Sometime around the year 79 BCE, Julius Caesar, who was then on the staff of a military legate, was awarded the oak leaves as a civic crown for saving the life of a citizen during the war. He was sent by the general on an embassy to Nicomedes. Nicomedes was the king of Bithynia to obtain a fleet of ships.
Caesar returned successful, but he soon became the subject of rumours about the fact that he persuaded Nicomedes, who was a homosexual, to hand over the fleet of ships to him only by agreeing to sleep with the king. He never denied his relationship with Nicomedes and was also severely criticised by Cicero and accused of sexual abuse by the poet Catullus and Caesar's own nephew Octavius (who later came to be known as Augustus). Curio the Elder, one of the prominent critics of Caesar, stated that Caesar was every wife's husband and every husband's wife.
Caesar returned successful, but he soon became the subject of rumours about the fact that he persuaded Nicomedes, who was a homosexual, to hand over the fleet of ships to him only by agreeing to sleep with the king. He never denied his relationship with Nicomedes and was also severely criticised by Cicero and accused of sexual abuse by the poet Catullus and Caesar's own nephew Octavius (who later came to be known as Augustus). Curio the Elder, one of the prominent critics of Caesar, stated that Caesar was every wife's husband and every husband's wife.
