As a modern historian, I’m always surprised by the sleuthing of Ancient Historians. Even in the case of Caesar, we have limited sources; so it takes scholarship of a high order to forge a biography that is at once so detailed, so consistent in its judgement, and so readable. I look forward to reading ‘Augustus’.

Masterful!

Goldsworthy outstanding as always.

‘Caesar’ by Adrian Goldsworthy is very comprehensive. The author uses all available historical sources and puts in order the known information into a cohesive timeline. The result is an excellent biography. Goldsworthy often compares two or more sources together as well, noting all of the sources and guessing sometimes which one is the more likely version if they diverge.

Caesar himself was helpful to later researchers of his life in that he published several books about his military campaigns which have survived millennia (literacy rules!). Archeologists have found the actual sites from debris and descriptions. Caesar usually included everything, softening very few incidents or mistakes. Apparently he omitted some events of personal courage, but maybe involved admirers were embellishing real or imagined stories.

However, Caesar was clearly an amazing leader in both personal charisma and in military finesse whether his contemporaries loved or hated him. The book explains in general with some details, and maps (but omitting the showing of topography like hills or rivers, unfortunately), Caesar’s many military battles and troop maneuvers with tribes in Gaul (France), Spain, Africa, near Asia and what would be the peoples of countries in and around Germany (Macedonia, Belgium etc.). He also tried to invade England! Romans lived to instigate fights and defend in constant warfare. I am not exaggerating. If the top politicians of Rome were not marching to conquer foreign countries, they were marching to do battle with each other.

Caesar usually juggled military campaigns and Roman politics at the same time, whether it was the politics of handling conquered tribes or of Rome’s common people and top 1%. He was a genuine multitasker phenomenon and a genius of military tactics and political maneuvers - a brainy intellectual with the energy and physical strength of someone years younger. Jealousy, imho, is the real cause of his murder, although the murderers claimed they feared Caesar’s growing political power. Rome was infested with power-seeking families and men for centuries! Intense violence in Rome was often begun by Roman military leaders who invaded Rome with their personal armies trying to kill political enemies! Assassination attempts were often threatened and made. Most politicians had personal bodyguards.

In Rome, politics was all about every Senator being for himself. Caesar was one of the many of this ilk, but he was attempting to make politics more fair and safe, changing laws and proposing more equitable management of the distribution of land and the just enforcement of laws (other historical Romans worked at making life better for commoners too). He promoted free speech, seeing that his writing as well as his usual behavior, whatever the narrative of his works or that distributed by his enemies, the description of his life would work in his favor. Being a military genius was not something a man could fake, after all, being seen by thousands of troops and in having the spoils of war to display on his return. Most common Romans were fans.

The book begins with Caesar’s early life and ends with his assassination. Rome was a turbulent City in Caesar’s lifetime! If Politics was a food, it was one which all important Romans had to eat wholeheartedly three times a day with constant intermittent snacks! Military prowess was important for all Roman politicians. The path to dominating Rome politically was primarily through having and keeping your own personal military force. To maintain the respect of their military troops, leaders had to be educated and landowners, very wealthy and male, plus most often connected by birth or marriage to the top 1% aristocracy - old founding families of Rome who normally had fantastic wealth and who claimed a god sired their founder. Caesar claimed Venus founded his family. However, inexplicably, when Caesar had finally gathered all of the threads of Roman power in his hands, he dismissed his bodyguards!

We all know how this ended. It was a little bit like how Shakespeare imagined, but the killers, backed up in the conspiracy of the murder by sixty - sixty! - senators, were more selfish with complicated personal motives and grudges. It certainly wasn’t a case of morally superior folks taking down a singularly terrible person! Goldsworthy reveals all. Caesar at age fifty-six definitely had become a dictator with all power voted him by the common people and by publicly kowtowing or genuinely admiring senators. But while Caesar demanded recognition of his dominance, his actions also showed a lifelong commitment to duty and justice and fairness. He wasn’t a bad person, gentle reader, for a Roman of 100-44 BC.

The book has an extensive Bibliography. It also has a very useful Chronology, a Glossary, an Abbreviation list, huge Notes and Index sections. I highly recommend this book for history and military campaign fans.