Julius Caesar (July 12/13, 102/100 B.C. - March 15, 44 B.C.) may have been the greatest man of all times. By age 39/40, Caesar had been a widower, divorce, governor (propraetor) of Further Spain, captured by pirates, hailed imperator by adoring troops, quaestor, aedile, consul, and pontifex maximus -- a lifelong honor usually reserved for the end of a man's career. What was left for his remaining 16/17 years? That for which Julius Caesar was most well known: the Triumvirate, military victories in Gaul, the dictatorship, civil war, and, finally, assassination.
Julius Caesar was a general, a statesman, a lawgiver, an orator, an historian, and a mathematician. His government (with modifications) endured for centuries. He never lost a war. He fixed the calendar. He created the first news sheet, Acta Diurna, which was posted on the forum to let everyone who cared to read it know what the Assembly and Senate were up to. He also instigated an enduring law against extortion.
Caesar traced his ancestry to Romulus, putting him in as aristocratic a position as possible, but his association with his uncle Marius' populism put Caesar in political hot water with many of his social class.
Under the penultimate king (Servius Tullius), patricians (the privileged class) developed -- just in time to take over as ruling class when the Romans, fed up with kings, drove out Tullius' murderer and successor, Tarquinius Superbus.
At the start of the Republic, the Roman people were mainly farmers, but between the fall of monarchy and the rise of Julius Caesar, Rome changed dramatically. First it mastered Italy; then it turned its sights to the Carthaginian hold on the Mediterranean, to gain supremacy over which it needed a fighting naval force. Citizen fighters left their fields prey to land speculators, although if all went well, they returned home with ample booty. Between slaves and the conquered wealth, the hard-working Roman became the luxury seeking spendthrift. Real work was carried out by slaves. A rural lifestyle gave way to urban sophistication.
The governing style that developed as an antidote to monarchy had included severe limitations on the power of any one individual. But by the time large-scale, enduring wars became the norm, Rome needed powerful leaders whose terms would not end mid-battle.
But the conservatives resisted change, seeing the downfall of the Republic in every nuance of reform. Thus Caesar's murder was incorrectly hailed by them as the only way back to the old values.
