What Are Julius Caesar's Accomplishments

What was Julius Caesar's childhood similar?

How did Julius Caesar change the world?

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Julius Caesar, in total Gaius Julius Caesar, (born July 12/13, 100? bce, Rome [Italy]—died March 15, 44 bce, Rome), celebrated Roman general and statesman, the conqueror of Gaul (58–fifty bce), victor in the civil war of 49–45 bce, and dictator (46–44 bce), who was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated past a grouping of nobles in the Senate House on the Ides of March.

Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman earth decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman guild has been extinct for and then long that most of the names of its keen men hateful little to the average, educated mod person. But Caesar'southward name, similar Alexander's, is still on people's lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nix of Caesar as a celebrated personality are familiar with his family name every bit a title signifying a ruler who is in some sense uniquely supreme or paramount—the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in the Slavonic languages, and qayṣar in the languages of the Islamic world.

Caesar'southward gens (clan) proper name, Julius (Iulius), is too familiar in the Christian earth, for in Caesar's lifetime the Roman calendar month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed "July" in his honor. This name has survived, equally has Caesar'southward reform of the calendar. The quondam Roman calendar was inaccurate and manipulated for political purposes. Caesar's calendar, the Julian calendar, is withal partially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and the Gregorian calendar, now in use in the Due west, is the Julian, slightly corrected by Pope Gregory 13.

Family background and career

Caesar's gens, the Julii, were patricians—i.e., members of Rome's original aristocracy, which had coalesced in the fourth century bce with a number of leading plebeian (commoner) families to form the nobility that had been the governing class in Rome since then. Past Caesar'south time, the number of surviving patrician gentes was modest; and in the gens Julia the Caesares seem to have been the only surviving family. Though some of the most powerful noble families were patrician, patrician blood was no longer a political advantage; it was actually a handicap, since a patrician was debarred from holding the paraconstitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The Julii Caesares traced their lineage dorsum to the goddess Venus, just the family was not snobbish or conservative-minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished.

Overlooking the Roman Forum with Temple of Saturn in Rome, Italy

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A Roman noble won stardom for himself and his family unit past securing ballot to a series of public offices, which culminated in the consulship, with the censorship possibly to follow. This was a difficult task for even the ablest and almost gifted noble unless he was backed by substantial family wealth and influence. Rome's victory over Carthage in the 2d Punic State of war (218–201 bce) had made Rome the paramount ability in the Mediterranean bowl; an influential Roman noble family'south clients (that is, protégés who, in return, gave their patrons their political back up) might include kings and even whole nations, besides numerous private individuals. The requirements and the costs of a Roman political career in Caesar's 24-hour interval were high, and the competition was severe; but the potential profits were of enormous magnitude. One of the perquisites of the praetorship and the consulship was the government of a province, which gave aplenty opportunity for plunder. The whole Mediterranean globe was, in fact, at the mercy of the Roman nobility and of a new course of Roman businessmen, the equites ("knights"), which had grown rich on military contracts and on tax farming.

War machine manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry. This course had been partly dispossessed by an economic revolution post-obit on the devastation caused past the Second Punic State of war. The Roman governing class had consequently come to exist hated and discredited at home and abroad. From 133 bce onward there had been a series of alternate revolutionary and counter-revolutionary paroxysms. It was evident that the misgovernment of the Roman state and the Greco-Roman world by the Roman dignity could not go on indefinitely and information technology was fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of military dictatorship backed by dispossessed Italian peasants who had turned to long-term war machine service.

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The traditional contest among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils of function was thus threatening to plow into a desperate race for seizing autocratic ability. The Julii Caesares did not seem to be in the running. It was true that Sextus Caesar, who was mayhap the dictator's uncle, had been one of the consuls for 91 bce; and Lucius Caesar, ane of the consuls for xc bce, was a afar cousin, whose son and namesake was consul for 64 bce. In xc bce, Rome's Italian allies had seceded from Rome considering of the Roman government's obstinate refusal to grant them Roman citizenship, and, equally consul, Lucius Caesar had introduced emergency legislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all Italian marry states that had non taken up arms or that had returned to their allegiance.

Whoever had been delegate in this critical yr would have had to initiate such legislation, whatsoever his personal political predilections. In that location is evidence, however, that the Julii Caesares, though patricians, had already committed themselves to the antinobility party. An aunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius, a self-made man (novus human being) who had forced his way upward to the meridian past his war machine ability and had fabricated the momentous innovation of recruiting his armies from the dispossessed peasants.

The date of Caesar the dictator's nativity has long been disputed. The twenty-four hour period was July 12 or 13; the traditional (and perhaps most probable) twelvemonth is 100 bce; but if this date is correct, Caesar must take held each of his offices 2 years in advance of the legal minimum age. His father, Gaius Caesar, died when Caesar was but 16; his female parent, Aurelia, was a notable woman, and it seems certain that he owed much to her.

In spite of the inadequacy of his resources, Caesar seems to have chosen a political career as a matter of course. From the kickoff, he probably privately aimed at winning office, not simply for the sake of the honours only in order to attain the power to put the misgoverned Roman state and Greco-Roman world into improve social club in accordance with ideas of his own. Information technology is improbable that Caesar deliberately sought monarchical power until afterwards he had crossed the Rubicon in 49 bce, though sufficient ability to impose his will, every bit he was determined to practice, proved to mean monarchical power.

In 84 bce Caesar committed himself publicly to the radical side past marrying Cornelia, a daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a noble who was Marius's associate in revolution. In 83 bce Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to Italy from the East and led the successful counter-revolution of 83–82 bce; Sulla then ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia. Caesar refused and came close to losing non just his property (such as it was) just his life as well. He found it advisable to remove himself from Italia and to do military service, first in the province of Asia and so in Cilicia.

In 78 bce, after Sulla's death, he returned to Rome and started on his political career in the conventional way, by acting as a prosecuting abet—of course, in his instance, confronting prominent Sullan counter-revolutionaries. His commencement target, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, was dedicated past Quintus Hortensius, the leading advocate of the day, and was acquitted by the extortion-court jury, composed exclusively of senators.

Caesar then went to Rhodes to report oratory under a famous professor, Molon. En route he was captured by pirates (1 of the symptoms of the anarchy into which the Roman nobility had immune the Mediterranean world to fall). Caesar raised his ransom, raised a naval force, captured his captors, and had them crucified—all this as a private individual holding no public role. In 74 bce, when Mithradates Half-dozen Eupator, king of Pontus, renewed state of war on the Romans, Caesar raised a private army to combat him.

In his absence from Rome, Caesar was made a member of the politico-ecclesiastical higher of pontifices; and on his return he gained ane of the elective military tribuneships. Caesar now worked to undo the Sullan constitution in cooperation with Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius), who had started his career as a lieutenant of Sulla but had changed sides since Sulla's death. In 69 or 68 bce Caesar was elected quaestor (the first rung on the Roman political ladder). In the same twelvemonth his wife, Cornelia, and his aunt Julia, Marius'due south widow, died. In public funeral orations in their honour, Caesar found opportunities for praising Cinna and Marius. Caesar afterward married Pompeia, a distant relative of Pompey. Caesar served his quaestorship in the province of Farther Spain (modern Andalusia and Portugal).

Caesar was elected 1 of the curule aediles for 65 bce, and he historic his tenure of this office by unusually lavish expenditure with borrowed money. He was elected pontifex maximus in 63 bce past a political dodge. Past now he had go a controversial political figure. Afterward the suppression of Catiline'southward conspiracy in 63 bce, Caesar, as well as the millionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus, was accused of complicity. It seems unlikely that either of them had committed himself to Catiline; but Caesar proposed in the Senate a more merciful culling to the expiry penalization, which the consul Cicero was request for the arrested conspirators. In the uproar in the Senate, Caesar's motion was defeated.

Caesar was elected a praetor for 62 bce. Toward the finish of the year of his praetorship, a scandal was caused by Publius Clodius in Caesar's house at the celebration there of the rites, for women only, of Bona Dea (a Roman deity of fruitfulness, both in the Earth and in women). Caesar consequently divorced Pompeia. He obtained the governorship of Farther Spain for 61–threescore bce. His creditors did non permit him go out Rome until Crassus had gone bail for a quarter of his debts; simply a war machine expedition beyond the northwest borderland of his province enabled Caesar to win loot for himself also as for his soldiers, with a balance left over for the treasury. This partial financial recovery enabled him, after his return to Rome in threescore bce, to stand for the consulship for 59 bce.