[Direct Linage1.FTW]
born July 12/13, 100? BC, Rome [Italy]
died March 15, 44 BC, Rome
Caesar, marble bust. In the Capitoline Museum, Rome.
Alinari-Art Resource/EB, Inc.
in full Gaius Julius Caesar celebrated Roman general and statesman, the
conqueror of Gaul (58-50 BC), victor in the Civil War of 49-46 BC, and
dictator (46-44 BC), who was launching a series of political and social
reforms when he was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate House
on the Ides of March.
Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world
decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society has been extinct for
so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the
average, educated modern man. But Caesar's name, like Alexander's, is
still on people's lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even
people who know nothing of Caesar as a historic personality are familiar
with his family name as a title signifying a ruler who is in some sense
uniquely supreme or paramount-the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in
the Slavonic languages, and qaysar in the languages of the Islamic world.