Like many people I'm sure, including on this board, I have long had somewhat of a fascination with the history of the final years of the Roman republic, and learned quite a bit about it through various history books, as well as not strictly reliable sources such as the TV series Rome, various movies and, last but not least, Colleen McCullough's famous seven-books series of historical fiction, Masters of Rome. So when I walked past the history section in the local library and saw this book, a recent (2006) biography of Gaius Julius Caesar, I figured it'd be a good way to fill the gaps in my knowledge while getting a somewhat more historically accurate view of the period than McCullough's.

Goldsworthy's biography is written for a wider audience, not for specialists, but one of its goals is clearly to separate fact from fiction, and certainty from conjecture, which does require ample mentions of the historical sources and the discrepancies between them on some issues. Occasionally Goldsworthy declines to go into the details of an academically debated issue, which I was disappointed in, but it's understandable and most of the time he does describe the debate. I certainly had the impression that Goldsworthy knew the relevant sources and was familiar with the historiographical controversies, so I have no complaints about the reliability of the work (not that I'm placed very well to judge that ).

Goldsworthy states in his epilogue that he focused on trying to show that there was nothing inevitable about Caesar's spectacular and dramatic career, that until well into middle age Caesar was just another (relatively) normal member of the Roman political class, and one should see each part of his career in its proper context. I would have expected no less from an actual historian, but it's true that that's a rather big change from the approach popular history often takes to Caesar. The result Goldsworthy's efforts still depicts Caesar as an extraordinary man in many ways, but then, I suppose he really was.

Goldsworthy's speciality is military history, and it shows in the book. The opening third, which describes Caesar's childhood and early career, with a modest historical background sketch, is adequate but rarely very informative or detailed. The second and third parts deal, broadly speaking, with the wars in Gaul and the civil war respectively, with a detailed description of Caesar's actions from year to year, including all the major battles. For me personally, those were the parts where I learned the most new things, though at times I felt I could've learned as much by just reading Caesar's own descriptions of those wars directly. The diagrams included for the major battles are nice, though generally not really needed as Goldsworthy's description of the battles is clear enough. Throughout the book, we see the transformation and spectacular growth of the Roman army during this period, which Goldsworthy describes well. I was a bit disappointed he didn't start this description a bit earlier by writing something about Marius' role in this process, but then he's writing a biography of Caesar here, and Wikipedia informs me he has in fact written books specifically about the evolution of the Roman army in this period.

As for the political side of things, Goldsworthy does a reasonable job at showing the evolution in Roman politics, starting - as is tradition by now - with Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and continuing until Caesar's emperorship in all but name, and its sudden end. He doesn't have room to go into remotely as much detail as McCullough does, and so iconic characters such as Marcus Aemilius Scaurus aren't mentioned very often, but all the important people and events are covered. More importantly, he makes clear how precedents shaped later events, particularly in terms of escalating violence and corruption - with the massacres by the hands of Marius, Sulla and Cinna, occurring when Caesar was a teenager, foremost among those. He also demonstrates how the extreme arrogance and huge egos of the Roman ruling class (Caesar definitely included), and the envy and jealousy caused by them, contributed to this escalation.

What was a bit lacking in all this is what one might call the most essential part of a biography: giving the reader a good idea of what Caesar was really like as a person. I don't think the blame here is really Goldsworthy's, who certainly tries but is limited to what his sources give him to work with. Still, I didn't feel he really shone in this aspect, much less deserved the exorbitant praise mentioned on the front cover of my copy ("An exceptional achievement. This is how biographies should be written.".

There are some other smaller issues I had with the book. Most prominently among them, Goldsworthy's irritating tendency of repeating himself. The statement that senators often blocked the solution of a problem rather than letting someone else get credit for solving it, is repeated at least four times in nearly the same words, as are some other things. Basic Latin terms such as boni and optimates (the two most common names for what one might call the conservative faction in Roman politics, though Goldsworthy does a good job showing that Roman politics was far more complex than this traditional division in two factions) are translated every single time they are mentioned. I also thought his hesitations and prevarications on certain issues, while good in se as they show just how much we don't actually know for sure, sometimes took up an awful lot of space.

Another quibble is Goldsworthy's way of discussing popular topics in popular history on which we don't know the actual facts, for instance Cleopatra's looks. He discusses the limited evidence we have, without reaching any real conclusion, then ends by saying that all in all, it's fair to say Cleopatra was very attractive, which in no way follows from the evidence he's shown. (I might be biased on this topic by my fondness of the surprising depiction of Cleopatra in Rome.) There are a few other instances of the same thing - first pointing out that there is no real evidence for a popularly held belief, but then concluding that the popularly held belief is probably right anyway.

The final issue I had were the numerous spelling errors (including, at one point, the plural "pilae" for "pilum", and on a few occasions even sentences that made no sense, but as I was reading a translation, it's likely Goldsworthy and his original publishers are not at fault for this.

In conclusion, Caesar is a good biography, giving what seems to me like a balanced view of the man, and clearly separating fact from myth or conjecture. It's not equally strong in all aspects of his life, but rather good for the military history and adequate or better everywhere else. Its intended audience is somewhere halfway between those really unfamiliar with Roman history and real Roman history buffs (or McCullough fans such as myself), assuming a certain amount of knowledge but still explaining a lot, sometimes repetitively so. Personally, I conclude that reading the actual specialist works - or the classical authors Goldsworthy bases himself on - might have been more interesting to me, as I really knew most things in this book already. While we're on the topic, any recommendations for detailed works on the life of Octavian/Augustus and/or the Second Triumvirate? I know Greg will tell me (if he reads this post, anyway) that the late Roman Empire is far more interesting, but I can't help it, the first century B.C. is just too fascinating.

P.S.: My apologies to Ghavrel, to whom I mistakenly said this book wasn't the same one as "Life of a Colossus". There is no sub-title in my translated copy, but I see on Wikipedia that the English original's title does indeed contain that.