Julius Caesar provoked strong reactions among people: some loved him, some hated him, some ridiculed him (Document 2), and some changed their minds (Document 3)—but only fools failed to recognize his extraordinary energy and will (Document 1). These excerpts, including one in his own words (Document 4), offer sample assessments of what different sources said this most famous Roman was like. The biographer Suetonius described both Caesar’s strengths and faults (Document 5).

1. Julius Caesar and the Pirates

About a century and a half after Caesar’s death, the Greek scholar Plutarch wrote a biography to reveal the famous leader’s character. He tells this story of Caesar as an eighteen-year-old (well before he became famous) refusing the dictator Sulla’s politically motivated order to divorce his wife. When the teenage Caesar fled Rome to escape being murdered by Sulla’s henchmen, he was captured by pirates while trying to get to safety in Asia Minor.

[To escape Sulla], Caesar sailed to King Nicomedes in Bithynia (in Asia Minor). On his voyage home, pirates from Cilicia captured him and held him on an island. When they demanded twenty talents [a huge sum] for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who he was, and spontaneously promised to give them fifty talents instead. Next, after he had dispatched friends to various cities to gather the money, he had only one friend and two attendants left while a captive of the most murderous men in the world. Nevertheless, he felt so superior to them that whenever he wanted to sleep, he would order them to be quiet.

For thirty-eight days, as if the pirates were not his kidnappers but rather his bodyguards, he participated in their games and exercises with a carefree spirit. He also composed poems and speeches that he read aloud to them, and anyone who failed to admire his work he would call an illiterate barbarian to his face, and often with a laugh threatened to crucify them. The pirates loved this, and attributed his free speech to simplemindedness and youthful spirit.

After Caesar had paid the ransom and was released, he immediately manned ships and put to sea against the pirates. He caught them still anchored, and captured most of them. He took their loot as his booty and threw the men into prison, telling the Roman provincial governor that it was his job to punish them. But since the governor had his eyes on the pirates’ rich loot and kept saying that he would consider their case when he had time, Caesar took the pirates out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he was going to do, when they thought he was joking.

Source: Plutarch, Life of Julius Caesar, 1–2 (excerpted). Translation by Thomas R. Martin.

2. A Poet Mocks Julius Caesar about Sex

In about 58 B.C.E., the twenty-something Catullus ridiculed Caesar (in his early forties) and his follower Mamurra in several acid-tongued poems. The biographer Suetonius (Life of Julius Caesar 73) reports that Caesar said the ridicule inflicted a permanent blot on his name, but that when Catullus apologized, Caesar invited the poet to dinner that very same day.

They’re a pretty good match, those fags,

Mamurra and that queer, Caesar.

And no wonder. They’ve both got the same stains,

One of them a City guy and the other from Formiae,

And they won’t wash out.

One’s just as sick as the other, those twins,

Two little brainiacs on the same little couch,

This one’s just as greedy an adulterer as the other,

They’re allies competing even for little girlies;

So, they’re a pretty good match, those fags.

Source: Catullus, Poem 57. Translation by Thomas R. Martin.

3. Cicero Writes to a Friend about Julius Caesar

Cicero, Rome’s most famous orator, wrote many private letters that have survived. In this one, written to his friend Atticus a few days after Caesar began the civil war by crossing the Rubicon River in January 49 B.C.E., Cicero worriedly expresses his opinion of Caesar at the time.

What’s going on? I’m in the dark. . . . That awful fool Caesar, who has never had even the slightest thought of “the good and the fair”! He claims he’s doing all this for the sake of honor? But how can you have honor if you have no ethics? Is it ethical to lead an army without official confirmation of your command, to capture cities of Roman citizens to force your way more easily to our mother city, to plot abolition of debts and the recall of exiles, a thousand outrages, “all to obtain the greatest of divinities, sole rule”?

In this letter, written on March 1 of the same year, Cicero offers a different opinion.

Just look at the kind of man who has taken over the republic: clear thinking, sharp, on the ball. By god, if he doesn’t murder anyone and doesn’t take away people’s property, the very people who lived in fear of him will worship him the most.

Source: Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 7.11, 8.13. Translation by Thomas R. Martin.

4. Julius Caesar Explains Why He Fought the Civil War

In his memoirs, Julius Caesar provided his own account of the civil war that made him Rome’s most powerful man. Here he reports what he said to the Senate on April 1, 49 B.C.E., after Pompey left the capital and Caesar took it without a struggle. In his own writings Caesar refers to himself in the third person (i.e., the he in this excerpt is Caesar).

A meeting of the Senate convened, and he spoke about the wrongs his enemies had done him. He explained that he had only wanted a usual office [i.e., consul] . . . and was content with what any citizen could obtain. . . . He emphasized his moderation in asking on his own initiative that both his army and Pompey’s be disbanded [to prevent war], a concession that would have cost him both status and office. He talked about how bitter his enemies had been . . . and how they had not laid down their command and armies, even at the cost of anarchy. He stressed how unfair they had been to try to deprive him of his legions, and how savage and arrogant in putting restrictions on the tribunes [who favored him]. He spoke about the offers he had made, the meeting that he had suggested but they had rejected. Given all this, he encouraged, he asked the Senators to take responsibility for the state and govern it together with him. But, he added, if they ran away out of fear, he would not run away from the job and would govern the state by himself. His opinion was that the Senate should send delegates to Pompey to arrange a settlement; he was not cowed by Pompey’s recent remark in the Senate that to receive a delegation implied authority but sending it implied fear. That sort of thought revealed a weak and superficial spirit. He, by contrast, wished to win the competition to be just and fair in the same way in which he had striven to excel in his achievements.

Source: Julius Caesar, The Civil War, 1.32. Translation by Thomas R. Martin.

5. A Biographer Describes Julius Caesar’s Character

These excerpts about Caesar’s character and behavior come from Suetonius’s biography, written about 150 years after Caesar’s assassination.

Caesar was somewhat overly concerned with how he looked, and he always had a careful haircut and shave, and even had excess hair removed. . . . His baldness embarrassed him because his enemies made fun of it. He therefore used to comb his little remaining hair forward, and more than any other honor bestowed by the Senate and people he treasured and used the right to wear a wreath of laurel leaves on his head all the time. . . .

The only sexual impropriety in his reputation was his relationship with the king of Bythinia, but that accusation was serious and lasted; everybody insulted him about it. . . . He seduced lots of women . . . and had love affairs with queens. . . . He drank only very little.

Both as a military commander and as a public official at Rome he used every trick to accumulate money. . . . As a public speaker and a general he either equaled or outstripped the fame of the most outstanding men of the past. . . . He wrote memoirs . . . which Cicero says “deserve the highest praise—they’re simple and elegant at the same time.”

On military campaigns he showed incredible endurance. . . . It’s hard to say whether as a commander he relied more on caution or boldness because he never led his army into a spot where it could be ambushed without first making a careful scouting of the territory. . . . He never let concern for religious scruples deter him from action or slow him down. . . . Whenever his troops started to retreat, he often rallied them himself, using his body to block their way . . . even grabbing them by the throat and making them turn around to face the enemy. . . . He judged his soldiers not by their character or luck but only by how skilled they were, and he treated them all with the same strictness and the same indulgence. . . . He would sometimes overlook their mistakes and didn’t punish them strictly according to the rules, but he always kept careful watch for soldiers deserting or mutinying, and these he punished with great harshness. . . . So, he made his men very devoted to him and also very brave.

Even as a young man he treated his clients faithfully. . . . He was always kind to his friends. . . . He never became so much of an enemy to anyone that he couldn’t make them a friend when the chance came. . . . Even in seeking revenge he was naturally very merciful . . . and he certainly showed wonderful self-restraint and mercy while fighting the civil war and after he won. . . .

In the end, however, his other words and deeds outbalance all this, and there is the opinion that he abused his rule and that it was justice that he was murdered.

Source: Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 45–76. Translation by Thomas R. Martin.

Questions to Consider