Born: July 12, 100 BC in Rome (Ancient state)
Died: March 15, 44 BC in Rome (Ancient state)
Nationality: Roman
Occupation: Emperor
Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) was a Roman general and politician who overthrew the Roman Republic and established the rule of the emperors.
At the time of Julius Caesar's birth the political, social, economic, and moral problems created by the acquisition of a Mediterranean empire in the 3d and 2d centuries B.C. began to challenge the Roman Republic. The senatorial oligarchy that ruled Rome was proving inadequate to deal with these new challenges. It could not control the armies and the generals and was unwilling to listen to the pleas of the Italian allies for equal citizenship and of the provinces for justice. The system also had no real answers for the growth of an urban proletariat and the mass importation of slaves. Caesar saw these inadequacies of the Senate and used the problems and dilemmas of the period to create his own supreme political and military power.
Caesar was born on July 12, 100 B.C. His father had been only a moderate political success, attaining the praetorship but not the consulship. Caesar's mother came from plebeian stock. The family could claim a long, if not overly distinguished, history. It was a patrician family on his father's side and therefore one of the founders of Rome and was entitled to certain traditional privileges and offices. However, in comparison with many other leading Roman families it had produced few distinguished people.
Early Training
Caesar received the classic, rhetorically grounded education of a young Roman at Rome and in Rhodes. He was considered one of the most cultured and literate of Romans by such an expert as Cicero himself. Caesar followed the traditional Roman practice of conducting some prosecutions in order to gain political attention. He served as a young officer in Asia Minor and was quaestor (financial official) in Farther Spain (69 B.C.)....