An Open Letter to Rome, her Soldiers and her Citizens

My Countrymen, I may no longer stand next to you as I did before, but I still stand with you, so listen to my words!

Imagine my dismay when I heard our noble Conscript Fathers, the learned, aged, and above all dignified men whom we have trusted to guide Rome to her destiny, broke out into an open brawl in the middle of a Senate Session. What are we to make of this, the citizens and soldiers of Rome? That our Senate has become so polarized, so angered and consumed with dispute, that they cannot control their own emotions?

When I first left Rome, it was in part because of the understanding that my continued participation in the Senate was an insufficient response next to the threats facing the Roman people. But now I have begun realize, had I remained in the Senate, my own safety would be threatened by my father's murderers! Is it so hard to imagine they might aim to finish what they had begun just a few weeks earlier with their daggers?

In the meantime, it is the Roman people who suffer the most, however. The immense public works projects, the plan of diverting of the Tiber River in order to reduce the risk of flooding and expand the Campus Martius, all stand incomplete and in disrepair. These are not pressing matters, the Senate decrees! The honoring of Brutus, the crushing of Lepidus, those are real issues! But they do matter to the Roman man on the street!

My last hour in Rome was spent in the Forum, overseeing the personal distribution of funds in my Father's name. There, one hard-working Roman spoke to me, as I was presenting him with the sum rightfully promised to him in my father's will. "Gaius Julius Caesar," he asked, "What of us? What of the Romans? Is it not enough that our heroes have been insulted, that our Champions are spit on?" He understood, as I understood, that now the Roman stands on a delicate precipice between starvation and Civil War, with more than some anger directed towards his Senate. The crowds who loyally chant my father's name bristle under the insults done against him. The Senate's antics, now practically legend in of themselves, do not help the situation. When Senates threaten each other with fists, how long before citizens do the same to their Magistrates?

As I continue my march and mobilization of men to the East, some of the men under my command have pleaded with me to turn West—to respond to the insults and injuries made against myself and the memory of my father, to the name-calling of "the Boy", and "the Tyrant" in the Senate. That I have too long tolerated the insults from my father's murderers. That the people are tired of the overdue funeral games promised to them and their beloved public works left abandoned thanks to an assassin's blade, and that the proud soldiers are tired of the insults to a General who gave them so much—wealth, fame, glory—and to which they gave their blood and sweat in return.

But to do so would be to march on Rome, something I would not contemplate! If our Conscript Fathers will take a moment from their antics and name-calling, I would ask of them: where would you have your General go? I am still loyal to Rome, to the Senate trusted to lead her, despite these personal insults and threats. My father loved Rome, to his final moment, and I still serve her!