History Chapter 18 - Julius Caesar, Part 1 PDF

# Chapter 18 - Julius Caesar, Part 1 Gaius Julius Caesar, more commonly known by his cognomen Julius Caesar, traced his lineage back to a prince of Troy who was celebrated as the son of the goddess Venus. With nothing less than the blood of the gods running through his veins, there could be little...

# Chapter 18 - Julius Caesar, Part 1 Gaius Julius Caesar, more commonly known by his cognomen Julius Caesar, traced his lineage back to a prince of Troy who was celebrated as the son of the goddess Venus. With nothing less than the blood of the gods running through his veins, there could be little wonder that such a man would become one of the greatest heroes of Rome. He was born into the aristocracy in 100 BCE after a difficult delivery that is believed to be the first recorded case of the appropriately named caesarean section. His father, also named Gaius Julius Caesar, had been Praetor Magistrate of the Province of Asia, and like the elder Caesar, the younger excelled in politics. As a patrician, young Julius was expected to serve a term in the Senate and in the army; he did so and performed well in both roles. When he was sixteen, however, his father's death made him the head of the household and inspired him to take a different career path. Knowing that he needed financial security more than anything else, Caesar turned to the priesthood. Religion was serious business in a city where rulers claimed sacred, holy ancestry from Zeus and Poseidon themselves, joining the priesthood meant that a man's family could enjoy the respect of their fellow citizens and enough money to live comfortably. There was one problem, unfortunately: the girl who Julius had already promised to marry was not from an aristocratic family. Priests were required to marry patrician women, so Caesar ended the engagement and married a patrician girl named Cornelia Cinna. His plan backfired hideously as the city's ongoing political debates had reached a breaking point between the two main factions, the Populares and Optimates. The first ideology posited that the best way to govern Rome was through democratic principles and the mobilization of the lower classes. However, many Romans were of the opinion that the Optimate platform was best, in which the aristocracy held supreme power over the plebeians because they were intellectually superior. Julius and his family subscribed to the Populares ideology. The Cinnas were politically allied with Caesar's uncle, Gaius Marius. Cinna was a consul of Rome at the time of his daughter's wedding to Caesar, and his influence helped the latter become the High Priest of Jupiter. Soon afterward, however, the Optimate enemy of Marius and Cinna, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, marched on Rome as the army's general and seized power. Once Sulla had installed himself as the Emperor of Rome in 81 BCE, he rid the city of his enemy Populares, and Caesar was stripped of his priesthood and instructed to divorce his wife. Refusing, the married couple left their home in exile. They were able to return thanks to the diplomatic outreach of his maternal family, but he was ultimately unable to pursue his career as High Priest of Jupiter. There was one other way that Caesar knew how to earn a living, and that was in the army. It was not an easy job, but the work of a soldier kept Julius out of Rome and away from the man who had rebelled against his uncle and turned the Republic back into a dictatorship. He didn't return until Sulla's death in 78 BCE when he felt it was safe to walk along the streets of Rome without danger of attack from the emperor's allies. Unfortunately, Caesar's wealth had long since been confiscated by Sulla as punishment for refusing to divorce Cornelia. It was only in a lower-class part of the city that the newly returned exiles could afford housing, but he took it up all the same. Those first years of his return to Roman life saw Julius Caesar take up public speaking, a habit he became well known for. Politics were his chosen theme, and Caesar spent hours speaking to groups about what he viewed as the disgraceful behavior of several of Rome's former governors. Through these regular monologues, Caesar's personal characteristics -specifically his high-pitched voice and erratic hand gestures- came to exemplify him. During a trip across the sea, possibly en route to study public speaking under the famed Apollonius Molon, Caesar was taken hostage by pirates and held prisoner on a tiny Greek island. During his 38-day imprisonment, Caesar took it upon himself to practice public speaking with his captors, who were apparently very much entertained by his flapping arms, squeaky voice, and obvious superiority complex. When the man's captors told him they demanded twenty weights of gold to release him, he confidently offered to pay fifty instead. The deal was done. When Julius was released, he returned to Rome, raised an army, and then captured and killed the pirates who'd kept him hostage. After that, he pursued law and politics. Over the next decade, Caesar moved up Rome's political ranks. He began as the military tribune, a position in which he was responsible for representing the army to the Senate, and was eventually granted the governorship of the province of Spain. In 60 BCE, Caesar had become powerful and liked enough to form a political alliance with two other ambitious politicians: Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey the Great. This union would be called the First Triumvirate. The purpose of the triumvirate was to put the right pressure on the Senate to ensure it passed several bills that were in Caesar's, Crassus', and Pompey's best interests. Ultimately, they wanted to secure the consulship of Rome for themselves, and this came to fruition the very next year when Julius Caesar was elected as consul. The first bill Caesar introduced to the Senate was cleverly designed to earn him the love of the people of the Roman Republic while leaving him untouchable by irritated senators. His plan was to give free land to the poor farmers and veterans of the Republic who owned nothing for themselves. It was a two-prong plan in which the poor of the Republic would be so grateful that they would become irrevocably loyal to their consul; secondly, it was meant to portray Caesar as selflessly infallible within the Senate. It worked but not at all the way the consul had intended. Senators disagreed heartily with splitting up public and private landholdings, and they walked out of the meeting when their new consul forcefully ejected an opponent from the Senate building. Caesar thumbed his nose at the senators and took the case directly to the plebeian assembly, who were convinced to support him alongside Crassus and Pompey. Thanks to the additional pressure of the plebeians and Rome's most powerful citizens, the Senate eventually voted to pass the bill. He'd lost the support of Rome's conservative senators but gained the love of the poor, who far outnumbered the aristocracy.