Julius Caesar

Gaius Iulius Caesar (anglicized: Gaius Julius Caesar; born 13 July 100 BC; died 15 March 44 BC; Latin pronounciation: ['gaːjʊs 'juːlijʊs 'kaɪ̯sar], English pronounciation: ['gaɪəs 'dʒuːliəs 'siːzəɹ]) was an aristocrat, politician and general of the late Roman Republic, and played a key role in the transformation of the Republic into the Roman Empire. He rose through the ranks of Roman elected offices to reach the consulship, and formed an unofficial, and controversial, triumvirate with Pompey the Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus which dominated Roman politics for several years. As a proconsul, he conquered Gaul and made expeditions to Britain and Germania. After the collapse of the triumvirate, he fought and won a civil war against the Senate and his former colleague Pompey, became the sole ruler of the Roman world, and was proclaimed Dictator in perpetuity. He left behind his own Commentaries on his wars in Gaul and the civil war, with supplementary books written by his supporters. He was assassinated by a group of senators hoping to restore the normal working of the Republic, but his death ushered in thirteen more years of civil war. Ultimately, his designated heir, Augustus, would establish permanent autocratic rule.

Biography

Early life

Caesar grew up in a patrician family which had come to political prominence during his father's generation. Two relatives had been consuls in the 90s BC, and Caesar's father, also called Gaius Julius Caesar, had been praetor and governor of Asia, and was brother-in-law to Gaius Marius, one of the most prominent men in the Republic. His mother, Aurelia, came from an influential family, the Aurelii Cottae.

Rome already ruled much of the Mediterranean, but was politically unstable and faced external threats. The Social War against her Italian allies, over the issue of Roman citizenship and the spoils of conquest, was fought from 91 to 88 BC, and Mithridates of Pontus was pressing her eastern provinces. With the Social War settled, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was appointed to lead the campaign against Mithridates, until a tribune passed a law stripping him of his command and transferring it to Marius. Sulla, who was with his troops near Naples, marched on Rome, forced Marius into exile, and left on campaign. Once he was gone, Marius retook the city, with the help of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and took bloody revenge on Sulla's supporters. One of those killed was Lucius Cornelius Merula, the Flamen Dialis or priest of Jupiter. Marius died in 85 BC, leaving Cinna in control of the city.

In 84 BC Caesar's father died suddenly while putting on his shoes one morning, leaving the sixteen-year-old Caesar as head of the family. He was nominated to replace Merula as Flamen Dialis, and broke off his engagement to Cossutia, the daughter of a wealthy equestrian, to marry Cinna's daughter Cornelia.

Having brought Mithridates to terms, Sulla returned to Italy, and civil war resumed. Cinna was killed in a mutiny of his own troops. Sulla retook Rome in November 82 BC, had himself appointed dictator, and embarked on a campaign of political murder that dwarfed even Marius's purges. Caesar, as Marius's nephew and Cinna's son-in-law, was firmly identified with Sulla's enemies. He was stripped of his inheritance and his priesthood, but refused to divorce Cornelia and was forced to go into hiding. His mother's family and the Vestal Virgins intervened on his behalf, and Sulla reluctantly lifted the threat against him, remarking that there were "many Mariuses" in the young Caesar.

Caesar did not return to Rome, but instead joined the army. He served in Asia, his father's old province, and Cilicia, and won the corona civica for his part in the siege of Mytilene. On a mission to Bithynia, he spent so long at the court of king Nicomedes that rumours of an affair with the king arose, which would persist for the rest of his life.

He returned to Rome after Sulla's death in 78 BC and began to use his oratorical talents in the courts. In 75 BC he travelled to Rhodes to study under Apollonius Molon, but on his way there was kidnapped by pirates. After he was released on payment of a ransom, he pursued the pirates in a small fleet and had them crucified on his own authority.

Political career

Caesar returned to Rome and began to climb the political ladder. He was elected military tribune, the first step in the cursus honorum, in 72 or 71 BC, around the time of the war against Spartacus, although it is not known what part, if any, he played in it. In 69 both his wife Cornelia and his aunt Julia, Marius's widow, died. Caesar delivered their funeral orations, and included images of Marius, unseen since Sulla's dictatorship, in Julia's funeral procession. He was elected quaestor for the same year, and served his year in office in Hispania. On his return to Rome he married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla. However, he continued to rehabilitate Marius's reputation while aedile in 65 BC, restoring the trophies of his victories, and brought prosecutions against those who had benefited financially from Sulla's proscriptions. He spent a great deal of borrowed money on public works and games, outshining, not for the last time, his colleague Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus.

During this period he was suspected of involvement in a number of attempted coups, one involving Marcus Licinius Crassus, and supported the extraordinary commands given to Pompey, against the Cilician pirates in 67 BC, and against Mithridates the following year.

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The conquest of Gaul

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Civil war

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Dictatorship

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Assassination

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Legacy

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Etymologies of Caesar's name

The cognomen Caesar

The suffix –ar was highly unusual for the Latin language, which might imply a non-Latin origin of the name. The etymology of the name Caesar is still unknown and was subject to many interpretations even in antiquity. Caesar himself propagated the derivation from the Moorish or Punic word for "elephant", thereby following the claims of his family that they inherited the cognomen from an ancestor, who had received the name after killing an elephant, possibly during the first Punic War. Since the Gauls came to know the elephant through the Punic commander Hannibal, it is possible that the animal was also known under the name caesar in Gaul. Caesar used elephants during his conquest of Gaul and at the river Thames in Britain, and displayed an elephant above the name CAESAR on his first denarius, which he probably minted while still in Gallia Cisalpina. The coin directly identifies Caesar with the elephant, because the animal treads a Gallic horn, the carnyx, as a symbolic depiction of Caesar's own victory.

Several other interpretations were propagated in antiquity:

• a caesis oculis ("because of the blue eyes"): Caesar's eyes were black, but this interpretation might have been created as part of the anti-Caesarian propaganda, because Caesar's early adversary, the dictator Sulla had blue eyes.
• a caesaries ("because of the hair"): Since Caesar was balding, this interpretation might have been part of the anti-Caesarian mockery.
• a caeso matris utero ("born by Caesarean section"): In theory this might go back to an unknown Julian ancestor who was born in this way. On the other hand it could also have been part of the anti-Caesarian propaganda, because in the eyes of the Republicans Caesar had defiled the Roman "motherland", which was also reported for one of Caesar's dreams, in which he committed incest with his mother, i.e. the earth.

The nomen gentile Iulius

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Literary work

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Cultural depictions

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