Caesar was a skilled swordsman and horseman with surprising power of endurance, who regularly took bold chances in planning a battle. Particularly following his campaigns in Gaul, he developed an intensely skilled, intensely loyal cadre of military intimates as well as an extraordinary bond with his legionary soldiers. He always addressed his soldiers personally, and called them "comrades." He was able to subdue a mini-mutiny during the Civil War by the simple device of calling the rebellious troops quirites, or merely "citizens," rather than his beloved soldiers. He apparently loved his men dearly, swearing once, in one example, never to cut his hair or beard after a bloody defeat in Gaul until his army was avenged. This was the traditional male sign of a Roman mourning for a death in his family. Like Alexander the Great, Caesar led from the front; he ate and drank what his army did, starved when they did, suffered when it was unavoidable. There are at least two occasions during the Civil Wars when one of Caesar's legions mutinied, demanding higher pay or greater benefits. In both cases, Caesar was able to reduce them to tears simply by claiming he would no longer accept them as his soldiers. The remarkable response to Octavius, after Caesar's death, also suggests that he had formed a bond with his legions unlike any other general of his day. They were loyal to him to death and beyond.

It is difficult to know, if any, philosophical principles Caesar held beyond his own glory; he has been claimed by both Stoics and Epicureans without much solid evidence. He served with notable gravity as a priest through most of his life and apparently held the normal Roman belief in the gods - at least in public. Perhaps the only thing he really believed in was the favor of the gods and Caesar's luck.

"Towards the end of his life, however, he took few chances; having come to the conclusion that his unbroken run of victories ought to sober him, now that he could not possibly gain more by winning yet another battle than he would lose by a defeat." Caesar apparently believed in his own luck as firmly as others did in his legend. Although one inescapably thinks of an Epicurean cast to Caesar's philosophy - if he had one - he could be as superstitious as any Roman when his greatness was at stake. Caesar always rode into battle on a freakish horse with rudimentary "toes," its hooves cloven into five parts. A soothsayer having predicted that the man who rode the animal would rule the world, Caesar cherished it and allowed no other man to touch it. Yet, when the omens were ominous at the Ides of March, Caesar could dismiss them as firmly as any freethinker.

Suetonius depicts Caesar fighting like a lion to save his life during the assassination but, when finally overcome, making a last desperate effort to draw his gown over his face and legs: to die in the old Roman fashion so that his enemies would not see his body disordered or naked. And Suetonius concludes,

THE LOYALIST

Caesar was ever loyal to his dependents and showed consistent affection to his friends. Having attained supreme power, he raised his old friends to high positions in the new state, merely saying "If bandits and cutthroats had helped to defend my honor, I should have shown them gratitude in the same way." His friends, for whatever private reasons, apparently returned his affection. Thus Matius could write poignantly to Cicero in the fall of 44,

"I am well aware of the criticisms which people have leveled at me since Caesar's death. They make it a point against me that I bear the death of a friend hard and am indignant that the man I loved has been destroyed. They say that country should come before friendship . . . I acknowledge that I have not yet arrived at that philosophical level. It was not Caesar I followed in the civil conflict, but a friend whom I did not desert, even though I did not like what he was doing." Matius to Cicero, 124.

Caesar was even tolerent of those who politically chose the Republican side during the Civil War: the greatest proof of that talent for loyalty is the fact that the majority of his assassins had been pardoned and returned to his inner circle on numerous occasions.

To summarize, Caesar was handsome, intelligent, witty, deliberately charming, austere, stoic, demanding, powerful, ambitious, loyal, an aesthete with exquisite taste, extravagant, promiscuous but not loving- and those qualities do not begin to sum up the impact he had in his own day, and to our own.