Caesar’s Wife

Pompeia was the second wife (his first wife Cornelia having died the previous year) of Caesar who had married her in 67 BC after he had served as Quastor in Hispania. Quaestores were elected officials of the RomanRepublic who supervised the treasury and financial affairs of the state, its armies and its officers. In 63 BC Caesar was elected to the position of pontifex maximus, the chief priest of the Roman state religion, which came with an official residence on the Via sacra. In 62 BC Pompeia hosted the festival of the Bona Dea ("good goddess") in this house in which no man was permitted to attend. However a young patrician named Publius Clodius Pulcher disguised himself as a woman and gained entry into that all women festival apparently for the purpose of seducing Pompeia. B ut Caesar's mother discovered him when he failed to disguise his voice. He was caught and prosecuted for sacrilege. Caesar gave no evidence against Clodius at his trial and he was acquitted. Nevertheless, Caesar divorced Pompeia, saying that "my wife ought not even to be under suspicion."

I want to ask the bloggers what are the substantive differences between these two cases where the wives were abandoned by their respective husbands on a matter of honour. When Caesar said “I donot want my wife to be even so much as suspected.” a phrase ‘Caesar’s Wife’ was coined having a positive connotation meaning ‘beyond doubt/reproach or having unimpeachable integrity’. But ‘Rama’s Wife’ is always used as a depiction of abandonment almost amounting to a sense of betrayal of a devoted wife’s trust. (We always call it 'Sita's abandonment' and Pompeia's divorce.)

Historically, I am sure, Sita’s dilemma must have been used to denote the devotion of the Kings to the opinion of their subjects and the highest dharma of the King to remove any doubts from the minds of their subjects. But subsequent (certainly not progressive!) interpretations by Westerners seem to have given this subtle hint of abandonment in this episode so as to prove that our ancient society had always been oppressive of women. And since we had stopped taking pride in our own culture and ancient bequeath till Raja Ram Mohan Roy happened, we were ever so ready to lap up every word coming from a Western mouth who had an axe to grind on the superiority of their civilization.

Otherwise why this differing interpretation between two essentially similar scenarios of two different civilizations?

Mr.Mulliner

PS: This post is not an attempt at trying to prove everything being honky-dory with women in our civilization. It is just a factual blog on subconscious role of perceptions creeping into so-called objective analysis of situations and scenarios. I am also not trying to rake up a civilisational debate here and the Theory of Clash of Civilisations. At best, by this post I am trying to say that there is a definite role of perception in social evaluation.