Julius Ceasar Essay, Research Paper
Julius Ceasar
Julius Caesar was said to be the greatest man in the Roman world. Some historians, and
among them those of international authority, have made greater claims for him. He was the
greatest of the Roman would but of antiquity. Looking through the onlg list of rulers, kings and
emperors and the rest, they have failed to find an wuqual of this man who refused the style of
king but those name Ceasar has become the commanding majesty and power. Great as a general,
great as a politican.
Born in 102 B.C., or it may have been tow or three years later, Gaius Julius Caesar, to
give him his full name, was of the most ancient and aristocratic lineage. Although he himself,
rationalist as he was, must have smiled sometimes at the conceit, there were some who said that
he was not only of royal but divine descent, since Venus, the goddess of Love, and married a
Trojan prince and so become the mother of the legendary founder of the Julian house. All the
same, circumstances and perhaps personal inclinations attached him to the comparatively
democratic party. His aunt had married as a youth of seventeen to the daughter of Cinna, another
leader of the fraction tht was opposed to the aristocratic party under Sulla, Marius, great rival. A
year or two later, when Sulla had become supreme in the state, the young man was ordered to put
away his wife. He refused, and his life was saved only through the intercession of powerful
friends in Rome.
But though he had been reprieved, Ceasar was far from safe, and for a time he skulled in
the mountains until he managed to get acrss the sea to Asia Minor, where he served in the Roman
army that was campaigning against Mithridates, the king of Pontus. At the seige of Mitylene in
80 B.C. he first distinguished himself as a soldier when he saved the life of a hard-pressed
cmrade. On the death of he kept himself at the bar. His politics and made a career for himself at
the bar. His political learning were showwn clearly enought, however, when he ventured to act
as prosecutor of one of Sulla?s principal lieutnants, who was charged with gross extortion and
crueltu when he was governor of the Macedonian province.
To improve himself in rhetoric, Casear went to Rhodes to take a course of lessons under a
celebrated master of that art, and it was probably at about this time that he had his famous
encouter with Mediterranean pirates. These rufians captured the ship in which he was a
passenger, and put his ransom. While his messenger was away collecting the money, Caesar
made himself quite at home with his captors. He told them amusing stories, joked with them,
joined in their exercises, and, always in the highest good humor, told laughed and joined in the
fun. But Caesar was as good as his word. As soon as his ransom had been paid some over and
he regained his liberty, he went to Miletus, hired some warships, and made straight back to the
pirates, and ordered them to be crucified as he had assured them that he would. He also got back
the money that had benn paid as his ransom.
Still on the fringe of the political arena, Caesar spent the next few years as a gay young
man about town. His family wasn?t rich, but there were plenty of moneylenders who were glad
to accommodate him. He spent money like water, on expensive pleasures women particularly,
since he was as facinating to them as they were to him and on building up a body of popular
support for the time when he might need it. Then in 68 B.C. he got his first official appointment
under Government, as a quaestor, which secured him a seat in the Senate, and in 63 B.C. he
appointed Pontifex maximus, a position of great dignity and importance in the religion
establishment of the Roman State.
He was onthe way up, and his rise was furthered by successful administration of a
province in Spain. So capable did he prove that in 60 B.C. he was chosen by Rome, to form with
him and crassus what is called the 1st Triumvirate. To strengthen the union between himself and
Pompey, Caesar gave Pompey his daughter Julia in marriage. Then after a year as Consul,
Caesar applied for, and was granted, the proconculship of Gual and Illyricum, the Roman
dominion that extended from what is now the south of France to the Adriatic. His enemies and
he had plenty were glad to see him leave Rome, and they no dought thought that Gual would
prove the grave of his reputation. After all, he had up to now shown no special military gifts.
But Casear knew what he was doing. He realized that the path to power in the Roman State lay
through military victory, and he believed, as firmly as he believed in anything, in his star.
In a series of campaigns he extended Roman dominion to the Atlantic and what a
thousand years later was to be known as the English Channel. Years after year his dispatched to
the Government in Rome told ever large conquests, of ever greater victories. Sometimes he
suffered a reverse, but not often and when he did he was relentless in his determination to win
the last and decisive battle. His soldiers idolized him even while they feared him. He demanded
but he showed them how to do it. He was not behind the lined general, ordering his men into the
breach while he looked on from a distance. He was always up there, in the front line or very near
it. He would march beside his legionaries on foot, and out-tire the best of them. He set the pace
for his cavalry. He would seize a spade and give a hand in digging in. He ate the same food as
his men were out in the cold and wet. He was never a specially strong man, physically he seems
been subject to epileptic seizures but when campaigning he seemed as hard as nails. And of
course he was brave. Many and many time when his men were hard-pressed by the hosts of
Gauls they were vastly cheered by the sights of their general hurrying up to their assistance,
branshing his weapns and shouting words of encouragement. ?Cowards die many times before
their deaths,? are among the words that Shakespeares puts into his mouth,?the valiant taste of
death but once.?
If we would read the histlry of those years of almost constant campaigning, from 58 to 49
B.C., where better than in those memories of Caesar?s own writting, that are among the
materpieces of latin lierature. Of course interest to us in 55 B.C. when the Roman expeditionary
forces sailed from Boulogne and the men got ashore on the coast at Deal. This first invasion was
nothing more than a reconnaissance, and after three weeks Casear went back across the Channel.
But in the summer of the next year he returned, and this time he penetrated as far as the valley of
the Thames in Middlesex. After considerable figting, the Britons under Cassivellaunus sued for
terms, gave hostages and agreed to pay tribute. Whereupon Caesar sailed back to Gual, where
there was always a risk that the recently subdued natives might make a fresh bid for their
independence.
In fact, they did rebel, and for several years Caesar found a worthy match in the young
Vercingetorix. Once he was defeated, and the Roman position in Gual was threatened as it had
never been before. But Caesar managed to unite his forces, and at Alesia in 52 B.C. crushed the
Gaulish armies and obtained Vercingetorix?s surrender. This was the end to resistance to Roman
rule henceforth Gual was a great and increasingly prosperous province of the Roman realm.
Casear?s victory was opportune, for affairs at Rome demanded his attention. The
Triumvirate was on the verge of dissolution. Pompey was estranged, and Crassus had gone off to
the east, where he met disaster and death in battle with the Parthians. Caesar?s terms of office in
Gaul was nearing it?s end, and already his enemies in Rome were talking of what they would do
to him when he had returned to civil life. They complained of his having overstepped his
authority, of having embarked on grandiose schemes of comquest, of cruelties inflicted on poor
inoffensive barbarians.
All there things were reported to Caesar in his camp, and, being the man he was, it is not
surprising that he resolved to get in the firt blow. Although he had only one legion under his
immediate command, and Pompey had been boasting that he had only to stamp on the ground
and legions would rise up to do his bidding he resolved to march on Rome. Early in January, 49
B.C. he took the decisive step of crossing the Rubicon, the little river that ws the boundry of his
command. As he watched his men plunging into streams he talked up and down the banks, and
some who were near said that he muttered the wrods ?Jacta alea est?, ?the die is cast? .
Whether he spoke the words or not, the die was cast, and in open defiance of Pompey?s
government, Caesar marched with all speed on the capital. Pompey?s support disintegrated, and
he was foced to flee overseas. Caesar entered Rome triumph.
Almost without a blow Caesar had become master of Rome, and he ws forthwith granted
dictatorial powers. But Pomey and his friends rallied, and for the next five years Caesar was
chiefly engaged in defeating, first, Pompey at Pharsalia in Greece, soon after which Pompey was
murdered in Egypt, next Pompey?s sons in spain, and hten the army of those Roman leaders who
constituted what was known as the senatorial party those who clung to the onle time-honoured
system of republican rule through the Senate.
A strange intrelude in this torrent of campaining is the time spent by Caesar in Egypt,
when he had an affair with the beautiful young Queen Cleopatra, who bore him a son. After this
he proceeded to Asia Minor, where Pharnaces, the son and murdered of King Mithridates, was
Causing trouble. Caesar made short work of him. In his message to the Senate he reported
?Veni, vidi, vici?, ?I came, I saw, I conquered?.
At length he returned to Rome, and was according yet another triumph he had had four
already. Vast crowds acclaimed him as he passed in his chariot through the streets on his way to
the Capitol. Great hopes were centered upon him, great things were expected of him. The old
system must soon come to birth. We shall never know what vast schemes were fermenting in the
brain of the man who was now hailed as Impector, the first of the emperors ot walk the stage of
history, but we may perhaps get some idea of them from what he managed to accomplish in the
all too short period that was left to him.
For the most part they were young men and vigorous, and he was middle-aged and grown
heavy and less active than in the days when he had soldiered with his men in Gual. But he put up
a good fight. He struggled, unarmed though he was, tried to push them sway, and then struck at
them with his meta stilus or pen. Then he saw Brutus was among his assailants. ?what, you too,
Brutus? as he said and convering his body with his robe so that he should fall decently, suffered
himself to be overborne. He fell, with twenty-three wounds in his body, at the foot of the statue
of his great rival Pompey, which, with characteristic magnanimity, he had allowed to be
re-erected in the Capitol.
Such was their mad fury, some of the murderers had wounded one another in their bloody
work. Now they ruched from the scene, sxultingly shouting that the Tyrant was no more. Thy
called upon the people who were there to rejoice with them, but the people hung their heads, or
muttered a prayer or fled.
So Caesar died ?the noblest man?, to quote Shakespeare?s immortal lines again, ?that
ever lived in the tide of times
Work Cited
100 Great Kings, Queens and Rulers of the World
Edited by John Canning
School Library Journal
Audio Recording Drama Theater
Julius Caear
http://homepages.iol.ie/~coolmine/typ/romans/romans6.html
Julius Caesar
http:library.thinkingquest.org/17120/data/bios/users/caesar/page_1.html
The Word Book Encyclopedia
Julius Caesar Vol 3