Caesar: Life of a Colossus
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"An authoritative and exciting portrait."—New York Times Book Review Publishers Weekly The man who virtually defined the West's concept of leadership comes alive in this splendid biography. Military historian Goldsworthy (The Complete Roman Army) gives a comprehensive, vigorous account of Caesar's conquest of Gaul and his victories in the civil war that made him master of Rome. But he doesn't stint on the nonmartial aspects of Caesar's life his dandyism, his flagrant womanizing (which didn't stop enemies from gay-baiting him), his supple political genius and the flair for drama and showmanship that cowed mutinous legionaries and courted Rome's restive masses. Goldsworthy's is a sympathetic profile. In his telling, Caesar's massacres and group enslavements, though "utterly ruthless," are considered and pragmatic, not wanton, and the conqueror seems to possess a moderation and magnanimity that sprang from the same idealized self-image that fed his ambition. The author's vivid portrait of the late Roman Republic that Caesar toppled is correspondingly jaundiced: its politics are about nothing except the personal ambitions of powerful men, and chaos, corruption and violence reign beneath the ritualistic niceties of republican procedure. More compellingly than most biographies, Goldsworthy's exhaustive, lucid, elegantly written life makes its subject the embodiment of his age. 16 pages of b&w photos, maps. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
IThe rise to the consulship, 100-59 BC101Caesar's world102Caesar's childhood303The first dictator484The young Caesar615Candidate826Conspiracy1097Scandal1308Consul152IIProconsul, 58-50 BC1849Gaul18410Migrants and mercenaries : the first campaigns, 58 BC20511'The bravest of the Gaulish peoples' : the Belgae, 57 BC23312Politics and war : the converence of Luca25313'Over the waters' : the British and German expeditions, 55-54 BC26914Rebellion, disaster and vengeance29315The man and the hour : Vercingetorix and the great revolt, 52 BC31516'All Gaul is conquered'343IIICivil war and dictatorship, 49-44 BC35817The road to the Rubicon35818Blitzkrieg : Italy and Spain, winter-autumn, 49 BC38019Macedonia, November 49-August 48 BC40520Cleopatra, Egypt and the East, autumn 48-Summer 47 BC43221Africa, September 47-June 46 BC44822Dictator, 46-44 BC46823The Ides of March490
