Julius Caesar

The book tells of the childhood and youth of Guy Julius Caesar, of the very House of Julii; covers Caesar’s education, his life as a priest of Jupiter, and the beginning of his political career. The reader gradually immerses in Julius Caesar’s consular activities, learns about his politics, mistakes and failures, the wars he waged, his plans for state transformation, laws, and ideas. Much of the book focuses on Caesar the conqueror: his struggle for power, the war with the Parthians, the uprising in Gaul, his relationships with enemies and envious people—and as a consequence, the rise of a conspiracy and the assassination of Caesar. Attention is also given to Cleopatra, whom Caesar fell in love with without restraint in his fifty-third year. The authors try to answer the question: what role did Caesar play in history? Not the role of a great statesman called to bring order to the chaos of the era—but the role of a great man of action, destined to destroy the old world with its dying traditions and build a new epoch embodying commerce, religious disbelief, the absence of family feeling, Eastern luxury, speculation, bribery, a democratic spirit, intellectual refinement, the first softening of barbaric cruelty, and passion for art and knowledge.