Julius Caesar and the Roman People

Robert Morstein-Marx (University of California, Santa Barbara)

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English

Cambridge University Press
26 August 2021

History; Classical history & classical civilisation

Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against the Republic's traditions and its greatest heroes of the past. Catastrophe befell Rome not because Caesar (or anyone else) turned against the Republic, its norms and institutions, but because Caesar's extraordinary success mobilized a determined opposition which ultimately preferred to precipitate civil war rather than accept its political defeat. Based on painstaking re-analysis of the ancient sources in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the participatory role of the People in the republican political system, a strong emphasis on agents' choices rather than structural causation, and profound scepticism toward the facile determinism that often substitutes for historical explanation, this book offers a radical reinterpretation of a figure of profound historical importance who stands at the turning point of Roman history from Republic to Empire.

By: Robert Morstein-Marx (University of California Santa Barbara)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 158mm, Spine: 41mm
Weight: 1.120kg
ISBN: 9781108837842
ISBN 10: 1108837840
Pages: 700
Publication Date: 26 August 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction; 2. The Early Caesar; 3. Caesar's 'Entry into History': The Catilinarian Debate and Its Aftermath; 4. Caesar's First Consulship; 5. Caesar in Gaul: The View from Rome; 6. No Return: Caesar's Dignitas and the Coming of the Civil War; 7. Taking Sides; 8. Caesar's Leniency; 9. En route to the Parthian War; 10. Conclusion

Robert Morstein-Marx is a Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East, 148-62 B.C. (1995), and co-editor of A Companion to the Roman Republic (2006).

Reviews for Julius Caesar and the Roman People

'Highly recommended.' R. T. Ingoglia, Choice Magazine 'What Morstein-Marx attempts here is nothing less than a reset of earlier thinking about the end of the Republic and Caesar's role in its downfall.' Michael Fallon, Classics For All