The Wrong Caesar

They named it Caesars Palace when they opened it in Las Vegas in 1966 and placed a larger-than-life statue of Caesar Augustus at its entrance.  It was to emulate the opulence of the Roman Empire.  The opening extravaganza featured cocktail waitresses in Greco-Roman garb greeting guests with, “Welcome to Caesars Palace, I am your slave.”  Among the problems with this display of decadence is they’ve got the wrong Roman emperor at the door.  (By the way, the name Caesars is not possessive in order to convey the idea that everyone who enters the hotel is treated like a “Caesar.”)

It really didn’t matter to the Jewish entrepreneurs who came up with the idea—Jay Sarno, Stanley Mallin, and later Nate Jacobsen. In 1962, they received a $10.6 million loan from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund and began building their hotel on land owned by billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.   The teamster fund was controlled by the infamous Jimmy Riddle Hoffa, of German and Irish descent. The fund’s management was nominally in the hands of Allen Dorfman, a Chicago‑based insurance executive and alleged organized‑crime associate, and stepson of Paul “Red” Dorfman—a Chicago Outfit (you know, Italo gangsters) figure described by Congressional investigators as “the link between the Teamsters Union and the Chicago underworld.”

In 1969, a Federal Organized Crime Task Force accused the casino’s financial manager, Jerome Zarowitz, of having ties with organized-crime figures in New York and New England.  Although Zarowitz was never tried, the task force pressured Sarno and his other investors to sell the casino to restauranters Stuart and Clifford S. Perlman for $60 million.

If this sounds like the plot of Martin Scorsese’s Casino, it is not, according to my research.  With so many Jewish names and bad boy Hoffa thrown in, there is hardly any room for a crooked goombah, let alone the whole greasy Outfit. Of course, if the media prefers a crooked Italian Las Vegas to a Jewish one, who am I to interfere? But to reflect the reality, this den of iniquity has the wrong theme.  It should have been called Solomons Palace.  No doubt the Hebrew cultural appropriators were at a loss to find a graven image of Sol the baby-splitter, so they latched on to our ample pictorial culture.

I’m writing about this because Wednesday will the birthday of Caius Octavianus Julius Caesar, known to us as Augustus, whose grand statue adorns Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.  Oy, better they should put at the entrance a statue of Nero.  Emperor Nero was the hedonist who built Domus Aurea (Golden House) where the Colosseum now stands, and lived the debauched life that Las Vegas encourages, until his universally-welcomed suicide.

In contrast, Augustus ruled for forty years and died in his bed in Nola, outside of Naples.  During those forty years, he and his third wife Livia resided in Rome in a modest palace in simple fashion. Subject to a variety of ills the emperor left banquets early so his guests could party-on without guilt.  He had a daughter by his first wife and three grandchildren.  Compare this to King Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, totaling 1,000 potential bedmates.  The Bible only mentions three children—I guess they were the only ones with a Jewish mother.

When Octavian became emperor he was only 31 years-old.  By that day, he had already won two civil wars, suppressed numerous rebellions, and inaugurated a period of 200 years of world peace, known as the Pax Romana. You can put Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon together and not make an Augustus. These amazing feats earned the emperor the Senatorial title of Augustus (“exulted or revered”).  In the words of historian Will Durant, “…despite a hundred defects and half a dozen idiots on the throne, the [system] he established…would give the Empire the longest period of prosperity ever known to mankind.”

This is certainly not the man to represent a gambling casino.  September 23rd should be a national holiday in Italy and a day of pride for its scions around the world. –JLM