So--Who WAS Julius Caesar, Anyway?

A friend of mine told me he had recently had a battle with another friend, a man who happens to be an admirer of that well-known Roman, Julius Caesar.
L. definitely is not. Being reminded of this fact, I said he could have a battle with me, too, if he chose. Caesar was one of my earliest intellectual interests, and remains so.
Why? Good question. I first met the man through the Shakespeare play named for him. There, he is depicted as a kind of political boss who has lost his grip. And I was sure, from the beginning, that this was part of the truth. But only part. How many political has-beens--if that is all they are--have their names ring down through the ages?
I think it is the complexity of Caesar's character, the many facets of it that have come down to us, that makes him so challenging to us even today.
He was not a nice person, to begin with. He did not live in a nice era, which helps to explain it. He was a relative of the popular Roman leader Marius-whose enemy, Sulla, plotted against the young Caesar's life almost from the time he was born. Having to keep your back to the wall at all times is not a prescription for an open, sunny personality.
Caesar also had as a contemporary the Roman general who crucified five thousand of Spartacus's gladiators along the Appian Way, following the defeat of the rebels. They played for keeps in the Rome of that day. For quite a while Caesar was good at playing for keeps, too, although the fate of the Ides of March caught up with him in the end.
It is important to note that Shakespeare never called Caesar "the noblest Roman of them all." As a writer, Shakespeare knew a flawed character when he saw one. He reserved the accolade of nobility for the pompous and nerdy Marcus Brutus--who, according to long-standing rumor, may also have been Caesar's son.
Maybe the really long-term influence exerted by Caesar has to do with ideas of his which were unorthodox in his time--some of which continue to shape our world. He was inquisitive, and he followed up on these ideas.
For example: Although the Caesar family was of ancient nobility, it was also down on its luck when young Julius came on the scene. Its home was in a poor section of Rome, right across from the city's only synagogue. Caesar inquired about this group of Jews, and became its protector. Somebody I have read recently--it may have been Tom Holland in "Rubicon"-- observes that the real sound of Rome following Caesar's assassination was not that of the howling mobs depicted by Shakespeare. It was of Jewish voices raised in lament for their friend.
Caesar's interest in the Jews shows a kind of broad and humane intelligence that I--and, I am sure, many other moderns--find appealing.
He also is credited with, in a sense, "inventing" Europe. Roman magistrates, leaving office, had come to be in the habit of leading military expeditions to eastern climes, to plunder and pillage them, enrich themselves, and (maybe) win a triumph when they returned to the capital.
Caesar instead turned to Gaul, toward the northwest, which through his efforts became an integral part of the Roman Empire--some would say the most important part during the early imperial days.
He and his men also were the first Romans to set foot in Britain, whose inhabitants--fed in part by distant historical memories, no doubt --one day would develop imperial aspirations of their own.
Who was your Julius Caesar? The sordid, power-grasping politician who lost his grip? The intellectually curious and often constructive visionary who helped shape our world of today?
Mine is both of these; and more--and less--besides.

"Imperium", by Robert Harris...

...or, "A Roman Reviewed"
Although centuries have passed since its fall, many of us cannot get the Roman Empire out of our heads. We remember resolute legions charging into battle, carrying the eagles of the great imperial city forward on what was then considered (at least by most Roman citizens) the triumphant surge of civilization. Thanks to a very great playwright named Shakespeare, and to some lesser and less well known scriptwriters, we remember great actors in great roles...Sir John Gielgud as Julius Caesar, Sir Alec Guinness as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius...
Why does memory linger? Because the Romans were like us in many ways, especially in their bedazzlement with power and their experiments with its use and its misuse.
In other words, their national--and imperial-- game was politics. Those who did not possess the skill required to ride the political wave were doomed to be swept under in its backwash. The Romans taught everybody who has come after them how the game is played; and everybody from Niccolo Machiavelli on would agree that not much has changed.
For this, I would add, I don't really blame the Romans. I believe the way we handle power is hardwired into our brains. Nobody really wants to throw the One Ring back into the fires of Mount Doom--to our great peril.
Robert Harris's "Imperium" is not a new book, simply one I consider worth sharing with readers. It's been out long enough that, if it interests you, you'll probably be able to arrange to borrow it at or through your public library--or buy it , new or used, online.
The book is about a Roman lawyer, orator, and statesman named Marcus Tullus Cicero, who used to be much more famous than he is. Part of his marketing problem no doubt has to do with the fact that his contemporaries included the much more flamboyant Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Augustus Caesar--part that Cicero, in the end, was among those swept under by the wave of power he had tried to ride.
Cicero was a gifted young man from the provinces, who arrived in Rome with the highest ideals and the highest ambition. His goal was to attain "imperium," one of the two consulships, the highest offices in the Roman state. This office he intended to exercise in the most principled way.
The story of what happened is narrated by his slave and secretary Tiro, said to be the inventor of a system of shorthand. The shorthand makes him seem to be almost magically gifted to Cicero's colleagues and enemies.
But Tiro's magic powers do not extend to an insightful telling of the tale of his master's moral decline; he is too loyal to see the import of what is happening. When Cicero's devoted relative Lucius, a man of the highest probity, commits suicide, this fact is mentioned to us by Tiro, but he does not tell Cicero about it. The secretary cannot or will not come to terms with Cicero's alteration in character, let alone its connection with Lucius's death.
It would be a good thing if our elected officials read more books that have to do with Roman history and politics. But would such reading encourage them to clean up the sinkhole of corruption that seems to be politics today? Or would they, like Tiro, be unable to come to terms with the facts as they are?