Julius Caesar, born more than 2,000 years ago, has become the most legendary of the Romans and the most present and alive in our 21st century. And not only in the cinema, literature or video games, but also in more everyday matters, such as the calendar, language or politics.
Few historical figures have influenced humanity as much as Caesar. And even fewer have managed to blend the memory of him with the lives of millions of people around the world throughout all ages. To achieve that, the greatest of his deeds, César had to live a life of epic proportions, yes. But also cook the historical reality of his character to create that myth that is impossible to forget and ignore with which we live every day. This is the story of how he got it.
In the words of the historian Mary Beard, the young Caesar was just “another posh from Rome.” The typical aristocrat destined to spend time in the Army to later opt for various positions in the service of the State. But something failed. Caesar, perhaps emulating some of his immediate predecessors, such as Sulla or Mario, was going to break the rules to gain power. And the first step to achieve this would be to rewrite his history, in order to feed it with legends that would strengthen his image.
One of the best known, among the possible inventions of Caesar, took place in the year 69 a. C. While in Hispania, he visited an island near Cádiz where a statue of Alexander the Great dominated the horizon. And there, according to his relatives, Caesar cried because, while the Macedonian general had achieved everything at 33 years of age, he had achieved nothing. He then wiped away his tears and declared that, from that moment on, he would direct his life to seek the most absolute of glories.
The truth is that we do not have any proof of the reality of this episode, but many historians agree that that story was an attempt by Caesar to link his life to that of the iconic Alexander the Great. And if so, it worked, because since then there have been two figures that tend to be compared.
But to become a national hero, Caesar needed more than a purpose to amend his whole life, seasoned with a forced parallel to Alexander. He had to emulate the Macedonian. And for that he had to lead a war that would last forever in the memory of men.
Before his military exploits, César understood that reaching power meant getting closer to power. And back then, power was embodied by Pompey, hero of the moment. His support for the most popular general in Rome paid off, and, as is well known, he ended up forming a solid alliance with him, which meant that Caesar left for Gaul with a handful of legionaries under his command and the opportunity to become a commander. a military reference
In Gaul, Caesar, in the words of the historian Josiah Osgood, apart from conquering a multitude of tribes, creates a character “who will go down to posterity”. Yours. And he achieves it thanks to the fact that he wrote his feat, The Gallic War, in simple, plain and direct language. Not for it to be read by the most cultivated, but for it to be recited to the mass of Romans that populated the streets. This is, so that all of Rome would know how big it was.
A great propaganda exercise. Today we know that some of the battles he narrated were, rather, indiscriminate massacres. Nor is it often denied that he probably embellished and magnified his exploits, though without untenable exaggeration.
The war also helped him to increase his personal assets remarkably. In this way, he soon became one of the millionaires of the time. But, although he kept much of the loot, he also saw to it that the legionaries received an immense prize, and contributed thousands of slaves and sesterces to the treasury of Rome. By then, Caesar had eleven legions under his command, and the Senate, with Pompey at its head, decided that this fearsome propagandist had to be removed from the scene.
The civil war broke out. Caesar against Pompey, to simplify the matter, although, really, it was Caesar against what was left of the Republic. And the most remarkable thing is that César managed, again through the exercise of propaganda, to transform his image as a coup leader, which he really was, into that of a liberator.
It worked. His tactic of launching a coup, while proclaiming himself a guarantor of freedoms, ended up getting through, and the bad guy in the movie became Pompey. It was then that Caesar tried to repeat the publicity exercise of The Gallic War with Civil War, the story of his fight against Pompey. Today historians believe that a good part of the facts narrated are true, although colored and made up with the aim of giving, once again, a heroic and positive image of a Caesar who still did not have all the levers of power in his hands.
With Pompey dead and his last adversaries cornered, Caesar acquired and exercised power as absolute as that of future emperors. Although another of his propaganda genius consisted in disguising that he was the sovereign of Rome, simply posing as a somewhat special citizen.
Now with the reins in his hands, Caesar launched an infrastructure program, subsidized food for the mob and entertained Rome with impressive shows. In addition, he increased the number of senators from three hundred to nine hundred, filling the House with supporters, and passed laws to appeal to the equestrian class, while increasing the salaries of soldiers to keep them devoted to his cause. He did, ultimately, what any book populist would have done.
But, beyond this series of measures, Caesar innovated at a propaganda level as no other Roman had ever dared to do. He ordered that statues of him be erected throughout the territory controlled by Rome, and he was also the first to mint coins with his face printed on them. From that moment it was impossible for the Romans to ignore what their leader was like and, most importantly, they understood that he was the only boss.
Our man did not stay in the material: he wanted to ascend to divinity. And it seems that the senators, wanting to flatter him, began to offer him disproportionate tributes. Certainly Caesar contributed to giving himself a veneer of divinity by insisting much, as Augustus would later do, that he was a direct descendant of the goddess Venus and Aeneas.
In one of the best known episodes of Caesar’s final stage, his beloved Antonio, before the crowd, offered him a crown. “Be the king of Rome”, he must have told him while his supporters cheered him. César rejected him up to three times. But the theatrical performance had a trick. A few days before, the Senate had named him dictator for life.
What happened next is history and art. As we know, the conspirators ended Caesar’s physical life, but they were unable to annul his memory. And this responded, in part, to a posthumous propaganda maneuver that Julius Caesar included in his will.
Antonio, who wisely read the will in public, made it known to the common people that he would receive large donations from César’s personal treasure, who, in addition, left a good amount of games and festivities paid for and gave his gardens in Trastevere to the town of Rome. Let us imagine the impact of the latter in a motley and suffocating city, without places of recreation, and perhaps this is how we understand the popular anger described by Apiano, who maintains that, after cremating the corpse of the dictator, the enraged mob ran through the streets looking for the assassins from his benefactor.
Caesar achieved immortality as a myth. To the point that his successors in the Roman Empire would bear his name, which over time would become synonymous with a high position within the imperial framework.
Caesar, and God, was also that summer month that precedes August, a name we owe to his immediate successor, Augustus, perhaps the one who best soaked up his teachings in terms of propaganda.
The Romans would make the memory of the dictator endure for centuries. Life of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, Parallel Lives by Plutarch, The Civil Wars by Appian, The Death of Julius Caesar by Nicholas of Damascus, The Apotheosis of Julius Caesar by Ovid… Texts from which later literature and art would drink , until transforming César into that character that we are still capable of recognizing today. Perhaps because, in their day, other documents that were somewhat more critical of the figure of the Roman did not succeed.
An example, the work of none other than an emperor, Julian, better known as the Apostate. Under the title Caesars, Julian portrays the various emperors who preceded him and how they attend a banquet celebrated by the gods. In it, the figures of those are portrayed in an extremely critical way and with a certain tone of mockery, but we will highlight here the advice that Zeus receives before meeting Caesar: “Be careful with Caesar, he is going for your kingdom.”
These are perhaps the most accurate words to define the ambitious historical figure whose propaganda made him an absolute leader while alive and a global icon after his assassination.
This text is part of an article published in number 648 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
