Gaius Julius Caesar, also known as Julius Caesar, was a Roman dictator and general. He was born on July 12th, 100 BCE in Rome, Italy. He is supposedly related to the Trojan Prince Aeneas, a Greek Hero and Mythical God. He was also the nephew of the famous Roma general, Marius. After his Uncle’s death, Sulla, his uncle’s enemy, was going to seize Rome by force.…
Polybius Describes the Romans’ Worship of Their Ancestors 1. Polybius admired the Roman Republic a great deal, in fact, he believed the roman republic to be a perfect form of government. He believed the success of the Roman Republic was tied to the Romans’ principle mosmaiorum, “the code of elders”. One of the main features that sets apart the Romans from the other civilizations at the time, was their devotion to their ancestors. The Romans’ practice during funerals showcased their devotion and respect to their ancestors.…
A hero often displays a tragic flaw, a characteristic that brings about a downfall. A tragic hero is a person usually of noble birth, who suffers catastrophe. In the play,” The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,” very much like other tragedies, this play had much suspense with the characters especially Brutus, and Cassius. Brutus contrasts very well with Cassius in this play. Cassius wanted to kill Caesar so he can gain the power which was for his own personal gain.…
Julius Caesar was assassinated by political rivals on the steps of the senate in Rome on March 15, 44 BC. Two of those political rivals were a former first commander under Pompey, Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus (a trusted friend) both whom Caesar had pardoned. He was stabbed 23 times. The assassins did not realize that Caesar death initiated the end of the Roman Republic. Caesar was exceedingly popular with the middle and lower classes.…
In his work The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius presents the reader with biographies of the prominent Caesars who ruled Rome. Suetonius was employed as secretary to Emperor Hadrian and due to this, had access to documents describing the Caesars lives. His account combines descriptions of the Caesars public lives, their military campaigns and their rule, as well as descriptions of their character and their personal lives. While he sometimes expresses his opinions within his writing, he tries to give his readers the full image of the Caesars including both their positive and negative attributes. To do this he, unlike other historians at that time, does not have a chronological approach to his writing but rather a thematic.…
Introduction: Suetonius and Augustus Suetonius’ approach to biography is elucidated by centring focus on the Life of Augustus. Suetonius rose to prominence as a scholar, and later gained positions in Hadrian’s court, with his work The Twelve Caesars dated tentatively to the reign of Hadrian between 117-38 C.E. He did not write in a chronological style like his contemporary Plutarch, but rather divided his work thematically, into categories such as birth, achievements, career, morals and death, although the structure varied within his work. One of the proposed reasons for this structure is that Suetonius was inspired by Augustus’ Res Gestae. Erik Gunderson argues that Suetonius used Augustus’ Res Gestae as an exempla, while his section on…
Suetonius was born around 68-9 AD, possibly in Hippo Regius (Suetonius xviii). His mentor described him as ‘scholarly and honorable’ and many held him in high regard (xix). Suetonius completed The Twelve Caesars sometime around the 120s during the peak of his career (xxiii). Suetonius conveys his opinion of each emperor indirectly through how he portrays their vices and virtues.…
I think that through multiple centuries of stories about the legendary ruler, his character was boosted to show that he was undeserving of his unfortunate fate. Therefore, while Shakespeare’s play is a very interesting and entertaining look at Caesar’s life and death, Plutarch’s biography of Caesar provides a more reliable account. As far as the nature of the man Julius Caesar, I believe it is not our place to decide. As we cannot know Caesar’s true motives or what drove his morals; we shouldn’t judge is character. In the end, God is the only person capable of making that…
Alexander the Great has been revered as military genius, tactician, and godlike conqueror. Many of the accounts taken down of his life make him out to be the hero of Western culture and practice. The peoples he conquered and the territories he took over worshipped him as a god and even placed him alongside the likes of Zeus and Ra. The main source used to gain knowledge of Alexander’s life stems from historians and philosophers, such as Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Arrian. These writers recorded the events that took place in his life as though they shared close ties to Alexander.…
‘Given the individual aspirations of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, it is not surprising that the first triumvirate broke down.’ Discuss The aspirations of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar were the cause of the breakdown of the first triumvirate due to Pompey’s want for power and money, Crassus’ lust for money and desire to make up for his lack of senatorial power, and Caesar’s need for money and power. The three men were feared by the senate, for their power and excessive wealth, so by joining together they could combine their forces to fulfil their wants. Each man needed something from the others, whether that be votes, support or popularity and without this need the first triumvirate would never have begun.…
Suetonius mainly focuses on how Caesar used means to manipulate his way into higher positions of power. Suetonius carefully describes the political moves and oratory skills by which Julius continued to increase his own power while battling for the popular party against the Senate. After the nine-year campaign in Gaul, Caesar decided that only civil war could settle the political dissension. Caesar 's popularity with the people excelled, presenting a threat to the power of the Senate and to Pompey, who held power in Rome. Crossing the Rubicon, he marched on Rome to start a Civil War against Pompey and ultimately seize power.…
In Antony and Cleopatra, displayed was a powerful love between two people at the climax of their trials and tribulations. Plutarch ‘Life of Antonius’ is the primary source, and Shakespeare has combined this factual evidence together along with fiction and drama to formulate a play that is different in terms of proposition, structure and notability. In the first century AD, less than one hundred years after Antony’s death ; but just in time to hear his grandfather’s personal experiences about the battle of Actium, also from Antony’s altruistic engaging in Alexandria. He was a Greek philosopher, and so his congeniality ran more in direction of his fellow countrymen than the Roman subjects of his regid studies.…
Suetonius focuses on what happened leading up to the murder, where Caesar was hailed as king by the plebs. While Plutarch wrote heavily about what happen after the act was committed: the parade of people happy with the murder, the reading of Caesar’s last will, and the rioting that was directed towards the murderers. Nicolaus’ account vividly depicts the act of the murder, where he describes the scene as if “they were fighting over Caesar” slashing and stabbing at Caesar and each other (Nicolaus, Augustus 24). Suetonius and Plutarch’s accounts of the murder are the most similar to each other, which may be because they wrote at similar times and under the similar thinking styles of the day, which was stoic philosophy. Nicolaus wrote his account at about the beginning of the first century, about 100 years before Suetonius and Plutarch, giving him an entirely different generational view point, and opinion of the…
"On Sparta" Book Review Plutarch 's take on the history of "On Sparta" was written in such a way that readers may not take every piece of information literally. One may be led to believe that Plutarch wrote this book with the idea that he was not trying to be historically correct. The exaggerated parts of the lives of Lycurgus, Agesilaus, Agis, and Cleomenes should be understood as more of a fable rather than an actual piece of history. “On Sparta" has a great balance between the lives and sayings of Spartan men and women sections. The Sayings section is almost comical.…
Have you ever wondered why in some plays there are not as many women as there are men. In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that is just the case, there are only two women in this play. Portia and Calpurnia only get introduced when men are talking. Portia goes crazy because she is not treated like she would like to be. Portia wants to be treated like men.…