Julius Caesar (born c. 100 Before the Year 1; died in 44 of the Christian scheme of the world — but according to whose calendar? The Georgian, or the one named for him?).

What a guy (but they said that about Hitler, too, before the conquering started — only in German*). But the skeptic in me wonders, to a certain extent, what all the fuss is about. Yes, Republican Rome was in its own way a human marvel (though not one I would have enjoyed living in). Yes, he was at the peak of Republican Roman society. But the obvious points are that 1) Julius did not create that Rome, nor can he claim credit for it; and 2) his career is famous for undermining it. He was betwixt and between: his rule is thought of as marking the end of the truly ancient world,** and it was left to Octavian, who rode on his coattails yet who also represents a kind of overthrow, to inaugurate the imperial stage of Rome.

Julius as a historical figure is wrapped up in so many layers of romance, glamour, fame, reference and mystery that it’s hard to detect the grimy (he must have been, at times) and flawed (he must have been, ditto) man within the idea. In fact, he’s not so much a man as a category. The proof of this lies in the fact that future rulers took his cognomen as their very title, rendered in their own language, throughout the world: not only the familiar Kaiser and Tsar, in Germany and Russia, but also Qaysar in Arabic and Urdu, Kayser in Turkish, and various other recognisable forms in places where you’d least expect it, including Indonesia.+

But the question is: Why? Yes he ventured into faraway, exotic lands; yes he was a conqueror; yes he was a popular statesman; yes he was obviously a whizz at publicity (writing memoirs of his conquests and clearly impressing his fellow Romans). But: so were a lot of men throughout history, and even some exceptional women. In so far as he was a conquering statesman, he is one of an elect but hardly tiny group, considering all the ages. “Beware the successful general has always been a problem”.++

Yet, to the extent that Julius was conquering a then-unknown world, encountering tribes never before described, spreading what then was thought of as civilisation to barbaric parts, he was surely one of a kind. And as such, his lustre or distinction could only ever be his own. To borrow the name of Caesar when you are a mere kinglet that has never ventured anywhere to initiate anything except the satisfaction of your vanity and lust strikes me as presumptuous and preposterous.

But wannabe kings and tyrants have never worried much about presumption and absurdity. And you can see why they have been drawn to the idea of Caesar — to the man that ended the Republic and founded an empire, through his protégé Octavian if not his progeny (Cesarion). The wannabes didn’t want to be called ‘Alexander’, despite the Great’s fearless and heartless conquests. For Alexander’s empire didn’t last:  the Macedonian wasn’t, ultimately, a founder. He merely spread, through the sword, what others had already invented. What’s more, we are told that Alexander’s name is hated in some parts of Asia to this day. Whereas no one hates Julius Caesar.

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*See Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth:  Image And Reality In The Third Reich.

**See Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution; also, the brilliant work by Jan H. Blits, The End Of The Ancient Republic:  Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

+See Wikipedia for a list:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title).

++Mr Brighton Payne.