Gaius Julius Cæsar (July 13, 100 BCE – March 15, 44 BCE)
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
(spoken by Mark Antony in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare)
I waited a full week since I wrote about Mark Antony before writing this post. There is a reason for this. It has to do with Cleopatra’s #metoo moment.
The injustice, the adverse partiality, of the attitude assumed by classical authors will speedily become apparent to all unbiassed students; and a single instance of this obliquity of judgment is all that need be mentioned here to illustrate my contention. I refer to the original intimacy between Cleopatra and Julius Cæsar. According to the accepted view of historians, both ancient and modern, the great Dictator is supposed to have been led astray by the voluptuous Egyptian, and to have been detained in Alexandria, against his better judgment, by the wiles of this Siren of the East. At this time, however, as will be seen in due course, Cleopatra, “the stranger for whom the Roman half-brick was never wanting,”2 was actually an unmarried girl of some twenty-one years of age, against whose moral character not one shred of trustworthy evidence can be advanced; while, on the other hand, Cæsar was an elderly man who had ruined the wives and daughters of an astounding number of his friends, and whose reputation for such seductions was of a character almost past belief. How anybody, therefore, who has the known facts before him, can attribute the blame to Cleopatra in this instance, must become altogether incomprehensible to any student of the events of that time. I do not intend to represent the Queen of Egypt as a particularly exalted type of her sex, but an attempt will be made to deal justly with her, and by giving her on occasion, as in a court of law, the benefit of the doubt, I feel assured that the reader will be able to see in her a very good average type of womanhood.
(from The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt by The Project Gutenberg)
The Conquering Hero
What’s his most famous quote? Ah, yes:
Veni, vidi, vici
I’m going to jump to the YOD (Finger of God) in Caesar’s birth chart. That alone tells the story of this man.
Mars Inconjunct Ascendant
Learn to work for the good of others by making their objectives your objectives, whenever possible. This aspect can accomplish a great deal, as long as you do not spend all your time and energy feeling angry or resentful about seemingly undeserved defeats. When you have a real goal to work toward that you can share with others, you will be able to attain that goal.
In close relationships you also have to learn to compromise. Initially you may come on very strong and act very aggressively toward someone you are interested in. But that approach only provokes conflict because the other person feels threatened. If you learn to take a softer approach, you will be able to get what you want, within reason, without having to fight for it.
Pluto Inconjunct Ascendant
This can be an indication that through experiences with others, you will be forced to undergo many significant changes in life. At times the crises may be quite unpleasant, but for the most part the results will be very positive, although for some people, they may be less constructive. But you must be careful about the kind of people you get involved with. Choose your friends with great care and try to find people who have a healthy outlook on life and who seem reasonably well balanced. People who are driven to extreme behavior or who act compulsively, as if they could not plan anything in advance, are not very good for you. They will get you into difficult situations that you do not need.
Sagittarius Rising (I came)
You are a very open and outgoing person, quite frank and honest; in fact, you may be blunt to the point of indiscretion. But people who are hurt by the frankness of your remarks feel better when they realize that you really do not intend any harm. Your honesty results from a sincere desire to keep life straight and simple. You do not like social niceties, seeing them simply as obstacles to real communication.
You have a great deal of energy, and you enjoy freedom very much. When you have to remain quiet or confined for any length of time, you get extremely restless. If you can’t direct your own life as much as you want, you feel trapped. For this reason you are particularly fond of open spaces. Sagittarians usually like mountainous areas, and being outdoors in general is very good for you.
Pluto in Taurus (I saw)
Mars in Cancer (I conquered)
As in all things, Caesar seemed to have a single-minded ambition: to conquer the world.
But “forces” at home in Rome felt that he had stayed ‘too long in Egypt’. So they plotted to remove him from the scene. They did not want an Egyptian Queen or her “unacknowledged” son to ‘rule’ the Republic with Caesar.
The Knives Were Out for Him
Although I have written about Julius Caesar’s assassination in a chapter of my book, At This Point in Time, I had not thought to compare his end with his beginning, until now.
There are a lot of ‘hot spots’ linking these two charts. For example:
Moon/Jupiter conjunct in the ‘event’ chart is transiting Caesar’s natal Uranus; and Caesar’s Part of Fortune is conjunct the ‘fatal’ Venus.
But I think the most striking feature involves the three Fingers of God aspects:
The ‘fatal’ Mars in the apex of the two inconjuncts with Caesar’s Sun and Midheaven, coupled with his ‘natal’ Sun forming the apex of the ‘fatal’ Mars and Saturn sextile; and the most obvious of all, the ‘fatal’ Pluto/Ascendant conjunction forming the apex of the Yod from Caesar’s Uranus and Ascendant. The timing couldn’t have been more exact.
There are no accidents. This was the will of the ancient gods.
Conclusion
Mark Antony was Julius Caesar’s friend. They shared so much throughout the years, including Cleopatra…
Antony must have sensed Caesar’s rising sign, because he nicknamed his eldest son and heir “The Archer” (Antyllus).
But to go back to Antony’s oration at Caesar’s funeral, the speech that Shakespeare put into his mouth was just a clever bit of writing:
