Name: Caesar
Rating: 3.55 (10 reviews)

Adrian Keith Goldsworthy

Research Fellow Adrian Goldsworthy

The first major biography in decades examines the full complexity of Julius Caesar's character in an incisive portrait that shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate two thousand years following his death.

Life of a Colossus

Caesar

Adrian Goldsworthy

Greg Talbot

Early last year a friend, an ancient history buff, loaned me this book. After 11 months of hestistancy, I looked past it's imposing size and took hold of it, and ravaged it over 2 weeks. Goldsworthy has written a marvelous timeline of Caesar's life. Several times he sets limits on his writing, not wanting to bend to conjecture or even soft assumptions. Looking over the bibliography, it is amazing just how many sources and books he dissected. Goldsworthy fundamentally change the way I looked at Caesar. Consider the 10 year span of dictorial rule, the chain reaction of several wars sparking at once, the civil discord between Pompey's forces and Caesar's before the passing of the Rubicon. I became to really appreciate the compressed events and blind luck involved in some of these events. I think this book works best for someone who has a significant interest in Caesar, and a strong background in Roman history. Goldsworthy is so narrowly limited in his subject matter, he never writes much about how Caesar had much of an effect on other aspects of Roman Life. The writing style is a bit much too, it can be wearing because the book reads as so factually based, that there is little room for reviewing, summarizing, or insight into Caesar's actions. Maybe I just want every novel to be like "Team of Rivals" haha. Anyone, worth checking out, but might be better as a fact checking resource than a straight through read.

Tobias V. Langhoff

Almost everything I know about Rome and Cæsar, I know from reading Asterix as a kid. Earlier this year I decided to read SPQR to get a better understanding of Rome, and now I followed it up with this great read about an interesting man. It's not clear to me why Julius Cæsar has become the "face of Rome" in popular culture, though.

I'm going to listen to the "sequel" about the first emperor Augustus as an audiobook now, by the same author and with the same narrator, and I hope the narrator says "Transalpine Gaul" and "Cisalpine Gaul" as many times as he did in this book.

Caesar Life of a Colossus

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