- This article is about Julius Caesar the Roman dictator. For alternative meanings: Julius Caesar (disambiguation).
Gaius Julius Caesar (Latin: C·IVLIVS·C·F·C·N·CAESAR¹) (July 12 or July 13, 100 BC – March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader whose conquest of Gallia Comata extended the Roman world all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, launching the first Roman invasion of Britain, and introducing Roman influence into what has become modern France, an accomplishment whose direct consequences are visible to this day. Caesar fought and won a civil war which left him undisputed master of the Roman world, and began extensive reforms of Roman society and government. He was elected dictator for life, and heavily centralized the already faltering government of the weak republic. His dramatic assassination on the Ides of March became the catalyst of a second set of civil wars which became the twilight of the Roman Republic and the dawn of the Roman Empire under Caesar's grand-nephew and adopted son, Caesar Augustus. Caesar's military campaigns are known in detail from his own written Commentaries (Commentarii), and many details of his life are recorded by later historians such as Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Mestrius Plutarch, and Lucius Cassius Dio.
Early life
Caesar was born in Rome to a well-known patrician family (gens Julia) which supposedly traced its ancestry to Julus, the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who according to myth was the son of Venus. At the height of his power in 45 BC, Caesar began building a temple to Venus Genetrix at Rome, signifying his link to the goddess. His father and namesake, Caius Julius Caesar, achieved the rank of praetor (see cursus honorum). His mother was an Aurelia from the Cottae branch, a rich and influential family of plebeian stock. As a young boy, he lived in a modest house in the Subura quarter, where he apparently learned to speak several languages, including Hebrew and Gallic dialects.
The Julii Caesarii, although of impeccable aristocratic patrician stock, were not rich by the standards of the Roman nobility. Thus, no member of his family had achieved any outstanding prominence in recent times, though in his father's generation there was a renaissance of their fortunes. His paternal aunt, Julia, married Gaius Marius, a talented general and reformer of the Roman army. Marius was also the leader of the Populares faction of the Senate, frequently opposed to the Optimates conservatives.
Towards the end of Marius' life in 86 BC, internal politics reached a breaking point. Several disputes of the Marius faction against Lucius Cornelius Sulla led to civil war and eventually opened the way to Sulla's dictatorship. Caesar was tied to the Marius party through family connections. Not only was he Marius' nephew, he was also married to Cornelia Cinnilla, the youngest daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Marius' greatest supporter and Sulla's enemy. Caesar was appointed flamen dialis (the chief priest of Jupiter) by Cinna.
Thus, when Sulla emerged as the winner of this civil war and began his program of proscriptions, Caesar, not yet 20 years old, was in a bad position. Sulla ordered him to divorce Cornelia in 82 BC, but Caesar refused and prudently left Rome to hide. Only the intervention of his family and closest friends saved him from certain proscription and death. Despite Sulla's pardon, Caesar did not remain in Rome and left for military service in Asia and Cilicia. During these campaigns he served under the command of Lucius Licinius Lucullus and distinguished himself for bravery in combat. In 81 BC he was sent to Bithynia to raise a fleet with such success that his opponents in Rome spread the rumour that while there he had became the lover of King Nicomedes. His sexual escapades were such that (according to Suetonius) the elder Curio in one of his speeches called him "every woman's man and every man's woman."
Back in Rome in 78 BC, when Sulla died, Caesar began his political career in the Forum at Rome as an advocate, known for his oratory and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption. Aiming at rhetorical perfection, Caesar traveled to Rhodes in 75 BC for philosophical and oratorical studies with the famous teacher Apollonius Molo .
On the way, Caesar was kidnapped by Cilician pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. When they demanded a ransom of twenty talents, he laughed at them, saying they did not know whom they had captured. Instead, he ordered them to ask for fifty. They accepted, and Caesar sent his followers to various cities to collect the ransom money. In all he was held for 38 days and used the time to write speeches and practice his rhetoric on his captors. If they failed to admire his work, he would call them illiterate savages to their faces, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all crucified. They were much taken with this and attributed his freedom of speech to a kind of simplicity in his character or boyish playfulness. But, true to his word, as soon as he was ransomed and released, he organized a naval force from the harbor of Miletus, captured the pirates and their island stronghold and put them to death by crucifixion as a warning to other pirates. However, since they had treated him well, he had their throats cut before they were crucified to lessen their suffering.
In 69 BC, Caesar became a widower after Cornelia's death trying to deliver a stillborn son. In the same year, he lost his aunt Julia, to whom he was very attached. During the funerals Caesar delivered eulogy speeches from the rostra. Julia's funeral was filled with political connotations, since Caesar insisted on parading Marius's funeral mask. This was the first attack on the Sullan proscription laws of the former decade. Although Caesar was very fond of both women (according to Suetonius), these speeches were interpreted by his political opponents as propaganda for his upcoming election for the office of quaestor.
Caesar's cursus honorum
Caesar was elected quaestor by the Assembly of the People in 69 BC, at the age of 30, as stipulated in the Roman cursus honorum. He drew the lots and was assigned with a quaestorship in Hispania Ulterior , a Roman province roughly situated in modern Portugal and southern Spain.
On his return to Rome, Caesar pursued his judicial career until his election as curule aedile in 65 BC. The functions of this office were similar to a present day mayor and included regulation of construction, traffic, commerce and other aspects of Rome's daily life. It was also a dangerous office because it included the organization of the Roman games in the Circus Maximus.
The public funding for this event was limited and, if the aedile wanted to offer the city magnificent games, in order to push forward his political career, this meant heavy expenses to their own purse. Caesar threw spectacular games that included the diversion of the Tiber River for a specific representation in the Circus. He ended the year in glory but in bankruptcy. His debts reached several hundred gold talents (millions of Euros in today's currency) and threatened to be an obstacle for his future career.
His success as aedile was, however, an enormous help for his election as Pontifex Maximus (high priest) in 63 BC, following the death of the previous holder Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. This office meant a new house — the Domus Publica (public house) — in the Forum, the responsibility of all Roman religious affairs and the custody of the Vestal virgins under his roof. For Caesar, it also meant a relief of his debts.
Caesar's debut as Pontifex was however marked by a scandal. Following the death of his wife Cornelia, he had married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla. As the wife of the Pontifex and an important matrona, Pompeia was responsible for the organization of the Bona Dea festival in December. These rites were exclusive to women and considered very sacred. However, Publius Clodius Pulcher managed to get in the house disguised as a woman. This was absolute sacrilege and Pompeia received a letter of divorce. Caesar himself admitted that she could be innocent in the plot, but, as he said: "Caesar's wife, like the rest of Caesar's family, must be above suspicion."
Sixty-three BC was an especially difficult year, not only for Caesar, but for the Roman Republic itself. Marcus Tullius Cicero was senior Consul and Caesar had been elected Urban Praetor by the Centuriate Assembly. During his consulship Cicero revealed a conspiracy to overthrow the elected magistrates organized by Lucius Sergius Catilina, a patrician aristocrat frustrated about his own political failure.
The result was the conviction to death of five notable Roman men, Catiline's allies, without a trial. The option open was banishment, as imprisonment before trial was unheard of; if banished the men would simply have gone to take command of Catiline's armies in Etruria. The Senate deliberated on the matter, with Caesar one of the few men to speak up against the death penalty. His views were eventually defeated in a famous meeting of the Senate, due to Cato the younger's insistence, and the men were executed in the same day. This was also the day when Caesar saw his affair with Servilia Caepionis exposed to the public eye. Caesar's opposition led to accusations — never proved — of involvement on the conspiracy.
If Caesar was implicated in the Catiline affair, it did him no lasting damage. In 61 BC, after his praetorship, he served as governor of the province of Hispania Ulterior. This term permitted him to pay part of his enormous debts.
The First Triumvirate and the Gallic War
In 59 BC Caesar was elected senior Consul of the Roman Republic by the Centuriate Assembly. His junior partner was his political enemy Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, a member of the Optimates faction and personal friend of Marcus Porcius Cato. The first act of Bibulus as Consul was to retire from all political activity in order to search the skies for omens. This apparently pious decision was designed to make Caesar's life difficult during his Consulship. Indeed, he needed allies and he found them where none of his enemies expected.
At this time the leading general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) was fighting in the Senate for farmlands for his veterans, without success. A former Consul, Marcus Licinius Crassus, allegedly the richest man in Rome, was also having problems in obtaining his long-desired military command against the Parthian Empire. Caesar the Consul was in desperate need of Crassus's money and Pompey's influence, so an informal alliance was created. Historians call this union the First Triumvirate (rule by three men). To confirm the alliance, Pompey married Julia Caesaris, Caesar's only daughter. Despite the differences in age and upbringing, this political marriage proved to be a love match.
Following a difficult year as Consul, Caesar was given Proconsul powers to govern Transalpine Gaul (current southern France) and Illyria (the coast of Dalmatia) for five years. He was not content with an idle governorship. Instead, he started the Gallic Wars (58 BC–49 BC) in which all of Gaul (the rest of current France) and parts of Germania were annexed to Rome. Among his legates were his cousins Lucius Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Titus Labienus and Quintus Tullius Cicero (Cicero's younger brother).
Caesar waged war against various peoples, defeating the Helvetii (in Switzerland) in 58 BC, the Belgic confederacy and the Nervii in 57 BC and the Veneti in 56 BC. On August 26th 55 BC he attempted an invasion of Britain and, in 52 BC he defeated a union of Gauls led by Vercingetorix at the battle of Alesia. His accounts of these campaigns were recorded in his commentaries De Bello Gallico ("On the Gallic Wars").
According to Plutarch, the whole campaign resulted in 800 conquered cities, 300 subdued tribes, one million men sold to slavery and another three million dead in battle fields. Ancient historians are notorious for exaggerating numbers of this kind, but Caesar's conquest of Gaul was certainly the greatest military triumph since the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
Despite his successes and the benefits they brought to Rome, Caesar remained unpopular among his peers, especially with the conservative faction, who always suspected him of wanting to become king. In 55 BC, his partners Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls and honored their agreement with Caesar by prolonging his proconsulship for another five years. This was to be the last act of the First Triumvirate.
In 54 BC, Julia Caesaris died in childbirth, leaving both Pompey and Caesar heartbroken. Crassus was killed in 53 BC during his ill-fated campaign in Parthia. Without Crassus or Julia, Pompey began to drift towards the Optimates faction. Still away in Gaul, Caesar tried to secure Pompey's support by offering him one of his nieces in marriage, but Pompey refused. Instead, Pompey married Cornelia Metella, the daughter of Metellus Scipio, one of Caesar's greatest enemies.
The civil war
In 50 BC, the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to return to Rome and disband his army because his term as Proconsul had finished. Moreover, the Senate forbade Caesar to stand for a second consulship in absentia. Caesar thought he would be prosecuted and politically eliminated if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a Consul or without the power of his legions. So he refused to act as ordered and crossed the Rubicon river (the frontier with Italy) on January 10, 49 BC and civil war broke out. Historians differ as to what Caesar said upon crossing the Rubicon; the two competing lines are "The die is cast" and "Let the dice fly high!" (a line from the New Comedy poet Menander), the former in Latin (Alea iacta est) and the latter in Greek. This minor controversy is occasionally seen in modern literature when an author attributes the less popular Menander line to Caesar.
The Optimates, including Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger, fled to the south, not knowing that Caesar had only his Tenth Legion with him. Caesar pursued Pompey to Brundisium, hoping to patch up their deal of ten years before. Pompey eluded him, however, and Caesar made an astonishing 27-day route-march to Spain where he defeated Pompey's lieutenants. He then went back east, to challenge Pompey in Greece where on July 10, 48 BC at Dyrrhacium Caesar barely avoided a catastrophic defeat to Pompey. He decisively defeated Pompey's numerically superior army — Pompey had nearly twice the number of infantry and considerably more cavalry — at Pharsalus in an exceedingly short engagement in 48 BC.
Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was murdered by an officer of King Ptolemy XIII. In Rome, Caesar was appointed dictator, with Mark Antony as his master of the horse (magister equitum, or chief lieutenant); Caesar resigned this dictatorate after eleven days and was elected to a second term as consul with Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus as his colleague. He pursued Pompey to Alexandria, where he camped his army and inadvertently got tangled in the Alexandrine civil war between Ptolemy and his sister, wife, and co-regnant queen, the Pharaoh Cleopatra VII. Perhaps as a result of Ptolemy's role in Pompey's murder, Caesar sided with Cleopatra; he is reported to have wept at the sight of Pompey's head, which was offered to him by Ptolemy's chamberlain Pothinus as a gift. In any event, Caesar defeated the Ptolemaic forces and installed Cleopatra as ruler, and began an affair with her which produced his only known biological son, Ptolemy XV Caesar, better known as "Caesarion". But they never married.
After spending the first months of 47 BC in Egypt, Caesar went to the Middle East, where he annihilated King Pharnaces II of Pontus in the battle of Zela; his victory was so swift and so complete that he commemorated it in his triumph with the words Veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). Thence, he proceeded to Africa to deal with the remnants of Pompey's senatorial supporters. He quickly gained a significant victory at Thapsus in 46 BC over the forces of Metellus Scipio (who was killed in battle) and Cato the Younger (who committed suicide). Nevertheless, Pompey's sons Gnaeus Pompeius and Sextus Pompeius, together with Titus Labienus, Caesar's former propraetorian legate (legatus propraetore) and second in command in the Gallic War, escaped to Spain. Caesar gave chase and defeated the last remnants of opposition at Munda in a fiercely contested battle in March 45 BC. During this time, Caesar was elected to his third and fourth terms as consul in 46 BC (with Marcus aemilius Lepidus ) and 45 BC (without colleague).
After the war
Immediately after his return from the East (and before his departure for Spain), Caesar began extensive reforms of Roman society and government. He tightly regulated the purchase of State-subsidized grain and forbade those who could afford privately supplied grain from purchasing from the grain dole. He extended the Roman citizenship to all communities in Gallia Cisalpina, thus enfranchising the remainder of the Italian peninsula. He made plans for the distribution of land to his veterans and for the establishment of veteran colonies throughout the Roman world. In one of his most wide-ranging reforms, Caesar ordered a complete overhaul of the Roman calendar, establishing a 365-day year with a leap year every fourth year (this Julian calendar was subsequently modified by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 into the modern calendar); as a result of this reform, the year 46 BC was in fact 445 days long to bring the calendar into line.
Caesar returned to Rome, where he began to receive increasingly grandiose honours from the Senate: Plutarch even records that he at one point informed the Senate that he felt his honours were more in need of reduction than augmentation, but withdrew this position so as not to appear ungrateful. He was given the title Pater Patriae ("Father of the Fatherland") and authorized to dress in triumphal regalia at all times. The month known until then as Quintilis was renamed July (Latin Julius) in his honor. He was appointed dictator a third time, and then nominated for nine consecutive one-year terms as dictator, effectually making him dictator for ten years; he was also given censorial authority as prefect of morals (praefectus morum) for three years.
In 44 BC, Caesar became consul a fifth time with Mark Antony as his colleague; he was soon appointed perpetual dictator (dictator perpetuus) and began wearing the knee-high red boots of the kings of Alba Longa, from whom the Julii Caesares were descended. In February 44 BC, Antony, having just been appointed as flamen to Caesar, publicly offered him a diadem, a white linen strip worn on the forehead which was the Hellenic symbol of monarchy; Caesar refused the diadem, but to this day there remains scholarly dispute about whether or not Caesar intended to make himself King of Rome.
Assassination
The Roman Senate traditionally met in the Curia Hostilia, but it had been destroyed by fire years before. Thus Caesar summoned the Senate to meet in the Theatrum Pompeium (built by Pompey) on the Ides of March (March 15) 44 BC. A few days before, a fortuneteller had said to Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." As the Senate convened, Caesar was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of senators who called themselves the Liberators (Liberatores); the Liberators justified their action on the grounds that they were preserving the Republic from Caesar's alleged monarchical ambitions. Among the assassins who locked themselves in the Temple of Jupiter were Gaius Trebonius, Decimus Junius Brutus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Gaius Cassius Longinus; Caesar had personally pardoned most of his murderers or personally advanced their careers. Marcus Brutus was a distant cousin of Caesar and named as one of his testamentary heirs. There is also speculation that Marcus Brutus was an illegitimate child of Caesar's, since he had an affair with Servilia Caepionis, Brutus' mother; however, Caesar was 15 years old at the time Brutus was born. Caesar sustained 23 stab wounds, which ranged from superficial to mortal, and fell at the feet of a statue of Pompey. His last words have been variously reported as:
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Και συ τεκνον? (Kai su, teknon?) (Gr., "Even you, my child?" – from Suetonius)
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Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi! (Lat., "You too, Brutus, my son!" – a modern Latin translation of the Greek quotation from Suetonius)
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Et tu, Brute? (Lat., "And (even) you, Brutus?" – from Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar)
Caesar's violent death caused considerable unrest in Rome. A series of civil wars broke out, the first of which between Decimus Brutus and Antony resulted in the creation of the Second Triumvirate of Caesar's distant cousin Antony, his lieutenant Lepidus, and Caesar's grand nephew Gaius Octavius, posthumously adopted by Caesar as "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus", known in English as Octavian before 27 BC and Caesar Augustus after. This Triumvirate deified Caesar as divus iulius and – seeing that Caesar's clemency had resulted in his murder – proscribed its enemies and conducted a second civil war against Brutus and Cassius, whom Antony and Octavian defeated at Philippi. A third civil war then broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war, culminating in Antony and Cleopatra's defeat at Actium, resulted in the ascendancy of Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor, under the name Caesar Augustus. In 42 BC, Caesar was formally deified as "the Divine Julius" (Divus Iulius), and Caesar Augustus henceforth became Divi filius ("Son of God").
The literary Caesar
See Literary works of Julius Caesar.
The military Caesar
See Military career of Julius Caesar.
Caesar's name
See Etymology of the name of Julius Caesar.
Caesar's marriages and offspring
Chronology
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July 13 100 BC – Birth in Rome; Alternatively, July 12, 102 BC
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84 BC – First marriage to Cornelia Cinnilla
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82 BC – Escapes the Sullan persecutions
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81/79 BC – Military service in Asia and Cilicia; tryst with Nicomedes of Bithynia
- 70s – Career as an advocate
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69 BC – Death of Cornelia, Quaestor in Hispania Ulterior
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65 BC – Curule aedile
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63 BC – Second marriage to Pompeia Sulla,
- December, Divorces Pompeia
- Elected pontifex maximus and praetor urbanus
- the Catilinarian conspiracy
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61 BC – Serves of Propraetor in Hispania Ulterior
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59 BC – First consulship with Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, beginning of the First Triumvirate
- Third marraige to Calpurnia Pisonis
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58 BC/53 BC – First term as Proconsul of Gaul
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54 BC – Death of Julia
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53 BC – Death of Crassus: end of the First Triumvirate
- 53 BC/48 BC - Second term as Proconsul of Gaul
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52 BC – Battle of Alesia
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49 BC – Crossing of the Rubicon, the civil war starts
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48 BC – Defeats Pompey in Greece at Battle of Pharsalus, made dictator (serves for 11 days)
- Second consulship with Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus
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47 BC – Campaign in Egypt; meets Cleopatra VII
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46 BC – Defeats Cato and Metellus Scipio in northern Africa, third consulship with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus
- Second dictatorship
- Elected Pontifex Maximus for life (introduces Julian Calendar) and adoptes Octavian as heir
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45 BC – Defeats the last opposition in Hispania
- Returns to Rome; fourth consulship (without colleague)
- Named Pater Patriae by the Senate and third dictatorship
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44 BC –
- Fifth consulship with Marc Antony
- Appointed perpetual dictator
- February, Refuses the diadem offered by Antony
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March 15, Assassinated
References
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The Gallic War, by Caesar; Loeb Classics
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Life of Caesar, by Plutarch; Oxford Classics
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The Twelve Caesars – Julius Caesar, by Suetonius; Penguin Classics
Related topics
External links
Notes
1- Gaius Iulius Gaii Filius Gaii Nepos Caesar, in English "Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Gaius, grandson of Gaius".
