M. Porcius Cato

Since we're meant to stick to Caesar's personality on this thread and not Caesar's historical role (which has been debated elsewhere), I won't comment on Mosquito's post (which just parrots Mommsen without giving the man--and his many critics--any credit) except to say that it sheds no light on Caesar's personality. Indeed, Mosquito has yet to define even what he means by "personality," a fact that is the more troubling because he resists every psychological analysis of Caesar--despite the fact that personality is an inherently psychological concept! To my mind, this whole thread has been a case of bait-and-switch. It's like asking, "Why did Rome's economy collapse? But don't talk about supply and demand--that's pointless speculation!"

The orb on the sceptre is also a powerful reminder that the Hellenized ancients knew the Earth was not flat.

"Unleash hell".

Absolutely. It's possible that Caesar was imitating the Hellenistic monarchs of his age. However, this hypothesis raises more questions than it solves:Why did Caesar, and not even a blood-soaked tyrant like Sulla, go so far as to substitute his own likeness for that of the gods on the coins that everyone carried? Why did Caesar--and none of the other dictators in Roman history--have a month of the year named after him? The narcissism theory accounts for the positive events (what Caesar did do) and negative events (what other dictators did not do) rather nicely (narcissism being a fairly rare disorder), whereas the imitation hypothesis doesn't (given that many previous statesmen were similarly influenced by the East, yet did not have their faces put on coins etc). Absolutely right. It's also very telling that Napoleon admired Caesar (though thought he was a better general than Caesar!), whereas Washington (the man who would not be king) admired Cato.

Come now, we're not limited to Plutarch and Suetonius in judging Caesar, the man who broke convention by having his face put on coins and naming a month of the year after himself. Are we to assume that all the coins that we have with Caesar's face on it were minted by Plutarch? Are we to assume that we refer to "July" thanks to Suetonius? Obviously not. And, really, isn't it consistent with pathological narcissism to come up with the idea of putting your own face on coins that previously had depicted deities? Isn't it consistent with narcissism to be the first one to name the months of the year--that also had religious significance--after yourself? For a Harvard psychiatrist's take on Caesar, see here.

"The voice of the people, is the voice of God" is possibly the most evil idea ever devised.

I agree wholeheartedly.

If he did, how would you calculate the odds from the data?

No. The psychoanalysts following Freud saw narcissism as a sexual disorder in which the libido was directed toward the ego rather than being directed outward, and narcissism was viewed a major cause of homosexuality, for which the psychoanalysts had no theory and which presented problems for their overall theory of object-relations. (I swear, you can't parody this nonsense.) If you look at the early writings on narcissism in the pre-history of modern psychology, they are overwhelmingly influenced by this focus on sexuality. In contrast to the psychoanalytic clap-trap, modern psychologists view homosexuality as a completely healthy sexual preference, and there is nothing in the diagnosis of pathological narcissism that refers to sexual preferences.

And when you contacted the statistician involved in the project, what exactly did he tell you?

To care about archaeology and not care about probability is a contradiction. Archaeology yields patterned data, and the whole trick is to disentangle noise from signal, which is the central problem of statistics.

Sigmund Freud, the same lovable goofball who gave us the term "penis envy" and Moses and Monotheism. Sorry gals, Sigmund Freud did not provide the symptoms of NPD. Freud's narcissism was never defined precisely, and the early attempts to add any rigor to psychoanalysis (which is a term that refers only to Freud's system) provided the basis of the DSM-I and DSM-II. These diagnostic systems were no more likely to elicit identical diagnoses for a given set of symptoms than would be expected by chance.

Yet still high enough to keep any sane person from declaring it the tomb of Jesus on that basis alone. If the probability of this conjunction occurring due to chance is less than 1/20, it would be accepted by nearly any medical journal in the world. According to the authors, the chance probability is more like 1/600. What I find fascinating, btw, is the vast double-standard in the thresholds people set for probability and belief. What is the probability that a Nazarene was a killed on a cross and rose from the dead? What is the probability that a Nazarene lived a normal life with a wife and a kid and was buried with his mom and dad? The Church maintains the first as a certain likelihood for Jesus, and they claim the second to be an unbelievable improbability because there is a 1/600 chance that it was otherwise. Why don't they just drop the pretense and say that they don't care about archaeology because they have their faith? At least they'd leave archaeology (and statistics) uncorrupted.

Obviously the math won't be identical to my toy example. You've missed the point entirely, which was to illustrate the difference between independent probabilities and joint probabilities. This is the critical distinction that is ignored by endlessly-repeated rejoinder that the names on the tombs were common ones and thus highly likely. It's true that the names were frequent, but the conjunction of the names were low frequency. For some reason, biblical scholars appear to be utterly ignorant of this elementary fact of probability. The dockyard analogy is also highly misleading because the conjunction of the 4 names was not merely spatial. Kosmo is right that this would be a concern if the scholars had uncovered a 100-ossuary site and merely found scattered there an ossuary for a Jesus, and another one for a Joseph, and another one for a Mary, and another one for a Magdalene. Except for the Magdalene finding (which is a zero-frequency name across all the sites in Jerusalem), there would be nothing uncommon about this at all. What would be uncommon, however, is if these 4 ossuaries were clearly connected. And it is the connection that the DNA testing (as well as inscriptions, like "Jesus, son of Joseph") establishes. Frankly, given the overall state of statistical illiteracy among people in the humanities, I'm not at all surprised that interest in this find was dormant for a decade.

That's not a page out of a book--that's a whole book! Although I'll politely decline your extravagant assignment, my bet is that one could make a damned good case for at least five of these from Caesar's own writing in the Gallic Wars and Civil Wars.

Of course it's not "totally impossible", but it's very, very, very highly improbable. Do the math: suppose that 1 in 10 Nazarene men were named Jesus and 1 in 10 men were named Joseph (and nobody is named Jesus Joseph). What is the probability that 2 randomly selected men would be Jesus and Joseph? (Here's a calculator to figure it out.) The answer is 1%. Given the same prevalence of the names Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, the odds get even worse for a randomly chosen 3-some being Jesus and Joseph and Mary. Then, when you toss in Mary Magdalene (a Greek name, which is very uncommon in Judaea), the odds become vastly unlikely. This is like finding a submarine-shaped tomb in London for four guys named John, Paul, George, and Ringo. It's not "totally impossible" that that's not just due to chance, but you'd have to be pretty daft not to recognize them as the fricking Beatles. My bet: it's either Jesus and the gang, or it's a forgery.

Actually, with the current crop of writers, Jesus would be killed because he broke up with Mary Magdalene, who was also sleeping with Pontius Pilate, Pollio, and the Virgin Mary. The resurrection, of course, would be played true to the Gospels--for historical authenticity of course (heh heh). Seriously, though, I think the series has jumped the shark.

Of course, I went with Cremutius Cordus' opinion, but I'm wondering what the case would be for Pollio.

For the umpteenth time, no one has said that Caesar was mentally unstable, not in the sense that he was incompetent to function at normal tasks. In fact, being a good writer is in no way inconsistent with pathological narcissism; indeed, being a good writer would be a real boon to the pathological narcissist. From the DSM-IV: Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following: (1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) (2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love (3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions) (4) requires excessive admiration (5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations (6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends (7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others (8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her (9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes I'm not going to go over this list point-by-point, but this seems like a pretty good description of the man who cheated on his wives, betrayed his friends, whined continually about how everyone was jealous of him, bragged of killing a million human beings and enslaving another million, marched an army on his own country to avoid going to trial for war crimes, had himself declared dictator-for-life, refused the title of king only because he said it was beneath him, and had his statue placed in temples with the inscription "To the invincible god". All this, I'm sure, is just normal behavior

We have sources about Caesar (e.g., Cicero's letters) that predate Augustus' cult, so compare them to later sources and see if Caesar's personality is depicted any differently.

This really is a stretch. Age is also correlated with wealth. Are we to assume that old hags were once considered the apex of sexiness? (See Aristophenes' Ecclesiasuzae for some strong counter-evidence.) Further, modern studies certainly don't support this idea. When identical women are dressed in McDonald's uniforms, ordinary white shirts, and business suits, the status markers have no effect on men's judgments of their attractiveness. Do the same manipulation on men's status markers, and you find large effects of status markers on women's judgments of the men's attractiveness. Therefore, if anyone is to be judged sexy for being fat, it would be men and not women. (Gasp! Did you know that men and women have different standards for what's sexy?) You have a theory to explain non-existent data. There is no good evidence that "fat girls" were considered sexier "back in the day", so any theorizing is completely premature.

The average person wouldn't know the difference between a pleb, a pilum, and a pomerium, so why they should be confused about Caesar's character is no surprise at all. In fact, I'm rather glad to see that the best men despise that tyrant still. As for "ivory tower mumbo-jumbo", I would remind you that that "ivory tower mumbo-jumbo and mental gymnastics" is the only thing that makes this discussion at all fruitful or educational. If you want to go back to "Hail Caesar!" vs "That darling of Venus couldn't be stabbed enough", I'm happy to oblige, but it comes at the cost of truly interesting threads (like this one, this one, and this one). In my view, almost the whole value of the Caesar debate (or any of the great debates regarding Rome) is that the passions are hot enough to motivate wide and deep exploration of the historical literature. If that's "ivory tower mumbo-jumbo", then I'd like to see more of it, since that's where I actually have a chance to learn something new (like Neil's insightful parallel between Caesar's behavior and the symptoms of clinical narcissism). Anyone who diagnoses 99/100 randomly-selected people with a personality disorder is medically incompetent.

What are you talking about? Caesar's epilepsy? If you ask me, Cassius should have left him to drown.

First, I agree with everything that Neil said. Second, I think we're in agreement that Caesar's being a clinical narcissist is less than certain. Still--by Jupiter's stone--can't we at least agree that he was a vain, reckless, power-hungry manipulator?? Leaving aside whether you think it's OK to be a vain, reckless, power-hungry manipulator, or whether other Romans were too, or whether Caesar was justified in his vanity/recklessness/etc due to his divine origins or Marian posturing or whatever, does anyone have any evidence against this characterization? Last, if you are a committed amoralist and therefore don't want to pass moral judgment on anything (or nothing ancient or older than 30), then why not at least address the aspects of Caesar's personality that have no moral valence. For example, does anyone think Caesar was an introvert? Or that he loved routine and hated change? Or prided himself on his punctuality? Or found himself easily agreeing with everyone around him? Or was the nervous type? To me, all these characteristics seem very far from the Caesar depicted in the sources, which depict a fellow was open-minded, careless, extroverted, competitive, and self-confident. (Neil might recognize these characterizations as corresponding roughly to the "Big Five" personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.)

Yes, I agree, but the validity of a given diagnosis is irrelevant to the reliablity of a diagnostic category. My point about hypothetical diagnoses was only to show that the diagnostic categories of physical ailments (like heart attacks) are no more or less reliable than diagnostic categories of mental ailments (like depression). If you want to argue that all remote diagnoses (physical or mental) are uncertain, I'm in 100% agreement. If you want to argue that only mental diagnoses are uncertain because mental disorders are a myth or purely subjective, I'm in 0% agreement. Do you understand this distinction?