Julius Caesar

The general who crossed the Rubicon and ended the Republic

Gaius Julius Caesar was the Roman general and statesman whose career ended the Republic. A patrician who cast himself as the people's champion, he took the consulship in 59 BC, conquered Gaul in nine years of war and wrote the account of it himself. Ordered to give up his army, he crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, beat Pompey at Pharsalus and made himself dictator for life. Senators who feared a king stabbed him on the Ides of March 44 BC. His name became the title of the emperors, his calendar is still in use, and his adopted heir Augustus built the monarchy he had only sketched.

Timeline

100 BC

Born — In Rome, into an old patrician family allied to Marius

63 BC

Pontifex maximus — Elected chief priest of Rome over two senior rivals, with borrowed money

59 BC

Consul — First consulship, backed by his pact with Pompey and Crassus

58 BC

To Gaul — Takes up his command; defeats the Helvetii and Ariovistus in the first season

52 BC

Alesia — Vercingetorix surrenders; Gaul is won

Jan 49 BC

Crosses the Rubicon — Marches on Italy with one legion; civil war begins

9 Aug 48 BC

Pharsalus — Routs Pompey's larger army in Thessaly

Feb 44 BC

Dictator for life — The Senate names him dictator perpetuo

15 Mar 44 BC

Assassinated — Stabbed by some sixty senators in the Curia of Pompey

Family

photo Gaius Julius Caesar praetor · died 85 BC

photo Aurelia of the Aurelii Cottae · died 54 BC

photo Julius Caesar 100 BC–44 BC

photo Cornelia daughter of Cinna · married 84, died 69 BC

photo Julia wife of Pompey · c. 76–54 BC

photo Caesarion Ptolemy XV, son of Cleopatra · 47–30 BC

photo Octavian adopted in his will · 63 BC–AD 14

Caesar never acknowledged Caesarion in writing: Cleopatra gave the boy his name, and Caesar's friend Oppius wrote a pamphlet denying the paternity. Octavian had him killed in 30 BC.

The patrician who chose the people

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in Rome on 12 July 100 BC into an old patrician family that had money troubles and few recent consuls. His aunt Julia was the wife of Marius, the popular general, and Caesar married Cornelia, daughter of Marius's ally Cinna. When Sulla took Rome in 82 BC and ordered him to divorce her, the teenager refused and hid until friends bought his pardon. Sulla is said to have warned that there were many Mariuses in the boy.

He climbed the ladder of offices with borrowed money and a gift for spectacle: quaestor in 69, aedile in 65, pontifex maximus in 63, praetor in 62, governor of Further Spain. In 60 BC he made a private pact with Pompey, Rome's greatest general, and Crassus, its richest man. As consul in 59 he forced their programme through and secured for himself the governorship of Gaul.

Gaul

From 58 to 50 BC Caesar conquered Gaul, roughly modern France and Belgium, fighting the Helvetii, Ariovistus's Germans, the Belgae, the Veneti and the Nervii, bridging the Rhine twice and twice landing in Britain. He reported each year to Rome in the Commentarii de Bello Gallico, seven books of plain, third-person prose that made his case to the public while his enemies in the Senate sharpened theirs. The great Gallic rising under Vercingetorix ended at Alesia in 52 BC, where Caesar's army besieged the town and beat a relieving force at the same time. Plutarch puts the human cost at a million dead and a million enslaved; the numbers are his, but the scale was new.

Meanwhile the pact frayed. Crassus died at Carrhae in 53; Caesar's daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, had died the year before. Pompey drifted to the Senate's side.

The Rubicon

In January 49 BC the Senate ordered Caesar to lay down his command. To return to Rome as a private citizen meant prosecution; to cross the Rubicon, the stream marking the edge of his province, with troops meant civil war. He crossed it with one legion.

“Iacta alea est.” — The die is cast.

— Suetonius, *Life of the Deified Julius* 32. Plutarch has him say it in Greek, quoting the playwright Menander.

Pompey abandoned Italy for Greece. Caesar took Spain from Pompey's legates, then followed him east and destroyed his larger army at Pharsalus on 9 August 48 BC. Pompey fled to Egypt and was murdered as he landed. Caesar arrived days later, spent a winter besieged in Alexandria, and left Cleopatra on the throne — and pregnant. Zela in 47 (“veni, vidi, vici”), Thapsus in 46 and Munda in 45 finished the Pompeians. At Rome he was made dictator, in 46 for ten years and, in February 44, for life. He reformed the calendar, founded colonies, enlarged the Senate and pardoned his enemies.

The Ides of March

Clemency did not buy loyalty. To a Senate that had lost its power, a dictator for life who wore red boots and had his head on the coins looked like a king. Some sixty senators, led by Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus — whom Caesar had pardoned after Pharsalus — stabbed him at a meeting of the Senate in the Curia of Pompey on 15 March 44 BC. He was fifty-five. His will adopted his eighteen-year-old great-nephew Octavian, the future Augustus; Cicero, who had cheered the deed, was dead within two years and the Republic soon after.

Caesar mattered because he showed that the Republic's institutions could not contain a commander with a loyal army and a popular following. His name became the title of the emperors, and later of kaisers and tsars; his calendar, lightly corrected, is still in use; the month of his birth still bears his name.