Caesar at Alexander's tomb

A fabula togata

In like manner we are told again that, in Spain, when he was at leisure and was reading from the history of Alexander, he was lost in thought for a long time, and then burst into tears. His friends were astonished, and asked the reason for his tears. "Do you not think," said he, "it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?"

Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria exhausted. He had been at war for years and had pursued Pompey eastwards across Italy and Greece; after routing him at Pharsallus Pompey had yet again escaped. Wearily, Caesar followed him to the land of the Ptolemies.

But Pompey needed no more pursuing; he had been beheaded by the King Ptolemy. Caesar turned away in horror from Theodotus as he presented the head of Pompey, but he accepted Pompey's seal-ring, and shed tears over it.

It was not only Pompey’s fate that occupied his thoughts. Caesar had long been compared to Alexander the Great; his tomb lay in the city, and among his first acts in the city was a pilgrimage to his tomb.

As Caesar entered the great Macedonian’s tomb, he found Alexander’s sarcophagus, its contents preserved as though the king might one day rise again.

Caesar stood in silence, gazing upon the form of Alexander. Suddenly, he struck the stone and cried, ‘Remove this at once!’

The officials of the Ptolemaic court were stunned. An attendant, a royal official, approached him. The gladii of his legionaries quivered in their scabbards. Surely, if Caesar was overawed by the tomb, he might like to see the tombs of the Ptolemies instead?

Caesar turned to face them. The shadow of the tomb stretched across his face. Half in shadow, he snarled into the silence; ‘What do our Roman children know of Alexander? Research by the Quaestors shows that children who lived within 1.5 miliarium of the certus satus centres I opened during their first five years performed 0.8 grades better in their examinations.’

Caesar snatched the purple cloak and diadem from atop the tomb, threw them to a soldier and ordered they be put in storage. ‘And what of security?’ He asked the stunned eunuchs of Egypt. ‘Just last year I established the Terminus Securitatis Imperii to combat the scourge of Illyrian pirates facilitating crossings of the mare nostrum.’ He placed his own oak-leaf crown delicately where Alexander’s had lain.

Legionaries began to shift the tomb on hastily assembled block and tackle. Caesar looked on, a thinly-veiled contempt curling his lip. ‘It was I, not Alexander, who has introduced the iuvenes futures unit to the world. By identifying young men at risk of gladii crime, we will cut serious violent crime by half within a decade. He may have named more than 70 cities across the world for himself… but how many youth hubs bear his name?’ The tomb of the great Macedonian cracked as it slid from it’s marble catafalque.

Caesar kept his eyes fixed on the body of Alexander. A lictor barged through the eunuchs of the court, bearing his curule. He placed it where Alexander’s tomb had stood. Caesar finally moved, and as he sat down he turned to the crowds. Caesar’s face was no longer in shadow, and it gazed upon the stunned Egyptians. He smiled, and told them; ‘I came to see a king, not dead men.’