Caesar's Contemporaries

Biographies in this section follow on the lives of Caesar's great contemporaries; men like Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Brutus, Antony, Cato, the men for and against him in the struggle to dominate the Republic, as well as Sulla, Marius, and the Gracchi, who so deeply influenced the Rome in which Caesar grew to manhood. The sole woman - THE woman of the ancient world - is, of course, Cleopatra VII of Egypt.

Caesar has two advantages over almost any other character in Roman history: although some of the best sources have been lost to history (such as the probable biography prepared by the famous historian Pollio, who fought with Caesar, and Caesar's own works on poetry and rhetoric), there is a wealth of surviving historical sources to paint not only the picture of Caesar, but to vividly bring to life his many great contemporaries. Secondly, Julius Caesar lived in the midst of great Romans; his struggles for or against the Republic are painted against a backdrop of the struggles with his peers which bring to mind the clash of Titans. Brutus, Cicero, Pompey, Cato, Crassus, Marius, Sulla, and many others; all impacted Caesar's life, many were destroyed by him, all have left images which complement or defy the image Caesar himself wished to present to history. It is fitting that, in the struggle for the very future of Rome, he could match himself against men of great stature.

Yet, as Sir Ronald Syme noted, there was a melancholy in Caesar's last years, in which he had become the last man standing, destroying all his old opponents except the now-muted Cicero, surviving alone on a battlefield in which the best opponents were gone:

	" 'They would have it so' said Caesar as he gazed upon the Roman dead at Pharsalus, half in patriot grief for the havoc of civil war, half in impatience and resentment. They had cheated Caesar of the true glory of a Roman aristocrat - to contend with his peers for primacy, not to destroy them. His enemies had the laugh of him in death. Even Pharsalus was not the end. His former ally, the great Pompeius, glorious from victories in all quarters of the world, lay unburied on an Egyptian beach, slain by a renegade Roman, the hireling of a foreign king. Dead, too, and killed by Romans, were Caesar's rivals and enemies, many illustrious consulars. . . . Cato chose to fall by his own hand rather than witness the domination of Caesar and the destruction of the Free State."
	Syme The Roman Revolution