Julius Caesar: The Life and Times of the People’s Dictator. By LUCIANO 
CANFORA. Translated by Marian Hill and Kevin Windle. University of 
California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2007. Cloth, $29.95. ISBN 
978–0–520–23502–1. (Originally published in Italian as Giulio 
Cesare: Il Dittatore Democratico. Laterza, 1999.)

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A CJ Online Exclusive: 2008.09.01

Studying the evidence for ancient history can sometimes feel like standing 
on a headland watching the fog come in. Much is largely obscured for much 
of the time, though many things are visible in outline a fair amount of the 
time, while every now and then come patches of bright sunlight or at least 
shafts of light burning through the gray. The task of the ancient historian 
is to work within the bits of light over time and so put together as best 
one can a composite map of the terrain beneath the fog.

In this new biography of Julius Caesar, Luciano Canfora (C.) at times 
demonstrates the bright spots in this metaphor very effectively. Some whole 
chapters bring masterful clarity to difficult terrain, such as why Caesar 
first turned to dictatorship during civil war (pp. 287–95) and why and 
how he was drawn into his Alexandrian War (pp. 188–208). Particularly 
striking is C.’s close attention to the evidence of Josephus—against 
the silence of the author of the Alexandrian War—that the Jews 
significantly contributed to Caesar’s victory at Alexandria (pp. 
209–17). What sources do and do not say is often highlighted: see pp. 
128–9 on Caesar, BC 7.1, or 245–55 on the tangled evidence describing 
Octavian’s first interactions with Caesar. Complex situations can be 
brilliantly handled in a few sentences, such as how Caesar could remain 
pontifex maximus while an enemy of the state (p. 161), or why the war 
against Cato in Africa was a republican war in ways that the war against 
Pompey was not (p. 230), or why the conspirators’ failure to dispose of 
Caesar’s body was the beginning of the end for them (p. 337). At points 
the language itself shines with insight: on the eve of civil war, “Caesar 
proved the extent of his pliability, a quality that is indispensable for 
the politician who has no intention of giving in on the main thing” (p. 
132). Regarding Antony’s antics at the Lupercalia, “everything is 
elusive when one tries to understand the behavior of political figures and 
supporting actors in a time of dictatorship” (p. 283).

Yet on the whole, C. still leaves his reader disoriented in the fog. Each 
of the distinguishing passages noted above can be matched with 
disappointing ones elsewhere. The flow of the book is hard to follow, and a 
clear overall picture of Caesar’s career never emerges. For readers who 
know the terrain well already, this book is useful for the moments when it 
casts new light. But those not already familiar with what they are looking 
at will likely find it hard to understand what they are seeing in this 
book. Overall, it cannot be recommended as a primary or definitive account 
of one of Rome’s most deservedly studied figures.

The main difficulty with the book is the lack of any overarching thesis 
about Caesar’s life. The subtitle characterizes Caesar as the 
“People’s Dictator,” but C. never clearly defines what he means by 
this. Instead, the reader must formulate his own understanding by following 
how C. presents Caesar as a “party man” for the populares (pp. 3, 14) 
who then comes to realize the limitations of popular party politics (pp. 
42, 50, 68) and so turns to the dictatorship to free himself of those 
politics while yet retaining the support of the people (pp. 152, 186, 
287–95). Putting this story together takes work, and even then it is not 
sufficiently clear what is gained by characterizing Caesar as the 
People’s Dictator. (Certainly no one would try to characterize him as the 
Optimate Dictator!)

C.’s book thus reads like a series of studies about aspects of Caesar’s 
life and deeds more than a unified biography. The 348 pages of the main 
text are broken up into 42 short chapters, which often do not link together 
as well as they ought. Although the book is basically arranged 
chronologically, some chapters range widely. Chapter 5 (pp. 26–32), for 
example, although following a chapter on Caesar’s election as pontifex 
maximus in 63, stretches to discuss social and economic issues connected 
with Caesar and Cato in 59, Brutus and Cicero in 51–50, and Caesar in 49. 
The reader who does not already know the significant events of those years 
and the issues at stake in those contexts will have a hard time determining 
what the chapter is trying to accomplish. The insights of the strong 
chapter on Caesar’s first dictatorship in 49 (pp. 287–95) risk being 
lost because it is placed after the discussion of Antony offering Caesar 
the crown at the Lupercalia in 44 (pp. 281–6) and immediately before an 
analysis of the historical validity of Cassius’ Epicureanism that hinges 
on his actions at and after Pharsalus in 48 (pp. 296–305). When I first 
read these three chapters in succession, I found them confusing; only when 
considered separately did the analysis of each emerge.

In addition to the structure of the book, there are too many exaggerations 
or errors to make me comfortable recommending it to those without a ready 
library to check the citations. Some of my concerns involve only excessive 
language, such as describing Sallust’s Catiline as a “pro-Caesar … 
hagiography” (p. 47) or Caesar’s assassination as “the terrorist 
option” (p. 319). But there is also some sloppiness about matters of 
evidence and occasional lapses of fact. On successive pages, a scene from a 
play of Bertolt Brecht substitutes for any direct ancient evidence (p. 27) 
and a whole paragraph that merely paraphrases Plutarch is cited incorrectly 
(p. 28, “Fearing more than anything…” is a rendition of Caesar 
8.6–7, not 8.1). Cicero, not Cato, had the speeches of the Catilinarian 
debate recorded (p. 55: the passage cited, Plutarch, Cato the Younger 23.3, 
makes this clear). As one of Plutarch’s best known narratives also makes 
clear (Cato 58–70, this time not cited), Cato did not kill himself “as 
soon as he received word of the defeat” at Thapsus (p. 235). It is a more 
significant distortion to say that after Caesar’s attempt to blockade 
Pompey at Dyrrachium, “Pompey broke through the blockade and retired 
towards Macedonia. Caesar gave chase until finally the two armies faced 
each other…” (p. 177). It was, rather, Caesar who fled a perilous 
defeat, and Pompey who gave chase (see Caesar, BC 3.67–77). But because 
of Pompey’s delay on this occasion, Suetonius (one of C.’s favorite 
sources) reports that Caesar declared that Pompey did not know how to win 
(Caesar 36). For C. to flub the consequences of Dyrrachium so significantly 
undermines his credibility regarding the whole Pharsalus campaign, one of 
the central events of Caesar’s life.

Perhaps most worrisome are places where C. too easily adopts a modern 
perspective that denies the complexity of the evidence. When discussing 
Caesar’s election as pontifex maximus, for example, C. explains 
Caesar’s engagement with Roman religion thus: “Being an Epicurean in 
his intellectual sympathies, Caesar … realized full well that false 
notions concerning the gods had generated fear, and that this fear had 
produced a false religion, a cult which rested on an almost commercial 
relationship with the gods” (p. 23). The actual practices and beliefs of 
Roman religion are never discussed, and the reader is thus given no reason 
to believe that any other view of Roman religion holds intellectual weight. 
Another example comes from C.’s loaded characterization of Caesar’s 
motivation for his Gallic War. “It was all for one end: it is clear that 
the protagonist and instigator of the venture cynically used the genocide 
in the political struggle at home” (p. 118). C. then tries to defend this 
position by invoking Pliny, Natural History 7.91–9, which he calls “a 
‘Black Book’—to use a modern expression—of extraordinary harshness, 
in which Caesar’s crimes are set against the vastly different balance 
sheet of Pompey’s long political and military career” (p. 120). Pliny 
is indeed more celebratory of Pompey than of Caesar in that passage, but 
7.99 ends with the point that, compared to the review of Pompey’s 
achievements, a review of Caesar’s would be infinite, involving the whole 
world. Pliny also claims in 7.99 that Caesar appeared greater than Pompey 
(qui maior illo apparuit), a remark that deserves interpretation and not to 
be swept away as part of “a ‘Black Book’ … of extraordinary 
harshness.” Novice students of Roman history deserve better guidance, and 
scholars deserve more careful writing.

Readers also deserve a current and complete bibliography. C. is fond of 
commenting on heavyweights like Napoleon Bonaparte, Theodor Mommsen and 
Ronald Syme, but he does not engage with much recent work. He shows a 
preference for Italian scholarship, which is fair enough, though one misses 
fundamental work such as Peter Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic 
(Oxford, 1988), which offers a significant challenge to notions of party 
politics at Rome but which C. seems simply to ignore (so also the question 
of friendship in politics, on which Brunt’s volume contains a superb 
essay; compare 159–64). The notes at the end of each chapter are mostly 
citations of ancient sources (also true in the well annotated Chronology at 
349–69), the editions for which are discussed at 370–4, leaving only 
374–6 for a highly selective and idiosyncratic review of “Modern 
Sources.” On the enormous topic of Caesar’s death, for example, C. 
points to only three items (p. 376): a 1958 article by J.P.V.D. Baldson, 
“some chapters” of a 1996 monograph by U. Gotter and the first chapter 
of J. Bleicken’s 1998 biography of Augustus. To be fair, C.’s Italian 
edition was published in 1999, so such recommendations were more relevant 
then, but more of an effort should have been made to annotate the 
bibliography for its English translation. Lastly, more of an effort to 
choose or commission modern translations of the ancient sources would be 
beneficial. Why, for example, does Plutarch sound so much like Shakespeare: 
“Impious Casca, what doest thou?” (p. 330, Brutus 17); “Nay, Brutus, 
if thou hast a purpose worthy of thyself, I am well” (p. 309, Brutus 11)? 
Because the Loeb translations were used without revision (p. vii).

In sum, C.’s biography meanders and frustrates as much as it clarifies 
and enlightens. It should not be a reader’s first encounter with Caesar, 
nor will it be the last word about Caesar’s career.

REX STEM
University of California at Davis


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