The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination
Barry Strauss, 2015
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451668797
Summary
The exciting, dramatic story of one of history’s most famous events—the death of Julius Caesar—now placed in full context of Rome’s civil wars by eminent historian Barry Strauss.
Thanks to William Shakespeare, the death of Julius Caesar is the most famous assassination in history. But what actually happened on March 15, 44 BC is even more gripping than Shakespeare’s play.
In this thrilling new book, Barry Strauss tells the real story.
Shakespeare shows Caesar’s assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals’ plot, put together by Caesar’s disaffected officers and designed with precision. There were even gladiators on hand to protect the assassins from vengeance by Caesar’s friends.
Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, as Shakespeare has it, but they had the help of a third man—Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar’s entourage, one of Caesar’s leading generals, and a lifelong friend. It was he, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar.
Caesar’s assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and in the power of senators. The assassins rallied support among the common people, but they underestimated Caesar’s soldiers, who flooded Rome. The assassins were vanquished; their beloved Republic became the Roman Empire.
An original, fresh perspective on an event that seems well known, Barry Strauss’s book sheds new light on this fascinating, pivotal moment in world history (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1952-53 (?)
• Where—near New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.A., Ph.D. Yale University
• Currently—lives in Ithaca, New York
Barry S. Strauss is a Professor of History and Classics at Cornell University and chair of its history department. He is an expert on ancient military history and has written or edited numerous books, including The Battle of Salamis (2004), The Trojan War (2006), The Spartacus War (2009), and The Death of Caesar (2015). His books have been translated into six languages.
Strauss holds a B.A. from Cornell and a Ph.D. from Yale and has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, the Korea Foundation, and the Killam Foundation of Canada. He is Director of Cornell's Program on Freedom and Free Societies and past Director of its Peace Studies Program.
He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife Marcia; the couple has two grown children. His hobbies are rowing, cycling and hiking. He love jazz and opera and watch too much television. (From Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 4/20/2015.)
Book Reviews
[A] page-turner.... Detail after detail clothes the familiar facts of Caesar’s seemingly inevitable murder with fresh images.... The last bloody day of the Republic has never been painted so brilliantly.
Greg Woolf - Wall Street Journal
This history of Caesar by the American academic Barry Strauss is a romp, yes, but a glorious one, through the final months of Rome’s most famous ruler.... One of the most riveting hour-by-hour accounts of Caesar’s final day I have read.... An absolutely marvelous read.
Catherine Nixey - Times (UK)
A classics thriller.... The Death of Caesar teases apart this paramilitary operation of 60 or more conspirators and, in reporting the facts, revokes much of Shakespeare’s poetic license in Julius Caesar.
Katharine Whittemore - Boston Globe
The superb storytelling of Barry Strauss shows that the details of history's most famous assassination are just as fascinating as why it happened.... The Death of Caesar provides a fresh look at a well-trodden event, with storytelling sure to inspire awe.
Scott Manning - Philadelphia Inquirer
A fresh, accessible account of the archetypal assassination.... Strauss underscores [the conspirators'] dilemma with an urgency that makes each page crackle with suspense.... The Death of Caesar serves us both as an entertaining, vital act of preservation for those details and figures glossed over by other historians and as a reminder of a plot so daring it would be unthinkable today.
Nick Ochwar - Los Angeles Review of Books
[A] compelling, clarifying account of one of history's most dramatic assassinations.... [Strauss] conveys the complexity of late republican Roman politics while keeping up a lively pace.
Lev Grossman -Time
With a keen focus on the conspiracy itself, Strauss examines Caesar's rise to power while looking closely at his colleagues.... Strauss's writing is stilted and the material may be most accessible to those with some knowledge of ancient Rome, but most readers will find this an informative and dramatic tale.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] riveting portrayal of Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. The author explains successfully very complicated political situations in laymen's terms, propelling the reader through Caesar's dramatic rise to his shocking murder.... [E]nriching and exciting .—Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA
Library Journal
(Starred review.) wMaster historian Strauss zeroes in on the few years surrounding Julius Caesar's assassination and delves into the strengths of the characters involved.... Once again, Strauss takes us deep into the psyche of ancient history in an exciting, twisted tale that is sure to please.
Kirkus Reviews
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