The Rise of Julius Caesar

Author(s): Lily Ross Taylor

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 1957), pp. 10-18
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/641006
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THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
By
LILY ROSS TAYLOR
WHEN
Caesar was
born,
probably
in
Ioo
B.C.,
it is doubtful
whether
anyone
at Rome would have
expected
a son of this
secondary
branch of the
patrician Iulii
Caesares
to rise to
great
eminence
in the state. The
family,
to be
sure,
was
very
old;
it was said to have
come to Rome from Alba
Longa
when
King
Tullus Hostilius
destroyed
the
city,
and the
Iulii kept
the tradition alive
by maintaining
associations
with Alba and the Alban
gods.
But,
in
spite
of the
family's antiquity,
the
nobility
of the
Iulii,
to
paraphrase
Cicero on another
patrician,
was
better known to men of letters and to historians than it was to the voters.
It was not even
very
well known to men of letters and
historians,
for
the ten or eleven
Iulii
who reached
high
office in the
fifth
and fourth
centuries
hardly average
a line
apiece
in the six books that
Livy
devotes
to their
period-books
crowded with vivid stories of
patrician
families
like the
Fabii,
the
Manlii,
and the Valerii.
The first
Iulius
with the
cognomen
Caesar known to
us,
a
praetor
in
the Hannibalic
War,
was
presumably
a descendant of this
fifth-
and
fourth-century family.
The
Iulii
Caesares of the next
century
were in
two
branches,
which were
registered
in different tribes and were not
always
associated
politically. They
were on
opposite
sides in the civil
war between Marius and Sulla. A member of the branch that was
originally
more
important,
the
family
of Mark
Antony's
mother,
reached
the
consulship
in
157.
This
branch,
finding
no record of
great
achieve-
ments in their
shadowy republican ancestry, perhaps
invented the
claim that the
supposed
founder of their
house,
Iullus,
the
Iulus
of
Virgil,
was a son of Aeneas and a
grandson
of Venus.
They put
the
image
of Venus on their coins and
emphasized
their
Trojan origin by
becoming patrons
of Ilium. Gaius Caesar followed their lead
when,
in
the funeral oration for his
aunt,
he boasted of his
family's
descent from
Venus,
a claim made known later for all time
by Virgil.
In
spite
of the
prominence
of their
cousins, Gaius
Caesar's immediate
ancestors had not risen above the
praetorship.
But his
family
had
improved
its
position by marrying
into the
plebeian nobility,
which
was more
important
at the time than the
dwindling patricians.
His
grandmother
came from the Marcii
Reges,
a house
that,
as Caesar de-
clared in the same funeral
oration,
claimed descent from
King
Ancus
THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
II
Marcius,
and his mother
belonged
to the old consular house of the
Aurelii Cottae.
But the
really important marriage
in the
family
was that of Caesar's
aunt
Julia
to
Gaius Marius,
a 'new man' from
Arpinum,
and an able
soldier of
great
ambition. Marius' remarkable victories and the
support
of his
loyal
soldiers and of
many knights helped
him to win not one
but six
consulships
in the
years 1o7
to
Ioo.
He was further aided
by
tribunes of the
plebs
who,
in the Gracchan
tradition,
submitted their
bills
directly
to the
people,
without senatorial
authority.
Hence Marius
was considered a
popularis,
a
demagogue,
and was therefore condemned
by
the
'good'
men,
the senatorial
loyalists
who liked to call themselves
the
optimates.
In Marius' sixth
consulship,
the
year
of Caesar's
birth,
the contest between Marians and
optimates
broke out into armed com-
bat,
combat that was
quelled
for a
time,
but was renewed after the Social
War in the bitter civil strife of the
eighties.
Caesar's father and
uncle,
with a
minority
of the
nobles,
belonged
to
the
party
of Marius. It was not
actually,
as it is sometimes
called,
the
'popular party',
for
parties
at Rome were
shifting groups,
formed on a
personal,
not an
ideological,
basis. Doubtless under the influence of
Marius,
the uncle became consul in
91;
and Caesar's
father,
who did
not
go beyond
the
praetorship,
was the founder of a
colony composed
almost
certainly
of Marian veterans. Some indication of Marius' influ-
ence is also to be found in the
marriages
of Caesar's sisters and in
Caesar's own first
marriage
to the
daughter
of a rich
knight-alliances
not with old
families,
but
apparently
into houses that Marius
expected
to use in
building
a new
nobility.
As for
Caesar,
his career was almost ended
by
the dominance of the
Marians,
who were in control of Rome from
87
to 82. The office of
flamen Dialis,
the most sacred of the Roman
priests,
was
vacant,
and
the Marians found in the
young
Caesar a
patrician
to fill the
place.
This
patrician priest
and his
patrician
wife were surrounded
by
taboos and
curious
religious obligations.
The
flamen
of
Jupiter
could not
spend
more than a
night
or two a
year away
from
Rome;
he could not mount a
horse,
look
upon
an
army,
or see a dead
body.
His whole life and that
of his wife had to be devoted to the service of
Jupiter.
One wonders
what the
young
Caesar was like when the Marians
picked
him out for a
priesthood
that would have debarred him from an active
political
and
military
career. In order to hold
it,
Caesar divorced the
daughter
of the
rich
knight
and married the
patrician
Cornelia,
daughter
of
Cinna, who,
after the death of Marius in his seventh
consulship,
was
tyrant
of Rome.
But Caesar was never
inaugurated
as
priest
of
Jupiter;
the
courageous
12
THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
pontifex
maximus,
later slain
by
the
Marians,
perhaps
refused to
carry
out the
ceremony.
Since Caesar was
being groomed
for this unwarlike
priesthood,
he
seems to have had no
part
in the terrible
struggle
for
supremacy
between
Sulla and the Marian forces. On the side-lines he must have witnessed
the crimes and the murders committed
by
both
sides,
and what he saw
then
may
well
explain
the calculated
policy
of
mercy
that Caesar
adopted
in a later civil war.
Sulla,
victorious in
82,
seems at once to have had
plans
for
Caesar,
not as an ineffective
priest
of
Jupiter,
for he saved Caesar from that
fate,
but as a
representative
of Sulla's own
class,
the
patriciate.
But Caesar
firmly
refused to divorce Cinna's
daughter
in order to make a
proper
marriage,
such as
Sulla
was
arranging
for other nobles. The
story
is
that Caesar then had to flee from Sulla's
agents,
who were
carrying
out
the brutal
proscriptions,
and
that,
as a result of the
pleas
of the Vestal
Virgins
and of his mother's relatives on the Sullan
side,
his life was
spared, though
his
property
and his wife's
dowry
were confiscated.
Caesar did not
stay
in Rome to witness the
organization
of the Sullan
constitution, which,
by
various
measures,
including
the reduction of the
tribunate of the
plebs
to
impotence,
was
designed
to establish a
govern-
ment controlled
by
the Senate.
Instead,
he went out to seek a
military
career,
not under the Marians still
fighting
in
Spain,
but on the staff of
the Sullan
governor
of Asia. Thus he
began
a decade of
compromise
with the Sullan
system.
Caesar
quickly
won the confidence of his
commander and served as his
emissary
at the court of Nicomedes of
Bithynia.
More
important,
because of its
political implications,
was the decora-
tion that Caesar won from his
commanding
officer at the
siege
of
Mity-
lene,
the rare distinction of the civic
crown,
a wreath of oak
leaves,
awarded for
saving
the life of a Roman citizen. The
political significance
of the civic crown for Caesar's
career,
as Dr. Helen E. Russell has
pointed out,
can be deduced from
Livy's
account of the enrolment of
new members of the
depleted
Senate after the battle of
Cannae,
an
action carried out
by
a dictator
who,
as a former
censor,
was
evidently
following regular procedure.
This dictator enrolled all holders of
magistracies
in
descending
order to the
quaestors,
and all the men who
had
spoils captured
from the
enemy
or who had been awarded the
civic crown. We know that when
Sulla,
as
dictator,
filled the ranks of
the Senate after the murders and deaths of the civil
war,
he made
membership
automatic for
quaestors.
He
may
have done the same
thing
for
possessors of enemy spoils and of the civic crown. In that case,
THE RISE OF
JULIUS CAESAR
13
the
young
Caesar would at once have become a
senator,
a status at
least
suggested by
a
legateship
he held several
years
later. It is also not
unlikely
that either under Sulla's law or
by special
senatorial
action,
for
which there are certain
parallels
in the
sources,
Caesar was
permitted
to be a candidate for office before he reached the
age specified by
law.
That would
explain why
Caesar held the
praetorship
and
consulship
two
years
earlier than the
legal age,
and would remove the
strongest
argument against accepting
Ioo
B.c.
as the date of his birth.
On
receiving
the news of Sulla's death in
78,
and of
impending
revo-
lution, Caesar,
who
by
this time had transferred to the staff of another
Sullan
commander,
abandoned his
military
service and returned to
Rome.
But,
on
examining
the
situation,
he did not
join
the leader of
the
revolution,
M. Aemilius
Lepidus,
whose
programme
included the
restoration of the full
powers
of the tribunes of the
plebs. Instead,
Caesar, now,
I
believe,
a member of the
Senate,
occupied
himself with
contacts in Rome and with the
prosecution
of a
provincial governor,
always
a favourite method of
attracting public
notice for a
young
man
who
hoped
to rise in
politics.
And
though
he lost the
case,
Caesar made
a
good showing
in his
speeches,
which in their
published
form
placed
him
among
the
great
orators of Rome.
Ostensibly
to
perfect
his
oratory
under Cicero's
great teacher, Molo
of
Rhodes,
Caesar left Rome after two or three
years
to return to the
East. Much besides
study
was crowded into the next two
years
or
more,
which extended his
military experience
and widened his
knowledge
of
the
empire.
On the
way
out Caesar was
captured by pirates, and,
after
he was
ransomed,
raised a
force,
captured
the
pirates,
and crucified
them. He made another
journey
to the
Bithynian
court. At the outbreak
of the Mithridatic War in
74,
Caesar
organized
an
expedition
and
expelled
the
king's agent
from the cities of Asia. It was either before
Caesar's return to Rome in
73
or in the
following year
that he served as
legate, apparently
of Mark
Antony's
father,
whose mission was to clear
the sea of the
pirates
that Caesar knew so well. He does not seem to
have
stayed long enough
to be involved in the disastrous failure of the
expedition.
Whatever the date of this
legateship,
Caesar was called back to Rome
in
73 by
a
signal
honour. He was elected a member of the
college
of
pontifices,
a
priesthood
of
great prestige,
with none of the taboos and
restrictions of the
flamen
Dialis. This election shows the
position
Caesar
held in the
nobility.
Under the Sullan constitution the old method of
electing priests
had been restored.
They
were now chosen not
by
popular
election but
by
the
priests themselves,
who functioned as a
14
THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
club and refrained from
choosing
men who were at
enmity with any
of
the members. The
pontifices
who elected Caesar were
powerful
members
of the Sullan senatorial
nobility.
The most illustrious was
Q.
Lutatius
Catulus,
restorer of the
Capitol,
son of a bitter
enemy
of Marius.
Catulus and his
colleagues evidently
considered Caesar a
'good' young
man,
free from the
demagoguery they
associated with Marius.
But Catulus and the other
pontifices
soon realized that
they
were
wrong,
for the
'good' young
man
speedily
turned into a
popularis
in the
best Marian tradition. There had
already
been attacks on features of
the Sullan
constitution,
and the status of the tribunate of the
plebs
had been
slightly improved.
But the tribunes were
still
seeking
the law-
making power by
which,
in the
generation
before
Sulla,
the will of the
senatorial
majority
had
repeatedly
been overruled. And
Caesar,
as
military
tribune,
almost
certainly
in the
year 71,
threw himself
vigorously
into the
fight.
That
brought
him into contact with
Pompey,
who,
with
fresh laurels from his
Spanish
victories,
had been
accepted
as a candidate
for the
consulship, although
he had held none of the lower offices. And
Pompey promised
that he
would,
as
consul,
restore the full
powers
of
the tribunate.
When
Pompey
fulfilled his
promise
as consul in
70,
Caesar
instigated
a tribune to
propose perhaps
the first law
passed
under the restored
powers,
and
spoke
from the rostra himself in
support
of the law. It
provided
for the return of the exiled adherents of
Lepidus, among
them
Caesar's
brother-in-law,
Cinna's son. The unknown Plotius who
pro-
posed
this bill is the first of a
long
line of tribunes whom Caesar used
in the next two decades to
gain
his ends in
opposition
to the Senate.
One
may
ask
why
Caesar
changed
his
course,
and whether it was
conviction or
policy
that had made him a
'good'
man for a decade. I
suspect
that it was
policy,
that,
with his sure sense of
timing
in
politics,
he waited to
join
the
fight
for the destruction of the Sullan constitution
until
Pompey's championship
made
victory
sure. Close relations with
Pompey
are indicated
by
Caesar's
support
of the bills
proposed by
tri-
bunes to
give Pompey
his
great
commands
against
the
pirates
and
against
Mithridates.
But Caesar's association with
Pompey
did not lead him to seek mili-
tary experience
as one of
Pompey's big
staff of
legates.
Caesar's business
now was
city politics,
and he curtailed his tours of
duty
in Farther
Spain,
both as
quaestor
in
69-68
and as
governor
in
61-60.
His activities
in Rome included resuscitation of the
memory
of
Marius,
pursuit
of
Sullan
profiteers,
and a
carefully planned
attack on the
prestige
of
eminent Sullan
nobles, particularly
Catulus. When Caesar's
aunt,
THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
15
Marius' wife, and his own wife, Cinna's
daughter,
died in
69,
he
seized
the
opportunity
to revive the
memory
of both Marius and Cinna.
He
praised
both women from the
rostra,
and
brought forth,
from the
oblivion
to which Sulla had
consigned
them, the
images
of
Marius,
and
probably
of Cinna too. Four
years later,
as curule
aedile,
he
restored to the
Capitol
the
splendid trophies
of Marius'
great victories,
an act
enthusias-
tically
welcomed
by
the
people,
who must still have included
many
of
Marius' old soldiers. Caesar tried in vain to have the
right
to
hold
office
given
back to the Marians
proscribed by
Sulla. As
president
of
the murder court in
64
he condemned men who had received rewards
in the
proscriptions,
at the same time
pardoning
one of the worst
offenders, Catiline,
whom he was then
supporting
for the
consulship.
A
vigorous
attack on the
authority
of the Senate was made in
63,
when,
at Caesar's
instigation,
the tribune Titus
Labienus,
his future
legate
in
Gaul,
accused of treason an
aged
senator
supposed
to have
slain an inviolable tribune in the
year
of Marius' sixth
consulship.
The
trial in the centuriate
assembly
was a
sham,
and the
assembly
was
dissolved without
action, but,
as Cicero's defence of the accused makes
clear,
it had
served,
through
its indictment of senators of
long ago,
to
attack the
prestige
of the Senate of that
day,
and
perhaps
in
particular
of
Catulus,
the son of one of Marius'
unrelenting
foes.
Certainly
Caesar was
bending
all his
energies
to discredit Catulus.
The
great
contest between the two men came in the
year 63,
when
Caesar became Catulus' rival for the office of
pontifex
maximus. The
head of the
college
of
pontifices,
who was chosen from the
members,
was a
semi-magisterial
officer with
important power
and
dazzling pres-
tige.
It was a
great advantage (an advantage
that Catulus
lacked)
to
have an ancestor who had held the
office,
and the
story
that
Iulus
had
been
pontifex
maximus of Alba
may
have been invented
by
Caesar at
this
time. Caesar's
support
of a law
transferring
back to the
people
the
right
of
electing priests,
the last relic of the Sullan
constitution,
as well
as the
abundant funds for
bribery supplied by
Caesar's close associate
of
these
years,
M. Licinius
Crassus,
brought victory
over Catulus and
established Caesar as one of the
greatest figures
of Rome.
There was a vindictiveness in Caesar's attacks on Catulus that one
finds
during
his civil career
only
in his
subsequent
attitude toward the
man
who
succeeded Catulus as leader of the
optimates,
M. Porcius Cato.
Not
content with his defeat of Catulus at the
polls,
as
praetor
in the fol-
lowing year,
Caesar tried in vain to have Catulus' name erased from the
Capitol,
accusing
him of
embezzling public
funds in the
building
operations.
16 THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
The distinction of the chief
priesthood
had no effect on Caesar's
espousal
of
popular
causes. That was clear on the famous Nones of
December
63,
when he took a stand
against
the death
penalty
for the
Catilinarians.
Whether or not he was involved in the
conspiracy (he
probably
was
not),
he
realized,
and was to
prove later,
that the
people
could be roused over the execution of citizens without trial. In the
published
version of the
speech
delivered at this same
meeting,
the con-
sul Cicero,
recognizing
his own
danger,
tries to
placate
Caesar
by
attri-
buting
to him not
demagoguery,
but
genuine
concern for the welfare
of the
people (animum
vere
popularem
saluti
populi consulentem).
But
there was
plenty
of
demagoguery
in Caesar's
activity
in the
following
year.
It included not
only
attacks on
Catulus,
but a contest with
Cato,
who had
emerged
in the Catilinarian discussion as the new leader of the
optimates.
If there was
any
chance,
as Cicero seems
vaguely
to have
hoped,
that
Caesar could be won over to the
'good'
men,
Cato ended
it,
for
by
his
obstructionist tactics in the Senate he not
only prevented
Caesar from
celebrating
a
Spanish triumph,
but at the same time blocked the
plans
of Crassus and
Pompey,
thus
preparing
the
way
for the famous deal
made
by
the three men. And
so,
as consul in
59,
Caesar,
acting
like a
tribune
(as
his enemies
said),
obtained from the
people,
in defiance of
the
Senate,
the measures his associates demanded
and,
through
a
tribune,
secured for himself an
army
and a
five-year
command in a
province
at
the
gates
of
Italy.
If he could win
great
victories-and
Caesar,
if no one
else,
knew that
he could-he now had the
weapons
with which he had seen Marius and
Sulla and
Pompey
win
primacy
in the state. He had a wide
knowledge
of the
empire
and its
problems,
but
only slight experience
in command-
ing troops,
for his raids on
pirates,
on cities of
Asia,
and even on the
mountain fastnesses of
Portugal hardly
counted. The chief scene of
his
fighting
had been the Forum and the
Campus.
We know
only
a
small
part
of the
story,
a
story
of a life of
movement,
of
initiative,
of
swift
decision,
of
painstaking political organization,
of the use of almost
any
means to
gain
his end.
Caesar's
ancestry
had not
helped
him
greatly,
but he had made
good
use of
Venus,
perhaps
of
Iulus,
and of Ancus Marcius. His Marian
associations had almost wrecked his
career,
but he had known how to
derive
advantage
from them later. He owed much to the relatives and
friends who had saved him from
Sulla,
to Sulla
himself,
who had rescued
him from the
priesthood
of
Jupiter,
to the Sullan commander who had
awarded him the civic crown,
and to the Sullan
pontifices who, by
THE RISE OF JULIUS CAESAR
17
electing
him to their
college,
had made him
eligible
for the
powerful
high priesthood.
When he abandoned his course as a
'good' man,
and
set out on what Cicero calls the
via
popularis,
he was
deeply
indebted to
Pompey,
the leader in the destruction of the Sullan
constitution,
and
to
Crassus,
who
placed
his
great
wealth and
powerful
friends at Caesar's
disposal. Thejourney
took
Caesar,
as it had taken
Marius,
to the
heights;
but the
sovereignty
of the
people,
the theme of endless tribunicial
orations,
was lost on the
way.
How little Caesar cared about the loss
was clear when in
49
he
pushed
aside the tribune of the
plebs
who
barred the
doorway
of the
Treasury;
when in
44
he
brought
low two
tribunes who
opposed
his
honours; when,
as
dictator,
he
repeatedly
made a
mockery
of the assemblies in which a
sovereign people
had once
passed
its laws and elected its
magistrates.
Yet there had been
something
prophetic
in the words of Cicero in the fourth
speech against Catiline;
for,
at the same
time,
in his statesmanlike
measures, Caesar,
with under-
standing
of the
problems
of
empire,
manifested a
deep
concern for the
welfare of the
people
of
Rome,
of
Italy,
and also of the
provinces
that
he tried to
amalgamate
with
Italy--in
short,
of all the
people
over
whom,
in
everything
but
name,
he had established a
regnum.
NOTE ON SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOR the
period
before
63,
when we have the first
contemporary
evidence in
the
writings
of Cicero and
Sallust,
the chief sources for the life of Caesar are
the
biographies
of Suetonius and
Plutarch,
both of which are mutilated at the
beginning;
Plutarch's lives of
Pompey
and
Crassus; Velleius Paterculus
ii.
41-43;
and scattered material in the historians
Appian
and Dio and in other
imperial
writers. For an
analysis
of the
sources,
see H.
Strasburger,
Caesars
Eintritt in die
Geschichte
(Munich, 1938).
The loss of the
beginning
of Sueto-
nius'
biography
has
deprived
us of the consular date for Caesar's birth. But
Suetonius
elsewhere,
and also
Velleius, Plutarch,
and
Appian
indicate that
the
year
was
00oo,
while
Eutropius,
who
says
that Caesar was
fifty-six
at the
time of the battle of
Munda,
would
suggest
ioz
or
perhaps
iox.
Mommsen
argued tentatively
for
102oz,
and is followed
by
T. Rice
Holmes,
The Roman
Republic (Oxford, 1923),
i.
436-42.
On the
meaning
of Cinnae
quater
consulis
(Suet.
Div.
lul.
.
i),
which I
mistakenly
used as evidence for the date of
Caesar's
birth,
see H.
Last,
Class. Rev. lviii
(1944), 15-17.
I
accept
the
year
0oo
for Caesar's
birth,
and refer for an
explanation
of the
peculiarities
of his
career to a
study
available
only
in
microfilm,
viz. Helen E.
Russell,
Advance-
ment in Rank under the Roman
Republic
as a Reward
for
the Soldier and the
Public Prosecutor
(University Microfilms,
Ann
Arbor,
Michigan, 1955), 25-53-
For Caesar's nomination as
flamen Dialis,
his election to the
pontificate,
the
date of the lex Plotiiz and of his
quaestorship,
and for other events in his
early career,
see
my paper,
'Caesar's
Early Career',
Class.
Philol.
xxxvi
(1941),
3871.1 C
18 THE RISE OF
JULIUS
CAESAR
I13-32,
and the
supplementary papers,
ibid. xxxvii
(I942),
421-4;
Am.
Journ.
Phil.
lxiii
(I942),
385-412;
Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc. lxxiii
(1942), 1-24.
For
Caesar's father's career and for Caesar's
post
as
legate,
almost
certainly
under
M. Antonius
Creticus,
see T. R. S.
Broughton's interpretation
of the
inscrip-
tional
evidence,
Am.
Journ.
Arch. lii
(1948),
323-3o,
and Trans. Am. Philol.
Assoc. lxxix
(1948), 63-67.
The sources for Caesar's offices are cited under
the
years
in
Broughton's
The
Magistrates of
the Roman
Republic,
vol. ii
(New
York,
1952).
The most
important
recent
biography
of Caesar is that of
Matthias
Gelzer, Caesar,
der Politiker und Staatsmann
(3rd
edition, Munich,
1941).
THE MICHAEL VENTRIS MEMORIAL FUND
MICHAEL
VENTRIS
died at the
age
of
34
last
September
in a motor accident.
His
discovery
that the Linear B texts of
Knossos,
Pylos, Mycenae,
and other
sites were Greek ranks as one of the most brilliant achievements of
scholarship,
and has been
internationally
acclaimed a feat of the same order as that of
Champollion
in
deciphering
the
Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The brilliance of this
discovery
is matched
by
its
importance;
it will take
years
to work out the con-
sequences
of the new
knowledge,
which
proves
that
Mycenaean
civilization
was
Greek-speaking, gives
us texts
contemporary
and
comparable
with texts
from the
adjoining
civilizations of
Egypt
and the Near
East,
and shows us
the state of the Greek
language
half a millennium before our earliest Greek
literature.
Michael Ventris was trained and
practised
as an
architect,
and there
lay
ahead of him a career of
exceptional promise. He
had an
uncanny gift
for lan-
guages
ancient and
modern,
and was fired to
study
the Linear B texts
by
a
lecture
given by
Sir Arthur Evans which he heard when he was a
schoolboy
at
Stowe. He
was, moreover,
a man of remarkable
personal
charm.
Accordingly
many
of his friends and
colleagues
feel that others
may
wish to
join
them in
forming
some memorial to his
genius
and
personality;
and a
distinguished
group
of
scholars,
with the societies concerned with his two main
interests,
architecture and Greek
studies,
has issued an
appeal
for
support
for a Michael
Ventris Memorial Fund. This would be administered
by
a trust
representing
the two
interests,
and used to found a memorial award or
scholarship open
both to
post-graduate
students who were
working
on
subjects
connected with
Mycenaean
civilization and to students of architecture. Contributions should
be made out to the Michael Ventris Memorial
Fund,
and sent either to the
Secretary,
Architectural
Association, 34-36
Bedford
Square,
London,
W.C.
I,
or to the
Secretary,
Institute of Classical
Studies,
50
Bedford
Square,
London,
W.C. I.