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Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. A A member of first Triumvirate , Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war , and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC Caesar changed the course of history of the Greco Roman society has been extinct for so long that most of the name of its great men mean little to the average, educated modern person . 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 Kaiser in German, tasar in the Slavonic languages,and qaysar languages of the Islamic world.

Caesar’s gen(clan) name , Julius(lulius), is also familiar in the Christian world, for in Caesar’s lifetime the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed “July” in his honour.This name has survived, as has Caesar’s reform of the calendar. The old Roman calendar was inaccurate and manipulate for political purposes. Caesar’s calendar, the Julian calendar,is still partially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and the Gregorian calendar,now in use in the West,is thr Julian, slightly corrected by Pope Gregory 8 . Caesar’s gens, the Julii , were patricians i.e. members of Rome’s original aristocracy, which had coalesced in the 4th century BCE with a number of leading plebeian families to form the nobility that had been the governing class in Rome since then . By Caesar’s time the number of surviving patricians gentle was small and in the gens Julia thr Caesares seem to have been the only surviving family. Though some kf the most powerful noble families were patricians, patrician blood was no longer a political advantage. it was actually a handicap , since a patrician was debarred from holding the para constitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The Julii Caesares traced their lineage back to the goddess Venus, but the family was not snobbish or conservative minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished. A Roman noble won distinction for himself and his family by securing election to a series of public office, whicj culminated in the consulship , with the censorship possibly to follow. This was a difficult task for influence. Rome victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE ) had made Rome the paramount power jn the Mediterranean basin, an influential Roman noble family client. might include kings and even whole nation besides numerous private individuals.The requirement and the costs of Roman political profit were of enormous magnitude.One of the perquisites of the praetorship and the consulship was the government of a province, which gave ample opportunity for plunder.The whole Mediterranean world was ,in fact ,at the mercy of the Roman nobility and of a new class of Roman bussinessmen, the equities which had grown rich kn military contracts and on tax farming.

Military manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry.This class had been partly dispossessed by an economic revolution following on the devastation caused by the Second Punic War.The Roman governing class had consequently come to be hated and discredited at home and abroad.From 133 BCE onwards there had been a series of alternate revolutionary and counter revolutionary paroxysms .It was evident that the misgovernment of the Roman state and the Greco Roman world by the Roman nobility could not continue indefinitely and it was fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of military service. The traditional competition among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils of office was thus threatening to turn into a desparate race for seizing autocratic power . The Juli Caesares did not seem to be in the running. It was true that Sextuts Caesar , who was perhaps the dictator’s uncle , had been one of the consuls 91 BCE, and Lucius Caesar , one of yhe consuls of 90 BCE , was a distinct cousin, whose son and namesake was consuls for 64 BCE, In 90 BCE ,Rome’s Italian Alies, has sedded from Rome because of the Roman government’s obstinate refusal to grant them Roman citizenship,and as consul,Lucius Caesar had introduced emergency legislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all Italian ally states that had not taken up arms or that had returned to their allegiance.

Whoever had been consul in this critical year would have had to initiate such legislation, whatever his personal political predilections .There is evidence, however,that the Jullii Caesares though patricians,had already committed themselves to the antinobility party.Anamunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius a self made man who had forced his way up fo ghe summit by his millitary ability and had made the momentous innovation of recruiting his armies from the dispossesed peasants.