Today, July 1, 2011, begins the month of the year that is the warmest – on average – in the earth’s northern hemisphere. July is great. It is the heart of the glorious summer season. July is Independence Day on the 4th, picnics, cookouts, parades, fireworks, and often some of the best chances in the entire year to catch large brown trout on dry flies at twilight and after dark.
Also on average, July is the “wettest” month here in the high desert of Southern California. Winter and spring rains are undependable and “iffy;” but hot, moist air surging up from Baja and Mexico in general will sometimes bring July thunderstorms. Those booming storms from the south can be surprisingly powerful….occasionally dumping such deluges on us that previously dry, barren washes suddenly fill with water and become rivers of runoff. Back in the summer of 2003, two local people trying to drive through one of those surprise water-filled washes had their little car flipped over by the force of the rushing water….and they both drowned when unable to get out.
In the old Roman calendar – going back to at least the 5th century B.C. – the name of this month was Quintilis, meaning simply “the fifth month.” In that old calendar and according to ancient Roman custom, March – the month of the god Mars – was the first month of the new year. It was very common among ancient cultures for the year to begin with the new spring season and its new growth, planting of crops, and easing of winter hardships. The first month of the year in the Hebrew/Old Testament calendar is Nissan, in the spring.
Quite a few people, I think, suppose that Quintilis got renamed to feed the over-sized ego of Julius Caesar; but actually, it’s not his fault. Years after Caesar’s dastardly assassination on the temple steps (44 B.C.) by Cassius and his crowd – including the famous “et tu, Brute” – young Octavian finally managed to defeat general Marc Antony and his lover, Cleopatra, at the Battle of Actium (31 B.C.). As Octavian consolidated his power over Rome and its lands, the Roman Senate eventually conferred the title “Augustus” (“revered one”) on him in 27 A.D. It was the new Emperor Augustus who changed Quintilis to the month of July, to honor Julius Caesar. Caesar was the great-uncle of Augustus, and in a rather curious detail, adopted him posthumously as his son and heir in his will read after the assassination.
Julius Caesar certainly has a claim on being one of the most fascinating and remarkable figures of ancient/classical history. He was something of a military genius – conquering vast new lands to add to Rome’s expanding domain – a brilliant politician, an eloquent speaker/orator, and an able writer. It was in that last discipline that he combined his various disciplines of expertise in one of history’s most powerfully concise statements (putting the vaunted brevity of such as Ernest Hemingway in the shade). In his report to the Senate in Rome concerning his bold, reaching military ventures in the large territory of the Gauls (whose men in arms greatly outnumbered his own forces), Caesar wrote: “Veni, vidi, vici” – “I came; I saw; I conquered.”
The man whose name was given to July was consequently the great love of my 9th grade Latin teacher’s life. The dear, older lady was single (back in those dim days she would have been called a “spinster”); and you didn’t have to sit in her classroom for very long before understanding that no man alive could have competed for the affection/love – if any ever did so – which she gave wholeheartedly to Julius Caesar. As far as she was concerned, Julius was the greatest man who ever lived – the greatest general, the most brilliant in governing, the most fluent of orators ever, the most proficient of all authors ever.
It would have been easy to scoff and dismiss such overblown adulation on the part of my old Latin teacher and snicker at her – and as you would suspect of 9th-graders, many of the kids did so – but she knew Julius just about as well as anyone could from the distance of about 2000 years….and however over-stretched, her hero-worship had substance to it. I mean, hey, anyone who could win the heart and body of Cleopatra (0ne of ancient history’s most capable and formidable women) really had to have something going for him. Caesar and Cleopatra joined up (she was much younger, only 21) when he went into Egypt in force in 48 B.C.; and a son, Caesarion, was born to them in 47 B.C. It was only after Caesar was murdered that Cleopatra’s more famous “love affair” began with Caesar’s former ally, Marc Antony.
Now when I say or write it, it seems rather like an oddity and something else to snicker at I suppose; but back in those school days I was fascinated to read Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin. He really was one of history’s most exceptional men – hubris, inflated ego, often ruthless ambition, and personal defects like marital infidelity aside (he was married to a patrician woman in Rome when he “hooked up” with Cleopatra). His victories are still studied by military professionals.
I don’t know how many people happen to think about it – or even know – but it was Julius whose name was given to the sometimes necessary delivery option of “caesarian section.” One of the famous details of his life was that he had to be surgically removed from his mother’s womb. Another is that he is probably one of history’s most famous epileptics, subject upon occasion to grand mal seizures, as my aunt was.
Julius Caesar had many opponents and enemies in his brilliant career, and it is still debated as to whether his assassination was a “necessary” intervention to prevent his otherwise inevitable dictatorship and betrayal of the ideals of the Roman Republic. One thing that does seem evident from reading materials from his day is that his leadership and handling of an army was superb. No commander can claim to be loved and honored by all his officers and soldiers; but it seems to me that a great many of his troops were willing to follow him, obey his orders, accomplish the seemingly impossible, go where others did not dare (even the famous “crossing the Rubicon”)….and at the cost of their lives if need be.
I suspect that many of his legionaires would have wholeheartedly endorsed renaming a month of the year in his honor. And they would probably have greeted this day with a hearty, “Hail, Caesar!” May a joyful July be yours.
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The Rev. Dr.'s Musings on Nature, Life & Belief 