Lucius Julius Caesar

Caesar, [né Isaac Sidney]Sid (b. 1922), comedian. The brash comic, who excelled at aping different accents and types, was born in Yonkers, New York. Although best known for his work on television, especially for The Show of Shows (early 1950s), he was starred in two Broadway musicals, Make Mine Manhattan (1948) and Little Me (1962), in the latter playing all of the heroine's diverse lovers. His return in Four on a Garden (1971) and Sid Caesar and Company (1989) were both quick failures. The character of TV star Max Prince in Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993) was based on Caesar.

The family name of the first Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, which was retained by successive emperors as a title. The NT refers to the Roman emperors, Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius (Matt 22:17, 21; Mark 14:17; Luke 20:22-25).

Concordance
Matt 22:17,21. Mark 12:14, 17. Luke 2:1; 3:1; 20:22, 25; 23:2. John 19:12, 15. Acts 11:28; 17:7; 25:8, 11-12,21; 26:32; 27:24; 28:19

Caesar, the name of a Roman patrician family of the gens Julia, one of the most ancient clans in Rome, which traced its origin back to Iulus, son of Aeneas. The name ‘Caesar’ (see 6 below) survived into modern times in the Russian ‘Tzar’ and German ‘Kaiser’. Julius Caesar's adopted son Octavian (later the emperor Augustus), added it to his own name, as did his adopted son, the emperor Tiberius, and his successors. Although the Caesarian branch of the Julian clan became extinct with the death of Nero, succeeding emperors tended to assume the name as a title, until ‘Augustus’ became the title of the reigning emperor, ‘Caesar’ that of the emperor's designated heir or second-in-command.

Gaius Julius Caesar

, Roman general, statesman, and dictator, b. 12 or 13 July 100 BC, assassinated 15 March (the Ides) 44 BC.

1. 100–62 BC. He came of a patrician family, but from the beginning was associated in politics with the popular party (see POPULARES). In 81 he served his first military campaign in Asia, but he came to public attention by two (unsuccessful) prosecutions in Rome. He then retired to Rhodes to study under a Greek rhetorician (M. Antonius Gnipho, who also taught Cicero), but on the way was captured for ransom by pirates whom, soon after his release, he caught and crucified, as he had told them he would during his captivity. He returned to Rome in 73 and became a senator before 70, supporting Pompey when the latter as consul repealed some of Sulla's revisions of the constitution. In 68 he went as quaestor to Hispania Ulterior (Further Spain). His wife Cornelia died, and on his return in 67 he married one of the Pompeian family, no doubt in order to cement an alliance. In 65 he was elected to the aedileship, an office whose holder was expected to spend lavishly on buildings and public entertainments. Caesar spent with unparalleled generosity. In 63 he was elected pontifex maximus, to the shame of his aristocratic rivals, and to the praetorship for 62. The end of his praetorship was marked by the scandal arising from Clodius' profanation of the Bona Dea mysteries in Caesar's house by appearing disguised as a woman. As a consequence Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia because, according to Plutarch, ‘his wife must be above suspicion’.

2. 61–50 BC. Caesar's successful governorship of Further Spain in 61 established his reputation as a general. On his return he made an informal alliance with Pompey and Crassus (often called by modern scholars ‘the first triumvirate’), and was elected consul for 59 together with Bibulus whose vetoes he notoriously disregarded. His legislation satisfied the personal ambitions of Pompey and Crassus, and as proconsul in 58 he took for himself the governorship of Illyricum (Dalmatia), Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy), and Transalpine Gaul (southern France).

The next nine years were occupied in the conquest of the rest of Gaul (the Gallic War), brilliantly described in his Commentaries. In the early years there is no evidence of discord with Pompey, who in 59 married Julia, the daughter of Caesar by his first wife Cornelia. Caesar himself married as his third wife Calpurnia, the daughter of L. Calpurnius Piso who was consul in 59. By 56 Caesar regarded the conquest of Gaul as complete, and spent 55 and 54 in sending expeditions to Germany and Britain. The compact with Pompey and Crassus had been renewed at Luca (Lucca) in 56; these two became consuls for 55 and renewed Caesar's command for a further five years. However, in 53 Crassus was killed fighting the Parthians, and Pompey and Caesar were left alone at the head of the state. Pompey's wife Julia, who had formed a bond between them, had died in childbirth the previous year. Sporadic revolts in Gaul in 53 culminated in a general rising in 52 under Vercingetorix, which Caesar put down after the most difficult fighting of his career. The pacification of Gaul was completed by 50. Meanwhile civil disturbances at Rome led to the appointment of Pompey as sole consul for 52, and his measures included a law that allowed Caesar to stand for the consulship in his absence. Caesar's governorship expired in 49 and he therefore needed the consulship for 48 if he was not to become a private citizen, liable to prosecution by his political enemies in Rome. The senate wished to recall him before there could be any risk of his becoming consul while still at the head of his army, and the consul C. Marcellus proposed that he should lay down his command by 13 November. Pompey hesitated whether to give his support, but finally threw in his lot with Caesar's enemies.

3. 49–44 BC. On 7 January 49 the senate ordered Caesar, now at the river Rubicon, the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy, to disband his army. On 10 January Caesar nevertheless crossed the Rubicon with his army, and the civil war was launched. Pompey was entrusted by the senate with the whole management of the war on behalf of the republic, but he was outmanœuvred and fled to Greece, and within three months Caesar was master of Italy with a large measure of popular support. He was prudently merciful to the defeated, in strong contrast with earlier Roman leaders and their proscriptions. Rather than pursue Pompey to Greece he went to Spain, where in a brief and brilliant campaign he forced the surrender of the Pompeian army at Ilerda (Lerida). In 48 he followed Pompey to Epirus in Greece and suffered a reverse at Dyrrhachium from the latter's powerful army; however, he defeated Pompey at Pharsalus and pursued him to Egypt, but on his arrival found him already murdered. After Ilerda, Caesar had been appointed dictator in order to hold the consular elections (in which he was elected consul) and pass some necessary legislation, but, that done, he had laid down the dictatorship. When news of his victory at Pharsalus reached Rome he was again nominated dictator, this time for a year. Throughout the winter of 48 he was occupied with a difficult war (the Alexandrian War; see BELLUM ALEXANDRINUM) to establish Cleopatra VII, now his mistress, on the throne of Egypt; and he thereby gave the Pompeian forces time to regroup. Soon afterwards Cleopatra had a son (Caesarion), claiming him to be by Caesar. Before returning to Rome, Caesar marched through Syria and Pontus to defeat Pharnaces, king of Pontus and son of the famous Mithridates. This he did in 47 at Zela, a victory which he announced with his famous boast, veni, vidi, vici, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’. In Rome he was elected to his third dictatorship, but before the year ended he set out for Africa where he defeated the Pompeians (i.e. republicans) at Thapsus in 46 (the consequent suicide of Cato at Utica became an inspiration for later republicans). On his return to Rome he was given the dictatorship for another ten years and in four magnificent triumphs celebrated his victories over foreign enemies (not those over other Romans).

He now turned to legislation, using his amazing ability and energy to bring about many much-needed reforms, none of such long-lasting benefit as the reform of the calendar. This (Julian) calendar remained in operation until it was further reformed in the sixteenth century. In the midst of these activities Caesar was called to Spain where a republican revolt had broken out, led by Pompey's two sons and Caesar's own former officer Labienus. They were finally defeated in the hard-fought battle of Munda (45). Among the army and the people Caesar's popularity was enormous, and the senate granted him virtually monarchical power as well as extraordinary emblems of monarchy; but, although he attempted to conciliate powerful senators by merciful treatment of his enemies, his evident intention of putting an end to republican government for ever and keeping the supreme power within his own family led to a conspiracy against his life, led by Cassius and Brutus, and he was stabbed to death in the senate house in 44 BC. (Dante in the Inferno put these two with Judas Iscariot in the lowest circle of Hell.)

4. Caesar's Commentaries (i.e. ‘notes’) on the Gallic war, and the (unfinished) three books on the civil war are his only writings that survive entire. The title of the former was chosen deliberately to suggest that it was not history that was being written but rather a bald record of events written in the third person, and therefore an objectively truthful account. Caesar wished, in fact, to create the impression that he was a simple soldier fighting necessary wars for the good of Rome, so as to refute the charges of his political enemies that he was fighting for personal aggrandizement. Nevertheless, despite its political purpose, the Gallic War is unique as a contemporary account of a foreign war written by a Roman general, in lucid, unrhetorical Latin. Each book seems to have been composed at the end of the year with which it deals and perhaps sent individually to Rome. The work was published as a whole probably in 51 BC. The Civil War is rather more obviously a political pamphlet, with the theme that his enemies had forced war upon him, but the narrative is occasionally relieved by a human touch or a flash of sardonic humour. The Bellum Africum, Bellum Alexandrinum, and Bellum Hispaniense were written by members of Caesar's staff.

5. Caesar also wrote a number of other books which have not survived: a collection of jokes and sayings, later suppressed by Augustus as too frivolous; a grammatical work on declensions and conjugations, composed while he was crossing the Alps and dedicated to Cicero; an irritated reply, Anticato, to Cicero's panegyric of Cato (see 3 above), and a number of poems, of which a verse epigram to Terence survives. He was an outstanding orator, described by Cicero as the most eloquent of Romans. We have Lives of Caesar by Plutarch and Suetonius. Several portrait busts considered authentic show a clean-shaven, austere face, with hair combed forward in later life to conceal baldness, as Suetonius described him. He was tall, pale, with keen black eyes, and took pains over his appearance. It was related that he was born by being cut from his mother's womb, the so-called Caesarian section, but this story is also told of the first member of the Julian gens to take the name Caesar, in order to explain the name by deriving it from caesus, ‘cut’.

For ‘Caesar’ as a title under the Roman empire see AUGUSTUS.

The family name of Julius Caesar and of the next eleven rulers of Rome, who were emperors.

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