Was Julius Caesar Queer? In Art or Real Life, Something of the Sort

The art is worth exploring even in the absence of certainty

Gaius Julius Caesar, from The Great General Series Allen & Ginter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gallias Caesar subegit, Caesarem Nicomedes.

This is a quote from the Roman historian Suetonius, and before we understand exactly what it means, we might have to decipher the translations of the verb subegit. It is the third-person, active perfect of subigere from Latin — active perfect meaning a completed action. As for the meaning of the verb itself, we could name a few: to bring under, to cultivate, to conquer, to subjugate, to force, to compel.

If we go on to translate what that quote means, as you would find in the Internet History Sourcebooks Project, we get something like:

All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him.

Seems pretty military-based until you grab the full extent of the meaning, and if you turn vanquish into conquer, for example, then you get a world of new possibilities.

Now think for a moment why anyone would say that Nicomedes IV, the King of Bithynia, had conquered Caesar, and not the Romans, like Caesar did with the Gauls.

Someone definitely had an agenda.