Content area
Full text
T. P. WISEMAN, JULIUS CAESAR. Stroud: The History Press, 2016. Pp. 127. isbn 9780750961318. £6.99.
H. MOURITSEN, POLITICS IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 214. isbn 9781107651333. £18.99.
M. HAAKE and A.-C. HARDERS (EDS), POLITISCHE KULTUR UND SOZIALE STRUKTUR DER RÖMISCHEN REPUBLIK: BILANZEN UND PERSPEKTIVEN: AKTEN DER INTERNATIONALEN TAGUNG ANLÄSSLICH DES 70. TODESTAGES VON FRIEDRICH MÜNZER (MÜNSTER, 18.–20. OKTOBER 2012). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Pp. 567, illus. isbn 978351511598. €82.00.
The importance of understanding Roman social structures and interactions in order to properly grapple with Roman political history lies behind all three works under review, to varying degrees and at different levels. Peter Wiseman's concise biography of Julius Caesar is part of the ‘Pocket Giants’ series ‘about people who changed the world — and why they matter’ (128). For W., Caesar's status hinges on his military ability, his role in the creation of the Roman Empire, the fact that his name was given to a dynasty and, perhaps more questionably, that he freed Rome from a corrupt oligarchy.
As a figure still present in popular imagination, W. strives to fully contextualise Caesar within the socio-political issues of his day. With this in mind he eschews the well-worn anecdotes which one might expect to find in a trade book, preferring, he claims, ‘to stick to what is important’ (112). And what is important in W.’s view is to turn away from the rhetoric of the oligarchic components of the Roman political elites in favour of focusing on a democratic ideal of the res publica. This reading of the Roman state as inherently democratic shapes the narrative. The first chapter (‘The People's Thing’) opens by asking the reader to picture the Roman state as one of equality, prior to the rapid shifts in economic stability over little more than a generation that subverted such an ideal to private interests and social tensions, into which world Caesar was born. The story of Caesar then becomes, in W.’s telling, the story of a struggle to return to that ideal.
One benefit of W.’s approach is that a general audience gets a sense of the wider socio-political landscape and language of Caesar and his contemporaries. This is aided by an emphasis on the...