There seems, in fact, little doubt that Cæsar was not now in a normal condition of mind. For some years he had been subject to epileptic seizures, and now the distressing malady was growing more pronounced and the seizures were of more frequent occurrence. At the battle of Thapsus he is said to have been taken ill in this manner; and on other occasions he was attacked while in discharge of his duties. Such a physical condition may be accountable for much of his growing eccentricity, and, particularly, one may attribute to it his increasing faith in his semi-divine powers. Lombroso goes so far as to say that epilepsy is almost an essential factor in the personality of one who believes himself to be a Son of God or Messenger of the Deity. Akhnaton, the great religious reformer of Ancient Egypt, suffered from epilepsy; the Prophet Mohammed, to put it bluntly, had fits; and many other religious reformers suffered in like manner. One cannot tell what hallucinations and strange manifestations were experienced by Cæsar under the influence of this malady; but one may be sure that to Cleopatra they were clear indications of his close relationship to the gods, and that in explanation she did not fail to remind him both of his divine descent and her own inherited divinity, in which, as her consort, he participated.
Towards the end of September Cæsar caused a sensation in Rome by an act which shows clearly enough his attitude in this regard. He consecrated a magnificent temple in honour of Venus Genetrix, his divine ancestress; and there, in the splendour of its marble sanctuary, he placed a statue of Cleopatra, which had been executed during the previous weeks by the famous Roman sculptor, Archesilaus.[53] The significance of this act has been overlooked by modern historians. In placing in this shrine of Venus, at the time of its inauguration, a figure of the Queen of Egypt, who in her own country was the representative of Isis-Aphrodite upon earth,[54] Cæsar was demonstrating the divinity of Cleopatra, and was telling the people, as it were in everlasting phrases of stone, that the royal girl who now honoured his villa on the banks of the Tiber was no less than a manifestation of Venus herself. It will presently be seen how, in after years, Cleopatra went to meet Antony decked in the character of Venus, and how she was then and on other occasions hailed by the crowd as the goddess come down to earth; and we shall see how her mausoleum actually formed part of the temple of that goddess. Both at this date and in later times she was identified indiscriminately with Isis, with Venus-Hathor, and with Venus-Aphrodite; and even after her death the tradition so far survived that one of her famous pearl earrings was cut into two parts, and, in this form, ultimately ornamented the ears of the statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome. Coins dating from this period have been found upon which Cleopatra is represented as Aphrodite, carrying in her arms the baby Cæsarion, who is supposed to be Eros. Cæsar was always boasting about the connection of his house with this goddess; and now the placing of this statue of Cleopatra in his new temple is, I think, to be interpreted as signifying that he wished the Roman people to regard the Queen as a “young goddess,” which was the title given to her by the Greeks and Egyptians in her own country.