Caesar: The Man From Venus
Caesar: Man from Venus from Douglas Challenger on Vimeo.
Artists creating original work during the performance. Meet Caesar as he grows up into a Rome that is recovering from one civil war and headed for another. Meet the powerful women in his life who help him achieve his destiny: his mother Aurelia, his aunt Julia, his wives and his great love Servilia: this is the man who claims descent from the Goddess Venus herself. We watch his rise to power in rome, his great adventures, his time in Gaul and finally, after he crosses the Rubicon, his war with Pompey that will leave him the most powerful man in the world. We see him as Venus joined with Cleopatra Isis. We end with the twenty three daggers that kill him and the ascent of his chosen heir Octavian. I am Gaius Julius Caesar, I was born one hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, I will become the most powerful man on earth, I will change the world forever, my name will live forever. This story, told in the first person begins with Caesar as a seven year old boy living in Rome with his mother Aurelia who is the landlady of a complicated and busy apartment complex. Young Caesar is known by all the tenants and loved – these are families from every part of the empire. Caesar’s uncle is Marius, seven times Consul, Rome’s greatest soldier and married to Caesar’s beloved aunt, Julia. Caesar understands that he is descended from the Goddess Venus as a teenager he will be Flamen Dialis as a adult, he will win the post of Pontifex Maximus. He and his wife and his mother live with the Vestal Virgins tending the flame of Rome. This is Roma – amor. RomamoR. Caesar will prove himself as an orator worthy of Cicero, a politician, poet philosopher, engineer, urban designer, architect, the worlds greatest general and the world’s most capable politician. He will also be loved by women as he loves women: his mother, his aunt, his first wife Cornelia and his only daughter Julia. After the death of Cornelia he will be loved by all the women of Rome particularly the wives of his enemies. He will take as a lover Servilia, the most brilliant political mind in Rome and half sister to Caesar’s arch enemy the arch conservative Cato. We tell the story of Caesar’s early adventures with the pirates, with the courts, his adventures with the wild and impossible Mark Antony and then his great conquest of Gaul with the surrender of Vercingetorix. He will be pitted against Cato’s party in the Roman Senate who will attempt to destroy him. Caesar will return from Gaul to fight Cato’s army led by Pompey, the man who had once been his son in law. Caesar will win the civil war and in trying to save Pompey find his great love Cleopatra. Cleopatra as the Goddess Isis and Caesar as the Goddess Venus will sail down the Nile together to see the sights of the ancient Gods. We end with Caesar’s death, on the Ides of March as 23 knives cut into his body, one driven home by Brutus, son of Servilia, Caesar recognizing death wraps his toga about himself in order to present and exquisite corpse. In death Caesar will know that his chosen son Octavian will rule the empire and deliver 40 years of relative peace and an end to civil war. At Caesar’s funeral a comet is seen in the skies headed for Venus. Lockwood reads Caesar himself, Cicero, and Plutarch. He finds Adrian Goldsworthy to be a mine of technical detail. Tom Holland’s Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a powerful portrait of that world and Michael Parenti’s The Assasination of Julius Caesar is one of the strongest sources for his approach to the life of Caesar. There are of course too many other great scholars and writers to mention here, but Lockwood thanks to Judith Hallett (Roman Sexualities with Marilyn B. Skinner), University of Maryland, for inspiration and advice.