History UsefulNotes / JuliusCaesar

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: It changes across the years depending on the political and social development of society, which obviously looks back at Rome through prism of later political developments and changes:

* UnreliableNarrator: His first-hand account on the Gaul war, ''De Bello Gallico'', understandably glosses over his least brilliant moments such as the unreliable Gaul allied cavalry, the first Briton campaign, his punitive expedition to Germany, Gergovia etc, sometimes applying the LeeroyJenkins, strategic victory / TacticalWithdrawal perspective. The trend is continued in the follow-up books about the civil war but it's believed those weren't actually written by Caesar.

Both Crassus and Pompey were former supporters of Sulla and had profited from the dictator's proscriptions, judicial murders, and purges. At the time, Caesar was the least powerful--a forty-year-old politician whose only achievement was winning a few elections, compared to Pompey, a self-proclaimed military prodigy who expanded Rome into Judea, followed by Crassus, who suppressed the Spartacus Rebellion (and who, again, was the richest man in Rome). Caesar shared the Consulship with Bibulus, whose ineffective attempts to oppose the Triumvirs' agenda led to their term being jokingly called the Year of Julius and Caesar (Romans referred to a year by the Consuls' names). After establishing their authority and passing agrarian reform laws that both helped themselves and benefited the poor, Caesar again went on military campaign as governor of Cis-and Transalpine Gaul and Illyria, conquering most of Gaul (France) and entering Germania across several years of campaigning, with a failed attempt to grab Britannia. While there his daughter Julia--Pompey's (very) young wife--died of illness. Within the same period, Crassus had died on the campaign against the Parthians, and the Optimate (or Conservative) faction, allied with Pompey, ordered Caesar to disband his army and declared his governorship over, at the same time refusing to allow him to stand for a second consulship. They then declared him [[{{Outlaw}} an enemy of the state]].

Caesar's only choice was to either surrender his career and become an exile, or risk dishonor, infamy and the future of Ancient Rome by rebelling. He chose the latter and marched on Rome, using as an excuse the mistreatment of the tribunes of the people who had presented his case to the Senate, by crossing the Rubicon, the border of Italy where Roman armies are supposed to disband. Considering that Sulla had crossed the Pomerium (the boundary of Rome beyond which the army was not supposed to enter) twice and was rewarded by the Optimates with absolute power, Caesar undoubtedly saw his own actions of a comparatively milder nature.

He campaigned through Italy, winning support along the way from many provincial nobles who were not big fans of the snooty Romans, while the Optimates banked everything on Pompey. Caesar eventually took the city unchallenged, even though he had only one legion, his enemies did not trust the newly-recruited troops raised in their defence and fled.

Near his final months, he planned an invasion of the Parthian empire. The prospect of a Caesarian success against the Parthians who had repelled all earlier Roman campaigns made many senators panic. While Caesar was moving at a far more moderate pace with his reforms to the liking of fellow populares, [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids and irritated others for his refusal of proscription]] as well as making cutbacks on the grain dole. But this only made it harder, in the eyes of the optimates, to deny consensual support to reform and rebuild Rome to a permanent populare. A military victory in Parthia would simply reinforce that.

Caesar was killed in 44 BC by a group of rebellious senators, led by Brutus (and the assassination plot was first instigated by Cassius), being stabbed [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 23 times]] [[BloodOnTheDebateFloor in the senate]]. The assassination was clumsy and amateurish, and some of the Senators stabbed and hurt each other when rushing up to Caesar. He was armed with a stylus (a sharp Roman pen, that Gracchian supporters used to defend themselves when they charged and killed Gaius) but [[DidntSeeThatComing was absolutely unprepared for what happened]]. The assassins inflicted a total of 27 wounds, which, given that up to 60 people are said to have ambushed him, is not a particularly good batting average. What's more, Suetonius relates that a physician who performed an autopsy on Caesar (the earliest known post-mortem report in history) established that only one wound (the second one to his ribs) had been fatal.

The line ''EtTuBrute'' is from Shakespeare. Plutarch states that Caesar on seeing Brutus blurted out, "''Kai su, teknon'' (You too, my son)?" either in sadness or in anger that in the end, even Brutus who he had spared and given a governorship in Gaul as a sign of good faith, had betrayed him. The exact site of Caesar's death, in a touch of historical irony, was right under the statue of his old friend and rival Pompey. The conspirators called themselves the "Liberators" and hoped that Caesar's death would resolve the cycle of CivilWar and restore the Republic under the Optimate hegemony. [[GoneHorriblyWrong The small matter of Caesar's great personal popularity and the mobilization by his supporters dispelled this notion]], and the conspirators were chased out of Rome, leading to decades of civil war, with Caesar's faction led by his general Marc Antony, his appointed heir, [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Octavian]] with support from Cleopatra. They eventually won, while his nephew Augustus eventually pulled a coup on his fellow conspirators and learning from his Uncle's failures, used a combination of proscriptions and savvy political engineering to permanently transform TheRepublic into TheEmpire. Caesar was initially supposed to be buried in the Roman Forum near his daughter Julia, but the crowd as a display of popularity, cremated him in public, throwing furniture, desk and other articles on top of his corpse as a tribute (similar to Clodius Pulcher's funeral which burnt down the old Senate house) and lighting a large bonfire.

Caesar is a controversial figure and historians to this day are divided about him. The Republic he overthrew was extremely corrupt and increasingly ineffective, while he provided strong, stable and popular leadership. He was merciful to his (Roman) enemies and widely respected for his many talents even by opponents like Creator/{{Cicero}}, who, in his invective-filled orations known as the Philippics, told Mark Antony that he was no Caesar. When he died he was either about to take personal power as the dictator, or possibly reform the Republic to accommodate its new responsibilities and peacefully and moderately end the spiral of factional wars that had gone on for a hundred years at that point. It is one of the great {{What If}}s of history as to what he would have done. The impact and importance of his legacy in Western civilization are indisputably immense: for the next two thousand years after his death, rulers would invoke and wear his name as a title and honorific. All five Emperors of the first dynasty had the name "Caesar" as part of their regnal name, and the word for "emperor" in many languages is based on it ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser "Kaiser"]] in German, "Kaisar" in Hindi, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar "Csar"]] in Slavic languages, Kejser[=/=]Keiser[=/=]Kejsare in Scandinavia), although Caesar himself was not an Emperor. Not bad for what seems to have originally been [[IronicNickname the Roman equivalent of the Aussie tradition of calling the bald guy "Curly"]].[[note]]"Caesar"="hairy". While it's not clear if the first member of the gens Julia to be called "Caesar" (who exactly that would be is murky) was hairy or bald, his descendants definitely tended to be bald, which knowing the Romans is probably why this cognomen stuck. (They loved this kind of joke.)[[/note]]

He took up legal advocacy (like most aspiring politicians of the time) and became famous for his oratory and ruthlessness in the courts. Shortly afterward he sought to improve his oratory further and sought out Cicero's teacher Appollonius in Rhodes. On the way, he was captured by pirates, and infamously acted high-handedly with his captors, demanding they ask for a higher ransom and promising to hunt them down and kill them all once he was freed. The pirates [[SarcasticConfession thought he was joking]], until he actually came back and had them all crucified.[[note]]Or, rather, had his corpses crucified. He thought crucifixion was so horrible a way to die he had them executed before putting them to the cross.[[/note]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Tusculum portrait, possibly the only extant {{sculpture|s}} of Caesar made in his lifetime.[[note]]Which interesting enough was rediscovered by Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of [[UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte another great world defining conqueror]], in 1825[[/note]]]]

Caesar is a controversial figure and historians to this day are divided about him. The Republic he overthrew was extremely corrupt and increasingly ineffective, while he provided strong, stable and popular leadership. He was merciful to his (Roman) enemies and widely respected for his many talents even by opponents like Creator/{{Cicero}}, who, in his invective-filled orations known as the Philippics, told Mark Antony that he was no Caesar. When he died he was either about to take personal power as the dictator, or possibly reform the Republic to accommodate its new responsibilities and peacefully and moderately end the spiral of factional wars that had gone on for a hundred years at that point. It is one of the great {{What If}}s of history as to what he would have done. The impact and importance of his legacy in Western civilization are indisputably immense: for the next two thousand years after his death, rulers would invoke and wear his name as a title and honorific. All five Emperors of the first dynasty had the name "Caesar" as part of their regnal name, and the word for "emperor" in many languages is based on it ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser "Kaiser"]] in German, "Kaisar" in Hindi, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar "Csar"]] in Slavic languages, Kejser[=/=]Keiser[=/=]Kejsare in Scandanavia), although Caesar himself was not an Emperor. Not bad for what seems to have originally been [[IronicNickname the Roman equivalent of the Aussie tradition of calling the bald guy "Curly"]].[[note]]"Caesar"="hairy". While it's not clear if the first member of the gens Julia to be called "Caesar" (who exactly that would be is murky) was hairy or bald, his descendants definitely tended to be bald, which knowing the Romans is probably why this cognomen stuck. (They loved this kind of joke.)[[/note]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Tusculum portrait, possibly the only extant {{sculpture|s}} of Caesar made in his lifetime.[[note]]Which interesting enough was rediscovered by Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of another great world defining conqueror, in 1825[[/note]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Tusculum portrait, possibly the only extant {{sculpture|s}} of Caesar made in his lifetime.[[note]]Which interesting enough was rediscovered by Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of the other great world defining conqueror, in 1825[[/note]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Tusculum portrait, possibly the only extant {{sculpture|s}} of Caesar made in his lifetime. [[note:Which interesting enough was rediscovered by Lucien Bonaparte, younger brother of the other great world defining conqueror, in 1825]]]]