There are probably more websites on Gaius Julius Caesar than any other person from the Classical World! We'll try hard to find the best... but if you've found one that you think we should share with others please let us know!
Solid information on a great new website.
Long, detailed life history by Jona Lendering on Livius.org that also includes tranlations of what the ancient sources tell us about him. The sections on "assessment" and "sources" are very valuable.
Excellent.
Another detailed bio - this time from Wikipedia. Solid with additional bonuses of hyperlinked text (meaning you can go off and spend ages learning about things you never knew) and relevant side-articles such as the pronunciation of his name.
Almost a year-by-year account of Caesar's life. Good for quick reference.
A great Gallic revolt occured against Rome in 52 BC. The leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, avoided set-piece battles - instead attacking supply bases and Gaulish hill-forts allied to the Romans. Caesar evetually surrounded Vercongetorix in the hill-fort (oppidum) at Alesia in eastern Gaul. When a relief force of Gauls, numbering 250,000 couldn't break through the Romans and left, Vercingetorix surrendered.
Painting of 1899 by Lionel Noel Royer in the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy en Velay, France.
Caesar's personal enrichment and glory through his war in Gaul made him enemies in Rome who wished to see him prosecuted and exiled at the very least. When the Roman Senate refused Caesar's request to be made consul (which would have allowed him immunity from prosection for a year), he acted decisively: he illegally led his army across the boundary between his province Gaul and Italy - a small river in northern Italy called the Rubicon - saying "The die is now cast". He was now a rebel-in-arms. And his action made the term "to cross the Rubicon" a metaphor for an irrevocable action.
Today, no-one knows where the Rubicon is or whether it still exists!
Fantastic computer-generated-image by Michael Komarck (2005).
"I came, I saw, I conquered" exclaimed in a letter in 47BC by J.C. after his swift and decisive victory against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the
Battle of Zale (modern Zile) in north-west Turkey.
Caesar arranged to have himself appointed dictator for life in early 44BC - this was the final straw for many senators, sixty of whom conspired to kill him. On the
Ides (15th) of March 44BC, a group of them led by Brutus and Cassius took the drastic step of stabbing Caesar to death in a hall being temporarily used as the Senate's debating chamber adjoining the Theatre of Pompey. He fell, head covered, under a statue of his former enemy Pompey.
By Vincenzo Camuccini, c.1800, in the Galleria di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy.
Here's
another famous painting of Caesar's assassination by Jean-Leon Gerome entitled "The Death of Caesar," (1867) in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA.
Assassination spot: here's a model of the
area around the Theatre of Pompey (in the centre). To its left stretch the adjoining porticoes and in the centre of the back portico is a larger hall. This is the most likely candidate for the place where the Senate were meeting that day.
Today, the closest we can come to the spot is Largo Argentina in Rome. The visible remains are temples... the temporary Senate House - and Caesar's assassination spot - would be somewhere under the modern pink building.
Caesar almost certainly did not, in fact, utter these precise words upon his assassination. Plutarch says that he died wordlessly while Suetonius says that he said "Kai su, teknon?" - Greek for "You too, my child?"
It is Shakespeare who roughly translated this Greek phrase into the Latin "Et tu, Brute?" for his play Julius Caesar written in 1600.
For many, the latest theatrical incarnation of Julius Caesar played by Ciaran Hinds in "Rome" is terrific.
recent discovery:
This sculpture of Julius Caesar was probably thrown into a river in 46 BC - that is two years before was assassinated. In which case, it is the only existing sculpture of him that was definately made in his lifetime.
This white marble bust of Julius Caesar - and perhaps the finest one in existence - is only the sixth original Roman portrait of Caesar known - although it was probably made around 100 years after his death. It was found in 2003 on the small Italian island of Pantelleria, south of Sicily. It dates to mid 1st and was found with 2 others in an ancient cistern in an old Roman area high above the main village On top of the cistern were remains of a major sacrificial offering. Clearly there was some attempt to hide and save these three busts at some point in the ancient history of Pantelleria
An amazing example of ancient sculpture! Made sometime in the 1st-century BC or AD, and thought to have come from Rome, this bust is made of Egyptian green slate (except the marble eyes which are modern) and conveys the majesty and authority of Caesar. Note how he's shown not in military uniform but in the tunic and toga of the Roman statesman.
In the Altes Museum in Berlin.
In the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia.
In the Vatican Museum.
In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Bronze bust in the Altes Museum in Berlin.
In the Montemartini Museum in Rome.
In the British Museum, London.
Seven books survive (an eighth was added by Aulus Hirtius, a military officer who served with Caesar).
Here's the
English translation.
His three books give Caesar's point of view - and some facts are at variance with those recorded by his opponent Cicero!
Here's the
English translation.
This popular salad (romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with Parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper) was created in the 1920s in a hotel in Tijuana, Mexico by Caesar Cardini!
J.C. was probably not born this way as sometimes believed; it was a risky process that nearly always resulted in the death of the mother - and Julius Caesar's mother lived on for many years after.
The term "Caesarian birth" (nowadays more popularly called "C-section") may have come from an ancestor of J.C.'s born this way (as Pliny the Elder tells us) or, in fact, be derived from the Latin word caedere (supine stem caesum) meaning "to cut".
