Word: servilia
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Author Bentley, without disallowing history's whispers that Caesar was a rake, minimizes the details. Readers who expect a luscious Egyptian interlude with Cleopatra do not know their Bentley. Cleopatra makes only one appearance-fully clothed and middleaged. Caesar's most constant mistress was Servilia, Brutus' mother, and of her Author Bentley contrives to make a somehow noble Roman matron, though she was twice married and continually unfaithful to both husbands. The other chief figures in the story appear as conventional history reports them: Pompey, a handsome, courageous, slow-minded soldier; Cicero a henpecked, opportunistic politician with...
Emphasis of Hail, Caesar! is less on politics or persons than on war. Author Pratt denies that Caesar was ever a pervert, even for policy; he mentions Caesar's mistress Servilia only in passing. For Caesar's rapid imposition of New Deal legislation on Rome he has nothing but implicit praise. Two-thirds of the book is devoted to a play-by-play account of Caesar's campaigns-a summary which leads Author Pratt to the surprising conclusion that Caesar "never became great as a soldier.'' He was not even a good soldier; his tactics...
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