The Rise and Fall of Julius Caesar

The boy who nearly didn’t survive

Caesar was born in July 100 BC into the patrician gens Julia, a family that claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas and his son Iulus. July 12 and 13 both appear in modern discussions of his birthday, so an exact day should not be treated as beyond dispute. The Julii were an established aristocratic family, although Caesar’s branch was not then among Rome’s most dominant political households. His father’s death while Caesar was in his sixteenth year made him head of the family. His early prospects depended on kinship, education, military service and the patronage networks through which Roman nobles pursued office.

His first great political danger came during Sulla’s ascendancy in the early 80s BC. Caesar’s aunt Julia was the wife of Gaius Marius, Sulla’s opponent; Caesar himself had married Cornelia, daughter of Marius’s ally Cinna. Sulla demanded that he divorce her. According to Suetonius, Caesar refused, lost property and priestly privileges, and went into hiding until influential relatives and the Vestal Virgins obtained his pardon. The famous warning that Caesar contained ‘more than one Marius’ comes from the later biographical tradition. It is a striking retrospective judgment, not a transcript we can independently verify. Read Suetonius’s account of this episode.

Caesar then served in Asia on the staff of Marcus Thermus and earned the civic crown at Mytilene. Later, usually dated to 75 BC, pirates captured him near Pharmacussa while he was travelling towards Rhodes. Plutarch says that when they asked for twenty talents, he offered to raise the ransom to fifty, behaved as though he commanded his captors, and threatened to punish them after his release. Both Plutarch and Suetonius describe his subsequent pursuit and execution of the pirates; Suetonius adds that he had their throats cut before crucifixion. These anecdotes reveal how ancient authors fashioned Caesar’s image of fearless self-command. Their colourful conversations and exact details need to be read as reported stories, not eyewitness narration.

Politically, he climbed the cursus honorum, Rome’s ladder of public offices, through a mixture of ability, alliances and conspicuous spending. As aedile in 65 BC he sponsored public entertainments and building works that increased his visibility, while taking on large debts. Suetonius observes that Caesar secured much of the public credit even for expenses shared with his colleague Bibulus. Spectacle could turn private wealth or borrowed money into political influence, but the result was never automatic. Caesar’s career illustrates both the opportunities of aristocratic competition and the financial pressures it placed on ambitious candidates.

In 63 BC he won election as pontifex maximus, Rome’s chief priest, defeating two more senior candidates. The office brought considerable religious standing and was held for life. Suetonius connects the campaign with heavy borrowing and preserves a story that Caesar told his mother he would return only as chief priest. Such episodes made his ascent look like a succession of audacious wagers. His later career also required conventional advancement: the praetorship in 62 BC and a provincial command in Spain prepared the way for his consulship in 59 BC.

Vanity, charm, and the private Caesar

Suetonius describes Caesar as tall, with a fair complexion and keen eyes, and reports that he was sensitive about his thinning hair. In this account Caesar combed it forward and particularly appreciated the right to wear a laurel wreath. The anecdote has helped create the familiar picture of a conqueror whose public confidence coexisted with personal vanity. But it also reminds us that Roman biography was interested in bodies, habits and appearance as clues to character. A later writer’s memorable portrait cannot give us unfiltered access to Caesar’s private thoughts.

His dress attracted comment too. Suetonius describes a tunic with long, fringed sleeves and a loose girdle, and attributes to Sulla a warning about the young man’s manner of wearing it. This was a tunic, not a sleeved toga. Clothing could carry political and moral meanings for Roman observers, who interpreted departures from elite convention as signs of luxury or insufficient discipline. We can identify that discourse without assuming that every detail of Caesar’s wardrobe was a calculated political message.

Caesar married Cornelia, Pompeia and Calpurnia at different stages of his life, and ancient writers describe affairs with several prominent women, including Servilia and Cleopatra. They also preserve hostile allegations concerning Nicomedes IV of Bithynia. The Nicomedes story was a weapon used by Caesar’s political opponents, and Suetonius records his denials as well as the insults. It is not secure evidence from which to assign him a modern sexual identity. The important historical point is how Roman invective connected sexual roles with status, masculinity and a man’s supposed fitness to command.

Accounts of his rapid travel, persuasive speaking and capacity to dictate while attending to other business contributed to his reputation for exceptional energy. Plutarch describes him dictating letters on horseback and keeping several secretaries occupied. Caesar could also show calculated generosity towards opponents, a policy that became especially conspicuous in the civil war. Admiration for these abilities should not turn into mind-reading: claims that every conversation or kindness was secretly planned go beyond the evidence. Ancient portraits are most useful when compared with the decisions and relationships that can actually be traced.

Ancient biographers also report attacks of illness, including episodes described as the ‘falling sickness.’ These reports have often been interpreted as epilepsy, but retrospective diagnosis from sparse, literary descriptions cannot establish a modern medical history. Plutarch discusses illness alongside Caesar’s endurance and determination; Suetonius includes it in a catalogue of bodily characteristics. The evidence supports saying that ancient authors reported recurrent health problems, rather than confidently reconstructing a condition, its precise symptoms or how Caesar privately understood it.

Eight years in Gaul: genius and atrocity

Around 60 BC Caesar joined Pompey and Crassus in the informal alliance later called the First Triumvirate. It was not an official three-man magistracy. Pompey wanted settlements for his veterans and recognition of his eastern arrangements; Crassus and his allies had financial and political interests; Caesar wanted the consulship and a powerful command. As consul in 59 BC, Caesar advanced measures favourable to the partnership despite bitter opposition. He then received Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, with Transalpine Gaul added to his command. Provincial office gave him access to troops, resources and opportunities for conquest on a scale that transformed his position in Roman politics.

From 58 to 50 BC, Caesar’s campaigns brought much of Gaul under Roman control. This included large areas of modern France and Belgium, though southern Gaul had already been a Roman province. His forces crossed the Rhine and invaded Britain in 55 and 54 BC, without establishing a permanent occupation there. Speed, engineering, intelligence gathering and an ability to recover from reverses were central to his military success. So were Roman allies, rivalries within Gallic communities and the labour of thousands of soldiers whose achievements his narrative folded into the story of their commander.

The human cost

The human cost was immense. The famous totals of one million people killed and another million captured come from Plutarch’s Life of Caesar, chapter 15, not from a single total in Caesar’s own account. They cannot be treated as reliable modern population statistics. Caesar’s description of Avaricum in 52 BC is more specific and no less disturbing: he says his soldiers killed without regard to age or sex and that only about eight hundred escaped from a population he put at forty thousand. The figures are his claims, but the massacre is part of his own narrative of victory. There is no basis for saying that Caesar systematically eliminated all Druids. Caesar’s account of Avaricum should be read alongside Plutarch’s much later summary.

Caesar suffered genuine reverses that show how uncertain the conquest remained. At Gergovia in 52 BC his army was repulsed with substantial losses. His account stresses that some soldiers pressed forward after a recall signal, a presentation that helps protect the commander’s reputation. The defeat strengthened Vercingetorix’s position and exposed the danger of treating Gaul as already conquered. Even after major victories, Roman control depended on supply routes, shifting alliances and the willingness of communities to submit.

Alesia — the siege that defined him

The decisive confrontation of 52 BC came at Alesia. Vercingetorix, an Arvernian leader who had assembled a broad but not universal coalition, withdrew into the fortified settlement while a relief army was raised. Caesar’s forces built an inward-facing siege line around it, then an outward-facing line to defend against relief. Ditches, ramparts, towers and concealed obstacles turned the surrounding landscape into an engineered battlefield. The lengths in Caesar’s account correspond to roughly sixteen kilometres for the inner circuit and twenty-one for the outer one. The essential achievement was not a single wall but a defended system in which the besiegers could resist attacks from two directions.

Caesar reports eighty thousand defenders and a relief force of about a quarter of a million infantry, figures that modern readers should not accept uncritically. Repeated attacks on the Roman lines failed, and Vercingetorix surrendered. Caesar describes the surrender briefly; Plutarch supplies the theatrical scene in which the Gallic leader rides around Caesar and sits at his feet. Those are different kinds of account, written for different purposes. Vercingetorix remained a Roman prisoner and was executed in connection with Caesar’s triumph in 46 BC. Military victory thus became both a public celebration at Rome and the final humiliation of an enemy leader.

Caesar the writer: warfare as literature

Caesar was not merely a general who sent dispatches. His Commentarii de Bello Gallico is a sustained Latin narrative of his campaigns, organised into seven books covering 58–52 BC. An eighth book continuing the story was written by Aulus Hirtius. The timing and manner in which Caesar’s books reached readers remain debated, so it is too simple to imagine a firmly documented annual publishing schedule. Their political value is nevertheless clear: they explained distant wars to a Roman audience and represented the author as an energetic commander responding reasonably to threats and difficulties.

The prose style is one of the work’s great strengths. Caesar normally refers to himself in the third person, giving his judgments the appearance of impersonal description. Direct language and careful sequencing can make complicated movements seem inevitable once he explains them. Cicero admired the commentaries’ unadorned elegance, praise quoted by Suetonius in chapter 56. That elegance is precisely why the reader must stay alert. A narrative can be clear and informative while still omitting alternatives, magnifying an opponent’s danger or shifting responsibility for a setback.

Beyond the wars, Caesar wrote poetry, speeches, grammatical works and political polemic. His De Analogia dealt with language; his Anticato attacked the reputation of Cato the Younger. Much of this writing survives only in fragments or references. He was also an accomplished orator, although the claim that Cicero ranked him neatly ‘second only to himself’ is too tidy. His funeral speech for his aunt Julia connected the family to kings and gods, while the public treatment of her husband Marius’s memory had political significance. Writing, speaking and remembering the past were all instruments in the competition for authority.

He was, in short, a man of genuine intellectual seriousness who used writing the way he used everything else: as a tool of power.

Cleopatra: intimacy and dynastic politics

When Caesar arrived in Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey in 48 BC, he encountered a dynastic struggle between Cleopatra VII and her brother Ptolemy XIII. Pompey had already been murdered by men acting for the young king’s regime. Caesar asserted a right to arbitrate the dispute, invoking Rome’s relationship with their father, Ptolemy XII, and his will. Egypt mattered because of its wealth, grain and strategic position. Cleopatra, about twenty-one, needed military and political support to recover her throne; Caesar, about fifty-two, was both a dangerous outsider and a potential ally.

Plutarch tells the famous story that Cleopatra gained access to Caesar by being carried into the palace in a bedding sack by Apollodorus. The familiar rolled carpet is a later version of the image. The episode may preserve a real clandestine meeting, but its vivid details belong to an ancient biographical narrative written long afterwards. We cannot establish that the two became lovers on that same night. Their relationship combined personal intimacy with hard political interests, and a careful account should leave room for what the sources do not tell us.

Cleopatra was an active ruler, not simply a romantic interruption in Caesar’s career. Plutarch’s Life of Antony praises her linguistic abilities and says she dealt with several peoples without an interpreter, including Egyptians. That supports her reputation for unusual linguistic accomplishment; it does not justify a precisely measured command of nine languages. Her survival depended on managing a court, an army and relations with Rome. Caesar’s intervention made sense within that struggle, without requiring invented conversations in which the two instantly recognised a kindred mind.

The Alexandrian War placed Caesar in considerable danger before reinforcements helped turn the fighting in his favour. Ptolemy XIII died, and Cleopatra was restored as ruler alongside another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. Later accounts also associate Caesar with a voyage on the Nile, but the extent and chronology of that journey are uncertain. What is secure is that he spent months in Egypt during an unresolved Roman civil war, before moving on to other campaigns. The Egyptian episode exposed both the reach of Roman military intervention and the ability of a local dynasty to pursue its own interests through it.

Cleopatra’s son Ptolemy XV, commonly called Caesarion, was born in 47 BC and was presented as Caesar’s child. His paternity was disputed in antiquity and cannot now be proved. Suetonius records competing claims rather than settling the matter. Cleopatra later stayed in Rome while Caesar was married to Calpurnia, and her presence gave Roman observers ample material for criticism. Crucially, Caesarion was not the heir named in Caesar’s will: the principal heir and adopted son was his great-nephew Gaius Octavius, the future Augustus.

The relationship sharpened questions about Caesar’s position, but it cannot be identified as the single or equal cause of the assassination. Roman suspicion of kingship had its own long political history, and Caesar’s accumulating honours troubled senators independently of Cleopatra. Claims that she was about to become Rome’s queen or that Caesarion had been designated to inherit Rome turn speculation into fact. The better-supported issue was whether meaningful aristocratic competition and republican checks could survive a ruler whose command no colleague could effectively match.

Crossing the Rubicon: the die is cast

The civil war had begun before Caesar met Cleopatra. His alliance with Pompey deteriorated after the death of Caesar’s daughter Julia, Pompey’s wife, in 54 BC and Crassus’s defeat and death at Carrhae in 53 BC. Disputes over Caesar’s command, a further consulship and his vulnerability to prosecution produced an increasingly bitter confrontation. Senators were divided, and negotiations did occur; there was no single unified ‘Senate side’ throughout the crisis. In January 49 BC, emergency measures at Rome and the collapse of compromise brought the contest to its decisive stage.

Caesar marched south instead.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon into Italy with troops in January 49 BC, conventionally dated to the night of 10–11 January. The river marked the boundary of his provincial command, and the advance was a challenge to the lawful authorities of the Republic. Suetonius and Plutarch preserve versions of the famous remark about casting the die; their wording is part of the literary tradition, not an audio record of the crossing. Caesar moved rapidly while Pompey and many senators withdrew from Rome and then Italy. Occupying the capital did not win the war: control of armies, provinces and supplies mattered more than possession of the city alone.

1. 59 BC · ConsulCaesar holds Rome’s senior elected magistracy and secures the provincial command that leads to the Gallic campaigns.
2. 49 BC · The Rubicon and first dictatorshipHe brings troops into Italy, opening civil war. His brief first dictatorship late that year is used to conduct elections.
3. 48 BC · PharsalusHe defeats Pompey in Greece. Pompey flees to Egypt and is murdered. The civil war continues elsewhere.
4. 47 BC · ZelaCaesar defeats Pharnaces II. Suetonius associates the slogan veni, vidi, vici with the later triumph celebrating the campaign.
5. 46 BC · Thapsus and a ten-year dictatorshipVictory in Africa weakens the remaining opposition; exceptional honours and a longer dictatorship follow.
6. 45 BC · Calendar reform and MundaThe Julian calendar takes effect on 1 January. Caesar defeats the remaining major Pompeian army in Spain.
7. 44 BC · Dictatorship in perpetuityCaesar receives dictator perpetuo early in the year, refuses a diadem offered by Antony at the Lupercalia, and is assassinated on 15 March.

What Caesar actually did with power

Caesar’s dictatorship was more than a prelude to his assassination. Between campaigns he reorganised institutions, settled veterans, addressed debt and altered the calendar. His time in Rome was limited, and serious armed opposition continued until the Spanish campaign of 45 BC. That matters when assessing both his achievements and their limits: some measures were enacted, others only planned, and many were administered through trusted associates. The reforms show a capacity to confront practical problems, but they also increased dependence on one man’s decisions.

The calendar was his most enduring reform. The Republican system had become badly misaligned with the seasons through irregular intercalation. In 46 BC, with specialist advice traditionally associated with the astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar arranged the transition to a solar calendar. The new system began on 1 January 45 BC, following an exceptionally long adjustment year of 445 days. Its year of 365 days, with provision for leap days, became the basis of later European calendrical practice. The Gregorian reform began replacing it in 1582, although adoption differed widely between countries and communities. It is therefore misleading to say that the Julian calendar simply stopped governing all of Europe in that year.

Other measures addressed citizenship, representation, settlement and finance. Caesar’s regime extended citizenship in northern Italy, enlarged the Senate, established colonies for veterans and other settlers, and reduced the number receiving Rome’s public grain distribution. Debt measures sought to manage obligations without a general cancellation. Suetonius also lists ambitious projects, including public libraries, legal organisation, roads and drainage. These must be distinguished from completed works: the proposed drainage of the Pontine Marshes was not an achievement Caesar actually delivered. The broader pattern joined practical administration to patronage, as newly promoted individuals and settled veterans owed much to the dictator.

His supporters could point to action on problems that previous governments had failed to resolve. His opponents could point to the loss of effective checks on his authority. Both observations matter, but neither proves what Caesar ultimately intended to call his regime. Roman offices and procedures still existed; their freedom to constrain him was greatly diminished. His final title, dictator perpetuo, granted in early 44 BC, made the question especially urgent by removing the expectation of a near-term end to his dictatorship.

The Ides of March: how Caesar was killed

Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus became leading figures in the conspiracy, which also included men who had served Caesar closely. Their motives cannot be reduced to one emotion: defence of republican liberty, rivalry, offended status and anxiety about the future could overlap. Brutus cultivated the memory of the earlier Brutus who, according to Roman tradition, helped expel the kings. He had also received Caesar’s pardon after supporting Pompey. Stories that he was Caesar’s biological son are not credible evidence of paternity. They add a dramatic family betrayal to an event already fraught with political and personal obligations.

Suetonius says more than sixty men joined the conspiracy, whereas twenty-three is the number of wounds reported on Caesar’s body. The two figures must not be confused. Caesar was preparing to leave for a campaign against Parthia, giving the conspirators reason to act before he departed. On 15 March 44 BC, the Senate was to meet in the curia attached to Pompey’s theatre complex. The murder did not take place in the familiar Senate House now standing in the Roman Forum.

Omens, warnings and the ancient narrative

Ancient narratives surround the assassination with dreams, prodigies and warnings. Suetonius and Plutarch tell of Calpurnia’s fears and Caesar’s hesitation about attending the meeting. They also make Decimus Brutus, a trusted associate who was part of the conspiracy, instrumental in persuading him to go. These stories show how Romans explained a momentous death through religion, character and fate. They should be reported as ancient traditions, without combining them with Shakespeare’s later dramatic inventions or treating supernatural warnings as established events.

The exchange with the seer Spurinna, in which the Ides have arrived but have not yet passed, belongs to that same tradition. Its precision makes it memorable. It does not make it independently verifiable. A responsible narrative can preserve the story while acknowledging the distance between the killing and the surviving biographies.

The core sequence is clear despite variations in detail. The conspirators gathered around Caesar as though presenting a request; Tillius Cimber seized his toga, and Casca struck. Others joined the attack, and Caesar fell. Suetonius reports twenty-three wounds and attributes to the physician Antistius the judgment that only one, a wound to the chest, was fatal. This is an ancient medical report at second hand, not a surviving modern autopsy. Accounts differ about Caesar’s final reactions and words, so an exact reconstruction of each movement would claim more certainty than the evidence permits. Suetonius, chapter 82 preserves both a narrative and an alternative report of his last words.

The killing threw Rome into uncertainty. The conspirators presented themselves as liberators, but they had not secured control of the state or a consensus about what should happen next. Fear, bargaining and public demonstrations followed. The Republic did not disappear by a legal switch at the moment Caesar died; its institutions remained objects of struggle. What failed was the hope that removing one man would, by itself, restore a stable political settlement.

What the conspirators got catastrophically wrong

The conspirators had removed Caesar without removing his supporters, his veterans or the institutions and appointments shaped by his rule. Their coalition was united more clearly over the assassination than over a workable political programme. Cicero was not a member of the plot and is not securely shown to have known its details in advance, although he welcomed Caesar’s removal afterwards. The immediate settlement involved bargaining, including an amnesty for the assassins and confirmation of Caesar’s acts. That compromise illustrates how difficult a simple return to an imagined pre-Caesarian Republic had become.

Mark Antony, Caesar’s fellow consul in 44 BC, was a crucial participant in these negotiations. Ancient accounts say Trebonius kept him outside the Senate meeting while the attack took place. Antony then used his office, connections and association with Caesar to preserve and extend his influence. His role was not limited to a single speech: he had to manage the Senate, Caesar’s supporters and the political value of the dead dictator’s papers, decisions and memory.

Caesar’s public funeral became a turning point in the struggle over that memory.

Ancient authors describe Antony’s address, the display of Caesar’s bloodied clothing and a crowd whose anger turned against the assassins. Appian also describes a wax image showing the wounds. These accounts should not be fused into a verbatim script, and Shakespeare’s famous funeral speech is a much later creation. Caesar’s will made his gardens available to the public and provided a monetary bequest. Such gifts gave ordinary Romans reasons of their own to mourn him. Brutus and Cassius eventually left Italy, raised forces in the east, and were defeated by Antony and Octavian at Philippi in 42 BC, two years after the assassination.

Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian, then eighteen, emerged as his adopted son and principal heir under the will. That name and inheritance brought opportunities, but his victory was neither immediate nor inevitable. A new round of alliances, proscriptions and civil wars followed. Octavian, Antony and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate in 43 BC; Antony and Octavian later became enemies. Only after Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Egypt in 30 BC did Octavian become the unchallenged victor. The settlement of 27 BC gave him the name Augustus and became a conventional starting point for the principate. Caesar’s assassins had hoped to recover republican liberty. The wars that followed instead helped make durable one-man rule possible.

How well do you know Julius Caesar?

Try these six questions, then open each answer. The explanations distinguish secure chronology from stories preserved by ancient writers.