Gaius Julius Caesar: Summary ∙ Life Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Julius Caesar

Start hereAt Zela Caesar won within five days of arriving and summed it up in three famous words. Yet neither writer who reports the words quotes a document by Caesar that survives, and the two disagree on where they appeared. How much of the Caesar we quote is his?

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, writer and politician who conquered Gaul, won a civil war and was made dictator for life. A group of senators stabbed him to death on the Ides of March, 44 BC. He was never a Roman emperor: Rome was still a republic, and the first emperor was his adopted heir, Augustus.

Below is his life in order, where the ancient writers disagree, the lessons we draw, and where to read the sources yourself.

Rubens’s portrait of Julius Caesar.

01Where his story starts, and what is missing

Caesar was born in July 100 BC in Rome. Britannica calls 100 BC the traditional, and perhaps most probable, year. It adds the catch: if it is right, he held each office two years before the legal minimum age. That is why its 1911 edition, following the historian Theodor Mommsen, preferred 102 BC.

The day is 12 or 13 July. The Roman writer Macrobius puts his birth four days before the Ides of Quintilis, which is 12 July. Britannica gives 12/13 July.

Part of the doubt comes from missing pages. Suetonius’s Latin text starts with a gap and opens in Caesar’s sixteenth year. Plutarch’s translator notes that many think the opening paragraphs, “describing the birth and boyhood of Caesar, have been lost”.

So the year is worked out from his age at death. Suetonius says he “died in the fifty-sixth year of his age”. His family was patrician, one of Rome’s old noble houses, and claimed descent from Iulus, son of Aeneas and grandson of the goddess Venus.

02Young Caesar: Sulla and the pirates

In the course of his sixteenth year he lost his father. He married Cornelia, daughter of a Cinna who had been consul four times. The dictator Sulla could by no means force him to put away his wife, and Caesar went into hiding.

Then came the pirates. Suetonius says he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharmacussa and held for nearly forty days. He was freed on payment of fifty talents.

In Plutarch, when the pirates asked twenty talents, Caesar laughed and offered fifty. He was held for thirty-eight days, and later caught the pirates and crucified them all.

Suetonius adds that Caesar had their throats cut first, as an example of his mercy. The two writers also differ on when the voyage happened.

03Climbing the ladder of offices

Caesar climbed the usual Roman career ladder. The dates are the 1911 Britannica’s:

• Quaestor, 69 BC, in Spain; the modern Britannica says 69 or 68 BC, and Plutarch’s translator dates this post to 67 BC.
• Curule aedile, 65 BC. He spent lavishly on public entertainments.
• Pontifex maximus, 63 BC, elected against two distinguished rivals.
• Praetor, 62 BC.
• Consul, 59 BC.

Each step cost money. Plutarch says that before he held any public office he was thirteen hundred talents in debt.

He later divorced his wife Pompeia, suspecting her of adultery with Publius Clodius. Plutarch has him explain: “I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion.” Suetonius gives it as “the members of my family should be free from suspicion”.

04The pact with Pompey and Crassus

Caesar’s consulship rested on a private deal. Suetonius says he made a compact with both of them, that no step should be taken in public affairs which did not suit any one of the three.

Modern books call it the First Triumvirate; even the 1911 Britannica wrote “the so-called First Triumvirate”.

Caesar’s daughter Julia was afterwards married to Pompey the Great. She died in child-birth at Pompey’s house. Plutarch’s view: it was their friendship, not their quarrel, that brought on the civil wars.

05Gaul, 58 to 50 BC

Between 58 and 50 BC Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul up to the left bank of the Rhine. He wrote his own account of the campaigns, the Commentaries on the Gallic War.

The text speaks of Caesar in the third person: lists found in an enemy camp, for example, were brought to Caesar. The last book is not his. Suetonius says Hirtius supplied the final book of the Gallic War, which Caesar left unwritten.

Suetonius says he was the first Roman to build a bridge and attack the Germans beyond the Rhine. He also invaded the Britons, a people unknown before.

At Alesia he besieged the Gallic leader Vercingetorix. The sizes of the armies depend on the source:

• Caesar: Vercingetorix speaks of eighty thousand chosen men inside. The relief army has eight thousand cavalry and about two hundred and forty thousand infantry.
• Plutarch: not less than a hundred and seventy thousand inside, and three hundred thousand outside.

Caesar’s account of the end is short: “They surrender Vercingetorix, and lay down their arms.” Cassius Dio says Caesar kept him in chains. Later, after sending him to his triumph, he put him to death.

The cost, and who counted it

Some of the hardest passages are in Caesar’s own words. In 55 BC he attacked two Germanic peoples, the Usipetes and Tencteri. When the rest of the people, boys and women, fled, Caesar sent the cavalry after them. He writes that the enemy numbered 430,000, and that none of his own men were lost.

Some Romans objected at the time. Plutarch, citing the writer Tanusius, reports that Cato proposed handing Caesar over to the Germans for breaking a truce.

Ancient writers gave totals, and they do not count the same thing.

Writer	What he counted
Plutarch	Gaul, in under ten years: three million fought; one million killed; as many taken prisoner.
Pliny the Elder	All his battles except the civil wars: 1,192,000 killed.
Velleius Paterculus	More than 400,000 of the enemy killed, and more taken prisoner.
Caesar	Figures for single episodes. For the Usipetes and Tencteri he gives 430,000 as the number of the enemy, not of the dead.

Pliny refused to count the dead to Caesar’s glory. He called it what was really “an outrage committed upon mankind”.

Modern historians treat these numbers with care. David Henige wrote in 1998 that until fairly recently the testimony of Caesar’s book was seldom seriously challenged.

In 2015 an archaeologist announced skeletal remains, swords, spearheads and a helmet from Kessel, in the Netherlands, linked to the 55 BC attack. Sophie Hulot, in a 2018 article, notes that doubts remain about the real link with the episode Caesar describes.

Whether to call the attack a genocide is argued. Hulot writes that it has long been seen as a war crime, and more recently increasingly described as a genocide.

She names M. Grant, in a 1969 book, as, to her knowledge, the first to use the word for this massacre. She argues that label seems inappropriate, because the ancient accusations were of a different kind. This is a question of how to judge the past, and we do not settle it here.

A separate page on the Gallic Wars goes through each year and each figure.

06Crossing the Rubicon, January 49 BC

The Rubicon was a small river. Plutarch explains that it separates the rest of Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, the province Caesar governed. The Treccani encyclopaedia says no magistrate could cross it at the head of an army without the senate’s authorisation (our translation).

The trigger was an emergency decree of the senate. Caesar’s own Civil War dates it to the seventh day before the Ides of January, 7 January. The tribunes Antony and Cassius fled to him.

In January 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon with a single legion, and began a civil war against Pompey. Plutarch puts his force at not more than three hundred horsemen and five thousand legionaries.

The famous scene is one of doubt. Plutarch says he stopped, wavered and discussed his perplexities with his friends before he crossed. Then come the words, in two languages:

• Suetonius gives them in Latin: Iacta alea est, “The die is cast”.
• Plutarch says he called out in Greek, “Let the die be cast”, a saying used by men taking a desperate risk.

Our page on famous Latin phrases looks at the phrase in more detail.

Two smaller puzzles remain. Caesar’s own Civil War never names the river; it says only that he set off with that legion to Ariminum. And the date is January 49 BC by the Roman calendar of the time, which had drifted out of step with the seasons.

Treccani (1936) gives 23 November 50 BC, without saying how. Our reading: it looks like the Roman January turned into a solar date.

Even the river is argued over. In 1936 Treccani listed three small rivers that modern scholars disputed. A separate page on the Rubicon covers the night, the words and the river in full.

07Civil war: Italy, Pharsalus and Pompey

The war moved fast. Plutarch says Caesar became master of all Italy in sixty days and without bloodshed.

The decisive battle came at Pharsalus, in Thessaly, on 9 August 48 BC.

Caesar won. Looking at the dead, he is reported to have said, “They would have it so.” Suetonius and Plutarch both take this from Asinius Pollio, who had been with Caesar at the Rubicon. Suetonius adds that at Pharsalus he cried out, “Spare your fellow citizens.”

Pompey fled to Egypt and was murdered there. When Caesar arrived, Plutarch says, he turned away in horror from Theodotus as he presented the head of Pompey.

08Egypt and Cleopatra

Cleopatra reached Caesar in secret. Plutarch says she stretched herself at full length inside a bed-sack, and her companion Apollodorus carried it in to him. The popular rolled-up carpet is not in his account.

Fighting broke out in Alexandria. Plutarch says a fire Caesar used spread from the dockyards and destroyed the great library, but his own translator noted that the destruction can have been only partial. Our page on the Library of Alexandria sets out what each ancient writer says.

When the war ended, he turned over the rule of Egypt to Cleopatra and her younger brother. Plutarch says she had a son by him whom the Alexandrians called Caesarion.

Whether Caesar was the father was a political question even then. The sources split.

• Suetonius says Caesar allowed her to give his name to the child. He adds that Mark Antony told the senate Caesar had acknowledged him.
• Caesar’s friend Gaius Oppius published a book to prove the child was not his.
• Nicolaus of Damascus reports a rumour that Caesar planned a capital in Egypt and had a son by Cleopatra, and says Caesar refuted it in his will as false. Nicolaus wrote in praise of Augustus.

Cleopatra later came to Rome. Cassius Dio says she settled in Caesar’s own house. A separate page on Caesar and Cleopatra looks at what each source says.

09Zela: “I came, I saw, I conquered”

In 47 BC he beat Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, at Zela. Suetonius says he won within five days after his arrival and four hours after getting sight of him.

He summed it up in three words: veni, vidi, vici, “I came, I saw, I conquered”. Two writers report it differently.

• Plutarch: Caesar wrote the three words to a friend at Rome, Amantius.
• Suetonius: they were carried on an inscription in his Pontic triumph. They marked “the speed with which it was finished”, not the events of the war.

Both are reports; neither quotes a document by Caesar that survives.

Our Veni Vidi Vici page turns the line into a three-step method; the method is this site’s own framework, not Caesar’s. Our page on what veni, vidi, vici means covers the words themselves.

10Thapsus, Munda and five triumphs

The fighting moved to Africa. At Thapsus, on 6 April 46 BC, a republican army was cut to pieces.

Plutarch gives two accounts. In the first, Caesar slew fifty thousand of the enemy, without losing as many as fifty of his own men. In the second, his usual sickness laid hold of him and he sat the battle out.

The civil war ran from 49 to 45 BC and ended with his victory over Pompey’s sons at Munda, in Spain, on 17 March 45 BC. It was close. Plutarch says Caesar had often striven for victory, but now first for his life.

He celebrated five triumphs, four in a single month: for Gaul, Alexandria, Pontus, Africa and Spain.

11Dictator for life, and what he changed

The Romans then appointed him dictator for life. Plutarch tells it straight after Munda, and calls it “confessedly a tyranny”, because it added permanence to power that already answered to no one.

He held the title by 15 February 44 BC. In his Second Philippic, Cicero says Antony had the calendar record that at the Lupercalia he offered the kingship to “Gaius Caesar, dictator for life”. The same entry says Caesar refused it (our translation). The Lupercalia was held every year on 15 February.

He used the power to change a great deal:

• A new calendar. He made the year three hundred and sixty-five days, with one day added every fourth year. To catch up, the year of the change had fifteen months.
• A shorter grain list. He cut the number receiving free grain from three hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand.

July is named after him, and the change came in his lifetime. Dio says the senate’s honours included that they had called the month in which he was born July. Censorinus dates the renaming to the year of Caesar’s fifth consulship, which he shared with Mark Antony.

Macrobius adds that the renaming came by a law proposed by Mark Antony as consul.

He was known for mercy. Plutarch says the temple of Clemency was decreed as a thank-offering in view of his mildness. When people hailed him as king, he answered, “I am Caesar and no king”.

Even so, Suetonius says, he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to the title of monarch. His overall judgement: it is thought that he abused his power and was justly slain.

12The Ides of March, 44 BC

Suetonius says more than sixty men joined the conspiracy, led by Gaius Cassius and by Marcus and Decimus Brutus. Nicolaus of Damascus says more than eighty. Our reading: either way, it was a small part of the senate. Dio says Caesar had enlarged it so that the sum of them grew to nine hundred.

They chose a meeting of the Senate called for the Ides of March in the Hall of Pompey. Rome’s heritage office says the session took place in the Curia of Pompey. Its remains are at Largo Argentina.

There were warnings. Plutarch writes that “a certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril” on the Ides of March; Suetonius names him as Spurinna.

The warning is ancient; the line is Shakespeare’s. Velleius Paterculus, writing in AD 30, says the soothsayers had warned Caesar “carefully to beware the Ides of March” (2.57.2, F. W. Shipley’s translation of ut diligentissime iduum Martiarum caveret diem).

His wife Calpurnia had a frightening dream, and Plutarch gives two versions of what she saw.

Camuccini’s painting The Death of Julius Caesar.

Caesar died on 15 March 44 BC. Suetonius counts twenty-three wounds. Appian also gives twenty-three, and Plutarch says that it is said he received twenty-three. Nicolaus says thirty-five. The physician Antistius judged that only the second wound, in the breast, was mortal.

His last words are reported in several ways.

• Suetonius: no words, only a groan at the first blow. He adds that some have written of a line to Brutus in Greek: “You too, my child?” (Rolfe’s translation).
• Plutarch: a cry in Latin at the first blow, “Accursed Casca, what does thou?”, and nothing to Brutus.
• Cassius Dio: silence is the truest account, though some add “Thou, too, my son?”

“Et tu, Brute?” is best known from Shakespeare; no ancient source gives Caesar those words. In the play (MIT Shakespeare text) he says, “Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar.” The Latin phrase was already familiar on the English stage in his day.

The four-word line “Beware the ides of March” is spoken to Caesar by a Soothsayer in the same play. Our page on famous quotes looks at that line. Our page on the Ides of March goes through each account blow by blow.

13The funeral, the will and a new god

His will left three hundred sesterces to each man of the people. It even named Decimus Brutus among his heirs in the second degree, one of the men who killed him.

The sources differ on Antony’s funeral speech. Suetonius says that instead of a eulogy, Antony had a herald recite the decree of the Senate, adding a very few words of his own. Plutarch says Antony pronounced the customary eulogy. The speech that opens “Friends, Romans, countrymen” is Shakespeare’s.

The crowd burned his body in the forum. Caesar was then numbered among the gods, by decree and in popular belief. At games given by his heir, a comet shone for seven successive days and was believed to be his soul.

It was voted that the Ides of March be called the Day of Parricide. Suetonius notes that hardly any of the assassins survived Caesar by more than three years.

14After Caesar: how Octavian became Augustus

Killing him did not end the fighting. In his will Caesar had adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavius, and it was Octavius who came out on top.

In January 27 BC the Senate gave him the title Augustus. Two surviving Roman calendars put it on the 16th; the later writer Censorinus puts it on the 17th. He is counted as the first of the Roman emperors.

So Caesar himself was never an emperor. The senate did give him imperator, a title generals had long been hailed by after their wars. Cassius Dio says it was given to him as a kind of proper name, “the same title that is now granted to” the emperors. But Rome was still a republic.

His name became a title instead. The American Heritage Dictionary gives “caesar” as a word used as a title and form of address for Roman emperors.

15How the ancient writers differ

Almost everything we know comes from a handful of writers. They wrote at different distances from the events, and with different aims.

Writer	When	What to keep in mind
Caesar	At the time.	His own account of his own wars.
Cicero	At the time.	Letters; one, from February 43 BC, wishes he had been at the “dinner” of the Ides.
Nicolaus of Damascus	In the time of Augustus.	A friend of Augustus; a eulogistic biography.
Plutarch	Lived about AD 45 to 120.	A Greek biographer.
Suetonius	Wrote mainly in AD 98–138, it seems; for a time Hadrian’s secretary.	Often reports what some writers said.
Cassius Dio	Born between AD 155 and 164; his history ends in AD 229.	A historian who sat in the senate.

Even Caesar’s own books were questioned. Asinius Pollio thought them put together somewhat carelessly and without strict regard for truth.

Cicero’s feelings about the murder were plain. He wrote to Cassius: Vellem Idibus Martiis me ad coenam invitasses. That is, “I wish you had invited me to dinner on the Ides of March” (our translation). He adds that there would have been no leftovers; in our reading, the leftover is Mark Antony.

16How historians judge him

The 1911 Britannica put the problem plainly: the verdict of historians on Caesar has always been coloured by their political sympathies. It saw no agreement possible between those who admire his rule and those who think he destroyed liberty.

Its own summing up was double-edged. Few men, it said, have partaken as freely of the inspiration of genius as Julius Caesar, and few have suffered more disastrously from its illusions.

Ancient writers judged him differently too. Appian called him fit to be compared with Alexander, while Suetonius, as above, reports the view that he abused his power and was justly slain.

Much later, Las Cases’s memoir of Napoleon’s exile reports that Napoleon thought him one of the most amiable characters in history. Napoleon added: “Cæsar overcame the Gauls, and the laws of his country.” Our page on Napoleon’s exile and death covers that exile. A separate page compares Napoleon and Caesar.

Our reading: it helps to keep two judgements apart. One is about his skill as a general and writer, which few deny. The other is about what he did with power, which is still argued.

17Caesar’s lines, and popular stories about him

Some lines are his own writing, some are reported, and some are Shakespeare’s.

Line	Where it comes from
“Experience is the teacher of all things”	His own Civil War 2.8, an aside in his account of a siege.
“In most cases men willingly believe what they wish”	His own Gallic War 3.18.
“I came, I saw, I conquered”	Reported by Plutarch and Suetonius.
“I would rather be first here than second at Rome”	Reported by Plutarch.
“The die is cast”	Reported, in Latin or in Greek.
“Et tu, Brute?”	Shakespeare.

A few popular claims about him do not fit the sources:

• The caesarean section. Pliny says it was the first of the Caesars, an ancestor, who was cut from his mother’s womb. Caesar’s own mother lived into his adult life: he lost first his mother during his years in Gaul. The US National Library of Medicine says we cannot be sure of where or when the term was derived.
• The Caesar salad. It is named after another Caesar. Caesar Cardini is said to have invented the dish on July 4, 1924, in Tijuana, though there is some debate about its origins.
• “Caesar was short.” No ancient source we read says so. Suetonius says he is said to have been tall of stature.

Our page on Caesar’s quotes goes through each line in turn. A separate page on popular stories about him does the same for those.

18Lessons from his rise and fall (our reading)

These are our readings, not rules he left behind.

• Speed can be the message. Suetonius says the three words were chosen to show how fast the war was won, not what happened in it.
• Big decisions are rarely as bold as they look afterwards. “The die is cast” sounds like instant resolve, but it came after long doubt at the river.
• Words change how people act. Suetonius says one word, “citizens” instead of “soldiers”, brought a mutinous legion round.
• Mercy won loyalty, and did not protect him. He pardoned and promoted Brutus and Cassius, who later led the plot to kill him.
• Power without limits made enemies. Suetonius reports that some thought he trusted the senators’ oath so fully that he dismissed his Spanish bodyguard.

19Where to read the sources yourself

• LacusCurtius has the Loeb translations of Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian and Dio used on this page.
• Project Gutenberg #10657 has Caesar’s own Gallic War and Civil War in English.
• The Latin Library has Caesar’s and Cicero’s Latin.
• Rome’s heritage office describes the remains of the Curia of Pompey, where he was killed.

20Quick answers

21Use this

22Quick quiz

How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, Cassius Dio and Velleius were read in the Loeb translations on LacusCurtius, with Suetonius in Latin; Caesar in the McDevitte translation and The Latin Library.
• Neither main biography keeps its opening pages, so the birth year rests on the age at death; both 100 BC and 102 BC are given.
• Where sources disagree (the Gallic death tolls, the words at the Rubicon, the wounds and the last words) each version is given with its writer.
• Whether the attack of 55 BC should be called a genocide is a question of judgement; the page reports the debate and does not rule.
• The exact day of the Rubicon crossing is not stated in any ancient source we read, so none is given.
• Britannica's modern article was read in a browser, as the site blocks scripts; the 1911 edition was read on Wikisource.

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23Sources