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Julius Caesar

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Plutarch notes that two hundred years later, armour and weapons from the battle were still being found. The battle of Orchomenus was another of the world's decisive battles.

It determined that the fate of Asia Minor lay with Rome and her successors for the next millennium. In 86 BC, after Sulla's victory in Orchomenos , he initially spent some time re-establishing Roman authority. His legate soon arrived with the fleet he was sent to gather, and Sulla was ready to recapture lost Greek islands before crossing into Asia Minor. The second Roman army under the command of Flaccus, meanwhile, moved through Macedonia and into Asia Minor. After the capture of Philippi , the remaining Mithridatic forces crossed the Hellespont to get away from the Romans.

Fimbria encouraged his forces to loot and create general havoc as they went. Flaccus was a fairly strict disciplinarian and the behaviour of his lieutenant led to discord between the two. At some point, as this army crossed the Hellespont to pursue Mithridates' forces, Fimbria seems to have started a rebellion against Flaccus. While seemingly minor enough to not cause immediate repercussions in the field, Fimbria was relieved of his duty and ordered back to Rome. The return trip included a stop at the port city of Byzantium , however, and here Fimbria took command of the garrison, rather than continue home.

Flaccus, hearing of this, marched his army to Byzantium to put a stop to the rebellion, but walked right into his own undoing. The army preferred Fimbria not surprising considering his leniency in regard to plunder and a general revolt ensued. Flaccus attempted to flee, but was captured shortly after and the consul was executed. With Flaccus out of the way, Fimbria took complete command. Fimbria quickly won a decisive victory over remaining Mithridatic forces and moved on the capital of Pergamum. With all vestige of hope crumbling for Mithridates, he fled Pergamum to the coastal city of Pitane.

Fimbria, in pursuit, laid siege to the town, but had no fleet to prevent Mithridates' escape by sea. Fimbria called upon Sulla's legate, Lucullus, to bring his fleet around to blockade Mithridates, but it seems that Sulla had other plans. Sulla apparently had been in private negotiation with Mithridates to end the war. He wanted to develop easy terms and get the ordeal over as quickly as possible.

The quicker it was dealt with, the faster he would be able to settle political matters in Rome. With this in mind, Lucullus and his navy refused to help Fimbria, and Mithridates 'escaped' to Lesbos. Later at Dardanus, Sulla and Mithridates met personally to negotiate terms. With Fimbria re-establishing Roman hegemony over the cities of Asia Minor, Mithridates' position was completely untenable. Yet Sulla, with his eyes on Rome, offered uncharacteristically mild terms.

Mithridates was forced to give up all his conquests which Sulla and Fimbria had already managed to take back by force , surrender any Roman prisoners, provide a 70 ship fleet to Sulla along with supplies, and pay a tribute of 2, to 3, gold talents. In exchange, Mithridates was able to keep his original kingdom and territory and regain his title of "friend of the Roman people. But things in the east weren't yet settled. Fimbria was enjoying free rein in the province of Asia and led a cruel oppression of both those who were involved against Romans, and those who were now in support of Sulla.

Unable to leave a potentially dangerous army in his rear, Sulla crossed into Asia. He pursued Fimbria to his camp at Thyatira where Fimbria was confident in his ability to repulse an attack. Fimbria, however, soon found that his men wanted nothing to do with opposing Sulla and many deserted or refused to fight in the coming battle. Sensing all was lost, Fimbria took his own life, while his army went over to Sulla. To ensure the loyalty of both Fimbria's troops and his own veterans, who weren't happy about the easy treatment of their enemy, Mithridates, Sulla now started to penalize the province of Asia.

His veterans were scattered throughout the province and allowed to extort the wealth of local communities. Large fines were placed on the province for lost taxes during their rebellion and the cost of the war. Perhaps in an attempt to gain experience for an army to act as a counter to Sulla's forces, or to show Sulla that the Senate also had some strength of its own, Cinna raised an army to deal with this Illyrian problem. Conveniently the source of the disturbance was located directly between Sulla and another march on Rome. Cinna pushed his men hard to move to position in Illyria , and forced marches through snow-covered mountains did little to endear Cinna to his army.

A short time after departing Rome, Cinna was stoned to death by his own men. Hearing of Cinna's death, and the ensuing power gap in Rome, Sulla gathered his forces and prepared for a second march on the capital. In the spring of that year, Sulla crossed the Adriatic with a large fleet from Patrae, west of Corinth, to Brundisium and Tarentum in the heel of Italy. Landing uncontested, he had ample opportunity to prepare for the coming war. In Rome the newly elected consuls, L. Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus Asiagenus and C.

Norbanus levied and prepared armies of their own to stop Sulla and protect the Republican government. Norbanus marched first with the intention of blocking a Sullan advance at Canusium. Seriously defeated, Norbanus was forced to retreat to Capua where there was no respite.

Sulla followed his defeated adversary and won another victory in a very short time. Meanwhile, Asiagenus was also on the march south with an army of his own. Either Asiagenus or his army, however, seemed to have little motivation to fight. At the town of Teanum Sidicinum, Sulla and Asiagenus met face-to-face to negotiate and Asiagenus surrendered without a fight. The army sent to stop Sulla wavered in the face of battle against experienced veterans, and certainly along with the prodding of Sulla's operatives, gave up the cause, going over to Sulla's side as a result.

Left without an army, Asiagenus had little choice but to cooperate and later writings of Cicero suggest that the two men actually discussed many matters regarding Roman government and the Constitution. Sulla let Asiagenus leave the camp, firmly believing him to be a supporter.

He was possibly expected to deliver terms to the Senate, but immediately rescinded any thought of supporting Sulla upon being set free. Sulla later made it publicly known that not only would Asiagenus suffer for opposing him, but that any man who continued to oppose him after this betrayal would suffer bitter consequences. With Sulla's three quick victories, though, the situation began to rapidly turn in his favour.

Many of those in a position of power, who had not yet taken a clear side, now chose to support Sulla.

The first of these was Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius , who governed Africa. The old enemy of Marius, and assuredly of Cinna as well, led an open revolt against the Marian forces in Africa. Additional help came from Picenum and Spain. Two of the three future triumvirs joined Sulla's cause in his bid to take control. Marcus Licinius Crassus marched with an army from Spain, and would later play a pivotal role at the Colline Gates. The young son of Pompeius Strabo the butcher of Asculum during the Social War , Pompey , raised an army of his own from among his father's veterans and threw his lot in with Sulla.

At the age of 23, and never having held a senatorial office, Pompey forced himself into the political scene with an army at his back. Regardless, the war would continue on with Asiagenus raising another army in defence. This time he moved after Pompey, but once again, his army abandoned him and went over to the enemy.

As a result, desperation followed in Rome as the year 83 came to a close. The Senate re-elected Cinna's old co-Consul, Papirius Carbo , to his third term, and Gaius Marius the Younger , the year-old son of the dead consul, to his first. Hoping to inspire Marian supporters throughout the Roman world, recruiting began in earnest among the Italian tribes who had always been loyal to Marius. In addition, possible Sullan supporters were murdered.

The urban praetor L. Junius Brutus Damasippus led a slaughter of those senators who seemed to lean towards the invading forces--yet one more incident of murder in a growing spiral of violence as a political tool in the late Republic. As the campaign year of 82 BC opened, Carbo took his forces to the north to oppose Pompey while Marius moved against Sulla in the south. Attempts to defeat Pompey failed and Metellus with his African forces along with Pompey secured northern Italy for Sulla.

In the south, young Marius gathered a large host of Samnites , who assuredly would lose influence with the anti-popular Sulla in charge of Rome. Marius met Sulla at Sacriportus and the two forces engaged in a long and desperate battle. In the end, many of Marius' men switched sides over to Sulla and he had no choice but to retreat to Praeneste. Sulla followed the son of his arch-rival and laid siege to the town, leaving a subordinate in command.

Sulla himself moved north to push Carbo, who had withdrawn to Etruria to stand between Rome and the forces of Pompey and Metellus. Indecisive battles were fought between Carbo and Sulla's forces but Carbo knew that his cause was lost. News arrived of a defeat by Norbanus in Gaul, and that he also switched sides to Sulla. Carbo, caught between three enemy armies and with no hope of relief, fled to Africa.

It was not yet the end of the resistance, however; those remaining Marian forces gathered together and attempted several times to relieve young Marius at Praeneste. A Samnite force under Pontius Telesinus joined in the relief effort but the combined armies were still unable to break Sulla. Rather than continue trying to rescue Marius, Telesinus moved north to threaten Rome. The battle was a huge and desperate final struggle with both sides certainly believing their own victory would save Rome. Sulla was pushed hard on his left flank with the situation so dangerous that he and his men were pushed right up against the city walls.

Crassus' forces, fighting on Sulla's right however, managed to turn the opposition's flank and drive them back. The Samnites and the Marian forces were folded up and broke. In the end, over 50, combatants lost their lives and Sulla stood alone as the master of Rome. At the end of 82 BC or the beginning of 81 BC, [15] the Senate appointed Sulla dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa "dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution".

The "Assembly of the People" subsequently ratified the decision, with no limit set on his time in office. Sulla had total control of the city and republic of Rome, except for Hispania which Marius's general Quintus Sertorius had established as an independent state. This unusual appointment used hitherto only in times of extreme danger to the city, such as during the Second Punic War , and then only for 6-month periods represented an exception to Rome's policy of not giving total power to a single individual.

Sulla can be seen as setting the precedent for Julius Caesar 's dictatorship, and for the eventual end of the Republic under Augustus. In total control of the city and its affairs, Sulla instituted a series of proscriptions a program of executing those whom he perceived as enemies of the state and confiscating their property. As this caused a general murmur, he let one day pass, and then proscribed two hundred and twenty more, and again on the third day as many. In an harangue to the people, he said, with reference to these measures, that he had proscribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe them at some future time.

The proscriptions are widely perceived as a response to similar killings which Marius and Cinna had implemented while they controlled the Republic during Sulla's absence. Proscribing or outlawing every one of those whom he perceived to have acted against the best interests of the Republic while he was in the East, Sulla ordered some 1, nobles i.

Helping or sheltering a proscribed person was punishable by death, while killing a proscribed person was rewarded with two talents. After the theatres re-opened at the start of the Restoration era, the play was revived by Thomas Killigrew 's King's Company in Charles Hart initially played Brutus, as did Thomas Betterton in later productions.

Julius Caesar was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was not adapted during the Restoration period or the eighteenth century. One of the earliest cultural references to the play came in Shakespeare's own Hamlet. Prince Hamlet asks Polonius about his career as a thespian at university, Polonius replies "I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i' th' Capitol. The police procedural combines Shakespeare, Dragnet , and vaudeville jokes and was first broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show. The movie Me and Orson Welles , based on a book of the same name by Robert Kaplow , is a fictional story centred around Orson Welles ' famous production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theatre.

The first triumvirate and the conquest of Gaul

Cesare deve morire , directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani , follows convicts in their rehearsals ahead of a prison performance of Julius Caesar. In the Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit , some of the character Beatty's last words are "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass me as an idle wind, which I respect not!

The play's line "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves", spoken by Cassius in Act I, scene 2, is often referenced in popular culture. The line gave its name to the J. The same line was quoted in Edward R. This speech and the line were recreated in the film Good Night, and Good Luck. Julius Caesar has been adapted to a number of film productions, including:. Modern adaptions of the play have often made contemporary political references, [42] with Caesar depicted as resembling a variety of political leaders, including Huey Long , Margaret Thatcher , and Tony Blair.

And often people in the title role itself look like or feel like somebody either in recent or current politics. Caesar is assassinated to stop him becoming a dictator. Doesn't look much like a successful result for the conspirators to me. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article's lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. Shakespeare on screen and List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations.

New Cambridge Shakespeare 2 ed. Julius Caesar in western culture. Yale University Press , p. Blakemore Evans Evans, G. Neither play has survived. Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, Vol. An Appreciation of the Hollywood Production. New Plays in Manhattan: Retrieved 13 March A Conversation with Norman Lloyd". Retrieved 5 November This is Orson Welles.

The New York Times. The Road to Xanadu. Retrieved 7 November Eric Blom , Vol. The Riverside Shakespeare Company's lively production makes you think of timeless ambition and antilibertarians anywhere. The Plays on Film and Television eds. Cambridge University Press, , pp. After this, he passed a law that rewarded families for having many children, to speed up the repopulation of Italy. Then, he outlawed professional guilds, except those of ancient foundation, since many of these were subversive political clubs.

He then passed a term-limit law applicable to governors. He passed a debt-restructuring law, which ultimately eliminated about a fourth of all debts owed. The Forum of Caesar , with its Temple of Venus Genetrix , was then built, among many other public works. The most important change, however, was his reform of the calendar. The Roman calendar at the time was regulated by the movement of the moon.

By replacing it with the Egyptian calendar, based on the sun, Roman farmers were able to use it as the basis of consistent seasonal planting from year to year. He set the length of the year to Thus, the Julian calendar opened on 1 January 45 BC. Shortly before his assassination, he passed a few more reforms. He also extended Latin rights throughout the Roman world, and then abolished the tax system and reverted to the earlier version that allowed cities to collect tribute however they wanted, rather than needing Roman intermediaries. His assassination prevented further and larger schemes, which included the construction of an unprecedented temple to Mars, a huge theatre, and a library on the scale of the Library of Alexandria.

He also wanted to convert Ostia to a major port, and cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.

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Militarily, he wanted to conquer the Dacians and Parthians , and avenge the loss at Carrhae. Thus, he instituted a massive mobilisation. Shortly before his assassination, the Senate named him censor for life and Father of the Fatherland , and the month of Quintilis was renamed July in his honour. He was granted further honours, which were later used to justify his assassination as a would-be divine monarch: He was granted a golden chair in the Senate, was allowed to wear triumphal dress whenever he chose, and was offered a form of semi-official or popular cult , with Mark Antony as his high priest.

The history of Caesar's political appointments is complex and uncertain. Caesar held both the dictatorship and the tribunate , but alternated between the consulship and the proconsulship. In 48 BC, Caesar was given permanent tribunician powers, [97] [ not in citation given ] which made his person sacrosanct and allowed him to veto the Senate, [97] although on at least one occasion, tribunes did attempt to obstruct him. The offending tribunes in this case were brought before the Senate and divested of their office.

After he had first marched on Rome in 49 BC, he forcibly opened the treasury, although a tribune had the seal placed on it. After the impeachment of the two obstructive tribunes, Caesar, perhaps unsurprisingly, faced no further opposition from other members of the Tribunician College. When Caesar returned to Rome in 47 BC, the ranks of the Senate had been severely depleted, so he used his censorial powers to appoint many new senators, which eventually raised the Senate's membership to In 46 BC, Caesar gave himself the title of "Prefect of the Morals", which was an office that was new only in name, as its powers were identical to those of the censors.

He also set the precedent, which his imperial successors followed, of requiring the Senate to bestow various titles and honours upon him. He was, for example, given the title of "Father of the Fatherland" and " imperator ". Coins bore his likeness, and he was given the right to speak first during Senate meetings. Caesar even took steps to transform Italy into a province, and to link more tightly the other provinces of the empire into a single cohesive unit. This addressed the underlying problem that had caused the Social War decades earlier, where persons from outside Rome or Italy did not have citizenship.

This process, of fusing the entire Roman Empire into a single unit, rather than maintaining it as a network of unequal principalities, would ultimately be completed by Caesar's successor, the Emperor Augustus. In February 44 BC, one month before his assassination, he was appointed dictator in perpetuity. Under Caesar, a significant amount of authority was vested in his lieutenants, [96] mostly because Caesar was frequently out of Italy. Near the end of his life, Caesar began to prepare for a war against the Parthian Empire. Since his absence from Rome might limit his ability to install his own consuls, he passed a law which allowed him to appoint all magistrates in 43 BC, and all consuls and tribunes in 42 BC.

Several Senators had conspired to assassinate Caesar. Mark Antony, having vaguely learned of the plot the night before from a terrified liberator named Servilius Casca , and fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off. The plotters, however, had anticipated this and, fearing that Antony would come to Caesar's aid, had arranged for Trebonius to intercept him just as he approached the portico of the Theatre of Pompey , where the session was to be held, and detain him outside Plutarch, however, assigns this action to delay Antony to Brutus Albinus.

When he heard the commotion from the Senate chamber, Antony fled. According to Plutarch , as Caesar arrived at the Senate, Tillius Cimber presented him with a petition to recall his exiled brother. Both Plutarch and Suetonius say that Caesar waved him away, but Cimber grabbed his shoulders and pulled down Caesar's tunic.

Caesar then cried to Cimber, "Why, this is violence! At the same time, Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck. Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm. According to Plutarch, he said in Latin, "Casca, you villain, what are you doing? Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, was striking out at the dictator. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenceless on the lower steps of the portico. According to Eutropius , around 60 men participated in the assassination.

He was stabbed 23 times. According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal. However, Suetonius' own opinion was that Caesar said nothing. Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators.

According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators; they, however, fled the building. Caesar's dead body lay where it fell on the Senate floor for nearly three hours before other officials arrived to remove it. Caesar's body was cremated, and on the site of his cremation, the Temple of Caesar was erected a few years later at the east side of the main square of the Roman Forum. Only its altar now remains. A crowd who had gathered there started a fire, which badly damaged the forum and neighbouring buildings.

In the ensuing chaos, Mark Antony, Octavian later Augustus Caesar , and others fought a series of five civil wars, which would end in the formation of the Roman Empire. The result unforeseen by the assassins was that Caesar's death precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. Antony, who had been drifting apart from Caesar, capitalised on the grief of the Roman mob and threatened to unleash them on the Optimates , perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself.

To his surprise and chagrin, Caesar had named his grandnephew Gaius Octavius his sole heir hence the name Octavian , bequeathing him the immensely potent Caesar name and making him one of the wealthiest citizens in the Republic. The crowd at the funeral boiled over, throwing dry branches, furniture, and even clothing on to Caesar's funeral pyre, causing the flames to spin out of control, seriously damaging the Forum.

The mob then attacked the houses of Brutus and Cassius, where they were repelled only with considerable difficulty, ultimately providing the spark for the civil war , fulfilling at least in part Antony's threat against the aristocrats. Octavian, aged only 18 when Caesar died, proved to have considerable political skills, and while Antony dealt with Decimus Brutus in the first round of the new civil wars, Octavian consolidated his tenuous position. To combat Brutus and Cassius, who were massing an enormous army in Greece, Antony needed soldiers, the cash from Caesar's war chests, and the legitimacy that Caesar's name would provide for any action he took against them.

Because Caesar's clemency had resulted in his murder, the Second Triumvirate reinstated the practice of proscription , abandoned since Sulla. Afterward, Mark Antony formed an alliance with Caesar's lover, Cleopatra, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. A third civil war broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other.

This final civil war, culminating in the latter's defeat at Actium in 31 BC and suicide in Egypt in 30 BC, resulted in the permanent ascendancy of Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor, under the name Caesar Augustus, a name conveying religious, rather than political, authority. Julius Caesar had been preparing to invade Parthia , the Caucasus , and Scythia , and then march back to Germania through Eastern Europe.

These plans were thwarted by his assassination. Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman to be officially deified. The appearance of a comet during games in his honour was taken as confirmation of his divinity. Though his temple was not dedicated until after his death, he may have received divine honours during his lifetime: After the death of Antony, Octavian, as the adoptive son of Caesar, assumed the title of Divi Filius son of a god. Based on remarks by Plutarch, [] Caesar is sometimes thought to have suffered from epilepsy. Modern scholarship is sharply divided on the subject, and some scholars believe that he was plagued by malaria, particularly during the Sullan proscriptions of the 80s.

Caesar had four documented episodes of what may have been complex partial seizures. He may additionally have had absence seizures in his youth. The earliest accounts of these seizures were made by the biographer Suetonius, who was born after Caesar died. The claim of epilepsy is countered among some medical historians by a claim of hypoglycemia , which can cause epileptoid seizures. In , psychiatrist Harbour F. Hodder published what he termed as the "Caesar Complex" theory, arguing that Caesar was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy and the debilitating symptoms of the condition were a factor in Caesar's conscious decision to forgo personal safety in the days leading up to his assassination.

A line from Shakespeare has sometimes been taken to mean that he was deaf in one ear: Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf. The playwright may have been making metaphorical use of a passage in Plutarch that does not refer to deafness at all, but rather to a gesture Alexander of Macedon customarily made. By covering his ear, Alexander indicated that he had turned his attention from an accusation in order to hear the defence. Galassi and Hutan Ashrafian suggest that Caesar's behavioral manifestations—headaches, vertigo, falls possibly caused by muscle weakness due to nerve damage , sensory deficit, giddiness and insensibility—and syncopal episodes were the results of cerebrovascular episodes, not epilepsy.

Pliny the Elder reports in his Natural History that Caesar's father and forefather died without apparent cause while putting on their shoes. These events can be more readily associated with cardiovascular complications from a stroke episode or lethal heart attack. Caesar possibly had a genetic predisposition for cardiovascular disease. Suetonius , writing more than a century after Caesar's death, describes Caesar as "tall of stature with a fair complexion, shapely limbs, a somewhat full face, and keen black eyes".

The standard abbreviation was C. In Classical Latin, it was pronounced Latin pronunciation: In the days of the late Roman Republic, many historical writings were done in Greek, a language most educated Romans studied. Young wealthy Roman boys were often taught by Greek slaves and sometimes sent to Athens for advanced training, as was Caesar's principal assassin, Brutus.

Thus, his name is pronounced in a similar way to the pronunciation of the German Kaiser. Caesar's cognomen itself became a title; it was promulgated by the Bible , which contains the famous verse " Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". This means that for two thousand years after Julius Caesar's assassination, there was at least one head of state bearing his name. Roman society viewed the passive role during sexual activity , regardless of gender, to be a sign of submission or inferiority.

Indeed, Suetonius says that in Caesar's Gallic triumph, his soldiers sang that, "Caesar may have conquered the Gauls, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar. The tales were repeated, referring to Caesar as the Queen of Bithynia, by some Roman politicians as a way to humiliate him. Caesar himself denied the accusations repeatedly throughout his lifetime, and according to Cassius Dio , even under oath on one occasion. A favorite tactic used by the opposition was to accuse a popular political rival as living a Hellenistic lifestyle based on Greek and Eastern culture, where homosexuality and a lavish lifestyle were more acceptable than in Roman tradition.

Catullus wrote two poems suggesting that Caesar and his engineer Mamurra were lovers, [] but later apologised.

Gaius Julius Caesar (proconsul)

Mark Antony charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favors. Suetonius described Antony's accusation of an affair with Octavian as political slander. Octavian eventually became the first Roman Emperor as Augustus. During his lifetime, Caesar was regarded as one of the best orators and prose authors in Latin—even Cicero spoke highly of Caesar's rhetoric and style.

A few sentences from other works are quoted by other authors. Among his lost works are his funeral oration for his paternal aunt Julia and his Anticato , a document written to defame Cato in response to Cicero's published praise. Poems by Julius Caesar are also mentioned in ancient sources. These narratives were written and published annually during or just after the actual campaigns, as a sort of "dispatches from the front.

They may have been presented as public readings. The texts written by Caesar, an autobiography of the most important events of his public life, are the most complete primary source for the reconstruction of his biography. However, Caesar wrote those texts with his political career in mind, so historians must filter the exaggerations and bias contained in it.

The modern historiography is influenced by the Octavian traditions, such as when Caesar's epoch is considered a turning point in the history of the Roman Empire. Still, historians try to filter the Octavian bias. Many rulers in history became interested in the historiography of Caesar. The second volume listed previous rulers interested in the topic. Charles V ordered a topographic study in France, to place in Gallic Wars in context; which created forty high-quality maps of the conflict. The contemporary Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent catalogued the surviving editions of the Commentaries , and translated them to Turkish language.

Julius Caesar is seen as the main example of Caesarism , a form of political rule led by a charismatic strongman whose rule is based upon a cult of personality , whose rationale is the need to rule by force, establishing a violent social order , and being a regime involving prominence of the military in the government. Bust in Naples National Archaeological Museum , photograph published in Bust of Julius Caesar from the British Museum.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the Roman dictator. For other people named Julius Caesar, as well as other uses, see Julius Caesar disambiguation. For other uses with the name Caesar, see Caesar disambiguation. Roman politician and general.

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Gaius Julius Caesar (proconsul)