Caesar: Life of a Colossus (2006)
There was a time, of course, when most of us would not only have known the life of Caesar backwards and forwards, but would have read him in the original Latin. Today though it's not even a safe assumption that everyone was exposed to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in school. Still, what with the success of movies like Gladiator, tv shows like HBO's Rome, novels like Steven Saylor's Gordianus mysteries, those of Colleen McCullough and Conn Iggulden, and Robert Harris's Imperium, and the penchant of pundits for comparing 21st Century America to Imperial Rome, it seems fair to say that there's at least a mini-boom of interest in the ancients. Comes now Adrian Goldsworthy, who John Keegan famously described as, "one of our most promising young military historians today," with an invaluable biography of the great man himself.
As we've noted in the past, Mr. Goldsworthy once again demonstrates a real facility with describing convoluted military action so that the layman can follow it. This is important here because Caesar spent so much of his life at war. Indeed, the author raises the possibility that Caesar fought more major actions than any other leader in history. But Mr. Goldsworthy also shows a sure hand in describing the political machinations back in Rome, where Caesar was forced to battle just as hard as he ever did in Gaul. Topping it all off are insights into Caesar's personality, sexual conquests, and literary career as well as a solid grounding in the social and political milieu of his times. That he manages to handle all of these quite different themes so well, and presents them in such readable fashion, makes this a definitive biography.
Personally, I found the book to be an especially effective complement to Rome, and vice versa, because Mr. Goldsworthy gives you the facts and the battles that the show doesn't have the time, in the first case, or the money, in the latter, to present. The series, on the other hand, succeeds dramatically by showing the personalities and petty feuds that often drove events even moreso than any historical forces. If you're watching the show you'll find the book enhances your viewing experience greatly and if you're reading the book you'll find the series fleshes out the characters nicely.
(Reviewed:28-Dec-06)
Grade: (A+)
