Julius Caesar
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From flowers and cookies to cake and chocolate, 1-800-Flowers helps guide you in finding the right gift to say how you feel. To learn more, visit 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST. That's 1-800-Flowers.com slash ACAST. Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. They forged a massive empire. They smashed enemies and shaped history. Sometimes, well often, with a sword. Sometimes with a stelus or a pen, if you like.

From innumerable battlefields to the marble-clad colonnades of Rome, a handful of leaders emerged. You've got Pompey, Scipio, Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, but who truly deserves the title of the greatest Roman of them all?

A lot of people would say Julius Caesar, the daring general who added millions of square miles to the empire or the republic before crossing the Rubicon and breaking that republic. But is that true? Is there someone more deserving? The one person who can answer this question for me

is the esteemed Dr. Simon Elliott, expert in all things Roman. And you're about to hear that conversation right here on the podcast. But before you listen, I have some exciting news for you. You're going to go crazy. It's all available for you to watch this episode on YouTube.

Yep, Dan's Nice History is launched on YouTube. Our Friday podcasts will be available to watch. So head over to our new YouTube channel and make sure you subscribe. Now, to make that super easy, you can find the link in our show notes. But now, friends, now it is time to decide whether Julius Caesar really was the GOAT. Let's get into it. Enjoy.

and lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower

Simon Elliott, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Love working with you, Dan. Let's get it done straight away. Julius Caesar, greatest of all time or not? Yes. So we can go to the pub. We're going to go to the pub. Off we go. In the world in which we live today, we see Julius Caesar as the greatest Roman. Not just the greatest Roman leader, but the greatest Roman. And he's the greatest Roman leader of all time.

That's through the prism of a couple of millennia of very positive PR for him. So remember, firstly, Julius Caesar was one of the greatest PR men of history, almost certainly the greatest PR man of the ancient world. Wrote up his own accounts of his adventures. Exactly, yeah. Totally. So most of what we know about him, he wrote. So if you're to believe that, then the answer is yes. Now... Shakespeare gave him a nice little glow up as well. Certainly did. Gave him a nice buff. Yeah. To the Romans, he wasn't. Ooh.

So to the Romans, actually the greatest Roman...

was Augustus. So Octavian, Julius Caesar's great nephew, who becomes the first Roman emperor. So to the Romans, Augustus is the greatest Roman. Julius Caesar is the second greatest Roman to the Romans. And that is why in the late Roman Empire, when you have a senior and a junior emperor, the senior one's called Augustus, the junior one is called Caesar. So for us in our world, Caesar was the greatest Roman.

For the Romans themselves, it was Augustus. Right. Well, let's get into his backstory, first of all. Then we'll hash out what he might have achieved and whether he deserves some of those plaudits, whether he's the greatest or second greatest. Still not bad. Good podium. When's he born? Caesar was born in 100 BC. So by the time he was assassinated, he was 65. Great. And Rome in 100 BC, is it a republic? Is it a sort of community of aristocratic people?

sort of luminaries who sit around in the Senate debating the best course of policy? If you look at Roman politics around the time he was born, the Senate was dominated by two political factions, and those political factions shaped his entire life and indeed his death. So you have the optimates, who are the pro-Senate reactionary party, and you have the popularis, who are the radical pro-Plebian party. And it was very black and white. You couldn't sit on the fence. You had to be one or the other in the Senate.

And those two factions effectively ensured that until Augustus was declared the first emperor in 27 BC, two thirds of that century was dominated by civil wars. Really, really brutal, awful civil wars between various factions. You can have times of peace, but mostly it was civil wars between...

the optimates and the popularies. A great republic brought down by savage partisan politics, you say. Fascinating stuff. And many as well as important by now, because you're getting towards the end of the second century BC into the beginning of the first century BC. Rome now is the master of not only the Italian peninsula, but the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. So through the Punic Wars, they've dominated the Western Mediterranean,

through the wars against Hellenistic kingdoms and in the East they've dominated the Eastern Mediterranean. The latter is very important because dominating the Eastern Mediterranean gives them access to the incredible wealth of

inherited by all the rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms, the successors of Alexander the Great. So what is now Syria and all that sort of part of the world. Absolutely, absolutely. So there's a super wealthy Senate divided savagely along partisan lines who are in a battle for the sort of heart and soul of the Republic. And the battle is led by what are in effect, and I call them bluntly, warlords.

So Caesar growing up, grand family, which of these two sides do you slide into? So Caesar is part of the Populare's sort of factions. So the first thing to look at with Caesar is to consider the gens or clan which he's born into. So at the aristocratic level for Romans, senators and equestrians,

They're aligned from birth with a clan, not necessarily like a voting tribe, as it were, which the Romans also confusingly had. But these are familial ties and they stick together through thick and thin. And he's in the July tribe.

Okay, so another one will be the gens Claudia, so the Claudians. That's why later when you get them coming together, you have the Julio Claudians. So the Juli are his clan, his gens, and that's reflected in his name. So he's got a classic trinomen of a Roman senatorial level noble. He's called Gaius. His friends called him Gaius. That's his first name. Gaius, Julius. So Julius is his clan name. And then Caesar. Caesar is the nickname name.

And what's it mean? Well, that's the interesting thing. So most people have their own pet theory about where Caesar comes from. What we do know is that Caesar first appears as the cognomen, the nickname, at the end of his family trinomen. Always remember, by the way, the eldest son of a Roman elite family carried the name of the father, exactly the same. Caesar's father was called Gaius Julius Caesar. So the first time Caesar appears is in the context of the Second Punic War.

One of my favorite theories is something which one or two classical historians mention, that a full bear called Gaius Julius was fighting at the Battle of Zama in the second Punic. They're fighting Hannibal, the Carthaginians in North Africa. Absolutely. And single-handedly kills an elephant. Oh, that's good. And the Punic, so Phoenician name for elephant is Kaiser.

So the Latinization of Kaiser is Caesar, which I love because then you go all the way through to the 20th century and you have Kaiser Bill, the leader of Imperial Germany in the First World War, called the Kaiser, which is named after an elephant. So you kill an elephant, you get that as your honorific, you get a nickname. And then it's kept. It cascades through the generations. So this is the name that Caesar inherits. Certainly it doesn't come from Caesarian birth.

because there's no evidence whatsoever that Caesar had a Caesarian birth with his mother Aurelia, because his mother almost certainly outlived him. And if you had a Caesarian birth in the ancient world, you'd die. His father did not outlive him, though. No, I mean, Caesar's father dies, as far as Caesar's concerned, young. So, Caesar is obsessed in his own lifetime with two things, wealth and power, and they both become obsessions from his experiences early in life.

Caesar's branch of the Juli with his father, Gaius Julius Caesar, was an elite sort of senatorial family, you know, full-fat part of the Juliagens clan. However, they weren't that well off. And then his father gets a big break and his father becomes the governor, the pro-consul of Asia, one of these fabulously rich eastern provinces. Sort of modern-day Turkey, sort of that. Absolutely, yeah, sort of western Turkey. It's a license to print money, basically. If you become the pro-consul of one of these provinces,

provinces in the former Hellenistic world, it's a license to print money. But his father dies when Caesar's 15, when he's bending down, allegedly, tying his shoelace and has a heart attack. So Caesar, from a very early part of his life, and he's the only son in the family, becomes the head of the family at the age of 15. And this is a Roman, as you say, because if you're pro-consul of Asia, you make a ton of money. So people like Caesar's father can make lots of money in Asia, and this new massive empire that suddenly sprung up.

you can then come back to Rome and use that money in your political battles against your hated enemy in the Senate. So it's highly partisan, lots at stake, and the wealth of the empire. Also, you're trying to get the best jobs for you and your mates, right? Absolutely right. Except that Caesar's father dies on the job. So he's all set to make the money and doesn't.

So the family were impecunious from that point on. So one of the things that you always see in any narrative about Julius Caesar is that he's borrowing money all the time. And then he's always basically one step ahead of his creditors. Well, the reason is because the family should have been very wealthy, but his father died young. But his dad's lived long enough to give him that ambition. I want to be pro-consul. I want to go and run chunks of the empire, expand. He wants to live that aristocratic life. That costs a bit of cash. Well, I think he's one of these characters in history which had a sense of destiny from a very young age.

which has been heightened within his own family because he's the only son, and then heightened again because he becomes the head of the family at 15. And then he gets dropped straight in to the next round of sort of civil wars between the Optimates and the Populares. And this isn't really politics. This is civil war. There are warlords vying for control of Rome. There are. I mean, basically, civil wars are awful and brutal. We know in the world in which we live today, they're awful and they're brutal.

There's zero-sum games where if you lose, you lose everything. And so frequently throughout the first century BC, you have Roman warlords leading aristocrats with their own military forces who lose and the whole family line goes. They lose everything, prescriptions, et cetera. So with Caesar at the age of 15, he gets dragged to the front line with the popularities and very, very young because...

becomes the high priest of Jupiter at the age of 15, and then also marries very, very young his first wife, who is the daughter of Cinna, the leading member of the Populares, because the granddaddy of the Populares, Marius, has just died.

And why on earth is Caesar sort of plucked? Has he just got the right name, the right bloodline, he's in the right place? Or he may be expendable, we don't know. But basically, he's dragged and he's put front and centre. Now, these names we're beginning to use here, we've used Marius, we've used Sulla, we've used Cinna. To those we can later add Caesar, we can add Pompey, we can add Mark Antony, we can add Octavian or Augustus.

These are warlords. And the reason why they become warlords in the first century because of the military reforms of the legions by probably the greatest of all the popular areas before Caesar, who is Marius, seven times consul, died in 86 BC, a year before Caesar.

Julius Caesar's own father died. What Marius did was recreate the legions so that all 5,500 legionaries, all equipped the same, all trained as engineers, and all can do everything the legion needs to be in the field. So it makes it highly mobile, one. Two, he removes the financial qualification to become a legionary. So the legions suddenly open to the poor.

Previously, they'd been sort of people of a little bit of substance. Like almost you think about a militia and revolutionary era, America, for example. These were sort of men of some standing who would be able to... who were figures in their own community. And they had to buy their own kit. So they had to spend money basically to become a Roman legion, which a lot of people couldn't. Now, it's all given to them.

And also, because you have this round of civil wars, you start getting legions created one after another. And when Augustus won, Octavian won eventually as the last man standing after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, he inherited 60 legions. Okay.

So what these warlords are doing now is that they're setting themselves against each other, creating these legions. As they build a new legion, they then promote the officers and junior officers from one existing one into the new one. So suddenly they have very, very, very reliable troops who will only follow them because they

They're being paid by the warlord. Yeah, they're utterly dependent on the warlord. Totally, totally. And also, they've got promotion through them as well. And these legions are independent. They can operate without sort of a baggage train. So that actually is a recipe for disaster for the Republic because the Republic falls eventually.

So you've got these political figures who are also military figures, and they've each got their private armies. Absolutely. And you can describe traits that these warlords have to a greater or lesser extent. Grit, this Roman ability to come back from adversity. Strategic and tactical leadership. Bravery, the ability to communicate well. The ability to make difficult decisions and be brutal if necessary.

And ultimately, the only one who had all of them was Caesar. All of the above. All of the above. So he's 15, he's got married, and he's a priest. So he's straight out of the blocks. Absolutely. A big priest, but basically he's on the front line. But it's a really bad time to do it because Marius has just died and the pendulum is swinging back in favor of the Optimates and suddenly Sulla pops up. And Sulla is...

a big deal military warlord okay the equivalent of Marius quite a terrifying individual actually famed for the prescriptions and the prescriptions means just sort of putting people's names on a list and saying they are now cast out of Roman society oh they're killed killed all their property confiscated they lose everything it's a totally zero sum game

So Caesar flees, and he flees to the Apennine Mountains, and he hides in the Apennine Mountains, but his mother, Aurelia, pleads his case with Sulla so he can come back, and she does very well. She actually pulls a few strings with some family members, and she does very well.

who are optimates and ultimately Sulla says yes you have this classic quote where Sulla says to him look I'll let him come back but mark my words he's a badon and we'll all regret it and from a Sulla perspective from an optimates perspective it's absolutely true so Caesar thinks he's a man of destiny Sulla seems to potentially agree and Sulla's a man of destiny himself as well Sulla knows how to spot them

There's too many men of destiny around in this period. This room's too small for too many men of destiny. There are two things as a member of the Roman aristocratic classes, senators of question, that you need to be able to do to survive because often you are in these zero-sum games. One's fight and lead men in battle and the other one is practice law because you're always going to get sued by people who want to dominate you in the Senate and if there's a weakness they'll exploit it and often that's through law.

So Caesar, still a very bright guy, is back with Sulla, but he still knows he's not safe. All it takes is Sulla to change his mind, so he flees again. But this time he joins the military, goes to Asia, where his father was the pro-consul previously, and then serves on the front line as a junior officer and does amazingly well.

And he wins the Corona Civitas, the crown of oak leaves, which is the Victoria Cross of the Roman world. This is incredible, incredible bravery that is only given when a Roman military officer or ranker saves another Roman citizen's life. So it's a big deal. So actually, he does amazingly well.

And he's learning the trade as well. He is, yeah. He's kind of also keeping out of Rome's politics a little bit. He is. He's safe-ish out there. He is, however. There's always a however with Julius Caesar, like many great figures in world history. So remember the two things you have to be good at as a Roman aristocrat. You need to be good at fighting and leading many battle, and you need to be good at the law. So he's proved one, so he's going to prove the other. Sulla dies and he goes back to Rome. Turns out he's amazingly good at practicing law as well.

So good. So good that actually he makes a lot of enemies. Yeah.

So he has to flee again. So where does he go? Oh, he goes back to Asia again. Well, he goes to Rhodes. So he decides he wants to improve his rhetoric. That's his speaking skills. Absolutely, which enables him to lead men in battle and also practice law and speak in the Senate. So he decides to go and see one of the leading rhetoricians in the Roman world and goes to Rhodes. It's on the way that you have this famous event with the Cilician pirates. Yeah, what happens? He gets snagged. So he and his mates, so he's got a band of brothers, his mates with him,

They're on the, um, probably a merchant ship, a Roman merchant ship, might be a war galley, but we'll say a merchant ship and it's on its way to Rhodes. And they get captured by Cilician pirates. Now, the interesting thing there is that although we call them pirates, remember the Romans have spent the last 50 years defeating all the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Eastern Mediterranean. A lot of these pirates are former sailors, former Marines. So they're actually fairly good troops actually. And he's captured. And then you get this amazing potpourri of anecdotes where, uh,

He sends all his friends to the regional city of Ephesus, Pergamon, to go and raise capital to pay the ransom. He himself is kept by the pirates. So he's with the Cilician pirates. And there they are. And he befriends them. And he wins them over. But he does say, ha, ha, ha. But remember, when I'm freed, I'm going to capture every single one of you. And I'm going to crucify you. They all go, ha, ha, ha. He's a bit of a card, isn't he? Except that that's exactly what he does.

So the money comes in, he's freed. He then goes to Pergamum, the regional capital, raises more money, hires mercenaries, goes back, captures the pirates, takes them back to Pergamum, leaves them with the governor. The governor's meant to execute them, but doesn't. So Caesar goes back, gets them, and he executes them by crucifixion, except being a nice guy, because he enjoyed their company. He slit their throats first. So, you know, all well and good.

What's amazing about this is so many endings to this story that could have involved Caesar dying as a young man at the hands of the pirates or his political enemies or in Asia. I mean, it's just remarkable that he survives. Remember, by the way, we're reading about this, a lot of this through his own words, the greatest PR man of the ancient world. However, there is this inherent sense of destiny driving him.

You know when you meet somebody in the world of politics or the world of military who's got this sense of self-belief, they can lead men in battle. And they do it easily and naturally. And that's exactly what you have with Caesar. People know he's lucky. They know he's good, but he's lucky. Remember all those traits that the warlords had. He's the only one that's got the lot.

And he knows it. Including the luck. Including the luck. Which every great commander needs. So he's freed from the pirates. Yeah. What happens next? So he ends up going back to Rome again. So it's this swinging between sort of like being in the Roman world and then going to one of the provinces and then going back. But he then gets a very good post and he goes to Spain. So he goes to Hispania Ulterior, which is southwestern Spain.

And serves through various levels of the cursus normum, which is the career path of a Roman aristocrat until he's ultimately effectively the governor of the southwest of Spain. And here, sort of in the early 60s BC, you get this amazing anecdote where Caesars in Cades, the great port originally founded by the Phoenicians...

There's a temple there to Alexander the Great with a statue of Alexander there. Remember every great leader, not only in the modern world, but certainly in the classical world, all wanted to star themselves on Alexander the Great. And he looks at the statue and weeps because at the time he's 33 and that's the age when Alexander most likely died. And he weeps because he's not achieved anything. I've achieved nothing. Come on. I've achieved nothing. This guy at the age of 33 conquered the entire known world.

The entire known world, and I've done nothing. However, you can almost see that sort of meeting with a statue of Alexander the Great re-accelerating. We say, right, time to crack on. Is he adding more territory to the Roman world, sort of conquered territory, or has it already been conquered, that part of Spain? That part of Spain has already been conquered, but basically the Roman world at the time, remember the Roman world later the empire is a Mediterranean world empire.

So you have the Western, Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, a fully functioning part of the Roman world, playing a very important part in Caesar's later life, actually. And Spain is now, not all of it, but a chunk of Spain is now beginning to join the Roman world as well. What we don't have at the moment is Northwestern Europe.

Okay, and that comes next in the Caesarian narrative. Julius Caesar will play a big part in conquering North-East Europe, so take me there. How does he come to, from Spain, what does he do after that? Goes back to Rome, becomes a consul in the 60s BC, quite a dirty, allegedly, series of elections, but becomes a consul in the 60s BC. By that point, he's forming the First Triumvirate. So you have Pompey Magnus, Gnaeus Pompey, who is... Another great commander. Totally, and the leader of the Optimates. Yes.

So the inheritor of the leadership of the Ottomartis from Sulla. You have Caesar, who has effectively inherited it from Marius and Cinna. And then the third one is the richest man in Rome, who's Crassus, who can play between the two. And the three of them form this triumvirate within the Senate where they agree not to block any of their legislation. So effectively, they stitch up the Roman political system and then they accrue themselves really good positions of power. So we see Caesar's

jumped a bit, hasn't he? So one minute he's a prisoner of the pirates. So Spain must have been really important for Caesar because he comes back and he's able to perform this tram for it. What's the key element there? It feels like he's passed through a bit of a threshold. Money. Money. Money, money. Caesar driven by...

power and buy money. And when you're in Spain, you have some of the most fabulous metalla in the Roman world. So mines, gold, silver, lead, iron, tin. It's basically sort of an opportunity to make vast amounts of money. So he comes back, he's got loads of cash now, so he can buy votes, he can buy loyalty. And also with loads of cash, he can get loans because his money's good for this point in his life. Not always, but this point in his life. So basically he's accruing

a treasure chest ready to do a big thing. And the big thing, the opportunity comes in 59 BC when in the context of the first triumvirate, he's granted the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul. So that is the north of Italy, north of the Po Valley and the Rubicon. Just under the, in that sort of curve under the Alps. Absolutely right. Yeah. So we're Milan and Turin are today and Ginoa and Venice. So basically a potential powerhouse. Yeah.

And also he's given Provincia. Provincia is the Roman province, which is on the southern coast of Gaul, which by that point is a Roman province. So with Provincia and with Cisalpine Gaul together, put the two together, and actually that is actually a real opportunity for him. He's already made some money in Spain.

But he can look north from Provincia, from the Mediterranean coast of modern France, and he can see all these unconquered territories to the north, Gaul, basically, with hundreds of different tribes, many of whom are siding with the Romans, trading with the Romans. But he knows there's wealth to be made. Now, remember, he also needs military glory. And to date, he's got his Victoria Cross from his first campaign in Asia.

He's done well in Spain, but... Doesn't have the big victory to his name as a commander. And then he just goes way over the top and gets the biggest of victories of all. He conquers Gaul. Unbelievable. The interesting thing, Dan, is he conquers Gaul in six years.

When the Romans invade Britain, and we'll talk about Caesar and Britain in a minute, but when the Romans invade Britain to conquer a province from the southeast coast to the line of the Solway Firth, tying later to become Hadrian's Wall, that took 40 years, right? Caesar conquers continental France, the Low Countries, and some of the western parts of modern Germany in six years.

Right? And also, this is a very rich, very wealthy territory that he's conquering as well. You know, with- They're quite sophisticated opponents. Totally. Longstanding tribal elites making their own money, et cetera. And yet he does it in six years. How did he do that?

I think it's because he really knew, probably more than anybody of the generation before his or the one after, how to lead these Marian legions on the battlefield. So Caesar is a serial creator of legions. So he starts the campaign with four and ends up with 14. And every campaign is incrementally over the winter, going back to Salpine Gaul,

Building new legions, building new legions. And a recruit's flocking to him because they're hearing there's bounty, there's money to be made, there's loot, there's slaves. Are people happy to turn up and take the shilling? Wealth and glory for Caesar and his men. They're ultra loyal. They're ultra loyal. So he's got his own pet legion, the 10th Legion, Legio Tenequestris as an example. But all his legions are pet legions. When the 14th Legion is destroyed, he recreates it.

And also, he's very, very, very, very good at logistics. The first campaigning 58B series against the Helvetii in the north of the Alps.

which is a huge campaign, actually. And the forces against him are far larger than the ones he's got. Brutal landscapes, mountain passes. Which he deals with. When he's campaigning against the German Suebi, he crosses the Rhine and builds the famous bridge across the Rhine. His 57 BC campaign, he says, right, I'm going for it this time. I'm going into the lands of the Belgae. So he goes right onto the Rhine, where the most troublesome of the Gallic tribes and confederations are.

fights the Battle of the Sambra or the Sabbath, where he almost loses but wins, famously using Roman special forces speculatories and exploratories as part of his campaign. And then as the wars come to an end, as he's beginning to conquer the whole of continental Gaul, modern France, et cetera, there's a series of revolts and it culminates sort of in the Great Gallic Revolt.

But crucially, in the middle of it, he invades Britain. Yeah, so he takes Roman legions across that Western Ocean for the first time. Dan, he's crazy. Crazy. Crazy. What's he doing? You know, to the Romans, this is the Mediterranean Roman world where you have Mare Nostrum, the Mediterranean,

They're having to cross Oceania, the channel, the Atlantic approaches the North Sea. That's terrifying for the Romans. And also until Caesar's invasions, although the Romans knew of Britain, they didn't know much. So it's a fairly terrifying land. So to invade Britain, it's crossing a terrifying ocean into a terrifying land.

The great Augustus planned to invade Britain three times, but very sensibly came up with an excuse each time. The mad and bad Caligula also planned to invade Britain and didn't because his troops refused to go across. The Claudian invasion in 43, which did succeed, the legionaries initially refused to cross. So it's scary. So for Caesar to get two invasions over, I call them incursions because he never overwintered, don't think he wanted to overwinter. That was an amazing feat.

Listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about Julius Caesar. Was he the greatest? More coming up.

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And there's fighting. It's not easy when they get there. There's fighting in the beach, in the shallows. Caesar has to lead the way. It's extraordinary leadership. So firstly, the 55 and 54 BC, they're in the context of the Gallic campaigns. So for Caesar, it's an addition, a bolt-on to his Gallic campaigns. He's using legions, which are part of his Gallic campaigns.

Why is he going? PR, a win. Glory. This is wealth and glory. Potential wealth from the Metalla in Britain, et cetera. Capturing slaves as well. He's doing something which no Roman's ever done before in terms of invading. So that gives him this massive PR win. Also, if you're a Gallic...

elite aristocratic member, and you've lost to Caesar, where are you going to run to? You can either run to the Germans north or east of the Rhine, or go across to your mates in Britain. So they're all going across to their mates in Britain. So you can almost imagine the situation where these Gallic aristocrats have been booted out of their own territories, fermenting trouble. So it's lots of opportunities for Caesar. Interestingly though, Danny's first campaign in 55, I think it's the worst one he ever planned. Why so?

Caesar, throughout his entire military career, has a reputation, rightly so, of being amazing at logistics. The planning, the reconnaissance...

special forces building fleets he nails it every time apart from 55 BC when he doesn't so he underestimates his enemy he only takes two legions he then does a very poor reconnaissance and the fleet turns up off the rocks up off the white clast over doesn't it basically which are covered in sort of like Britain's atop them saying come on so you end up with this like wacky racers scene where Caesar sends the fleet up the coast probably to the I think the invasion beaches were on the east coast of Kent and

sort of around Walmer and Deal up into Pegwell Bay and the Wantsam Channel near Thanet.

But the Britons follow them. So Caesar has to mount that most difficult of military operations, an amphibious assault against a defended shore. And it's quite a close run thing. I mean, you get this anecdote where the Aquila, so the Eagle standard bearer from the 10th Legion, his own Legion, leaps into the water because no one will jump in the water and they all have to follow him. But they win. But his cavalry don't arrive. So they've got 10,000 to 11,000 legionaries.

The cavalry don't arrive, so he's got nothing which can do reconnaissance for him. He's got nothing who can chase a broken enemy. So therefore, they just spend a while in the marching camps, doing a bit of prodding and poking around locally, lose some ships to bad weather, and then they go back again. Caesar, of course, writes it's an amazing success. The greatest PR man of the ancient world. But he doesn't let it go.

So it goes back in 54 BC, this time with five legions, 25,000 men and cavalry. The invasion this time isn't against the defended shore and ends up campaigning all the way through to probably modern Hertfordshire and does win a victory and gets peace agreements from the Britons. Goes back again, never winters, cracks on finishing off Gaul, but Britain's now on the Roman map.

My favourite fact about British history is that in the long, long history, the list of invasions of these islands...

there has only been one opposed invasion. And that was the first one that we know about. I know, amazing. Absolutely amazing. Caesar's in 55. It's very weird. By chariots. By chariots. And subsequently, people would just land, you know, like Edward II's wife just landed and marched inland. Duke William of Normandy just marched. So yeah, it's weird. Okay, so let's finish off Gaul because we should talk about Alesia, this astonishing victory that he besieges the Gauls, doesn't he? He builds a huge siege works around them and then he gets besieged. Talk to me about this doughnut siege. I've always been fascinated by it.

So the context is, towards the very end of his conquest, which was 58 to 52, there's a massive Gallic revolt led by Vercingetorix, who's one of the major tribal leaders, one of the great figures actually sort of in classical history. And Caesar, by now with a lot of legions, besieges Vercingetorix in Alesia, which is the major tribal capital.

I mean, the Romans do the same everywhere. So it's a classic Roman siege technique. You build the circumvallation around it. It's a big wall all the way around. All the way around it. Nothing gets in and out. Absolutely. And then the siege begins. And this is where you see Caesar being brutal, by the way, because Vercingetorix thinks, you know what? I don't need to feed the women and children. So he pushes them out into the no man's land between the walls of...

which was sort of an opida, so a very heavily defended series of very deep ditches and banks with palisades on top, multiple of them with interconnecting fields of fire. So it's a very sophisticated system of defences.

As was Caesar's circumvallation as well, which is ditches, probably two or three ditches, banks, Roman field obstacles and defences. On top of the bank, you're going to have the palisades as well as the gauls, and then towers as well and gateways. So, Bersing Gettarix kicks the women and children out into no man's land, expecting Caesar to let them through. And he doesn't. He lets them starve.

Brutal, brutal. Although, remember, for a Roman, if you're part of the Roman world, you're in, and if you're not, you're out. And if you're out, it's in the most brutal way. But nevertheless, even in that context, that is a brutal thing for Caesar to do. One of the reasons being, he knew his rear wasn't protected, and soon gets word that the Gauls are coming to try and relieve Alesia. So he builds another wall

ditch and bank triple ditch and bank this time facing out facing outwards it turns out to be a close run thing actually two or three times the Gauls trying to relieve Alesia sort of break in but Caesar here again showing one of the traits of the warlords leading from the front fighting in the front line hold the line because yeah so the Gauls try to break in and the other Gauls trying to break out yeah

And Caesar sticks in the middle, wearing a red cloak or something so everyone can see him. And also, he's got his scutum shield, he's got his gladius sword. So he's fighting as a legionary. He's actually literally fighting in the front rank. So, you know, this thing with the traits of these warlords, this is again him demonstrating bravery. So he's showed brutality, showed tactical and strategic skill, and he's shown personal bravery. And eventually wins the day. And he's generous to his men.

always generous to his men, which all Roman military leaders from that point learn that if you are in power because of the military or military success, always be nice to the military. Spread the love. Spoils of war. Spread the love of the many. Yeah.

So at this point, here's a microcosm of what is wrong with the Republic, is you can't have a Republic of senators all chatting and voting on legislation when these senators are by themselves sort of regional despots, superpowers. They have their own armies. They're now wealthier than any Roman has ever been in history, any European has ever been in history. We've had two big political developments taking place before the siege of Alesia in Rome. Firstly, Caesar's only child through a wife...

His daughter, Julia, who married Pompey, dies in childbirth. So his daughter has married his political rival slash partner for the time being. Absolutely. Pompey the Great. So that relationship starts fading from that point. And their baby dies. Yeah. So that baby could have unified the dynasties. Yeah. Quirk of history, one of those sliding door moments. Yeah.

But also, Crassus. Crassus decides. Because he's jealous, because you've got Caesar conquering Gaul, Pompey's an absolute legend, great CV, so Crassus decides...

He turns out to be a really rubbish soldier. So he decides he's going to try and conquer Parthia. Parthia is what later becomes Persia. So it's modern Iraq and Syria and into modern Iran. And the Parthians have emerged in the last century as being the great Roman opponents on the eastern frontier. So draw a line through modern Syria...

Parthia to the east, Rome to the west. So he decides he's going to defeat Parthia and he leads this heavy infantry-based sort of late Republican Roman army into the deserts of Syria. And hey presto, the Parthians who are either heavily armoured cataphract cavalrymen, one-tenth of their armies, or light men,

horse bowmen, nine-tenths of their armies, annihilate him. Just swarming around these big infantry formations and just slowly annihilate them. Battle of Cara, and it's a really sad event, actually, because...

The way it's described, he'd got his eldest son with him and his eldest son was killed the day before the main engagement took place. So actually he was grieving for his son who he was very close to and he wasn't match fit to lead his troops in battle by the sounds of it, probably very understandably. And the Romans get annihilated. So Crassus has gone as well. So politically Pompey's dropping out the picture and

And the links with Caesar are being cut and cut and cut. Caesar's a long way away as well, remember. The nearest he's been at any time here is in Cisalpine Gaul in the north of Italy. And Crassus is dead. So you get to the end of the 50s and Caesar is very heavily leveraged, borrowing money to raise these legions and

doesn't want to go back to Rome because he knows that when he goes back to Rome, the creditors are going to be after him if he doesn't have the military at his back. But he's not allowed legally to go back to Rome ever with military. He can't take his own private army marching back to Italy. It's illegal in the Roman world to bear arms in a city within the religious boundary, so he can't do it. The optimates are increasingly in the dominance in the Senate as Pompey drifts back to his bad old ways from a Caesarian perspective.

But the Senate knows if they can drag him back to Rome, then they can really sue him because of all the money he owes, et cetera. They can finish him off legally, maybe even finish him off militarily. But Caesar refuses to leave his position. So he gets told, you've got to come back. And he says, I'm not coming back. You've got to come back. I'm not coming back. And if you come back, you can't bring any troops. Well, I'm not coming back. But if I do come back, I will bring some troops. So eventually in 49 BC, he's had enough.

So this is where you get this fantastic vignette in history, the crossing of the Rubicon. The Rubicon is the river near Ravenna, which separates Cisalpine Gaul from Italy on the eastern coast of Italy. And he crosses it with the 13th Legion. He takes a legion with him. Pompey's got more troops in Rome than Caesar, but he bottles it. Getting on, but bottles it. Flees and he legs it to Greece.

Why do we have the expression crossing the Rubicon? Is this the beginning of the end of the Republic? It's the dice is rolled, isn't it? I mean, basically, he's told he's not allowed to enter Italy, so south of the Po or the Rubicon, with troops under arms. And he does. He absolutely does. He says, you know what? I've had enough of this. I'm the big man.

The big man with the money's dead. I've got no political familial ties anymore with Pompey. I'll be bullied around here. I know they want to finish me off because I've actually got more martial success than any of them. So I want to ignore you. And he just goes for it. What is he thinking at this point? Is he thinking, I want to be like Marius. I want to be like Sulla. I want to be like Suna. I want to be the dictator for the rest of my life. I don't think he's thinking in terms of being the dictator for the rest of his life.

I think there's a degree of real politic in it. Remember, it's looking at the resurgence of another round of civil wars.

which are zero-sum games. So he's not going to win that by hiding. So he's basically showing personal bravery here, warlord trait, by fronting up to the threat. And the threat is the optimates in Rome. So he says, look, I've had enough of this. Let's do it. Come on, bring it on. There's going to be a war. Let's fight it out. Remember, his favorite Latin phrase is ut veniant omnes, which means bring it on. Let them all come.

And also, if you psychologically think about what he's achieved, going to Britain is like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. That's how unbelievably fantastical it is. And he's done it twice, and the second time he's won. He's conquered the wealthiest part of northwestern Europe in Gaul. He's captured the biggest leader there is in Gaul versus Getterix. He's done a deal with the biggest leader, probably, at least in the southeast of Britain,

He's done it, you know, wealth and power. So he takes Rome, but Pompey and his allies are going to fight for control of the Roman world. But Caesar again shows how great a warlord military leader he is because he doesn't let it lie. So Pompey flees to Greece and

and Caesar follows him straight away. He actually crosses to Greece from Italy in the middle winter. So it's a high-risk naval crossing, but he does it because he's got a key on the tail of Pompeii, because he knows Pompeii's got a lot of loyal legionaries in Greece in the east. Pompeii actually calls a lot of them to his colours. The Titanic battles in 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, and it's a battle Caesar should have lost. Pompeii got more troops there,

got more allied troops, got more cavalry, but Caesar ultimately came up with a very good strategy to force the engagement and then series of tactics to win. And he wins and Pompey flees again. But Pompey makes a big mistake, which has big implications for the way we see the end of the Republican world and also Shakespeare, because he flees to Alexandria, which is the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. As Pompey steps off the boat in Ptolemaic Egypt, he has his head chopped off.

by Ptolemaic king who is keen to show that he's a friend of Caesar. But that's a mistake as well because Caesar is hot on the heels traveling from Greece to Alexandria and when he arrives he's incandescent

that a Roman has been beheaded by a barbarian king. That's the end of that particular pharaoh of Egypt. Absolutely. And he's replaced by... Well, his sister Cleopatra. Yeah. So you end up with the Lady Ptolemy's...

being a very dysfunctional, very, very, very dysfunctional dynasty. We're not even going to try and explain the family tree of the late Ptolemy. I just want to say that Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's father, and the father of the Ptolemy who beheaded Pompey, was the grifter of grifters of the classical world who spent his life going around the eastern Mediterranean trying to borrow money from the Romans.

And it was only Caesar who finally, with Pompey, acknowledged that Ptolemy XII was actually the proper Hellenistic king pharaoh of Egypt. But this is what puts Caesar into the orbit of Cleopatra. More on Julius Caesar coming up. BetterHelp Online Therapy bought this 30-second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your chalk.

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All right, so Caesar lands. He's very unhappy with the king of Egypt, but he doesn't mind the king's sister, Cleopatra. And ends up having an intense affair with her, which results in their son, Caesarian, being born. So in terms of the Roman world, that's a big deal. But Caesar doesn't stay in Egypt very long.

So you have this Alexandrian war where he's besieged in the Imperial Palace for a while, etc. But ultimately, as most of his troops come over, ultimately the Romans are victorious. And then he hot-foot sits back after spending a bit of personal time with Cleopatra.

Not to the Western Mediterranean, but he goes north. So he goes to thank the Judean kingdoms, which have been supporting him. But then he has to go... And that's in what is now Israel-Palestine. Absolutely. So they're, what do we call them, clients? They're not totally independent of the Roman world, but they're also not just incorporated into a Roman province. I'd say, Dan, that's absolutely spot on client states.

And then he goes north for his next campaign. So he's won at Pharsalus. He's won the Alexandrian War. He's done a parade of victory, effectively, on the eastern Mediterranean coast in the Levant. Is he now uncontested leader of the Roman world? No. This is the interesting thing. But he doesn't turn to the Romans first. So then he goes to Pontus.

which is the kingdom around the Black Sea, where Pharnaces II is rebelling against Roman rule. So this is effectively the Fourth Mithridatic War. And that's when Caesar goes up there very briefly, wins very quickly, and that's where the phrase veni, vidi, vici comes from. So I came, I saw, I conquered. And then he goes to pursue the final Optimates opponents, who by this time in North Africa, so he goes to Tunisia,

fights the Battle of Thapsus, which he wins. Tough battle, but wins. And that's 46 BC. They then flee, the survivors, and they go to Spain, of course. So he fights the Battle of Munda, which is a really, really nasty, brutal civil war battle where one of the leaders of the Optimates was Pompey's eldest son. He gets killed there. And that's it, basically. Pockets of resistance here and there, but that's it. So you're fighting from...

Greece, Egypt, Black Sea, North Africa, Spain. It's extraordinary. Starting off in Gaul through Rome. Yeah. But absolutely normal for the Romans. I mean, it's Maionostrum, the Roman Sea.

Then this is where he goes back to Rome in the middle of the 40s BC. Cleopatra comes over with Caesarian. And although the entrance isn't as glamorous as you have in Antony and Cleopatra, it is still exceptionally grand. Egypt becomes a thing. And this is when Caesar reforms the Roman calendar using the astronomers from the Ptolemaic court, for example. So you have the Julian calendar.

So these Greek-Egyptian astronomers come over with Cleopatra and Caesar goes, well, you're bringing some interesting ideas. And bamboozles the Romans. Yeah.

However, Caesar now is starting to make political mistakes. So we're in 46, 45 into 44 BC. He's making political mistakes. But he's ruling the Roman world at this point. He is really ruling it. And is he different to those other warlords you mentioned at the start? Is somehow this rule deeper and even more powerful? Or does he look a bit, if at the time you were like, oh yeah, he's just like that guy, Sulla. Is there something different about him? There's no one that can stand up to him at that point.

And that's dangerous because suddenly, as he's increasingly gathering dictatorial powers, dictator means that you're granted by the Senate the power of full authority over the Roman world, more or less. Yeah, dictator's not just us being rude. It's actually a title that was given. Yeah, but for a year, right? So he gets bump, bump, bump, sentencing.

So he's still acting as the dictator and eventually more or less gets told he can be dictator for life. So in effect, he's not an emperor, but he's ruling as a king or an emperor, which the Romans don't like. This unifies the optimates and popularities in the Senate against him. So he's got everybody against him. So he's got supporters, Markanton, et cetera, but broadly, a lot of people now are against him. And then it culminates on the Ides of March in 15th of March, 44 BC, 14th

when he's assassinated in the most brutal fashion as he's entering the Senate. And the interesting thing there, of course, is the building that he's entering isn't the Senate, because the Senate, the Curia, and the Forum Romanum was being rebuilt. So part of the theater of Pompeii, which is visible today, the steps of it are visible today in the Lago d'Argentina, that's where he's assassinated. And he gets about 60 stab wounds over...

Only one of which, by the way, probably based on the autopsy at the time, was fatal. But it really was fatal, and he's dead. So these other senators are just having a little prod just to get in on the action. Doesn't end well for them either, though. Well, I bet.

So he doesn't rule Rome for that long. No. And again, remember, we're seeing his career through the prism of history. And if you were to ask most people what the high points in terms of narrative are, they'd start off with his assassination. So in an odd way, we're looking at...

Caesar's chronological narrative backwards through the fact that he was assassinated when he was the big man. He's just too powerful. People are jealous of him. What kind of mistakes is he making? I think, you know, you get that maxim, don't you, that political power corrupts and total political power corrupts totally. And you can see a degree of that in the story of Caesar's demise. He's got very few people around him who are going to tell him the truth.

He's got very few people around him who can stand up to him personally on a personal level. He's got nobody who can stand up to him in terms of reputation as a military leader. And he's got ultra loyal troops as well. Absolutely ultra loyal troops, which nobody to that point has ever

He's defeated the optimates. He's won in Greece. He's won in Alexandria. He's won on the Black Sea. He's won in North Africa. He's won in Spain. No one can stand up to him. Are the other senators just angry that he seems to be building this dictatorship? Are they just jealous of him? Is it just old-fashioned partisan politics? Or are some of them motivated by the desire to return Rome to the proper republican rule? You know, the Romans liked doing things properly.

right they're like things in order there's a way of doing it they're not that fond of the easterners from the Hellenistic kingdoms etc Cleopatra's not that popular in Rome for example but

The Romans like doing things properly. And by this point, Caesar's really not doing things properly. He's having dictatorial powers year after year. And also, it looks as though he might accrue them for life, right? Which means he's a king or an emperor. He's not the first among equals. He's not the leading sort of Roman of the time, ready to pass the shining beacon of Romaniters onto whoever's going to follow him. And that doesn't sit well with the Roman senators.

So a big group of them decided to kill him. And the interesting thing, it is a big group and it's also not just from the optimality side as well. You get popularies joining them as well. I mean, the famous ones, you know, Cassius and Brutus, et cetera, we know through, principally through Shakespeare in actual fact, to be blunt.

but there's a lot of them. So you can almost imagine the sort of the cork of the bottle of the pressure of the Roman political system being exploded out the top by this sort of like really, really devastatingly brutal event, actually. There's then a couple more rounds of civil war, which we'll just gloss over. But eventually the key thing is that Caesar's heir, his great nephew Octavian, becomes Augustus, becomes the first emperor. So Augustus is sort of riding on the coattails of Caesar. Is that why we talk about Caesar as this kind of OG, original emperor?

Almost an emperor, but not in name. Absolutely. Okay. So one thing that Augustus inherits from Caesar is the ability to be a brilliant communicator and to be blunt, a PR man.

So Augustus makes sure once he becomes the emperor in 27 BC, he's the last man standing at the end of the civil wars in 31 BC when he defeats Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. So there's no more Roman warlords. He's the only one left. So he's the last man standing. 27 BC, the Senate say he's Augustus. He's the emperor. The Republic's dead. The empire begins. And from that point, Augustus is brilliant at...

creating the image he wants people to see. And part of that is to bask in the glory of Julius Caesar, which drags Caesar's reputation into the Imperial Age. And it lasts all the way through the Imperial Age as well. So that's why you have Augustus and Caesar for senior and junior emperors. They're symbiotically linked.

That's why we get the Kaiser, the leader of the German Reich. That's why we get the Tsar. Absolutely right. That name has just echoed down the centuries. And it still cascades down the centuries. I mean, if you wanted to have a bankrupt Hollywood movie, the one you go for is something about Caesar. If you ask anybody in the street, name me a Roman, and they'll say Caesar. Many say Cleopatra, actually, because I've actually done it. But most people say Caesar. So are people on the street right? I mean, why that memory? You cannot lay a glove on him in terms of military command. He was an extraordinary military commander. Yeah.

Was Caesar the goat? In the Roman Republic, yes. In the Roman Empire, I personally would put him on a par probably with Augustus. Augustus is the person which all subsequent Roman emperors wanted to emulate and do better than. Very few, if any, succeeded. So I'd say probably you have two goats, symbiotically linked, Caesar and Augustus.

So military commandment for short, did he have a big impact? Did he change life for civilians? Would it have felt different under Caesar's rule? Absolutely. From that point on in the Roman world, for example, on an absolutely daily basis, because he changed the Roman calendar, the Julian calendar. That's only one tiny example of

Caesar carried out many reforms in public life, many reforms of the Roman economy. Roman society would have felt the impact of many of the reforms as well. But certainly, although intriguingly in our world today, when he is considered the greatest Roman, mostly it's in the context of military success. So he's a little bit like Napoleon Bonaparte. He was as active off the battlefield as he was on it.

It's a very interesting analogy because Napoleon is a divisive individual in terms of a military leader and a political leader, probably in the same way, certainly, that Caesar was at the time of his death. So it gives us some insight, actually, into why people were worried about him seizing too much power. Was the Roman Republic doomed? Even if there hadn't been a Julius Caesar, there'd have been someone else. It ended up just metastasizing into an empire. That's a really great question, actually. Yeah.

I would imagine if you were to look at the Julio-Claudian emperors in particular, were absolutely obsessed with staying in power. And one of the reasons was they were terrified that there'd be a return back to the Republic. So the Republic, one, going wasn't a given, and two, not coming back wasn't a given. We're just fortunate to have history so we can see what would have happened. But all it would take is a sliding door moment and things could have changed totally.

So the language of the Roman Empire is all around us. The architectural inspiration of the Roman Empire all around us every day as we walk through the cities of so much of the world. People, I suspect like you, we now know, think about the Roman Empire an indecent amount when they should be thinking about other things. Is that all because of Julius Caesar? Well, to a huge extent, yes. So let's look at very briefly parts of the Roman world which we've touched on. Spain,

Gaul, the Low Countries, these are parts of the world today which speak a Romance language. That's based on Vulgar Latin. So they became part of the Roman world.

either at the time of or because of Julius Caesar, and they still speak a Romance language. The law codes of many continental legal systems, including France and Spain, is based on the Roman 12-table system of law. So even there, the law of these nations is based on the world of Rome.

in parts of the world where Caesar played a key role in either incorporating the Roman world or in the terms of Gaul conquering. So even in the most physical way, the answer is absolutely right. Yes. Okay, so let's expand that. Well, let's be naughty right at the end. You see the goat of the whole of ancient history, Egypt, Greece, Persia, the works.

The two people whose names are most often mentioned as the goat of the ancient world. If we'd say to somebody, who's the greatest person in the ancient world? It'd be Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. And Alexander the Great conquered his own known world by his early 30s. And he's the guy in defeating Achmed of Persia, which gathered the wealth, which later led...

to the Hellenistic kingdoms being formed in the Eastern Mediterranean, which then allowed that wealth to fuel the late Republican civil wars because that's where the money came from originally. So Alexander the Great was incredibly successful and

To me, it's Julius Caesar and Alexander. Very, very clearly, because Alexander the Great, for me, inherited the finest military machine of his own known world, which nothing could stand up against, which was the phalanx and lance arm cavalry army developed by Philip II, his father. Caesar fought other people who were symmetrically just as good as he was. And Caesar fought throughout his entire life, his entire life.

So he was always on campaign in battle once he was a major political leader. Whereas Alexander the Great's conquest was over a much shorter period of time. And the sense of jeopardy if Caesar had lost, Alexander the Great, if he'd not die, could have gone back to Macedon, et cetera, and said, I've done a good job still. Caesar couldn't, he'd have lost everything. So the sense of jeopardy was even more heightened. So for me, it's Julius Caesar. Tough to argue with that. Thank you very much, Dr. Simon Elliott. Brilliant, as always, fluent, as always. It's been a great pleasure. I love having you on the podcast. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out. ♪

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