It is difficult, now, to separate the most famous Roman of them all from the most famous author of them all. For twenty generations, the Julius Caesar defined by Shakespeare has overwhelmed all other images of Caesar, so that it it is difficult to imagine the living man himself. Yet Shakespeare's Caesar, taken solely as biography, is deeply flawed. Caesar, however grandiloquent, is also portrayed as corrupted by power: humorless, pompous, even self-importantly fearful. The needs of a Renaissance playwright produced an image that likely would have seemed alien to Caesar's contemporaries. There is no hint of the personal charm for which he was famous, the wit and magnetism remarked by Cicero and Sulla. Caesar was the cold-eyed conqueror who could tell a defiant subordinate that it was easier to kill him than to have to say so; the teenage rebel refusing to do the bidding of the killer-dictator, Sulla; the intellectual second only to Cicero as a speaker, writer. and student of his age. The man himself was infinitely more complex and interesting than Shakespeare's version. Perhaps that is why, both because and in spite of Shakespeare, he is simply the best-recognized Roman in history.

When Caesar died in 44 BC, a great comet soon troubled the skies over Rome. No more superstitious people ever lived: even those who had bitterly opposed him and murdered him outside Pompey's Theater were awed by the implications when the heavens themselves " blazed forth the death of princes." Soon thereafter, for the first time in Roman history, a living man was deified; in the process, the man himself was lost to history.

In his own lifetime and ever since, Caesar the man - not the god or the legend - remains inscrutable. Historians ever since have pointed out the difficulty in reconciling the many and conflicting pictures of the private and public man. The statues, busts, and coins that have come down to us show similar, confusing faces. Most important of all is the unanswered, burning question: did Caesar set out to destroy the Roman Republic? This biography attempts to sketch the significant facts we know about Caesar's life and death. The interpretation of the facts must be left to each person seeking Caesar.

At no time in Roman history does a man shine in the light of powerful contemporaries, nor in Roman history is there more source material for their lives and conflicts. Caesar's life and accomplishments cannot be understood without the context of his fellow-Romans Cicero , Pompey , Crassus, Cato the Younger, Brutus , and Antony . The Gracchi began the slide to revolution scant decades before Caesar was born; Sulla and Marius helped make the times what they were. Biographies of these men can be found under Contemporaries. His military campaigns, including Alesia, the campaigns of the the Gallic Wars, the expeditions to Britain, and pivotal battles such as those of Pharsalus and Dyrrhachium, can be found under "Battles.

Personal notes and thanks may be found in the Forward. Information about the author may be found here.

Welcome to Caesar's Rome.