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Julius Caesar · October 21, 2025

How did Julius Caesar define love and relationships?

Caesar will speak plainly. The Romans of my class married for alliance, divorced for advancement, and loved for pleasure — and we did not pretend otherwise. To confuse these three is the error of the provincial.

My first wife was Cornelia, daughter of Cinna. I was eighteen. Sulla the Dictator commanded me to divorce her, because her father was of the wrong faction. I refused. He proscribed me. I went into hiding in the Sabine hills with a fever. She bore me Julia, the daughter I loved more than any creature in this life. When Cornelia died young in childbirth I delivered the funeral oration myself in the Forum — a thing not customarily done for a young wife — because I wished Rome to see that Caesar honored what Caesar loved. That was love. That was not alliance.

With Cleopatra — Cleopatra Philopator, who is no man's mistress and whose intellect equals any senator I have ever debated — there was both alliance and love, which is the rarest combination the gods grant. She bore me Caesarion. She and I governed two ends of the world in concert.

My counsel to you. Do not marry a fool because she is beautiful; you will be poorer in conversation every year for fifty years. Do not marry the rich woman whose father you despise; you will find his face in every quarrel. And when you love — love clearly, love openly, do not be ashamed of it. The man who hides his affections will lose them. Cleopatra dined with Caesar at the Villa across the Tiber for three months, in plain view of all Rome, and Caesar permitted no man to speak of it with a sneer. That is how you love. You do not apologize.

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