What Is Julius Caesar's Passion For Learning

Roman culture also held education in high esteem, respecting learned political figures and leaders. In Lives, Plutarch discusses Caesar’s virtuous passion for learning: “In the meantime Sylla's power being now on the decline, Caesar's friends advised him to return to Rome, but he went to Rhodes, and entered himself in the school of Apollonius . . . Caesar is said to have been admirably fitted by nature to make a great statesman and orator, and to have taken such pains to improve his genius this way that without dispute he might challenge” (Lives). Caesar returns from fighting pirates to find he can take a weak Rome. Rather than fight his rival Sylla, however, Caesar decides to enter school to advance his learning. He knows he will have another …show more content…
Alexander was personally educated by Aristotle, amongst other teachers, and his father, Phillip, made sure that Alexander developed a passion for learning at a young age: “his education, as it might be presumed, was committed to a great many attendants, preceptors, and teachers” (Lives). Alexander’s learning-intensive childhood paid off, as he was known as a learned leader. In adulthood, Alexander was well versed in many scholarly fields: “the practice of the art of medicine. For when any of his friends were sick, he would often prescribe them their course of diet, and medicines proper to their disease, as we may find in his epistles” (Lives). Alexander was similarly interested in knowledge and learning. Like Caesar, he was well-educated, which was an important trait in Roman society and surely interested Plutarch’s Roman