Caesar: A Life in Western Culture

by Maria Wyke

More than two millennia have passed since Brutus and his companions murdered Julius Caesar—and inaugurated his legend. Though the assassins succeeded in ending Caesar’s dictatorship, they could never have imagined that his power and influence would only grow after his death, reaching mythic proportions and establishing him as one of the central icons of Western culture, fascinating armchair historians and specialists alike.
 
With Caesar, Maria Wyke takes up the question of just why Julius Caesar has become such an exalted figure when most of his fellow Romans have long been forgotten. Focusing on key events in Caesar’s life, she begins with accounts from ancient sources, then traces the ways in which his legend has been adapted and employed by everyone from Machiavelli to Madison Avenue, Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw. Napoleon and Mussolini, for example, cited Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in defense of their own dictatorial aims, while John Wilkes Booth fancied himself a new Brutus, ridding America of an imperial scourge. Caesar’s personal life, too, has long been fair game—but the lessons we draw from it have changed: Suetonius derided Caesar for his lustfulness and his love of luxury, but these days he and his lover Cleopatra serve as the very embodiment of glamour, enticingly invoked everywhere from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to the hit HBO series Rome.
 

Caesar is the witty and perceptive work of a writer who is as comfortable with the implications of Xena: Warrior Princess as with the long shadow cast by the Annals of Tacitus. Wyke gives us a Caesar for our own time: complicated, hotly contested, and perpetually, fascinatingly renewed.
 

Genres: History, Classics

287 pages, Hardcover

Published August 31, 2008

Reviews

[Boone Ayala · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting thing for me is Wyke’s method of metahistorical biography - balancing contemporary records of Caesar’s life with the appropriations of events from his life, and seeking to show the continued resonance and uses of his biography throughout history.

This seems like this would make a fun assignment for students. Something like “pick one work (art, literature, video game, movies and TV, etc) which depicts a historical event, figure, or process covered in this course. Using course materials, outline the history of the event. Then, analyze the event’s representation in media. Go beyond a simple critique of inaccuracy - why is the artist invoking this event? How does the medium change the way the event is experienced or understood ? How might you, in collaboration with the artist, change the event to make it more historically accuarate, or at least express different dimensions of the history?”

[Bonnie_blu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surveys western culture from Caesar's time to the 21st century and shows how Caesar's life has been used through numerous time periods and by many cultures to promote various political and/or spiritual agendas. Two very strong conclusions can be drawn from Wyke's investigation: 1) Caesar was without a doubt an extraordinary person gifted with a plethora of talents and great intelligence; thus, the continued attraction and relevance of his life more than 2000 years after his death, and 2) political/cultural/religious entities and movements will continue to co-opt the rich details of his life to promote their own agendas. Recently there has been a renewed effort to discover the "real" Caesar; however, this may be an impossible task unless additional sources are discovered. Therefore, Caesar's life will continue to be malleable.

[Anurag · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about the modern reflection of institutional power. I wish the author went into politics and psychology a little more but she seemed more interested in keeping the book entertaining. It's fine at first, but there are instances where the author attempts draw conclusions on our understanding of Caesar by overinterpreting rather unconsequential artifacts - things as Age of Kings - a computer game. For such reasons I probably won't recommend this book for someone interested in studying Caesar in details - but the book definitely is an entertaining commentary on the topic.

[Lyndon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think i love the concept of this work as much as the work itself. To 'read' Caesar through the centuries is to catch a glimpse of how history is anything but static; rather, it serves the purposes of those who need 'history' to come out in their favor. This is a fascinating telling of the story of Caesar, and a remarkable reading of even current manifestations of appeals to Caesar. The prose is tight and lucid, which makes the text skip along merrily.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is well-written, but it turns out I wasn't interested in the subject as much as I thought.