Caesar

Caesar

In history it is rare to find truly great leadership, but every once in a while someone comes along so charismatic that even his enemies cannot but admire him. Rome in the first century B.C. was replete with statesmen, generals and leaders who to this day are remembered as being among the greatest and most fascinating that ever lived. But there is no doubt as to the most memorable of these. Gaius Julius Caesar lived from 100 to 44 B.C. and though his life began and ended with Rome beset by internal strife and the threat of civil war, he did more than anyone to consolidate the power of Rome and facilitate the rise of the Roman empire. It is true that the political and social climate of Rome had been changing rapidly for two hundred years before Caesar, but it is a moot point whether Rome would have proceeded towards monarchy without Caesar. The important thing is that he did live and reshape the Roman world; the life of Caesar was the catalyst for four centuries of the most extensive and influential empire in human history. Aside from his legendary military prowess, shrewd political mind, oratorical and literary brilliance, reputation for even handedness and demagogic appeal, part of what fascinates us even today about Caesar is that his assassination in 44 B.C. by a group of short sighted senators left a feeling of inconclusiveness to the story of Caesar. Was his ultimate goal a monarchy or did he simply wish to drastically reform Rome to ensure control of its conquests? Did he really aspire to conquer the whole earth as Alexander had? What would he have accomplished in the years after 44 B.C.? What he did manage to accomplish was extraordinary. In his conquests as a general Plutarch ranks him as the greatest in the h...

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...s difficult to call a man a transformational leader when his life began and ended with his country in chaos, but for this man there can be no doubt that his life forever transformed the history of his people. He was indeed born at the right time in Roman history, but we cannot attribute his success to this alone. Does history make the man or does man make history? This does not matter. History happens and men play a part in it whether they are the audience or the actors, whether a puppet or the hand that guides it. Caesar would have scoffed at such idle speculation and continued making history.

Bibliography:

Bibliography

WORKS CITED 1. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. 2. Plutarch, The Fall of the Roman Republic. New York: Penguin Books, 1972. 3. Hooper, Finley A., Roman Realities. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979