C. Iulius Caesar
100 BC – 44 BC
Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC into an ancient patrician family that claimed descent from Venus through Aeneas — illustrious lineage but, by the late Republic, not especially wealthy or politically powerful. His aunt Julia married Marius; his first father-in-law was Cinna. These connections marked him as a popularis from the start, and Sulla reportedly said the boy had "many a Marius in him."
His military and political career is the stuff of universal history — the conquest of Gaul, the crossing of the Rubicon, the civil war against Pompey, the dictatorship, the Ides of March. What concerns us here is that he was also one of the finest prose stylists in the Latin language. His Commentarii de Bello Gallico and de Bello Civili — written in the third person, in a deliberately plain style — are masterpieces of self-presentation disguised as military dispatches. Cicero praised their "naked beauty" (nudi enim sunt, recti et venusti). Every sentence serves the argument that what Caesar did was necessary, competent, and just.
He was murdered on 15 March 44 BC by a conspiracy of senators. His prose outlived them all.
Eight books covering eight years of conquest. Caesar describes his subjugation of Gaul in prose so clean and controlled that it has been used to teach...