Reflections on Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy

Caesar is a really complicated guy. He was very talented as a general and in basically everything he did, and I have a lot of sympathy to his populare political moves. Basically, he fought against the Roman aristocracy and helped the poorer people on the fringes of Roman society. He also gave clemency to his enemies and treated people well. However, he committed what we would today call a genocide in what was then called Gaul (France) and Britannia (England).  He also had a hand in destroying the Republic, a form of government that is nice; although essentially an oligarchy ruled by the wealthiest, it at least offers a version of democracy. We gotta remember thought that his role was by no means something that only he could have done. The Republic had already been screwed up royally by Marius, Sulla, Saturninus, Cinna, Catiline, etc. and there was always another one of these aristocrats trying to do what Caesar did. Obviously everyone has their own style of doing things, but I cannot imagine that Pompey winning the Civil War would have reverted Rome to its old Republican virtues. Just wasn’t gonna happen. In sum, it’s hard to have one opinion about the guy politically because he would not fall into any of our modern political categories and because its hard to say how he would have been different from other Romans at the time, especially since he was assassinated only having been dictator for like two years.

Reading this has made me feel a lot better about American democracy. When you read through the life of Caesar, what stands out is the insane amount of bloodshed in Rome throughout his life. In the week and a half when Caesar triumphed four times, he claimed to have slain over one million enemies of the republic. Over the course of his life the Republic seems to have spent as many years in civil war as in peace, and you get to see how the Republic ends because all the republican senators are killed during these wars. So, when you look at the USA in 2018 we are still doing much, much better.

As for the book itself, at points it reads like a novel and is spectacular. At about 600 pages though, there are definitely a few parts worth skimming. The highlights for me were the fleshed-out details of the battles and the way the author gives you the fuller context of Roman life in the 1^st century BC. I would recommend to anybody who wants to learn more about the period and Caesar himself. I stopped reading and picked it back up again after a few weeks because I was more interested in the period than in Caesar but I’m glad I returned to it.

Miscellaneous Facts

Caesar was a womanizer on a pretty big level. He banged basically every Roman aristocrat’s wife or sister of that generation. Poor Marcus Brutus, from Shakespearean fame “et tu Brutus,” had a mom and a sister who both had affairs with Caesar.

The book mentions that Alexander the Great, with whom Caesar is often compared, only took part in five pitched battles and three major sieges plus many smaller encounters. Caesar, on the other hand, fought 50 battles in his life, a record that wouldn’t get beaten until Napoleon came around, some 1,850 years later. I almost don’t believe those numbers for Alex though and I need to do more research on that.