Caesar’s wife, section & salad

Judges are known to embellish their verdicts with gems from literature and myths, not necessarily always true. But that’s okay. It is the spirit behind the delivery of justice that matters. And one of their favourite quotes is “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion”.

This is what Justice B Kemal Pasha of the Kerala High Court cited as he declined to interfere with a vigilance court’s order for further investigation in the bar bribery case last week. The court said it was leaving the matter to Finance Minister KM Mani’s conscience, making it virtually impossible for him to continue in office. The case relates to allegations that Rs 5 crore was paid to Mani by bar owners for a favourable policy on renewal of licences. Mani’s detractors went for the jugular (aggressive in attacking), drawing parallels on whether Mani could be Caesar’s wife and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy Caesar himself.

Justice Pasha said, “I am reminded of the Shakespearean saying that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” However, contrary to popular perception, this is not a “Shakespearean saying”. It has not been mentioned in any of the bard’s plays on Julius Caesar. It is a leaf out of the pages of ancient Roman history. In 62 BC, Julius Caesar is chronicled to have said that his second wife Pompeia should be above all suspicion, justifying the divorce. 

Caesar married Pompeia in 67 BC, his first wife Cornelia having died the previous year while giving birth to her stillborn son. In 63 BC, Caesar was elected as the chief priest of the Roman state religion and the next year, Pompeia hosted the festival of the Bona Dea (good goddess), in which only women were invited. However, a young man, Publius Clodius, disguised as a woman managed to sneak in, apparently for seducing Pompeia. He was prosecuted for sacrilege, but acquitted for want of proof. Nevertheless, Caesar divorced Pompeia, even though he did not believe the rumours, saying that “my wife ought not even to be under suspicion”, giving rise to the proverb “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion”. So, it refers to probity in public life for a person and his associates who are expected to be honest or of high morals.

In 2010, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in an unprecedented move to clear his name from the shadow of the 2G scandal, had offered: “I shall be happy to appear before the Public Accounts Committee if it chooses to ask me to do so. I sincerely believe that like Caesar’s wife, the Prime Minister should be above suspicion.” 

Unfortunately, Caesar’s wife did not get any such chance to be heard.

There are a couple of other famous phrases regarding Julius Caesar, the great statesman who built the Roman empire, that have, over time, been covered with a sheen of myth. Such as, Caesarean section, “Et tu, Brutus?” or even Caesar’s salad.

A Caesarian section (often C-section) is a surgical operation for delivering a child by cutting through the wall of the mother’s abdomen and uterus. It is believed that the procedure is so named because Caesar was born in this way. However, that’s not true. Caesar certainly wasn’t the first person born via C-section. So, how did the two get connected? The term has been explained as deriving from the verb caedere, “to cut”. Roman author Pliny the Elder refers to a certain Julius Caesar (an ancestor of the statesman) as ab utero caeso, “cut from the womb”, giving this as an explanation for the name “Caesar”, which was then carried by his descendents.

But, there’s more. Historia Augusta, a collection of biographies of Roman emperors, suggests a few other origins for the name: “…he who first received the name of Caesar was called so either because he slew in battle an elephant, which in Moorish is called caesai, or because he was brought into the world after his mother’s death and by an incision in her abdomen, or because he had a thick head of hair (caesaries is Latin for hair), or, finally, because he had bright grey eyes (caesiis is Latin for blind, and grey eyes may refer to glaucoma).”

Julius Caesar’s supposed last words before the fatal blow by Brutus — “Et tu, Brutus?” (You too, Brutus?) — are probably the most well known from Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Since Caesar professed to love Brutus as a son and had been his political sponsor, “Et tu, Brutus?” has become a popular literary trope expressing shock at the betrayal of an ally. But historians Plutarch and Suetonius say it’s fiction.  Caesar’s end was not so dramatic. 

Finally, Caesar salad is called so after its creator Caesar Cardini, an Italian who ran restaurants in Mexico and USA in the 1920s, and the Roman king has nothing to do with the assortment of vegetables dressed with sauce, cheese and condiments.

Well, well, my education of Shakespeare continues even after studying his works through school, graduation and post-graduation. How about you?

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