Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar destroyed the Roman republic and was murdered for it. Born in 100 BC into a patrician family of ancient name and modest recent standing, he was marked early: his aunt had married Marius, and Sulla ordered him to divorce his wife Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna. He refused, went into hiding, and was pardoned with the remark that there were many Mariuses in him. He was captured by pirates in his twenties, joked that he would crucify them, was ransomed, raised a fleet privately and did. He rose through the offices on borrowed money, was elected pontifex maximus in 63 BC by bribery on a scale that left him ruinously in debt, and in 60 BC formed the private alliance with Pompey and Crassus that gave him the consulship and then Gaul. He conquered Gaul between 58 and 50 BC — some eight hundred communities taken, perhaps a million killed and a million enslaved by his own account — crossed the Rhine on a bridge built in ten days, and twice landed in Britain. Ordered to disband his army, he crossed the Rubicon in January 49 BC and won the civil war at Pharsalus, Thapsus and Munda. As dictator he reformed the calendar, relieved debt, extended citizenship, settled veterans in colonies, and pardoned his enemies systematically. He took the dictatorship for life in February 44 BC, and sixty senators including Brutus and Cassius stabbed him twenty-three times on 15 March. He wrote the commentaries on his own campaigns in the third person, in prose of exceptional clarity.

• Lived: 100 BCE – 44 BCE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: ruler, general, writer