caesar biography book

Top Ten Books on Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar has cast a shadow over western history for two millennia. He was a remarkable general, a people's champion, the destroyer of the Roman Republic and the creator of the Roman Empire. Each of these books not only try to tell Caesar's story but attempt to understand his impact on the world.

In the introduction to his biography of the great Roman emperor, Adrian Goldsworthy writes, “Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover, and adulterer.” In this landmark biography, Goldsworthy examines Caesar as a military leader, all of these roles and places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the first century B.C.

Freeman, Philip. Julius Caesar . (Simon and Schuster, 2008)

In this splendid biography, Freeman presents Caesar in all his dimensions and contradictions. With remarkable clarity and brevity, Freeman shows how Caesar dominated a newly mighty Rome and shaped its destiny. This book will captivate readers discovering Caesar and ancient Rome for the first time as well as those who have a deep interest in the classical world.

Suetonis, Grant, Robert, trans. The Twelve Caesars (New York: Penguin Books, 1979)

In April 44 BC the eighteen-year-old Gaius Octavius landed in Italy and launched his take-over of the Roman world. Defeating first Caesar's assassins, then the son of Pompey the Great, and finally Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, he dismantled the old Republic, took on the new name 'Augustus', and ruled forty years more with his equally remarkable wife Livia. Caesar's Legacy grippingly retells the story of Augustus' rise to power by focusing on how the bloody civil wars which he and his soldiers fought transformed the lives of men and women throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. During this violent period, citizens of Rome and provincials came to accept a new form of government and found ways to celebrate it. Yet they also mourned, in literary masterpieces and stories passed on to their children, the terrible losses they endured throughout the long years of fighting.

Rubicon is vivid historical account of the social world of Rome as it moved from republic to empire. In 49 B.C., the seven hundred fifth year since the founding of Rome, Julius Caesar crossed a small border river called the Rubicon and plunged Rome into cataclysmic civil war. Tom Holland’s enthralling account tells the story of Caesar’s generation, witness to the twilight of the Republic and its bloody transformation into an empire. From Cicero, Spartacus, and Brutus, to Cleopatra, Virgil, and Augustus, here are some of the most legendary figures in history brought thrillingly to life.

Combining verve and freshness with scrupulous scholarship, Rubicon is not only an engrossing history of this pivotal era but a uniquely resonant portrait of a great civilization in all its extremes of self-sacrifice and rivalry, decadence and catastrophe, intrigue, war, and world-shaking ambition.

Marcus Porcius Cato: an aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops, political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher, a hardnosed defender of tradition who presented himself as a man out of the sacred Roman past—and the last man standing when Rome's Republic fell to tyranny. His blood feud with Caesar began in the chamber of the Senate, played out on the battlefields of a world war, and ended when he took his own life rather than live under a dictator.

Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, Oxford University, 2002).

Related Articles

Jiménez, Ramon L., Caesar Against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War (New York, Praeger, 2006).

The Landmark Julius Caesar is the definitive edition of the five works that chronicle the mil­itary campaigns of Julius Caesar. Together, these five narratives present a comprehensive picture of military and political developments leading to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the advent of the Roman Empire.

Roman Warfare surveys the history of Rome's fighting forces from their inception in the 7th century BCE to the fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century CE. In non-technical, lively language, Jonathan Roth examines the evolution of Roman war over its thousand-year history. He highlights the changing arms and equipment of the soldiers, unit organization and command structure, and the wars and battles of each era. The military narrative is used as a context for Rome's changing tactics and strategy and to discuss combat techniques, logistics, and other elements of Roman war. Political, social, and economic factors are also considered.

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Table of Contents

• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

About the author.

Philip Freeman is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Western Culture at Pepperdine University and was formerly professor of classics at Luther College and Washington University. He earned the first joint PhD in classics and Celtic studies from Harvard University, and has been a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, the American Academy in Rome, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of several books including Alexander the Great , St. Patrick of Ireland, Julius Caesar , and Oh My Gods . Visit him at PhilipFreemanBooks.com.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 14, 2009)
• Length: 416 pages
• ISBN13: 9780743289542

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• History > Ancient > Rome
• Biography & Autobiography > Historical
• Biography & Autobiography > General

Raves and Reviews

"Julius Caesar packed more into his life than most of history's great men -- and Philip Freeman unpacks it all with skill and clarity. He takes the reader through every dizzying thrill and spill. The scholar will find much to admire in this book, but, better still, the newcomer to ancient Rome will turn its pages with excitement, enlightenment -- and sheer narrative suspense." -- Anthony Everitt, author of Augustus and Cicero

"Can Alexander Hamilton possibly have been right that Julius Caesar was 'the greatest man who ever lived'? Reading Philip Freeman's pacy and panoptic narrative of Caesar's life from unpromising early beginnings to the fateful Ides is one very rewarding approach to answering that perennially fascinating question." -- Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History, University of Cambridge

"Elegant, learned, and compulsively readable, Julius Caesar moves from broad sweep to brilliant detail. Freeman triumphantly tells the story of one of history's greatest and most terrible figures. He is as knowledgeable about Cleopatra's Alexandria as he is about Celtic tribes, and he writes about the Roman Senate with the assurance of an insider." -- Barry Strauss, author of The Trojan War and Professor of History and Classics, Cornell University

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“A comprehensive and readable, one volume biography of Caesar. . . . [Canfora] not only crafted a detailed and authoritative biography of Caesar, but he did so in such a manner that you truly get a feel for what the man may have really been like - not just the dry facts about his accomplishments and impact on history. . . . A ‘must-read’ for anyone with an interest in Roman History or reading biographies of exceptional historical figures.” — History In Review

“Canfora has full command of the sources, both ancient and modern, which allows him to analyze closely the events of Caesar’s life and to note and interpret differences between the sources.” — Library Journal

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The best books on julius caesar, recommended by peter stothard.

The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar by Peter Stothard

Julius Caesar was a populist politician and general of the late Roman Republic who immortalized himself not only by his beautiful writing about his military exploits, but also by the manner of his death. Here, British journalist and critic Peter Stothard , author of The Last Assassin, chooses five books to help you understand both the man and what motivated him and some of the people who have been inspired by him in the 2,000 years since he died.

Interview by Benedict King

Et Tu, Brute? The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination by Greg Woolf

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester

Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw

The Complete Works of Julius Caesar by Julius Caesar

Imperial Projections in Modern Popular Culture by Sandra R. Joshel (Ed)

1 Et Tu, Brute? The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination by Greg Woolf

2 american caesar: douglas macarthur 1880-1964 by william manchester, 3 caesar and cleopatra by george bernard shaw, 4 the complete works of julius caesar by julius caesar, 5 imperial projections in modern popular culture by sandra r. joshel (ed).

P erhaps, before we discuss your selection of books about Julius Caesar, you might briefly outline who Caesar was. As a non-Classicist, I think he conquered Gaul and Britain, and brought the Roman Republic to an end by crossing the Rubicon. He was then assassinated and said: ‘ Et tu, Brute ?’

And yes, he did cross the Rubicon, which was a shallow stream between Gaul and Italy. By crossing it with his army, in January 49 BC, he broke the rules designed to keep victorious armies away from Rome , began a civil war and gave the world a new term for an act from which you couldn’t go back.

Four years later, he might have said something like, ‘ Et tu Brute ,’ when he saw that one of his assassins on the Ides of March was the much loved son of his mistress. But, if he did, it would have probably been in Greek . It was quite usual for educated Romans to speak Greek. More importantly, he was a great writer in plain and elegant Latin . With words he established his place in the minds of his fellow Romans and of millions of people later by saying what he’d done—just as his death defined him for other writers.

By being assassinated he set a standard for thinking about the motives and consequences of assassination . For Romans, how you died was a very important summation of how you had lived. His death cemented what he’d written about what he had done. And the consequences of his death meant that no one ever forgot him.

Your book, The Last Assassin , deals with the pursuit of Julius Caesar’s assassins by his supporters, most notably his adopted son, Octavian, who would go on to become Emperor Augustus . What does that campaign to get back at his assassins tell us about the early establishment of his myth and reputation?

Caesar had many friends, as people who get to the top always do. But it turned out that some of those friends, for various reasons, were also his greatest enemies, so much so that they were prepared to kill him.

They each had slightly different motives, some of which are related to aspects of Caesar’s own character. Some hated him because they hadn’t become as rich under his watch as they felt he’d promised them they would be, or they’d hoped to be. One of them didn’t like him because he’d slept with his wife. Some didn’t like him because he pardoned them and made them feel, by his famous clemency, that somehow he was holding that over them. They felt ashamed of having been pardoned.

Others killed him because they were jealous of other people who hadn’t been as close to Caesar in the hard days in Gaul, but who seemed to have done almost as well as they had. There were lots of different personal reasons. One of them was upset that Caesar had stolen some lions he had planned to put in a circus show.

“For Romans, how you died was a very important summation of how you had lived”

But they all had this fear that Caesar, even if he wasn’t yet a tyrant in 44 BC, was going to become a tyrant and a single autocratic ruler of Rome. There had been brief periods in Roman history when there had been single autocratic rulers before, but the assassins had this idea that he was going to be different. They couldn’t know that, of course, but they thought he would become a kind of hereditary monarch and impose a different kind of tyranny that they wouldn’t be able to get rid of.

So, they argued amongst themselves, probably suppressing their personal motivations, as to whether it was the right thing to kill a man like Caesar, who had done a great deal for Rome , but who was now on the brink, or over the brink, of establishing a tyranny. Sophisticated arguments were brought to bear about whether they should kill him, or whether the civil war that would probably follow from his death would be even worse.

Let’s move on to the books you’re recommending about Julius Caesar. First up is Et Tu, Brute?: the Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination by Greg Woolf. Tell us about why you’ve chosen this one.

Having to choose five books about Julius Caesar has been a great challenge. Caesar is someone whom you have to look at through many different lenses and prisms. He is not an easy character to see straight up. Looking at him might be compared to looking at the sun. He wasn’t the sun, except to some of his most extreme admirers. But if you try to look at him from one sole direction, it is rather blinding. So, the books I’ve chosen—and Greg Woolf is a very good introduction to this—try to look around Julius Caesar, to look at the ways different people saw him at the time and have seen him since. Woolf’s is a good account of how Caesar got to the Ides of March and what happened on the day. It’s quick and short and a very good start. But there’s also a long section on how the assassination reverberated through history, across Europe and across the Atlantic.

If he didn’t say ‘ Et Tu, Brute? ’ what did he say?

‘ Et tu, Brute? ’ was one of Shakespeare ’s many contributions. If he said something like it, it is more likely he said the Greek words, ‘kai su, teknon’ , which means ‘and you, my child’ and has been variously interpreted to mean ‘even you, who I’ve loved so much’ and ‘even you, the son of my mistress’ or ‘you, too, are going to be assassinated in your turn.’ Maybe it meant ‘I’ll see you in hell’ or a version of ‘up yours, Brutus.’ The Greek phrase has been interpreted in many different ways and Shakespeare’s ‘Et Tu, Brute?’ was just a convenient way of Shakespeare saying what a Roman might have said.

And just before we get on to the next book: we all know how Caesar died, but where did he come from? Was he born into a senatorial Roman family or did he pull himself up by his bootstraps?

He was born into a good family. All the people we’re talking about in the story, all Caesar’s assassins, were part of the elite, if you like, although the man that I have recently become most interested in, Cassius Parmensis, the last surviving assassin , wasn’t one of the top ones, which in some ways made his eyes a good lens through which to watch the action.

Caesar was a member of one of the elite families which had been rivals, squabbled and cooperated with each other, and fought against each other for hundreds of years, and had made Rome the extraordinary conqueror of so much. Gradually, it turned out that the bigger Rome’s empire, and the bigger the army its generals had, the more impossible it was to control them from the centre. So, Caesar, out in Gaul, with a lot of legions, was a lot more powerful than the Senate, which was supposed to be his master. So the system risked toppling over under its own weight.

“Caesar had many friends…But it turned out that some of those friends, for various reasons, were also his greatest enemies”

Let’s move on to American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester. This is the life of the American general Douglas MacArthur, who was the ruler of occupied Japan after the Second World War . Why have you chosen this book?

This book is a great example of how long the idea of Caesar lived in the minds of people writing about soldiers and politicians. MacArthur was an extraordinary figure. He prided himself on his superiority to everybody else, to his speed and imagination. He didn’t like trench warfare or anything that was slow. He prized the unexpected. He was an egomaniac—not for nothing claimed by Donald Trump as his favourite general—and often cited by people who want to fight the establishment, who want to argue that the establishment is always plodding and slow and wants to do things the way it’s always done them.

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Donald Trump liked to compare himself to Douglas MacArthur just as MacArthur’s biographer liked the comparison to Julius Caesar. They were people who did things differently, who subverted the ideas of the elite to really work for the people. This is a continuous strand of thought since the death of Caesar—and the background to a big bit of Donald Trump’s mind.

And did MacArthur himself consciously model himself on Caesar?

Yes, he did, in many different respects. Caesar’s writings were designed to make him a hero back home, even when fighting a long way away. And MacArthur in the Pacific Islands was a master of making sure that everybody back home knew what he was doing and who was setting the big policies. He was never in retreat—only ‘advancing in another direction’, a very Julius Caesar-like thought. When MacArthur said, ‘the most important rules are the ones you break’, he was also echoing Caesar. He ruled postwar Japan like a Caesar. Eventually the American president at the time, Harry Truman, got fed up with this, decided that he was risking a war with China over Korea and, in April 1951, ordered him home.

Did MacArthur have any political ambitions? Did he end up in the Senate, or anything like that?

Let’s move on to George Bernard Shaw’s play, Caesar and Cleopatra . Tell us a bit about the play and why Shaw was drawn to this particular story. What’s the spin he puts on it?

Shaw had a very high view of himself and compared himself constantly to Shakespeare. He thought that, in respect of the handling of power, Shakespeare had got the Romans wrong. His idea was that Shakespeare was very good at dealing with failure and romance, but not very good at dealing with the great hero.

Shaw paints a portrait of Caesar in which his motivations, those that romantic biographers and filmmakers like to show as being all about love, were actually formed by hard-nosed, brutal political calculations and realities. Shaw was making comments, in a sense, on the British occupation of Egypt, which had started in 1882, and relating it to the Roman occupation. He took the hardest-nosed, de-romanticised view of that part of Caesar’s life—in contrast to the view put up by so many storywriters, balladeers and Shakespeare.

Shaw was very interested in Nietzsche and he thought that Caesar was an example of ‘the New Man’ who would solve the problems of the old world. He saw Pompey, whom Caesar had defeated after his crossing of the Rubicon, as part of the old world that had to be pushed aside.

Shaw was writing at a time a time when many people were keen to dismiss the old and corrupt and find new superheroes. He thought that Caesar was a great man who had not been able to find a vehicle to show his greatness.

And is it a good play, or a good read? Is it put on regularly still?

Let’s move on to the next of your books, The Complete Commentaries of Julius Caesar . There’s probably not much need for an explanation as to why you’ve chosen them, but tell us a bit about them and also a bit about why Caesar wrote them—it’s quite unusual for a general to be a great literary figure.

He had the talent and he had extraordinary stamina. He had people who helped him, secretaries and copiers. Some of his adjutants were effectively people helping him with his writing. One of the things they all said about him was that he had this gift for what we might now call multi-tasking. He could dictate six or seven letters, write a speech and watch where the enemy was going all at the same time. This was probably massively exaggerated but, clearly, then as now, some people are much better at that than others.

It sounds a bit like Churchill .

Exactly. And I think if you’ve got that skill and other people don’t, it’s useful to play it up because it does make you seem somewhat superhuman, even if actually you’re doing something that lots of ordinary people can do as well. We all know people who can only concentrate on one thing and people who can do four or five things at once. If one of those skills is elegant, clear writing, that is a rare and very useful gift.

“‘Et tu, Brute?’ was one of Shakespeare’s many contributions.”

One of the reasons why Caesar’s Gallic Wars became a set text for generations and generations of British, German, French and American schoolboys was not just because it showed a hero in his own voice—if you thought of Caesar as a hero—but it also had this extraordinarily disciplined, economical and beautiful use of language. He was an extraordinary writer and I don’t think Five Books on Julius Caesar would be complete without the Complete Works .

These include the famous Gallic Wars but also books for the period covered by Shaw’s play, the so-called Alexandrian War, the time when he was fighting to get Cleopatra established in Egypt. This one was probably written by admirers of Caesar, the so-called ‘continuators’, who fought with him in Gaul and other war zones and who finished the books off after he died. And you really can tell the difference in style between the books that Caesar wrote himself and the rest. The continuators keep the character of Caesar going but are unable to match Caesar’s Latin.

Were they written for the record or did they serve a political purpose?

The Commentaries absolutely served a political purpose, which is one of the reasons why they’re so clear and focused. He was fighting away from Rome for years and years at a time. But he still needed the support of the Romans and so he wanted them to know what he was doing, just like MacArthur, following him, did.

So the Commentaries on every year of the war in Gaul found their way, pretty deliberately, back to Rome and they were copied and people talked about them and said, ‘Isn’t Caesar doing fantastically well?’ And that’s where the assassins really got it so wrong, because the people knew that Caesar was doing all these great things, the soldiers knew that he was doing these great things. By modern standards, he was a genocidal egomaniac but on their terms he was doing very well by Rome.

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That view was much advanced by the image of Caesar that Caesar had created himself. The Commentaries were a very important part of projecting that image, as it were over the top of the Senate, to the Roman people. Again, it’s that kind of language you get from Trump and other populists : you can bypass the elite and somehow get your message straight to the ordinary people.

Although we don’t know a lot about the publication of Caesar’s work, it is pretty clear that people in Rome had a very good idea of what he had achieved and these Commentaries were his way of making sure they did.

So, the Commentaries were a first-century BC version of Twitter, effectively.

To some extent. But they were more extensive and connected than that. They were more like newsreels, really. They were long and described every battle, or rather every battle he wanted you to know about. Any battle that he lost or nearly lost could be deemed not a battle at all and quietly edited out. But he was judicious. Not everything went well for him. When it came to Britain he wrote an account of his two attempts to conquer Britain, both of which were failures. He found reasons to explain that. He didn’t pretend that everything was absolutely wonderful which, of course, probably in itself improved the credibility of what he did say.

And do you get any sense from reading his Commentaries of what he was like as a private individual, beyond the carefully curated public figure?

Let’s move on to “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve All Got It in for Me!”, which is an essay by Nicholas Cull in Imperial Projections in Modern Popular Culture .

Yes. It’s a good part of a very good book. Carry on Cleo , one of the most popular of the Carry On films, is another important way of looking at Julius Caesar. The people who made the films would have probably laughed at the idea that they were a socio-political text, but Nicholas Cull is right to present them in that way. The plot of Carry On Cleo is a mishmash of the stories of Caesar and Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra, plus a bit about the invasion of Britain all mixed into one. It is quite a good reminder that a lot of the history we read, which all seems so clear-cut, might be just as much of a mash-up. But it’s also a sort of triple satire—on Caesar himself, on the British Empire (which by the 1960s was fading fast) and, perhaps most importantly, a satire on the new American hegemony. The whole film is based on the set of the great Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra film .

The Carry On producers said they could make a whole film about Cleopatra in the time that it would take Joseph Mankiewicz and his team to paint one wall of a set. Carry On Cleo was done on the cheap, very quickly, and had a wonderful script. And it has the amazing line of the assassination where Kenneth Williams, as a very camp Julius Caesar, comes storming out of a door with a dagger in his back and a lot of angry assassins behind him, and shouts, ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ Many fans of British comedy in the postwar period say that the line was never bettered anywhere.

November 20, 2020

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Peter Stothard

Peter Stothard is an author, journalist and critic. He is a former editor of The Times and of The Times Literary Supplement . His books include Alexandria: The Last Nights of Cleopatra and On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy.

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• biography & autobiography

Life of a Colossus

by Adrian Goldsworthy

608 Pages , 6.12 x 9.25 in , 16 pp. b-w illus.

• 9780300126891
• Published: Monday, 28 Jan 2008
• 9780300139198
• Published: Wednesday, 1 Oct 2008

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• Description

Adrian Goldsworthy is the author of numerous acclaimed books, including biographies of Augustus and Antony and Cleopatra. He lectures widely and consults on historical documentaries for the History Channel, National Geographic, and the BBC. He lives in the UK.

“[An] excellent biography. . . . Goldsworthy tells this story with great skill and narrative force . . . [and] provides a great deal of vivid detail.”—Mark Miller, Wall Street Journal “An authoritative and exciting portrait not only of Caesar but of the complex society in which he lived.”—Steven Coates, New York Times Book Review “A rich and remarkably complete panorama of the times and the man. . . . The best introduction to Caesar and his world that is currently available.”—Karl Galinsky, Bookforum “This book makes and insightfully explains the leap from Caesar the soldier and general to Caesar the statesman and nation builder. It’s better than any book I’ve ever read on him, and more incisive.”— Wall Street Journal (cited by Leo J. Hindery Jr., CEO of InterMedia Partners VII LLP, as recommended reading of biographies and autobiographies of great leaders for those plotting a career path to the corner office) “Monumental. . . . [Goldsworthy] writes with great style.”— Atlantic Monthly “The man who virtually defined the West’s concept of leadership comes alive in this splendid biography. Military historian Goldsworthy gives a comprehensive, vigorous account of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul and his victories in the civil war that made him master of Rome. But he doesn’t stint on the nonmartial aspects of Caesar’s life—his dandyism, his flagrant womanizing (which didn’t stop enemies from gay-baiting him), his supple political genius and the flair for drama and showmanship that cowed mutinous legionaries and courted Rome’s restive masses. . . . Goldsworthy’s exhaustive, lucid, elegantly written life makes its subject the embodiment of his age.&rdquo— Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[A] definitive and entertaining new biography. . . . Goldsworthy is renowned as a military historian, but his coverage here of messy late Republican politics is also authoritative and crystal clear. He gives us a colourful sense of the wider world and Roman society at this time, and above all, the commanding, unmistakable presence of the timelessly fascinating man himself.”—Christopher Hart, Independent “The analysis of Caesar’s generalship is predictably excellent, the account of the Gallic wars, in particular, has rarely been bettered.”—Tom Holland, The Spectator “This is an engaging and well-drawn resource for those who wish to be introduced to the man who was Caesar. . . . Additions to Goldsworthy’s text include a chronology of key events, a glossary, and notes. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.”— Library Journal “Eternally intriguing history readers, the end of the Roman Republic receives astute analysis and dramatic narration in Goldsworthy’s life of Caesar.”— Booklist “ Caesar: Life of a Colossus succeeds in capturing all the drama and complexity of this best-known of lives. Mr. Goldsworthy . . . has real narrative gifts, as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of late republican Rome. Together, these strengths make Caesar one of the most fascinating biographies you will come across this year.”—Adam Kirsch, New York Sun “Lively and accessible.”—Mike Oppenheim, Journal of Military History “[Goldsworthy] succeeds in returning the man to his time and place and reminds us how it all could have been very different.”—Blake D. Dvorak, Washington Times “Excellent and very readable. . . . Designed for the general reader or a lover of history and [it is a] reading experience of the first order.”—David Walton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “A superb and absorbing life of the man who came, saw and conquered—and then was murdered for his trouble.”—J. Peder Zane, News and Observer “Noteworthy. . . . Goldsworthy gives a thorough account of Caesar’s military accomplishments as well as painting a vivid portrait of both the man and the power-hungry world he inhabited.”— Christian Science Monitor “Goldsworthy’s deep knowledge of Caesar’s times makes it possible to fill in all sorts of details on education, military affairs, marriage customs, but most of all on the ferocious politics of Caesar’s time. . . . [A] fine biography which brings, in prose which is never pedantic or dull, depth, color and context to his amazing life and interesting times.”—John Lisenmeyer, Greenwich Times “This is an absorbing tale, more exciting than any modern-day mystery or thriller. It has drama, intrigue, affairs, spectacular battles, brilliant politics, and a charismatic central figure. Moreover, it is a solid work that brings to life the rich world of the Mediterranean in the decade before Christ.”—Geeta Sharma-Jensen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Goldsworthy tells Caesar’s story with professional detachment, extensive understanding of the institutional and political mechanisms of the late Republic, and proficiency with the Latin and Greek sources. . . . [He] weaves together a rich and engaging narrative that gives full weight to the importance of political, personal, and family obligations that defined the course of Caesar’s life. . . . A clear and captivating picture of the man who forever changed Rome.”—Daniel Larison, American Conservative “Goldsworthy has written an excellent book aimed at readers at all levels, particularly those without extensive background in Roman history. His narrative style is easy, free flowing, and anything but dry. . . . Highly recommended.”— Choice “Fresh and readable.”—Henry S. Cohn, Federal Lawyer “While classical scholars may have been arguing since the Renaissance about the true character and accomplishments of the Roman general and politician Gaius Julius Caesar, for the past four hundred years educated people around the world have drawn conclusions about him largely from the portrait created by William Shakespeare. . . . As Adrian Goldsworthy demonstrates admirably in Caesar: Life of a Colossus , the real Julius Caesar was a much more complex character. . . . Highly readable.”—Laurence W. Mazzeno, Magill’s Literary Annual “Adrian Goldsworthy has produced the definitive modern biography of Julius Caesar. It is an absorbing book about a fascinating personality. . . . This is a great book. It is essentially a mini-history of Rome from 100 to 44 B.C. It reads well and will do nothing but enhance Adrian Goldsworthy’s already fine reputation.”—J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr., Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly “Readers interested in Caesar and ancient Rome will enjoy Goldsworthy’s flowing narrative and thoughtful analysis.”—David Bonagura, Jr., University Bookman “A fascinating account of the life and career of a remarkable man. . . . Goldsworthy is a sober and cautious biographer, but then, when one’s subject is Julius Caesar, one needs to be nothing more.”—John Phillips, Southern Humanities Review Named one of the 100 noteworthy books of the year (2006) by the Kansas City Star Named a Number 1 Editor’s Choice in Biography by Amazon.com in 2006 Named a Best Book of 2006 by Amazon.com Chosen by the Association of American University Presses as an Outstanding Title for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2007 Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2007 by Choice Magazine “It gives me great pleasure to give Caesar the strongest possible recommendation. Caesar was a complex character living in confusing times, but Adrian Goldsworthy tackles the subject with a vigor, thoroughness and clarity of purpose that the great man himself would have approved of.”—Philip Sidnell, editor, Ancient and Medieval History Book Club (London) “Adrian Goldsworthy is one of our most promising young military historians today.”—Sir John Keegan, author of The Iraq War “Goldsworthy’s book will remain the definitive biography of Caesar for years to come.”—Philip Matyszak, author of The Sons of Caesar: Imperial Rome’s First Dynasty “Adrian Goldsworthy is one of the new generation of young classicists who combine scholarship with storytelling to bring the ancient world to life. In his masterly new Caesar , he shows us the greatest Roman as man, statesman, soldier, and lover.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar “ Caesar is an accessible, balanced, and highly readable contribution to our understanding of one of Rome’s most complex characters. No one writing in English today knows more about Roman military history than Adrian Goldsworthy.”—Guy MacLean Rogers, author of Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness

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Julius Caesar

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• Livius - Biography of Julius Caesar
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• Table Of Contents

What was Julius Caesar’s childhood like?

Julius Caesar's family was old Roman nobility , but they were not rich. His father died when he was 16, but he received significant support from his mother.

How did Julius Caesar change the world?

Julius Caesar was a political and military genius who overthrew Rome’s decaying political order and replaced it with a dictatorship. He triumphed in the Roman Civil War but was assassinated by those who believed that he was becoming too powerful.

How did Julius Caesar die?

Julius Caesar was murdered in the Roman Senate House by a group of nobles on March 15, 44 BCE. The assassination plot was led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus .

How did Julius Caesar come to power?

Julius Caesar crafted an alliance with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey to form the First Triumvirate and challenge the power of the Roman Senate. After Crassus's death, Caesar led his army into Italy, defeated Pompey, and claimed the title of dictator.

Julius Caesar (born July 12/13, 100? bce , Rome [Italy]—died March 15, 44 bce , Rome) was a celebrated Roman general and statesman, the conqueror of Gaul (58–50 bce ), victor in the civil war of 49–45 bce , and dictator (46–44 bce ), who was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate House on the Ides of March . He is one of the major figures of Classical antiquity .

Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society has been extinct for so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the average, educated modern person. But Caesar’s name, like Alexander ’s, is still on people’s lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nothing of Caesar as a historic personality are familiar with his family name as a title signifying a ruler who is in some sense uniquely supreme or paramount—the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in the Slavonic languages , and qayṣar in the languages of the Islamic world .

Caesar’s gens (clan) name, Julius (Iulius), is also familiar in the Christian world, for in Caesar’s lifetime the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed “ July ” in his honour. This name has survived, as has Caesar’s reform of the calendar . The old Roman calendar was inaccurate and manipulated for political purposes. Caesar’s calendar, the Julian calendar , is still partially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and the Gregorian calendar , now in use in the West, is the Julian, slightly corrected by Pope Gregory XIII .

Family background and career

Caesar’s gens, the Julii, were patricians —i.e., members of Rome ’s original aristocracy , which had coalesced in the 4th century bce with a number of leading plebeian (commoner) families to form the nobility that had been the governing class in Rome since then. By Caesar’s time, the number of surviving patrician gentes was small; and in the gens Julia the Caesares seem to have been the only surviving family. Though some of the most powerful noble families were patrician, patrician blood was no longer a political advantage; it was actually a handicap, since a patrician was debarred from holding the paraconstitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The Julii Caesares traced their lineage back to the goddess Venus , but the family was not snobbish or conservative-minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished.

A Roman noble won distinction for himself and his family by securing election to a series of public offices, which culminated in the consulship , with the censorship possibly to follow. This was a difficult task for even the ablest and most gifted noble unless he was backed by substantial family wealth and influence. Rome’s victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218–201 bce ) had made Rome the paramount power in the Mediterranean basin; an influential Roman noble family’s clients (that is, protégés who, in return, gave their patrons their political support) might include kings and even whole nations, besides numerous private individuals. The requirements and the costs of a Roman political career in Caesar’s day were high, and the competition was severe; but the potential profits were of enormous magnitude. One of the perquisites of the praetorship and the consulship was the government of a province , which gave ample opportunity for plunder. The whole Mediterranean world was, in fact, at the mercy of the Roman nobility and of a new class of Roman businessmen, the equites (“knights”), which had grown rich on military contracts and on tax farming.

Military manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry. This class had been partly dispossessed by an economic revolution following on the devastation caused by the Second Punic War. The Roman governing class had consequently come to be hated and discredited at home and abroad. From 133 bce onward there had been a series of alternate revolutionary and counter-revolutionary paroxysms . It was evident that the misgovernment of the Roman state and the Greco-Roman world by the Roman nobility could not continue indefinitely and it was fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of military dictatorship backed by dispossessed Italian peasants who had turned to long-term military service.

The traditional competition among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils of office was thus threatening to turn into a desperate race for seizing autocratic power. The Julii Caesares did not seem to be in the running. It was true that Sextus Caesar, who was perhaps the dictator’s uncle, had been one of the consuls for 91 bce ; and Lucius Caesar , one of the consuls for 90 bce , was a distant cousin, whose son and namesake was consul for 64 bce . In 90 bce , Rome’s Italian allies had seceded from Rome because of the Roman government’s obstinate refusal to grant them Roman citizenship, and, as consul, Lucius Caesar had introduced emergency legislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all Italian ally states that had not taken up arms or that had returned to their allegiance .

Whoever had been consul in this critical year would have had to initiate such legislation, whatever his personal political predilections . There is evidence, however, that the Julii Caesares, though patricians, had already committed themselves to the antinobility party. An aunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius , a self-made man ( novus homo ) who had forced his way up to the summit by his military ability and had made the momentous innovation of recruiting his armies from the dispossessed peasants.

The date of Caesar the dictator’s birth has long been disputed. The day was July 12 or 13; the traditional (and perhaps most probable) year is 100 bce ; but if this date is correct, Caesar must have held each of his offices two years in advance of the legal minimum age. His father, Gaius Caesar , died when Caesar was but 16; his mother, Aurelia, was a notable woman, and it seems certain that he owed much to her.

In spite of the inadequacy of his resources, Caesar seems to have chosen a political career as a matter of course. From the beginning, he probably privately aimed at winning office, not just for the sake of the honours but in order to achieve the power to put the misgoverned Roman state and Greco-Roman world into better order in accordance with ideas of his own. It is improbable that Caesar deliberately sought monarchical power until after he had crossed the Rubicon in 49 bce , though sufficient power to impose his will, as he was determined to do, proved to mean monarchical power.

In 84 bce Caesar committed himself publicly to the radical side by marrying Cornelia, a daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna , a noble who was Marius’s associate in revolution. In 83 bce Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to Italy from the East and led the successful counter-revolution of 83–82 bce ; Sulla then ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia. Caesar refused and came close to losing not only his property (such as it was) but his life as well. He found it advisable to remove himself from Italy and to do military service, first in the province of Asia and then in Cilicia .

In 78 bce , after Sulla’s death, he returned to Rome and started on his political career in the conventional way, by acting as a prosecuting advocate—of course, in his case, against prominent Sullan counter-revolutionaries. His first target, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, was defended by Quintus Hortensius , the leading advocate of the day, and was acquitted by the extortion-court jury, composed exclusively of senators.

Caesar then went to Rhodes to study oratory under a famous professor, Molon. En route he was captured by pirates (one of the symptoms of the anarchy into which the Roman nobility had allowed the Mediterranean world to fall). Caesar raised his ransom, raised a naval force , captured his captors, and had them crucified—all this as a private individual holding no public office. In 74 bce , when Mithradates VI Eupator , king of Pontus , renewed war on the Romans, Caesar raised a private army to combat him.

In his absence from Rome, Caesar was made a member of the politico-ecclesiastical college of pontifices ; and on his return he gained one of the elective military tribuneships. Caesar now worked to undo the Sullan constitution in cooperation with Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius), who had started his career as a lieutenant of Sulla but had changed sides since Sulla’s death. In 69 or 68 bce Caesar was elected quaestor (the first rung on the Roman political ladder). In the same year his wife, Cornelia, and his aunt Julia, Marius’s widow, died. In public funeral orations in their honour, Caesar found opportunities for praising Cinna and Marius. Caesar afterward married Pompeia, a distant relative of Pompey. Caesar served his quaestorship in the province of Farther Spain (modern Andalusia and Portugal ).

Caesar was elected one of the curule aediles for 65 bce , and he celebrated his tenure of this office by unusually lavish expenditure with borrowed money. He was elected pontifex maximus in 63 bce by a political dodge. By now he had become a controversial political figure. After the suppression of Catiline’s conspiracy in 63 bce , Caesar, as well as the millionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus , was accused of complicity. It seems unlikely that either of them had committed himself to Catiline; but Caesar proposed in the Senate a more merciful alternative to the death penalty , which the consul Cicero was asking for the arrested conspirators. In the uproar in the Senate, Caesar’s motion was defeated.

Caesar was elected a praetor for 62 bce . Toward the end of the year of his praetorship, a scandal was caused by Publius Clodius in Caesar’s house at the celebration there of the rites , for women only, of Bona Dea (a Roman deity of fruitfulness, both in the Earth and in women). Caesar consequently divorced Pompeia. He obtained the governorship of Farther Spain for 61–60 bce . His creditors did not let him leave Rome until Crassus had gone bail for a quarter of his debts; but a military expedition beyond the northwest frontier of his province enabled Caesar to win loot for himself as well as for his soldiers, with a balance left over for the treasury. This partial financial recovery enabled him, after his return to Rome in 60 bce , to stand for the consulship for 59 bce .

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Caesar: A Biography Kindle Edition

• Print length 528 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes Not Enabled
• Publisher Basic Books
• Publication date March 18, 2008
• File size 6591 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From the back cover.

James Boswell called him ‘the greatest man of any age’. As politician and diplomat, writer and lover, but above all as a military genius, Julius Caesar is one of the most perennially fascinating figures in history. Christian Meier’s biography is the definitive, modern account of Caesar’s life and career, and places him within the wider context of the crisis of the Roman republic. Written specifically for a general readership, this authoritative, stimulating book serves, amongst other things, as a reminder to those who believe that men are mere servants of historical forces that the great individual still has an unarguably significant part to play.

“Meier’s is a compulsively readable, scholarly, imaginative, and almost poetic account.” PETER JONES, 'Sunday Telegraph'

“A subtle and complex inquiry into the nature of politics and power in the late Republic … Meier builds up a convincing portrait of a man with a restless need for achievement but no master plan … His 'Caesar' goes well beyond the confines of biography to present a radical analysis of a political system in decline, and the opportunities it afforded one of the most brilliant and unscrupulous individuals of all time.” JOAN SMITH, 'Independent on Sunday'

“This book of Meier’s … has become a book of great historical importance and literary glory, portraying the most fascinating ruler of the ancient world in his historical context, and in all his humanity, against the background of a Rome shattered by civil war.” INGE FRESE, 'Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung'

About the Author

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0028QGPYY
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (March 18, 2008)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 18, 2008
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 6591 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
• #268 in Historical Italian & Roman Biographies
• #605 in Ancient Rome Biographies
• #1,161 in Ancient Roman History (Kindle Store)

About the author

Christian meier.

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Customers find the content comprehensive, analytical, and succinct. They also say the book is thought-provoking and an immersion in a fascinating time. Readers also mention the author's skill and enthusiasm is a rare combination.

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Customers find the book very comprehensive, analytical, and superb. They also say it's more succinct and not as rich in speculation.

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