Caesar: Life of a Colossus
by Adrian Goldsworthy
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Book Reviews of Caesar: Life of a Colossus
Book Review: absolutely first rate critical bio, in full context, from the evidence
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best biographies I have ever read, from the first Roman period that offered the richest assortment of literary sources and archeological evidence. It covers all of the things that Caesar did, from his political career to his military exploits. Every single page is fresh and engaging, never bogged down in academic trivia or obscure scholarly disputes, but always sticking to the essence of what we can know and indicating what we can't due to lack of evidence. It is dense and utterly fascinating, bringing to life a time but also an exceptional career and life.
First, we get the context of the republic, which is in decline due to the unwieldliness of its procedures and the fatuous intrigues of its Senators and aristocracy; the issues (of empire) it is facing are also increasingly diverse and complex, requiring a steadier hand from an executive. Due to the amount of access points that could be used to block actions, from the auguries of Caesar's mortal enemy Bibilus that were judged "bad" and hence should block all political activity to vetos from Tribunes. The intricacies are all explained with clarity as well as in vivid stories of various incidents. In particular, it became clear to me how important individuals were, rather than parties: alliances were ephemeral, a function of each person's pursuit of personal glory rather than a reflection of any coherent ideology.
Second, there is the particular Roman politico-cultural context. After a series of increasingly brutal civil wars, the ruling class had been decimated, denuded of both high quality politicians and, perhaps worse, the accepted traditions that used to limit their exercise of power (checks and balances via ostracism, but there is much more). In addition, there was the traditional importance of family honor, which went back several generations. While it was a constraint on behavior, it also created an obligation to live up to past glories and offices, both increasing responsibility but also nakedly ruthless ambition. The republic was akin to a religion, to avoid too much control by a king, which was associated with autocratic repression. It is similar to American respect for democracy and alternation of power via parties.
Third, we get to know the unique personality that was Caius Julius Caesar, an aristocrat from a long-declining family that lacked honor (in highest office) for nearly a century. From an early age, he was precocious in astonishing ways. For example, he was captured by pirates while barely older than a student adolescent, but he laughingly partied with them while telling them he would return to crucify them and sell their families into slavery. Once ransomed, he did - at enormous profit from slave and booty revenues.
Nonetheless, as a tribute to Goldsworthy's art as biographer, we see Caesar as only one of the typical kind of brilliant aristocrat of his time, just another ambitious youth willing to risk his life to advance. Throughout his entire career, he was one step ahead of utterly ruinous catastrophe. Yet though his innermost thoughts and drives remain a complete mystery, he was always thinking ahead, to the long-term prospects of his pursuit of glory and power. It is as intimate a portrait as possible, subtle, and just this perspective is worth the price of admission.
Fourth, Goldsworthy follows the trajectory of Caesar's career. As a struggling politician to the age of 40, with occasional military missions, he built a client base by providing services and cultivating an image as a "popularis", i.e. champion of the working class. In this time, we see his friendships with Pompey, Cicero, and many others, in addition to his implacable enemies, such as Cato (a rigid fool, if you ask me) and Bibilus. He also gained an impressive array of lovers, including Sevilia, the mother of Brutus, which was also a political act.
Caesar was a poltical genius, rarely making mistakes and always planning his next accomplishment, which always advanced his prospects. Though born relatively poor, he became immensely rich, risking everything with his debts - incurred to entertain the masses, then finding military opportunity to exploit in Spain. To run for highest office, he also gave up a triumph, one of the greatest honors possible, which has been denied through administrative procedure by his enemies.
Fifth, Caesar's military genius is microscopically examined, which is utterly fascinating and a good half of the book. You get his strategy and tactics, but most interestingly his leadership style. In this respect, Pompey, his great competitor, comes off as an unimaginative master of mass confrontation (overwhelming adversaries by superior force and organization), whereas Caesar is a creative underdog, often badly outnumbered, seeking advantage in terrain, tactics, and by understanding the assumptions behind his adversaries behavior; there are so many leadership lessons that I cannot do them justice here.
Regarding his leadership, Caesar cultivated good subordinates that could never equal his fundamental creativity; this required him to make most of the big decsions, of which they were consistently incapable. In this regard, you witness Cicero's brother, Marc Anthony, Labienus, etc. He also respected his adversaries to recognize their own self-interest, which explains his clemency and lack of cruelty, but also his ability to entice enemies to give up without fighting to the death as they expected mercy. Again, very subtle stuff, which nonetheless led to his assassination.
Sixth, with the civil war, the reader learns of Caesar's immense egotism. To preserve his dignitas, which his senatorial adveraries threatened via trivial lawsuits in my view, he was prepared to plunge the empire into civil war, resulting in untold thousands of deaths: rather than humiliation, exile and the end of his career, he used military force to smash his adversaries.
Seventh, once all his adversaries were subject to his rule, we see his governance, all the while campaigning in such disparate locations as SPain and Egypt. Here, Caesar may have been a reformer of genius, riding rough shod over problems that had festered for decades under the immobile republic. While Goldsworthy continually reminds us of how little we can actually know, he gives a balanced view of what we know Caesar to have stood for. Once again, we feel awe at the depth of his genius, in particular surpassing Alexander the Great in this domain.
Eighth, we get a glimpse of his literary genius. While traveling, he would dictate correspondence and his book-length commentaries to three full-time secretaries. In the process, he created both a new level in the art of political propaganda and refined the accepted style of written Latin, challenging Cicero as the premier writer of his time. Again, unbelievable accomplishment.
Finally, as Caesar had flouted so many conventions and mortally offended so many, we see his assassination. Interestingly, throughout the entire book, the author always demonstrates that Caesar could have lost everything with a single misstep, most obviously in the military domain. In the last instance, he took one risk too many, in trusting those he pardoned.
I was astonished to see how much more of a gambler he was than I had imagined, after reading more than a dozen histories of Rome. This in my view is the true art of biography: you feel you are seeing the life as people did at the time, even if you know what happened in the end.
This is absolutely brilliant popular history. I will have to read more by this gifted author, one of the best I have ever read on the Classical era. Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm.
Book Review: The Definitive Caesar Biography of Our Time
Summary: 5 Stars
Adrian Goldsworthy's aptly titled "Caesar: Life of a Colossus" is an outstanding effort at explaining to a modern audience the source of Gaius Julius Caesar's enduring greatness and continuing relevance. Through his tremendous knowledge and passion, and gift at making the arcane relatable, Goldsworthy sweeps the reader up and transports him to late Republican Rome, making one feel as if a contemporary of Caesar. Reading this book, it is impossible to walk away unconvinced that one has gotten to know Caesar the man as fully and intimately as the historical record permits. As such, this is the definitive Caesar biography of our time.
The book, like Caesar wrote of Gaul, is divided into three parts, each in the neighborhood of 170 pages long. Part I spans the 41 years from Caesar's birth all the way through his first consulship in 59 B.C., as these are the least documented years of his life. Part II covers the conquest of Gaul and, owing to the existence of Caesar's timeless first-hand account, is perhaps the most detailed section of the book. Part III begins with the fateful crossing of the Rubicon and ends with Caesar's dramatic assassination in the Theater of Pompey. Supplementing the main body of work are a short introduction and epilogue. Also included are a timeline of events, a helpful glossary of Latin terms, maps of major battles and the Roman world (the utility of which varies considerably), and several pages of black-and-white photographs.
Though it logs in at a robust 520 pages, "Life of a Colossus" never lags. Goldsworthy narrates the life of the great Roman with verve and lucidity, bringing both subject and setting to life in three dimensions. The author displays equal skill at political and military analysis and is adept at explaining technical concepts in a way that is informative but never condescending or pompous. His intellectual honesty is also admirable and refreshing - he takes great pains to refrain from speculation and is always forthright with the reader about what is not known. Likewise, when two or more sources conflict, he discloses the discrepancy and provides a reasoned argument for why, in his opinion, one is likely more credible on the point than the other.
To the extent the book has a shortcoming, it is that while a good deal of time and effort is devoted to examining Roman military and political life, comparatively little is spent on Roman society. It could have benefited from focusing a bit on day-to-day life in Rome.
Overall, this is a sympathetic but balanced treatment of Caesar. Goldsworthy views his subject and his ascendancy to the dictatorship as symptomatic of the late Republic rather than the cause of its destruction. In contextualizing Caesar's actions and motivations, he emphasizes the debilitating dysfunction that had come to plague the oligarchic political system by the first century B.C., manifesting itself in the form of petty personal rivalries, institutionalized jealousy, politicized prosecutions, pervasive corruption, and increasing acceptance of the use of force as a means to solve political conflict. Caesar came of age during this turbulent period and, undoubtedly influenced by the examples of Marius and Sulla, among others, reacted similarly when he felt himself unfairly endangered by his political enemies.
Where Caesar differentiated himself, though, was in the way he ruled once he defeated the Optimates. Though it is arguable whether he was a "tyrant" under the technical definition (one who seizes power illegally), he certainly was not in the modern sense. He freely granted clemency to his opponents, did not proscribe his critics as Marius and Sulla had done, and passed reasonable laws that benefited the public. As Goldsworthy explains, not even Caesar's enemies ever really attacked the substance of his laws, and it is impossible to argue that the people were not tangibly better off under his rule than before.
Caesar's real problem was that he had completely eclipsed everyone else. His star shone too bright in a rotting environment of hyper-jealousy. His spectacular victories in Gaul, Britannia, Egypt, and Pontus, combined with his unabashedly populist politics, which emphasized land reform and greater expansion of citizenship to the provinces, and his great popularity among the public, made him a mortal threat to the senatorial elite and the established order. He was torn down by inferior men because he had become too great, and therein lies the tragedy.
While Goldsworthy clearly views Caesar as a great man of history, he does not deify him or cloak him in infallibility. He acknowledges Caesar's brilliant generalship, but offers mild criticism of some of his decisions at Sabis and Gregovia. Likewise, he acknowledges some of Caesar's more ruthless actions in Gaul, such as ordering that the right hands of the defeated warriors at Uxellodunum be severed, but also points out that these stood in contrast to his generally clement nature and were unexceptional within the context of the brutality of ancient warfare.
Caesar has been a complicated subject for biographers through the ages, as critical assessment of him has tended to depend almost entirely upon the political prism of the times. Objective biographies of the man have been rare, and even the classical sources are tinged with bias one way or the other. "Life of a Colossus" succeeds largely because Goldsworthy presents Caesar's accomplishments dispassionately and never divorces the man from his times, allowing the reader to reach the inevitable conclusion himself. A true colossus, Caesar requires no embellishment to convince the world of his greatness.
Book Review: First rate.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a terrific book. It is very well written and very entertaining (at least for those who like history). Sometimes I can't wait until I finish a 500-page book, but with this one I was sorry to have reached the end. Not only is Caesar's life discussed in detail, but so are the government and politics of Rome and nature of the Roman military. This is particularly true of the first third of the book that details Caesar's early life. In this part of the book Caesar is just one character among the likes of Marius, Sulla, Crassus and Pompey. An important theme of the book is the personal nature of Roman politics and the fact that it was generally personal gain that motivated the participants, not any great popular agenda. The author contends that laws were passed, wars fought, people subjugated; all in the name of auctoritas (prestige and personal influence) and as a means to achieve great personal wealth. I had always believed that the Roman state pushed imperialism for the wealth that could be extracted from the vanquished, but Goldsworthy shows that it was more the quest of individuals, such as Caesar; not that Rome objected or rejected their share of the plunder.
The story is told from Caesar's perspective and thus events are generally depicted in a favorably light, but Goldsworthy does not shy away from considering the more negative aspects of Caesar's personality and behavior. Caesar is shown to have been a womanizer of epic proportions and a man who fought a Civil War because he felt that his dignity had been insulted. As an example of the story being told from Caesars perspective, it is stated, "Caesar believed that he was forced into the Civil War", rather than stating that Caesar was forced into the Civil War. In other words, we are told what Caesar believed (based on his writings), not an author's interpretation of what happened. Caesar is shown to have been a senior priest (the Pontifex Maximus), a jurist, a master politician and general in the class of Alexander the Great. (To be fair, religion, law, politics and the army were all intertwined in Rome and many men of note participated in all of these endeavors, but few (perhaps only Pompey) were as talented a general (and Caesar ultimately defeated Pompey)).
Many of Caesar's actions can be interpreted in many different ways. For instance, were Caesar's political and land reforms meant to improve a failed system and better the lives of the citizens of Rome; or were they the actions of a master politician who sought to curry favor with people in order to bolster his own prestige and power? Goldsworthy believes that the answer is somewhere between these two extremes, but he provides the information to enable the reader to decide for him or herself. (The information that is given may be somewhat biased, but I came away with the more positive interpretation of Caesar's actions, tinged with the idea of the personal and political gain that they brought.)
The book details many of the important battles that Caesar fought (mostly his victories, but also some minor defeats), and also some minor, but interesting, aspects of Caesars life and Roman life in general. For instance, Goldsworthy describes the Roman naming conventions and why many men had three names (sometimes four), whereas their wives and daughters had only one. While this may seem trivial, it showed me why so many people had the similar or the same name and cleared up many of the questions that arose in my reading of other books. The book also contains a useful chronology of important events and a glossary of terms.
I felt that Goldsworthy's book on the Punic Wars (The Fall of Carthage) was a bit academic in tone, but I do not feel that this is the case for this book. There is much less of the "A says, whereas B says and C says" in this current book. The story is much more straightforward, but in still quite detailed. The areas of current controversy over the interpretation of the historical texts are mentioned, but not dwelled upon.
This book does justice to Caesar's very interesting and controversial life and I highly recommend it. Read it and you will learn about Caesar's life and the Rome of his lifetime. You will learn how he conquered, but perhaps not exactly why. You will learn of the complete destruction of some who fought against him, contrasted to his great leniency shown to others (some of whom repaid this by renewing the fighting against him, some eventually assassinating him). You will learn how Caesar lived and of the conquest of Gaul, the Civil War, his dictatorships and his assassination.
Book Review: A truly informative and enjoyable read.
Summary: 5 Stars
Adrian Goldsworthy's writing reminds me of those all too rare teachers we remember from our school days who not only knew their subject, but could actually convey it to a class in a way that was both totally understandable and very enjoyable.
Such is the lucidity of Goldsworthy's prose and quality of his research, you find you literally flow through the pages, absorbing the material and feeling immersed and educated in the world to which Caesar was a part. No need here to backtrack, reread, and move on unsure of what exactly was explained and feel mentally fatigued in the process.
The work starts with an excellent build up showing the state of the Republic and the Julii clans fortunes prior to Caesar. Therafter Goldsworthy truly covers every corner of Caesars life. Many would be familiar with his Gallic exploits and the Civil War up till the Et Tu Brutus stage. But this work, while not ignoring that, covers that often overlooked side of Caesar: his youth, his upbringing, education, early efforts to impose himself in the publics eye at any opportunity, and his skillful rise to prominance and the obstacles he overcame (no mean feat given his families almost anonymous and powerless status at the time he was born)which make for every bit as interesting reading as his military prowess. Not only is Caesars political fortunes covered, but those of just about every serious protagonist who affected the political landscape before and during Caesar all of which makes modern politics feel very tame. The way its all told, does not personalise it like a memoir/biography but as if you are a bystander following anothers progress while being able to take in the sights and sounds of that persons world.
All-in-all a work that will provide no end of enjoyment to people just fascinated with Caesar and his world as well as people who just appreciate Roman history and learning about the times. In that respect this book provides as much information on Roman society and its culture,traditions, taboo's and organisation as it does on Caesars life as an added bonus. And it's all so articulate and fluently layed out. Hard to find a flaw with it seriously.
Book Review: Excellent new biography of Caesar
Summary: 5 Stars
Ever since the great German historian Theodor Mommsen portrayed Caius Julius Caesar as Rome's "perfect man," the dictator has been the subject of many biographies. There are some excellent scholarly materials on the general, such as Mattias Gelzer's translated Caesar: Politician and Statesman and Christian Meier's Caesar. Some more contemporary biographies geared toward the layperson, such as The Education of Julius Caesar by Arthur Kahn and The Assassination of Julius Caesar by Michael Parenti, present the general as a popular reformer. With Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, an excellent combination of the scholarly and popular is presented.
In Caesar: Life of a Colossus , Mr. Goldsworthy explains technical and historical terms concisely and comprehensively. (There is also a glossary included.) Detailed endnotes and a thorough bibliography are included. The author's writing style is both lively and engaging. Although sympathetic to Caesar, Mr. Goldsworthy is objective, both with the general and his adversaries. He portrays both Caesar and Rome in the late Republic in a vivid and understandable manner.
Two interesting aspects that Mr. Goldsworthy ponders are Caesar's view on religious matters and the impact that the general's personal life had on political events. Our historical resources are meager on these two subjects, so Mr. Goldsworthy makes some educated guesses. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus , though some of the ancient sources and modern historians portray the dictator as a skeptic. Still, Mr. Goldsworthy speculates on how religion impacted Caesar's life and actions. For the scholar, Stefan Weinstock's Divus Julius presents the official political-religious aspects of Caesar's reign, as well as his successors' contribution to the cult of Caesar.
There is also some discussion on the role that Caesar's family played in his formation, particularly the women in his life, such as his mother Aurelia and his daughter Julia. Again, the primary sources are limited, but the author tries to piece together the familial relationships.