Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: the late Republic: its institutions, the power of generals, the conflicts between populares and optimates, Marius and Sulla.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family; his early career and the cursus honorum; his alliance with Pompey and Crassus.
• Career: the consulship of 59 BC; the Gallic War; the civil war; his dictatorship and reforms; his relationships with key individuals; his assassination.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC.

• Institutions: the Senate, annual magistrates (the cursus honorum: quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul), tribunes and assemblies. Governors of provinces held imperium (military command) but could not lead troops out of their province.
• Generals and armies: since Marius, soldiers were often poor volunteers who looked to their general for land at discharge, giving commanders a personal following.
• Civil war: Sulla marched on Rome (88), won a civil war and ruled as dictator (from 82; he resigned soon after and retired by 79), killing his enemies through proscriptions.
• Pompey rose through great commands (pirates 67, Mithridates 66–62); Crassus was the richest man in Rome. Cato and Cicero defended the Senate's authority.
• Values: nobles competed for dignitas (standing) and gloria; the Republic prized libertas (freedom from domination by one man).

• Born 100 (some scholars argue 102) into the patrician Julii, who claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas' son Iulus. His aunt Julia married Marius.
• 84: married Cornelia, daughter of Cinna. Under Sulla he refused to divorce her, went into hiding and was spared after pleas by relatives and the Vestals.
• Service in Asia: won the civic crown at Mytilene (about 80). Captured by pirates (about 75); after his ransom he had them crucified. Studied rhetoric at Rhodes.
• 69: quaestor in Further Spain; funeral speeches for his aunt Julia (displaying Marius' images) and Cornelia.
• 65: curule aedile; lavish games, huge debts.
• 63: elected pontifex maximus. In the debate on the Catilinarian conspirators he argued against execution without trial.
• 62: praetor. The Bona Dea scandal: he divorced Pompeia, saying his wife must be above suspicion.
• 61–60: governor of Further Spain; gave up a triumph to stand for consul.

• The so-called First Triumvirate: an informal alliance with Pompey (land for veterans; approval of his eastern settlement) and Crassus (relief for the tax-farmers). Sealed by Pompey's marriage to Caesar's daughter Julia.
• Consul 59 with Bibulus: land law (including Campania), ratification of Pompey's settlement, the tax-farmers' rebate. Bibulus' religious obstruction was ignored; he stayed at home, and wits spoke of the consulship of ‘Julius and Caesar’.
• Lex Vatinia: Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years; the Senate added Transalpine Gaul.

Effects: enormous wealth and a loyal, experienced army; huge loss of Gallic life and enslavement; Caesar's Commentaries presented the war to readers in Rome.

Meanwhile in Rome: Julia died (54); Crassus was killed at Carrhae (53); riots led to Pompey's sole consulship (52), and Pompey moved closer to the optimates.

• Dispute: when Caesar's command would end, and whether he could stand for a second consulship in absence (allowed by the law of the ten tribunes, 52). As a private citizen he could be prosecuted.
• December 50: the Senate voted 370 to 22 for both Caesar and Pompey to give up their armies, but the consul Marcellus ignored the vote.
• January 49: the Senate's final decree; tribunes Antony and Cassius fled; Caesar crossed the Rubicon (‘the die is cast’, Suetonius).
• 49: Pompey abandoned Italy; Caesar defeated Pompey's legates in Spain (Ilerda).
• 48: Pharsalus; Pompey murdered in Egypt. The Alexandrian War; Caesar supported Cleopatra VII.
• 47: Zela (‘veni, vidi, vici’).
• 46: Thapsus in Africa; Cato's suicide at Utica. Four triumphs.
• 45: Munda in Spain.
• Clemency (clementia): Caesar pardoned many enemies, including Brutus, Cassius and Cicero, unlike Sulla — but to proud nobles, being pardoned was itself a humiliation.

• Offices: dictator several times (for ten years from 46; for life from February 44) and repeated consulships.
• Senate enlarged to about 900; more praetors (16) and quaestors (40).
• Debt relief: property valued at pre-war prices, interest paid deducted.
• Grain dole recipients cut from 320,000 to 150,000; about 80,000 citizens settled in colonies overseas (Carthage, Corinth).
• Citizenship for the Transpadane Gauls (49) and others; most collegia banned.
• The Julian calendar from 1 January 45, with the astronomer Sosigenes, replacing a 355-day calendar whose intercalary months had been mismanaged.
• Building: the Forum of Caesar and temple of Venus Genetrix (46), the Basilica Julia, a new Senate house; plans for public libraries.
• Honours: the title Father of his Country, statues (one among the kings, one inscribed ‘to the unconquered god’), his portrait on coins, a golden chair, a month (Quintilis became Julius), a planned priest for his cult.

• Fears of kingship: at the Lupercalia (February 44) Antony offered him a diadem, which he refused; he failed to rise to greet the Senate; he was dictator for life.
• Conspirators: about 60, led by Brutus and Cassius, many of them pardoned Pompeians and some former Caesarians. Motives: libertas, the Senate's lost authority, personal grievances, and the timing before his Parthian campaign (due to leave on 18 March).
• He was stabbed 23 times in the Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey.
• Aftermath: no restoration of the Republic; renewed civil war, the rise of Octavian (his adopted heir), the Second Triumvirate and, eventually, the Principate. Caesar was deified in 42.

Modern views: Theodor Mommsen (19th century) saw a genius who saved Rome from a corrupt oligarchy; Ronald Syme (1939) saw the struggle of great men and factions; Erich Gruen (1974) argued the Republic was not doomed until Caesar's war; Christian Meier (1982) an outsider who never offered the Republic a new order; Adrian Goldsworthy (2006) a balanced political and military study.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Achievements: the conquest of Gaul; victory in civil war; clemency; reforms with lasting effects (calendar, colonies, citizenship).
• Criticisms: illegal methods in 59; brutality in Gaul; starting a civil war for his dignitas; autocratic rule and divine honours.
• Legacy: the end of the Republic in practice; the model and the name (Caesar) for later emperors; his heir Augustus.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on clemency, not one of our bank questions):

‘Caesar's clemency was both a strength and a weakness. By pardoning enemies such as Brutus, Cassius and Cicero, he avoided Sulla's proscriptions and won some genuine support. Yet clemency was a virtue of a master, not of an equal: Cicero's private letters show how bitterly he resented owing his safety to one man's mercy. That many of the assassins were men Caesar had pardoned suggests that clemency could not reconcile the nobility to a system in which their freedom depended on his goodwill.’

• Calling the First Triumvirate a legal office. It was a private alliance; the Second Triumvirate (43) was legal.
• Saying Caesar was crowned king or became emperor. He refused the diadem; his title was dictator.
• Treating the Commentaries as neutral history.
• Confusing Pharsalus (48, Pompey), Thapsus (46) and Munda (45).
• Writing a narrative of his life when the question asks for a judgement.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his rise, the consulship, the Gallic War, the causes of civil war, his reforms or his assassination.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess or evaluate his methods, achievements, impact or legacy.
• Name each source's perspective: Caesar's self-justification, Cicero's changing private views, Suetonius' later judgement.
• Useful terms: imperium, dignitas, libertas, clementia, cursus honorum, populares, optimates, senatus consultum ultimum, dictator perpetuo.

• Tiberius Gracchus: the start of the conflicts and methods that shaped Caesar's career.
• The Augustan Age: how his heir learned from Caesar's fate.
• Alexander the Great: a model Caesar admired; Suetonius says he sighed before a statue of Alexander at Gades in Spain (Plutarch says he wept while reading about him).