Freeman triumphantly tells the story of one of history's greatest and most terrible figures. "Elegant, learned, and compulsively readable, Julius Caesar moves from broad sweep to brilliant detail. "Can Alexander Hamilton possibly have been right that Julius Caesar was 'the greatest man who ever lived'? Reading Philip Freeman's pacy and panoptic narrative of Caesar's life from unpromising early beginnings to the fateful Ides is one very rewarding approach to answering that perennially fascinating question." - Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History, University of Cambridge The scholar will find much to admire in this book, but, better still, the newcomer to ancient Rome will turn its pages with excitement, enlightenment - and sheer narrative suspense." - Anthony Everitt, author of Augustus and Cicero He takes the reader through every dizzying thrill and spill. "Julius Caesar packed more into his life than most of history's great men - and Philip Freeman unpacks it all with skill and clarity. This book will captivate readers discovering Caesar and ancient Rome for the first time as well as those who have a deep interest in the classical world. With remarkable clarity and brevity, Freeman shows how Caesar dominated a newly powerful Rome and shaped its destiny. In this splendid biography, Freeman presents Caesar in all his dimensions and contradictions. Caesar’s legendary romance with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra still fascinates us today. Eventually he was murdered in one of the most famous assassinations in history.Ĭaesar’s contemporaries included some of Rome’s most famous figures, from the generals Marius, Sulla, and Pompey to the orator and legislator Cicero as well as the young politicians Mark Antony and Octavius (later Caesar Augustus). He was a spokesman for the ordinary people of Rome, who rallied around him time and again, but he profited enormously from his conquests and lived opulently. He made alliances with his rivals and then discarded them when it suited him. Born into a noble family that had long been in decline, he advanced his career cunningly, beginning as a priest and eventually becoming Rome’s leading general.
He possessed great courage, ambition, honor, and vanity. Julius Caesar was a complex man, both hero and villain. But, as Philip Freeman describes in this fascinating new biography, Caesar was also a brilliant orator, an accomplished writer, a skilled politician, and much more. He is best known as the general who defeated the Gauls and doubled the size of Rome’s territories. He shaped Rome for generations, and his name became a synonym for “emperor”-not only in Rome but as far away as Germany and Russia.
More than two thousand years after his death, Julius Caesar remains one of the great figures of history. A fascinating, comprehensive biography of the cunning Roman conqueror Julius Caesar.
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