May You Live In Interesting Times

Julius Caesar

Dateline: 07/13/98

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

-Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"

Today, to mark the anniversary of Julius Caesar's birth, I will provide fairly objective historical information, as well as two interpretive challenges to Fry's claim that Caesar was the greatest man of all time. The objective portion contains a synopsis of what to me seem the major stages of Caesar's life/career following the death of Sulla. My musings precede the considered opinions of readers.

Influenced by A Noise of War in which A. J. Langguth presents Caesar as a superstition-spurning, overwhelmingly lucky man, my pedestrian thoughts dwell on the comparison between Caesar and President Clinton. Both men were embroiled in affairs -- Lewinsky, Flowers/Cleopatra, Cato's sister, Brutus' mother -- that threatened to harm their careers, but like Teflon®, nothing sticks. Likewise, with Clinton's legal and Caesar's military battles, the outcome doesn't seem to hinge on what they did or failed to do, but on the (in)actions of others -- the McDougals/Pompey and Vercingetorix.

That's today: Last night I finished Langguth's 1994 story of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero. Two years ago, when I read Morgan Llywelyn's Druids (which told of Caesar's Gallic operations), Caesar seemed brutal and heartless; and when, last month, I read Fry's biography, Great Caesar, I saw him as a brilliant, affable, renaissance man.

UPDATE (3/8/99): For others who have compared our leader's world with that of antiquity, see:
(www.post-gazette.com:80/regionstate/19981213close3.asp) Close Encounters; It's a Tale of Elizabethan or Roman Proportions and (www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/dowd/011099dowd.html) Avid Ovid Readers (03/08/99).

Next page > Caesar's Bio >