Residence 1
📍Domus Publica, Roman Forum, Rome, Italy
“As Pontifex Maximus I lived in the Domus Publica — the official residence that stood at the edge of the Roman Forum, between the temple of Vesta and the Sacred Way. To walk out my front door was to step into the beating heart of the Roman world. I could hear the orators in the Forum, smell the sacrifices at the temples, watch the senators in their togas hurrying to the Senate House. I worked through the night here, dictating letters while walking, writing my Gallic Wars between campaigns. Rome was my life's work, and this house its centre of gravity.”
👍 LovedThe extraordinary location at the centre of Roman public life. The ability to observe and participate in every aspect of Roman politics from my own doorstep.
👎 DislikedThe total absence of privacy — as Pontifex Maximus my home was also a public religious site. The constant stream of visitors and petitioners at all hours.
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (121 AD); Plutarch, Life of Caesar (75 AD); Goldsworthy, A. Caesar: Life of a Colossus (2006), Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Residence 2
📍Subura District, Rome, Italy (Caesar's birth quarter)
“I was born Gaius Julius Caesar on the 13th of July in the year 100 BC in the Subura district of Rome — a noisy, crowded neighbourhood of tenement buildings and street markets, far from the grandeur of the Palatine Hill where the old Roman aristocracy lived. My family the Julii were patricians who claimed descent from the goddess Venus, but we had fallen on relative poverty, and the Subura flat was the reality behind the grand genealogy. I walked daily through streets that taught me about the Roman people in ways the Senate never could. I was educated in rhetoric and law, held the priesthood of Jupiter briefly, married young, and began the political career that ended the Roman Republic and began the Empire. I never forgot that I came from the streets of the Subura.”
👍 LovedThe Subura's human density and variety — the crowds, the commerce, the political gossip that reached the street before it reached the Senate. The Roman rhetorical education that gave me the tools for everything I later did.
👎 DislikedThe relative poverty behind a grand family name. The Subura's distance from the centres of power where careers were made. The political enemies who made every advance a negotiation.
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Goldsworthy, A. Caesar: Life of a Colossus (2006), Yale University Press; Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars (121 AD, translated Robert Graves 1957)
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