Review: Giulio Cesare

Giulio Cesare by Luca Canali
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This short book was very promising at the start. It doesn't go into too much detail, but covers Caesar's life and seemed very useful as a point of reference, not only for what happened in his life, but for the reasoning behind his main decisions, whether personal, political or military.

However, then came chapters 5, 6 and 7, where the author decided to act as a psychoanalyst and explore Caesar's motivations. This wouldn't be too bad, except he clearly uses this opportunity to pretty much justify any bad thing people might have to say about Caesar. He even has one entire chapter analyzing how often Caesar used superlatives in his writings (admittedly rather interesting), with the idea that this meant he felt very passionate about what he wrote (and that it wasn't propaganda). I confess I ended up skimming this toward the end since I felt the author had fallen into the trap of thinking his biographical subject could do no wrong.

Chapter 8, however, redeemed the book, with an analysis on the Ides of March. How the conspirators had read public sentiment so incorrectly, and why Caesar would not be surrounded by bodyguards, despite credible threats.



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