Julius Caesar

Last night I finished another of Pen & Sword's "Roman Conquests" series, ... Roman Conquests: GAUL --a good companion to read along with your copy of Caesar's Commentaries. Which reminds me that decades ago, my mother (the school teacher) and I drove from our country home to the Univ. of Alabama to see Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." We killed time at the university bookstore. It was there I got my first "grown up" military history volume: War Commentaries of Caesar, a paperback translation by Rex Warner. I had that book until it almost returned to cellulose! These days I have The Battle for Gaul - a HB illustrated by Barry Cunliffe.

Caesar and his doings have generated a vast library of non-fiction and fiction through the centuries. Colleen McCullough turned him into an industry with her enjoyable series of novels.

Caesar's military operations are covered by a plethora of authors over the years. Besides his The Civil War Julius Caesar, I still hold on to Osprey's short summary Caesar's Civil War by classical scholar Adrian Goldsworthy, and Jimenez' Caesar Against the Celts and Caesar Against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War. See also A NOISE OF WAR: CAESAR, POMPEY, OCTAVIAN AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ROME, interesting.

There's a host of biographies out there, I prefer Caesar: Life of a Colossus and still retain Caesar by Meier.

I'm sure everyone on this forum has their own favorite, happy reading!

"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres....."

Love Caesar. If it wasn't for him I would have never fallen in love with my barbarians nor those lovely Roman historians.

Julius Caesar... the more you read about him the more you see how he was every woman's man, and every man's woman... haha

"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres....."

The bread part, the cheese part, and the wine part.

Ciaran Hinds portrayal of Caesar in the Rome series, was a pretty sexy dude. Can't blame Cleo, and all the other noble ladies and not so noble gentlemen, nope not at all.

eta Conquest of Gaul is still on my TBR pile.

Conquest of Gaul is where the series Rome got the characters Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. I believe they're the only two soldiers Caesar mentions by name.

I can't believe how much I have laughed since joining this group!

Hey, we just tell it like it is ;-D

I'm now reading Routledge's Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome (Roman Imperial Biographies) ...very good so far, I start the Gallic Wars chapter next.

Tom Holland's "Rubicon"while not a book specifically about Caesar, captures him brilliantly as the flesh and blood individual he once was. I am always surprised by those who admire Caesar as a historical figure.

Well, of course there's admiring and admiring.



Sorry, I grew up reading Asterix.

Besides the Commentaries, are there other writings by Caesar that survived?

#11 @ Matt LOL!!!!!!

>9 Ammianus: I'm now reading Routledge's Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome (Roman Imperial Biographies)

I like Billows so that's a recommendation, but I have admit I'm a little gun shy (no doubt unfairly so) about biographies that are published as part of a series. I have this notion that the goal of such things is to encapsulate everything we already know about the subject, rather than put forth any new theory. But perhaps that doesn't apply in the case of academic presses.

I second the recommendation for Rubicon though.

There are many examples of people loving/admiring people who did Great Things, even if they were murderous individuals, power-hungry grabbers, and the like. It is doubtful that the adoration would survive actual experience with the individual in question. Unless they were integral to the success in achieving the personal obsession of the Elevated Personage.

#15 Indeed, I admire Beatrix Kiddo in "Kill Bill" very much, although she is a murderous assassin. But she is a comic book character. Caesar was a real flesh and blood human being who was more than any other historical personage responsible the the deaths of ten of thousands, the enslavement of tens of thousands and the death of the Republic. I would compare him to Napoleon, I suppose, rather than Hitler or Stalin or Mao, but even so I am hard-pressed to locate the "great things" he allegedly accomplished. To me, he seems like a power-hungry, immoral, opportunist who rode roughshod over all who might stand in his way. There are things I admire about Alexander, for instance, although far less than most people do, but frankly I can find little about Caesar worthy of any admiration at all. I suppose we can say, to his credit, that he was not deranged psychopathic murderer like Sulla, nor was an immature deranged murderer like Marc Anthony, but that is hardly much to his credit. IMHO

Similarly, I am always befuddled by the veneration of the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, responsible as they were for the death and enslavement of so many.

>17 HectorSwell: Similarly, I am always befuddled by the veneration of the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson

A sense of historical context is useful.

Yes, thank you.

Viewed in a historical context, Caesar was probably better than the alternatives, i.e., the likes of Mark Antony on the one hand, and a fickle and corrupt Senate on the other.

17 Hector, I am as aware as you of the historical irony of moral relativism, which is why I carefully placed Caesar on the other side of the aisle from Mao, as it were. There is yet another small chasm between Caesar then and George and Tommy, don't you think?

#15 "It is doubtful that the adoration would survive actual experience with the individual in question."

I did neglect in my earlier post to emphasize that I not only agree with you here but I must commend you on it putting quite elegantly!

>18 southernbooklady:. Perfect:D

How many slaves can dance on the head of a pin?

>24 HectorSwell: How many slaves can dance on the head of a pin?

I always find myself inclined to snort a bit when people dismiss historical figures for their past crimes against humanity. I get wanting to correct a whitewashed story in order to bring some depth and complexity to the national myth, but of course Jefferson was not just a slaveholder, as he was not just a President or just the guy who (mostly) wrote the Declaration of independence. Context is everything.

And after all, if we are going to write off important historical figures because they owned slaves or murdered their way to power, or acted in any other way in accordance with their times even if it would be appalling in ours, well then as a woman I get to throw pretty much all of western history into the garbage for the way it practically institutionalized the enslavement of women.

Chernow, for what it is worth, really does a great job discussing Washington's conflicted attitude and relationship with his slaves. And of course for Jefferson, you really can't do better than The Hemingses of Monticello.

And I think David McCullough is almost single-handedly responsible for the rehabilitation of John Adams' reputation. Also Ellis also wrote a good book about him, and there have been several books about Adams' relationship with his wife. So Abigail herself probably deserves a little of the credit.

I do agree that context is everything.
As difficult as it is to formulate decisive judgments about people from 200 years ago, it is even harder when looking back 2000 years ago. And comparisons between time periods are fairly meaningless outside of parlor games.

Re Julius Caesar, the historical record indicates that he was a fascinating and formidable character in his time, and I have enjoyed reading about him.

My point is only that Caesar left us with nothing positive of significance. He destroyed the Republic, whether or not you enjoy reading about him. Warts and I, I think we can locate accomplishments and contributions for Washington and Jefferson, slaves and all. To equate them employs fallacious reasoning in my opinion. Context is of course important, but what is heinous in one time remains heinous in another, despite what Mao's Little Red Book would tell you. I keep coming back to Mao because he took great pleasure in justifying the millions he murdered in remaking the society for the better. I don't buy it, but to his credit we can say that China after Mao was more literate and better fed. What can we say about what Caesar bequeathed to civilization? I'm open to ideas here ...

It's interesting to look at the founding fathers' own role models. Washington's was Cato, Jefferson's was Circero, and Hamilton? Julius Caesar.

#28 LOL interesting.

Like others, I have found Caesar a "fascinating and formidable character in his time, and I have enjoyed reading about him." My rhetorical question was that I wondered why some people admired him. This, on my part, is a post-modernist revisionist reaction to the 18th and 19th century tradition in the West that did often extol Caesar, something I feel that he does not deserve. It is fun reading about him murdering and enslaving thousands of Gauls, I suppose, but I wouldn't want to have a beer with him LOL

>27 Garp83: Surely Garp, you are not suggesting we not examine cultural norms and differences when examining the character and behavior of persons from the distant past?

>27 Garp83:
Considering some of the atrocities committed in the name of ideology under Mao, I actually think I'd rather be a subject of Caesar's. Mao was responsible for tens of millions of people starving. If he left them "better fed and literate", it wasn't for lack of trying the opposite.

I've always found the irony-of-ironies of the Roman empire to be that after a non-Roman area was conquered and the resistance and whatnot was mopped up, you may very well have been "better off" not only than your people were before the Romans came, but also compared to Romans AT Rome (especially the upper-class ones). Obviously you have to be careful with this line of reasoning, because it's not dissimilar to some of ye olde slaveholders' ideals regarding Africans; but the fact remains that--at least for areas that were already somewhat "urban"--the Romans had a vested interest in improving the infrastructure. And even if that meant nothing to them: at least they weren't in Rome during all the political proscriptions! Tiberius, for instance, gets a really bad rap for a lot of things (and rightfully so), but while he may have terrorized the elites at Rome, his "administration" (to use a sort of anachronistic word) was largely "hands-off" outside of Italy.

Reminiscent of that hilarious scene from Life of Brian to the effect of:

What have the Romans ever done for us!?
Well, there's the roads.
Ok, the roads. But what else have the Romans ever done for us!?
Well, brought peace?
Ok, peace, but ....

And so on :)

I love that Life of Brian quote!
As for Caesar, I feel that although I have said it three times and three different ways, nobody seems to understand what I am saying. Perhaps you guys are over-thinking it? It seems to me that my statements have not been cryptic nor oblique. So I give up Ha-ha. Have fun with your Caesar, however you choose to enjoy him.

#32 Josh -- I know you don't mean it that way but your post smacks a bit of "white man's burden" rationale, a la England, Belgium, France, Germany (and later the US) in the 19th century. Whatever the gift of infrastructure, I tend to think the Gauls were better off before being overrun than after, much like the African, Asian and others who were later colonized by the European descendants of the Romans.

27> What can we say about what Caesar bequeathed to civilization?

A calendar that worked? (Well, sort of).

Stan: Yeah, I sort of meandered down that thought process and was trying to follow the breadcrumbs back to my original point, which was that no matter how bad things got out in the provinces, you could always look at it and say "well... at least they didn't have to live in Rome!" Hell, I'd go out on a limb and say that for the vast majority of folks (again, after the battles and whatnot were over), Roman rule had little-to-no impact on their lives, whereas for obvious reasons, the exact opposite was true at Rome; if you were upper class, in some periods there was a mathematically substantial chance of you dying in some violent way, and if you weren't, you're in luck! because you could still die violently walking home at night, by virtue of there being no police force in our sense.

EDIT: Oh, and Caesar was a bitch. Specifically, the King of Bithynia's bitch.

Slightly tangentially, the Republic gets an IMNSHO undeseredly good rap too. The early Empire was oppressive, aggressive, stratified, etc, but the late Republic was also all of those things, plus more prone to devastating civil wars. The loss of political "liberty" may have been distressing to the senatorial aristocracy, but of little consequence to the lower strata (or provincial grandees for that matter).

Very true, and it is an interesting analogy to the growing "soft cage" we in the West increasingly live in today. Someone like Caesar comes along and essentially destroys democracy (though he obviously had a little help...), but it could certainly be spun that he was simply trying to save lives by putting an end to the ceaseless cycle of civil war. And in a time where we can imagine the average citizen growing increasingly disconnected from the government (in their idiom: "It doesn't matter whom I vote for? They're all going to be killing each other in a year, anyway."), the prospect of losing their theoretical rights wouldn't have--at the time--seemed like the terrible thing we may think it was. The connections to the modern day almost draw themselves.

Parallels to Napoleon.

And civil war is a time-honored opportunity for a strongman to take power, offering a fearful populace respite from instability.

Indeed. Another fascinating historical figure I like to read about but do not admire

this is very good for evolution of how is cesar importnat

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/921532.html