The Ides
Caesar's Murder and the War for Rome
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Unraveling the many mysteries surrounding the murder of Julius Caesar
The assassination of Julius Caesar is one of the most notorious murders in history. Two thousand years after it occurred, many compelling questions remain about his death: Was Brutus the hero and Caesar the villain? Did Caesar bring death on himself by planning to make himself king of Rome? Was Mark Antony aware of the plot, and let it go forward? Who wrote Antony's script after Caesar's death? Using historical evidence to sort out these and other puzzling issues, historian and award-winning author Stephen Dando-Collins takes you to the world of ancient Rome and recaptures the drama of Caesar's demise and the chaotic aftermath as the vicious struggle for power between Antony and Octavian unfolded. For the first time, he shows how the religious festivals and customs of the day impacted on the way the assassination plot unfolded. He shows, too, how the murder was almost avoided at the last moment.
A compelling history that is packed with intrigue and written with the pacing of a first-rate mystery, The Ides will challenge what you think you know about Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trying to clear away the "twaddle" that surrounds Julius Caesar, Dando-Collins (Caesar's Legion) provides a page-turner of a history describing step-by-step the events leading to the assassination of Julius Caesar and the impact of his removal on the collapse of the Roman Republic. Caesar's rise to power and his limitless ambitionposed an immediate threat to the survival of the Republic, which caused fear and consternation in those, such as Marcus Brutus, who nobly wished to defend Roman democracy. Brutus and his fellow senator Cassius planned the assassination and, with the help of yet other senators, carried it out on March 15, 44 B.C.E. Public sentiment originally favored the Liberators, as the assassins were known, but, thanks to the scheming of Marc Antony and the fickleness of the crowds, Brutus, Cassius, and others were forced to flee the city. In the months that followed, Antony and his sometime ally, Caesar's heir, Octavian, destroyed the Liberatorsonly to later wage war against each other. Antony's ultimate defeat led to Octavian's installation as the first emperor, Augustus Caesar. The dramatic story examines the roles of soldiers, politicians, philosophers, wives, and mistresses with perhaps too much emphasis placed on the ever-popular Cleopatra. 2 maps.
Customer Reviews
Cicero said what?
Well grounded in classical sources and painstakingly laid out in chronological order. Concise prose, and fleshed out well. One does not need an advanced degree to follow along and understand the events. I particularly enjoyed that the Roman holidays so prominently mentioned and explained so well that a novice like myself could appreciate how central they were to the lives of regular Romans in the late Republic. However, like most classical scholars he has “drunk the Kool-Aid”. Virtually all the sources available to us have a massive conflict of interest. The historian and literary class then and centuries later would lionize Brutus, and his “liberators”. He calls Caesar an unquestioned “tyrant”, then refers to the Republic as a democracy! No where does he critique the abject failures of the Patrician dominated government over the last century. An anachronistic city-state with a tiny minority squabbling over every imperial resource with a total disregard for state craft much less competence. Moreover, no where does he present a balanced portrayal of the issues between Republicans championed by Cato and Caesar, or Pompeius Magnus and Caesar. The author has to know know the extent of and the outsized influence the sources have on the narrative, yet he acts as a lawyer for their conclusions. Referring to this work as biased is embarrassingly obvious. Still I enjoyed it a great deal. However, I suppose I was hoping for a more balanced and measured approach.