One Head Is Worse Than Three: Varro's Trikaranos and the So-Called First Triumvirate

Abstract:

The Trikaranos, a work of Varro's preserved only by title in Appian's Bellum Civile, has usually been considered a satirical attack on the alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in 59 b.c.e. as a "three-headed monster." However, a re-examination of the evidence reveals that the Trikaranos was instead a pseudonymous satire directed not at the political alliance of the three men, but at Caesar alone, who was attacked as the single autocrat who spoke for all three members of the so-called "first triumvirate."