Calpurnia was Caesar’s third and last wife.Ĭaesar married his first wife, Cornelia at the age of seventeen. He Had Three Wives and Many Mistresses Caesar and Calpurnia, Fabio Canal, pre-1776. According to historian Cassius Dio, he accidentally broke off the nose of the great conqueror.Ĥ. Caesar’s nephew Octavian also visited the tombs when he visited Alexandria in later years. At the time, the Egyptians still held the tomb in high regard.Ĭleopatra had even incurred the anger of her subjects by taking gold from the tomb to pay her debts. He remained there for some time, enjoying Egypt and his affair with Queen Cleopatra VII, and visited the tomb of Alexander several times. He determined immediately to seek to return to Rome for greater things.Ĭaesar later traveled to Africa to bring an end to the civil wars. One day, while visiting the temple of Hercules in the large Spanish city of Gades, he saw a statue of Alexander there and fell to weeping in front of it, lamenting the fact that he was older than Alexander had been when he ruled over most of the known world, and yet he himself had achieved nothing noteworthy. When Caesar was about thirty-eight, he was assigned to govern the Roman province in Spain. He Was Fascinated by Alexander the Great Bust of Alexander the Great, Glyptotek museum, Copenhagen, DenmarkĬaesar grew up reading about the exploits of Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian general who conquered Persia and formed the greatest empire of his age, all before his premature death just before his thirty-third birthday. When his friends brought the ransom and freed him, Caesar sailed to the nearest port, managed to gather a private force just through his personal magnetism, sailed back to the pirates’ lair, defeated and captured them, and followed through on his promise to crucify every last one of them, though he ordered their throats slit in an act of mercy.ģ. The pirates would merely laugh at his threats, but they should have taken him more seriously. He joined in their athletic exercises and games, would send messages demanding silence for his slumbers, and told them frequently that he would crucify them all. Thoroughly amused by the bold young man, the pirates allowed him to wander freely among their boats and islands. Instead, he used his free time to practice speeches and poetry, often reciting his work aloud for the pirates and then calling them unintelligent savages if they did not appreciate his work. However, he did not behave like a typical prisoner. Informing them that they were clueless as to who they had just captured, he insisted he not be ransomed for anything less than fifty.Ĭaesar’s friends departed to gather the ransom, while Caesar himself remained a captive of the pirates. However, while still at sea, Sicilian pirates captured his ship and demanded a ransom of twenty talents. After earning a reputation for bravery and the second-highest military decoration in Rome for his bravery at the Siege of Mytilene, Caesar was eager to next advance his political career. It was a skill he developed early in his life and demonstrated in a peculiar encounter. He Was Once Captured by Pirates Fresco depicting Caesar shown talking to his pirate captors, Corgna palace in Castiglione del Lago, Italy Though he insisted that he was not a king nor desirous of becoming one, the Roman politicians were understandably suspicious of his motives and intentions, and they formed a conspiracy to murder him on the Senate floor.Ģ. At the crossing, he uttered his famous line, “the die is cast.”Īfter a long and brutal civil war against his former friend and father-in-law, Pompey the Great, Caesar emerged victorious and returned to Rome in possession of almost unlimited power. Instead, he crossed the Rubicon with an active army, breaking the ancient laws of Rome. The Senate attempted to force him into a no-win situation. ![]() However, he provoked the hatred of many of the Roman Senators by his popularity with the people and the soldiers of Rome and his apparent willingness to use that to his advantage. He enjoyed a stellar career as a politician and general. ![]() Julius Caesar Once Marched Against Rome Statue of Julius Cæsar by French sculptor Nicolas Coustou and commissioned in 1696 for the Gardens of Versailles, Louvre Museumīorn in 100 BCE, Julius Caesar was fast-tracked into the Roman political scene by his strong family ties.
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