Blogging Again - Like a Caesar!

Can you tell how happy I am to finally get my Internet connection back? Just in time to add new stuff to the blog and to finish researching and writing my essay on the media environment of Julius Caesar's Rome.

From what I've learned, Caesar would have been the first Roman to acquire a laptop with a wireless connection for propaganda blogging from the field. Plutarch tells us that he was "online" all the time:

In the day he was thus carried to the forts, garrisons, and camps, one servant sitting with him, who used to write down what he dictated as he went, and a soldier attending behind him with his sword drawn. . . . in this war he disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time or, as Oppius says, to more.

On Caesar's "on-the-go, online multitasking" Pliny comments:

The most outstanding instance of innate mental vigour I take to be the dictator Caesar; and I am not thinking of valour and resolution, nor of a loftiness embracing all the contents of the firmament of heaven, but of native vigour and quickness winged as it were with fire. We are told that he used to write or read and dictate or listen simultaneously, and to dictate to his secretaries four letters at once on his important affairs---or, if otherwise unoccupied, seven letters at once. He also fought fifty pitched battles, and alone beat the record of Marcus Marcellus who fought thirty-nine. . . . [Natural History, Book VII, 91]

Note how Pliny provides examples of communication vigour first, then presents his military vigor as part of an "also" phrase. He's a dictator (in the narrow, communication sense) before he's a dictator (in the political sense).

Nor should we forget that Caesar employed encryption software for his "secure transactions." Plutarch tell us:

And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required despatch.

To which Seutonious adds:

There are also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his intimates on private affairs, and in the latter, if he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. If anyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others.

Of course, when Caesar wanted to "flag" a message as urgent, he could do that too. Albert C. Leighton writes:

During his campaigns in Gaul in 54 B.C., Julius Caesar sent word to the beseiged Quintus Cicero (brother of the orator) by having a javelin, with a message attached, flung against the wall of Cicero's camp.

But apparently Cicero's "spam filter" was on, so the message languished in the "in box":

Unfortunately, the two commanders had not preconcerted the arrangement, and the javelin remained in the wall for several days before the message was discovered."

Finally, I have to publicly express my admiration for Leighton's decidedly understated wit, when he notes quite dryly in the body of his article:

Sometimes an effective message could be conveyed without words.

Only to add in an innocent-enough looking footnote:

A good example is the projection of Carthaginian General Hasdrubal's head into his brother Hannibal's camp by the Romans after the battle at the Metaurus River in 207 B.C. (Livey 27.51.11).

There's a lesson here: don't forget to read the footnotes kids---a lot of the scholar's personality is hidden there!