The Roman Empire: Julius Caesar — Conqueror, Dictator, Martyr

In January 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, a small river in northern Italy, setting in motion the civil war, dictatorship, assassination, and imperial transformation that would follow. This book traces that arc: from Caesar's boyhood in Rome's Subura district and his survival of Sulla's proscriptions, through his rise across the Republic's offices, his eight-year conquest of Gaul, his dictatorship, his murder by sixty senators on the Ides of March in 44 BC, and his posthumous deification.

Drawing on Caesar's own Commentarii alongside Plutarch, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, the account covers the political maneuvering of the late Republic, the realities of ancient warfare, and the contradictions of a figure who does not resolve into simple categories: a general whose Gallic campaigns killed roughly a million people, a politician who dismantled the Republic he claimed to serve, a dictator whose reforms — including a calendar used for sixteen centuries — outlasted his regime by a wide margin.