Julius Caesar

World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras 6/3/14, 11:44 AM

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Julius Caesar

General, politician, and master of propaganda, Julius Caesar is closely associated with the fall of the Roman Republic. A man of profound charisma who was well known for his pivotal military campaigns, Caesar was also an author and a shrewd developer of military propaganda.

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 100 BCE, the son of a noble but unremarkable patrician family. Caesar's early life was dominated by the political turmoil that surrounded the violent rivalry between followers of the populist Gaius Marius, who was Caesar's uncle, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the champion of senatorial privilege. After surviving Sulla's purges following his ﬁnal victory over Marius' forces, Caesar spent his youth studying in Asia Minor before beginning his military and political careers. He married Cornelia, the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who was a consul.

After distinguishing himself in the east as a soldier and orator, Caesar returned to Rome in 73 BCE to assume the duties of a pontifex, an important Roman priest. He now also began his climb through the cursus honorum (the chain of Roman offices that characterized the careers of politically ambitious Roman elites). He was first elected military tribune, an office with combined military and political functions, and in 69 became quaestor, the lowest office of the cursus honorum. Before setting out to the provinces to take up his duties, however, both Caesar's wife and his Aunt Julia, Marius' wife, died. Caesar used their deaths to fulfill propagandistic ends, endearing himself to many Roman citizens by breaking a long tradition of women not receiving public funerals. He held lavish funerals for both, in which he noted their aristocratic lineage and the significant role Cinna and Marius had played in the Roman Republic. That public praise of Cinna and Marius was an important step in defining Caesar's politics, as it angered the Optimates and positioned Caesar with the Populares.

On returning from the provinces, Caesar began in earnest the political maneuvering for which he would become famous. He supported the agitation of northern Italian Latin colonies for Roman citizenship and began courting the patronage of powerful Pompey the Great, who became Caesar's father-in-law when Caesar married his daughter Pompeia. The cooperation of Caesar, Pompey, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was a wealthy former supporter of Sulla, would form what would later be called the First Triumvirate, and the union of their diverse talents, resources, and mammoth ambitions would help to change forever the face of Roman politics.

During that time, Caesar won many supporters but also alienated important and respected men at Rome, including the conservatives Cicero and Cato the Younger. As praetor, he was almost prevented from taking command of his province in Further Spain by his creditors, who tried to have him prevented from leaving Rome. However, Crassus guaranteed his debts, and Caesar focused his efforts in Spain against various hostile tribes, winning enough booty not only to pay off his personal debts but also to contribute handsomely to the public coffers.

Caesar returned to Rome with greatly enhanced prestige and ambitions, aiming now for a consulship. In addition to his own desire for honors and power, Caesar increasingly needed political success to protect himself from his ever-increasing

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and ever-angrier circle of enemies. Caesar returned to Rome to announce his candidacy for the consulship, promising Pompey, Crassus, and others certain key pieces of legislation in return for their support. Although he won the election of 58, his colleague was the nephew of the arch-anti-Caesarian Cato. To win the legislation he had promised to his followers, Caesar used physical violence and unprecedented political corruption to neutralize the efforts of his colleague and his supporters.

The First Triumvirate now came into its own. Through the passage of highly dubious laws, the position of Caesar's allies and supporters were secured and their loyalties rewarded. Rich provinces became prizes for political ﬁdelity, and although that practice was nothing new, the naked contempt Caesar and his friends displayed for convention and legal precedent hardened attitudes and stoked fears among their rivals. After those rivals failed to win a prosecution of Caesar for corruption, a rising of tribesmen in Gaul drew Caesar back to the battleﬁelds and to more lucrative conquests.

It was with those conquests that Caesar maintained his position, enriching Roman nobles and nonnobles alike while the treasury of Rome was forced to foot the bills for Caesar's legions, which were increasingly seen as his personal army. Caesar's personal safety depended upon the personal army, at his command as long as he retained the imperium of office and his relationship with his fellow triumvirs. In 55, Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls, and Caesar had his command in Gaul extended by five years. The relationship began to crumble when in 53 Crassus was killed in battle against the Parthians. Meanwhile, Pompey was gradually seduced away by Caesar's enemies. As Caesar's five-year command neared its end, his enemies planned to arrest and try him at Rome.

In 49, Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon River in northern Italy and began what would prove to be a very bloody civil war. Pompey was put in charge of the anti-Caesarian republican forces, but he was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus and killed after ﬂeeing to Egypt. After joining forces with the Macedonian-Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, Caesar eventually defeated the republican forces in 45, killing tens of thousands of Roman troops in the process. After returning to Rome and showing extraordinary clemency toward his defeated enemies, Caesar, now dictator for life, was murdered on the Ides of March, 44 BCE by a group of Roman nobles, including Caesar's friend Marcus Junius Brutus, who feared that Caesar harbored plans to make himself king.

Though less noted for his literary ambition, Caesar was a master orator and author of many books on Roman history. Little extant writing has survived, except Caesar's Commentaries on the Civil War and Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, which, written in seven books, covers the excursions of Gallia and Britannia.

Although no name is as closely associated with the fall of the Roman Republic as that of Caesar, his murder did nothing to restore the republic. Instead, a horrible cycle of civil war followed, resulting in the advent of the ﬁrst Roman emperor, Augustus, in 27 BCE. Caesar's career is a symptom of the times in which Caesar lived, not the cause of the ills that destroyed the republic. In an age of ruthless and ambitious Roman elites, Caesar is remarkable less for the ends he pursued than for the intelligence and energy with which he pursued them.