Two thousand years of scholars have looked over my shoulder while I prepared this, my first historical web site, but the other four I have composed since were all written for the same reason as Caesar: to provide as accurate and detailed a history of Caesar's life and times as I could contribute to the Web. Too often, googling "Julius Caesar" results in thousands of entries of a few pages each, cramming in only the standard truths (or untruths) about the 56 fascinating years of Caesar's life. Errors in one bad site pop up like mushrooms in others thanks to the facility of "cut 'n paste.' Those sites I found accurate and helpful are listed, appreciatively, in the Reading and Links section of this site. From the inaccurate sites, I was frequently astonished - such as to learn that Pompey fought Vercingetorix in Gaul, or seeing for the umpteenth time the infamous "beat the drum" speech erroneously attributed to Caesar (an urban legend if ever there was one).

I have sought here as much accuracy as I could manage with as much detail as I thought the reader could bear. In particular, I've tried to quote from Caesar himself, or the historians who knew him or who had access to materials long since vanished since the fall of Rome - Caesar in the mirror of his near-contemporaries like Tacitus, Plutarch, Appian, Cassius Dio and the indispensable Cicero. To actually read Cicero tut-tutting about how he will find room for visiting Caesar and his bodyguard (all 2,000 of them), what he gave him for dinner, and the state of the great man's digestion, makes Caesar as immediate and real as your imagination can permit.

On a personal note, this site is dedicated to the members of AncientSites' The Rostra. Special thanks to Colin Burstall for web design assistance, and to Eden and Rory for starting the web community devoted to ancient history, now named AncientWorlds. For editorial assistance, my warm thanks to Antony Kamm, whose own biography of Caesar will be published shortly by Routledge. My particular gratitude goes to to the two million formal and informal students of Roman history who, since 2001, have visited this site to share their questions and suggestions. Their interest constantly renews my own.

If I have inadvertently omitted acknowledging an image from your site, please e-mail me and I will gratefully acknowledge it.

Now - apologies to Asterix - enter Caesar, stage right.