Caesar: Life of a Colossus | Adrian Goldsworthy

Caesar: Life of a Colossus | Adrian Goldsworthy | Excellent read on Caesar

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Caesar: Life of a ...

	Caesar: Life of a Colossus Adrian Goldsworthy Yale University Press, 2008 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As Adrian Goldsworthy writes in the introduction to this book, ?in his fifty-six years, Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover and adulterer.? In this landmark biography, Goldsworthy examines all of these roles and places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the first century B.C.

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Caesar?s life from birth through assassination, Goldsworthy covers not only Caesar?s accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters during which he was high priest of an exotic cult, captive of pirates, seducer not only of Cleopatra but also of the wives of his two main political rivals, and rebel condemned by his own country. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar?s character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some two thousand years later.

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A Superior Telling

Prior to this Caesar biography we essentially had Shakespeare's version and, in modern times, Meier's as respectively the popular and definitive versions of Caesar's life. This new biography reminds us once and for all that Shakespeare's play is a dramatic butchery. And it makes by comparison Meier's version read like a dry text book bereft of the dramatic juice and blood that were in fact Caesar's life. As a coincidental aside, Goldsworthy lives up to his name as a biographical historian. It requires a master of both genres to weave together the complex political machinations and upheavals, ethnic infighting, cultural norms, economic compulsions, military dispositions, and personal ambitions in Caesar's Rome that helped form who he was as, ultimately, a man. As a fairly knowledgeable fan of Julius Caesar the historical figure I found this book enlightening. As a fan of Caesar the man, I found it completely enjoyable.

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Excellent read on Caesar

I disagree with some of the reviews that say Caesar doesn't come to life in this book, I believe he does. You get into his mind, a man who simply dominated life like no other Roman. Admittedly the coverage was skimp on Caesar's time as a dictator, but Goldsworthy does his best in the room to describe the most important and interesting periods of Caesar's life. My favorite part about Goldsworthy is that he tells you what is known from our sources and what is pure speculation. He doesn't speculate himself as best he can which I like, and he doesn't try to make Caesar into Hitler as some modern revisionist historians have tried to do. He simply lays out the facts of what happened and lets the reader decide for himself about Caesar.

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Very Impressive

Adrian Goldsworthy did a fantastic job in writing this book. It's well written, painstakingly researched, and has little bias whatsoever. This is the second biography I've read on Caesar, and while the first [Julius Caesar by Philip Freeman] was a good introduction to the man, I found this book to be infinitely more informative and intriguing. At times the paragraphs can get a bit lengthy but after about 20 pages I got used to the writing style. The story is jam-packed with details that would escape most historians, but Goldsworthy presents them as a vital tool to help better explain just how complex the Roman world was at the time of Julius Caesar. I could go on and on about the various elements included in the book that helped make it one of the most enjoyable historical works I've read to date, but I don't mean to bore any readers of this review. To sum it all up, I must say that I was blown away by the scholarship I found in this book and highly, highly recommend it.

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An Interesting Read

Andrian Goldsworthy paints a picture of Caesar as a reluctant dictator--a man who was only looking for the respect he deserved. When his opponents in the government forced his hand by trying to take away everything that he had worked hard for, then Caesar was left with no choice--destroy or be destroyed. Unlike other great conquerors, Caesar was very mild, often pardoning those who fought against him and even including them in his government. It seemed almost as if he were trying to offer chances to those who didn't give him any chances. It seems that it is this boost of reputation is what Caesar was really craving.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn about Caesar's life and how the politics of his day helped shape who he was as a person and how it influenced his actions.

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Good, informative but why, oh why?!

This is a book I would recommend to anyone with some curiousity about "how Rome worked"...provided the reader has a strong mental filter to separate fact from fiction. It is readable, and the author's English is delightful, in the sense that there is something of the turn of the Century (19th-to-20th - not 20th-to-21st) elegance in it. The focus is perhaps more on the "workings of Rome" than on Caesar's most important years affecting Rome - the author is a bit too shy to appear to "endorse a Dictator". And, this is the weakness of the book. It is somewhat like historical works published in the Soviet era in the Soviet Union or one of its satellites. (Yevgeniy Tarlé's works on Napolean and Talleyrand come to mind [ Bonaparte, ]. Superb history, but Tarlé, a Soviet author, must pay homage to dialectic materialism).. In this case the author cannot keep himself from paying homage to all the "important" concepts that make a British academic "politicaly acceptable". Why, oh why, do so many today contaminate their excellent work with the eager additions to show that their thinking, by they way, corresponds to what is required? In this respect, the Introduction is outright painful. Also, to be popular in the early 21st Century, we must write about sex, sex, sex... Of course, we are just speculating, and therefore to avoid any danger of being accused of mixing history with fiction, we put in some weasel-words when we have no sources... The reason why this otherwise excellent work does not get five stars is the author's self-demeaning with his eagerness to prove that he is Politically Correct.

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