Was Julius Caesar bisexual? Was he epileptic?

Factual Questions
1

I always thought it was pretty well established that Julius Caesar was bisexual, and a remarkably enthusiastic lover of both sexes. But in her famously well-researched “Masters of Rome” novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Rome), Colleen McCullough paints a very different picture: Caesar was indeed “each woman’s man,” but not “every man’s woman,” the latter being a canard spread by his political rivals. (The Romans of the late Republic being much less tolerant of homosexuality than the Greeks were.)

McCullough also rejects the well-established legend that Caesar was epileptic. In one of her afterwords she explains that Caesar kept his full mental powers into late middle age – which practically no epileptic would, in the days before modern anti-seizure medications; seizures can cause cumulative brain damage.

What’s the Straight Dope on Caesar?

2

The whole “every man’s woman” thing apparently started with a visit Caesar made to King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, who he was rumored to have an affair with. The story as I’ve always heard it is that Caesar was ridiculed by his enemies not for engaging in homosexual acts per se, but for allowing himself to be penetrated by Nicomedes. This was considered the “feminine” position, and was supposedly unmanly. This, not the homosexual act as such, is what earned Caesar the title of “every man’s woman”. Among the Romans, in order to preserve his masculinity, the man was supposed to be the one doing the penetration in all sexual encounters, heterosexual as well as homosexual - that is, to be the buggerer, not the buggeree (if that’s even a word). Of course, this would also put some limitations on who you could get together with, as no upstanding male citizens really wanted to see their masculinity buggered, so to speak. The ones on the receiving end (pun intended) of a homosexual encounter would therefore be male slaves or young boys.

Anyway, the whole thing does sound like a good old piece of slander. That’s politics for you, I guess.

As for the epilepsy thing… I’ll get back to you.

3

OK, about the epilepsy:

The conspiracy nuts have picked up on this issue, some claiming that Caesar willfully allowed himself to be assassinated, as he knew that his epilepsy was going to get him soon anyway, either by killing him or turning him into a slobbering fool, and he figured that being assassinated in the senate was a more statesmanlike way to go. However, I don’t think there’s any actual evidence for this.

Anyway, the supposed epilepsy is mentioned by several sources, most importantly Plutarch. It’s worth noting that Plutarch actually seems to downplay the whole issue, claiming that it did not hinder Caesar in the field, but rather made him hardier:

“For he was a spare man, had a soft and white skin, was distempered in the head and subject to an epilepsy, which, it is said, first seized him at Corduba. But he did not make the weakness of his constitution a pretext for his ease, but rather used war as the best physic against his indispositions; whilst, by indefatigable journeys, coarse diet, frequent lodging in the field, and continual laborious exercise, he struggled with his diseases and fortified his body against all attacks.”

Another story is that when Caesar was deified by the senate, he received his honors while sitting down, instead of standing up, as expected. This was widely seen as arrogant and disrespectful behavior, and apparently offended both the senate and the public. Plutarch relates that Caesar himself claimed that his epilepsy was the reason that he remained seated:

“But afterwards he made the malady from which he suffered, the excuse for his sitting, saying that those who are attacked by it, lose their presence of mind, if they talk much standing; that they presently grow giddy, fall into convulsions, and quite lose their reason.”

However, once again Plutarch goes on to downplay it, saying that this wasn’t the real reason, and that Caesar had in fact simply taken some bad advice:

“But this was not the reality, for he would willingly have stood up to the senate, had not Cornelius Balbus, one of his friends, or rather flatterers, hindered him. ‘Will you not remember,’ said he, ‘you are Caesar, and claim the honor which is due to your merit?’”

Plutarch does also state that Caesar had an epileptic seizure in the middle of the Battle of Thapsus, two years before his death, but he points out elsewhere that the seizures didn’t start until the end of Caesar’s life.

So, if we are to believe Plutarch, Caesar was indeed epileptic, but the condition must have been rather mild. As it happens, another historian, Cassius Dio, actually claims that Caesar remained seated in the senate not because of an epileptic fit, but to hide an attack of diarrhea!

The epilepsy is also mentioned by the historian Suetonius, who claims that Caesar had epileptic fits twice while on campaign, as well as by the historian Appian. Of course, Shakespeare also made a point of it “Julius Caesar”, based on the aforementioned historians, thereby adding to the popularity of the idea:

CASSIUS: But, soft! I pray you. What, did Caesar swoon?
CASCA: He fell down in the market-place, and foam’d at mouth, and was speechless.
BRUTUS: 'Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.

OK, so, after all that… was Caesar epileptic? Heck, yeah, probably. But perhaps not very.

4

I saw a show about sex in Rome once (don’t remember where- might have been History Channel) that said the Romans didn’t distinguish sexuality the way we do. For us, the primary distinction is based on the gender of your partner- you’re homosexual or heterosexual. For them, the most important distinction for male sexuality was supposedly whether you were the active or passive partner- penetrating or being penetrated. The men who would take the passive role and be penetrated were looked down on in some of the same ways gays have been in our society.

Our distinction between gay and straight wouldn’t have made sense to a Roman, any more than asking a gay man whether he’s a top or bottom and inferring something about his character from the answer would to us.

5

:confused: “Not very”? I don’t know a lot about epilepsy . . . Are some cases worse than others? (I do know that some epileptics have grand mal seizures with the thrashing and the foaming, and some have petit mal seizures which are just brief spells of zoned-out catatonia.) Is there such thing as late-onset epilepsy, where you don’t start having seizures until well into adulthood?

6

This is an important point which usually gets overlooked in these sorts of debates. Modern concepts of homosexuality/bisexuality do not translate back through history well. Debating whether, for example, Alexander the Great was gay or not really doesn’t make any more sense than debating whether he was a Democrat or a Republican.

7

I’ve been epileptic since I was 15 (I’m 40 now). Fortunately, I have had very few seizures and they are mostly controlled. I can’t say that my medication has caused much trouble with my mental faculties.

My father was an eplieptic also and had more seizures and took a lot more medication. The only problem he had was that his attention span was a little shorter than others and he dozed off a lot.

I doze off a bit, although I think it’s from getting too little sleep. And I think my gnat-like attention span is a factor of growing up in front of a TV.

But there are a lot of conditions that cause seizures. I thought Ceasar’s seizures (tongue twister of the day) were likely caused by a brain tumor-like thing (to use the technical term). Few people develop epilepsy for the first time when they’re older without an underlying condition.

8

It makes a little more sense, because sexual orientation is to a large degree, biological, while political orientation isn’t. Both in Greco-Roman times and today, there have been/are men who were sexually attracted primarily to men, and others who were sexually attracted primarily to women. So you can say, “So and so would have been considered gay had he lived today”

9

Alexander is also reputed to have been epileptic – is there any proof of that?

10

:dubious:
I think I’ll amend my previous conclusion… I don’t know a lot about epilepsy either, as should be obvious, but a bit of googling does indeed seem to show that, no, there’s no late-onset kind. The consensus seems to be that epilepsy very rarely manifests itself after the age of 20. If you haven’t got it by then, you ain’t getting it. So, that sure is a blow to the idea that Caesar had it. However, there is also reports of freakish exceptions, like this woman being diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 74! Not sure how seriously that should be taken, though.

Also, as BobT says, there are many other conditions that can cause epilepsy-like seizures. Wiki suggests “head trauma, intoxication, infection, metabolic disturbances, withdrawal symptoms (from sedatives such as alcohol, barbiturates and benzodiazepines) and space-occupying processes in the brain (abscesses, tumors).” Perhaps Caesar had some form of brain tumor. Perhaps he had bumped his head at some point.

So, I’m starting to think that Caesar wasn’t epileptic after all. However, if the question is “did Caesar have epileptic-like seizures caused by something or other?”, I guess the answer is still yeah, probably.

As for Alexander, things seem to be even muddier. Again according to Wiki , the idea that Alexander had epilepsy (known to the Greeks as the “sacred disease”) comes from “a strong oral tradition, although not attested in any extant primary source”. I suspect, again, that it could have been a lot of things. He was also reportedly heavy on the booze, to the point of being alcoholic (supposedly a peculiar Macedonian trait). I suppose that could have had some nasty effects, too. So I guess it’s hard to say.

11

Interesting. So a man who gets his wife to do him with a strap-on (did they have strap-ons then? I’m sure they could have whipped something up) would also be considered, for lack of better colloquial term which refers to the concept of a derogatory/condescending term for homosexuals in modern society, a fag?

12

IANAExpert on ancient Roman sexuality, but as I understand it, yes. A man who buggered a male slave (or even a young boy), on the other hand, would have been considered normal.

If Colleen McCullough is to be believed (and my memory is right on this- been a few years since I read those books), irrumator, a man who gives blowjobs, was a fairly potent insult.

13

Hijack:
If you are interested in epilepsy and culture, you should read a book called The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman. It’s amazing.

14

I read a book recently that had a short section on Ancient Greek sexuality. As I understand it, being penetrated was looked down upon. Acceptable sex between men involved an older citizen with a younger one. The older man placed his penis between the younger one’s legs and used the friction to get off.

I don’t know if it was the same in the Roman Empire, but I imagine it could have been.

15

The way McCullough tells it, the Romans (of Caesar’s day) would have frowned even on that.

16

Oddly enough, I once read (in a pretty serious book about roman civilization, not on a random website) that this passive/active distinction extended to oral sex. IOW, receiving a blowjob would have been shameful for a citizen in good standing because it wasn’t an active form of sexuality (same with giving a blowjob, by the way).

17

I would be wary of McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, much as I love them. Her treatment of all things Caesar was excessively flattering. I’m an ardent admirer of the man myself, but I’m sure I rolled my eyes dozens of times during the second book alone.

Reading McCullough, one could get the impression that Caesar could walk on water if he felt like it.

18

I agree that sexual orientation is, too a large degree, biological, but it seems to be that how that biological orientation manifests itself is influenced by the current cultural definitions of sexuality that are floating around. Cultural norms have some underlying influence on other aspects of sexual attraction–what level of phyiscal maturity = sexual maturity, what body types are attractive, what positions are desireable, what level of kinship makes someone sexually unattractive etc–assuming that biological pressures are universal, it’s cultural conditioning that leads someone in one culture to think his cousin’s hot while in another culture that would never cross his mind. In the same way, I think that cultural condtioning has to play some role in how sexual orientation is percieved by individuals.

19

From what I’ve read in Roman Sexualities, this isn’t quite right. As others have mentioned, the distinction wasn’t like our modern hetero/homo-sexual distinction; rather it was penetrator/penetratee. Penetrators were good, and people who did the penetrating were looked down upon.

In terms of oral sex, the receiver of a blowjob was the penetrator, and the giver was the penetratee, regardless of gender. Thus, a woman receiving oral sex was the active penetrator (I think in theory the clitoris was doing the penetrating). The mouth was never a penetrating object, despite the tongue.

Thus the insult irrumator, someone who gives a blowjob (cite, see also The Latin Sexual Vocabulary), and irrumo, which basically translates as to receive a blowjob, or in the imperative mood, “suck it!”, and was very insulting.

As Peak Banana said, the scandalous thing with Caesar wasn’t sex with Nicomedes, but being penetrated.