Julius Caesar
Explore the life of Julius Caesar — the Roman general and dictator whose ambition, crossing of the Rubicon, and assassination transformed the Roman world.
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, politician, and writer whose ambition destroyed the Roman Republic and paved the way for the Roman Empire. His crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BCE — an act of treason that began a civil war — remains one of the most symbolically charged moments in Western history.
Caesar's military genius was demonstrated in Gaul (modern France), where he spent eight years conquering territory and peoples in campaigns of often brutal efficiency. His Commentaries on the Gallic War, written partly as self-promotion, became a masterpiece of Latin prose. His success in Gaul gave him wealth, veteran legions, and a reputation that the Roman political establishment found intolerable.
His assassination on the Ides of March (March 15, 44 BCE) by senators who feared his power has become history's most famous political murder. But killing Caesar didn't save the Republic — it doomed it. The civil wars that followed his death ultimately produced his adopted heir Octavian as Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Caesar's name itself became a title: Kaiser in German, Tsar in Russian. Few individuals have cast such a long shadow across subsequent history.