, little by little, the immense figure of Julius Caesar who is destined to change the history of the world.

Really, Rome is me is not just a novel. Rome is me is the beginning of a great long-term story to which I will dedicate the next ten years of my life in an intense series of novels. And narrating Caesar in full, without the Roman gods turning against me in their temples, requires no less. The literary challenge has begun. As someone I know would say, Alea iacta est: the die is cast. Caesar is my particular crossing of the Rubicon. There is no way back.