Julius Caesar

Essay by spoonful March 2006

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Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman military and political leader. He played an important part in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Caesar was born in Rome into a well-known patrician family, which supposedly traced its ancestry to Julus, the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas.

Caesar was elected quaestor, who supervised the treasury and financial affairs of the state, its armies and its officers, by the Assembly of the People in 70 BC, at the age of 30, as stipulated in the Roman cursus honorum (Wikipedia, Para 3).

Caesar made his way to praetorship by 62 BC and many of the senate felt him a dangerous, ambitious man. Because of this, they deprived him of a triumph after his praetorian command in Spain (61-60 BC) and they also did their best to keep him out of consulship. He finally became consul in 59 BC (Julius Caesar, Para 2).

Caesar and one legion began the Civil War of 49 BC by defying the Senate, crossing the Rubicon and marching on Rome. The legions of the Republic were now under Pompey's command (Cross, the civil war)

Caesar returned to Italy in September 45 BC, Great games and celebrations were held on April 21 to honor Caesar's great victory. He was the first living man to appear on a Roman Publican coins.

In the last five years of his life, Caesar prevailed in Civil Wars in Asia and Spain, conquered Egypt, rose to undreamed-of power in the Roman state, rent the fabric of the mos maiorum, was honored like a god for the first time in Roman history, and murdered by his closest associates when they believed he sought the power in name which he already held in fact (Cross, Conspiracy & Death)

When Caesar died in 44...