As I was reading the texts for this class, I took some notes on my thoughts and, since this is a blog post, thought I would share them.
Before reading the PDF and Plutarch, I had already known a lil' somethin' somethin' about our guy, Caesar. Cleopatra holds a huge place in my heart and her interactions with both Caesar and Antony made me develop an interest in them, as well. I have also watched HBO's Rome a million times and have a ton of non fiction on Ancient Rome (Read SPQR by Mary Beard. It's amazing!)
One thing I kept thinking of while reading about him for this class is that everyone knows this guy's name. Throughout these past couple of thousand years, we have made him immortal. Sure, he's a brilliant man and an excellent politician. But what I think gets lost in translation along the way, is that Caesar was just a man. He was a father, a husband (a couple of times), a womanizer, and a fierce friend. He was extremely ambitious and made it to the top and stayed there for quite some time. He made mistakes but also did great things. Now, I'm not saying everything he did was admirable but as someone who is human, I can see some areas where he made decisions for survival and some for politics.
Another thing that blows me away every time I think about it is that only a small percentage of ancient texts have survived. We may think we know everything about the ancient world, but the fact is that we don't. So much gets lost through years and years of war, fires, weather issues, etc. Every television show and movie portraying ancient Athens or ancient Rome may only be getting a small idea of what really went on. Could you imagine what the world would be like if we didn't have to study just the couple of ancient texts we have? What if we had a plethora of works that were still available to pour over instead of just guessing over ancient life like we do when read Homer? It seriously blows me away how much we don't have and what pieces of history we are missing as we move forward with our own history.
Lastly, since I'm a huge speculator on back stories (Come on guys, I mention this like every blog post), I can't help but think that either Caesar has got shitty friends or he was clueless about the people he surrounded himself with. I know he's not perfect and that there were some huge disagreements between him and Pompey even after Caesar gave him his daughter to marry. I mean, these best buddies went to war! Like, whaaat? And let's not even get me started about Brutus. Anyone else feel not a twinge of sadness when Brutus off'd himself after battle? No? Just me then? But I wish I could get a glimpse at Caesar's, the man not the ruler, mind as all this was going on. Did he feel betrayal? Or did he have a growing sense of impending doom? Or was he just "la-dee-da"-ing all over the place and was just focusing on the next best thing?
We'll never know but it's fun to speculate about!
You brought up a lot of thought provoking issues in your post. Taking a humanities class in high school, I also too know that not a lot of the ancient texts survived but I never really connected the two until now. Yeah, sometimes I can be an idiot. But you make a really good point. We don't know and most likely never will know the whole story behind who Julius Caesar was as a man.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you said he was just that. He wasn't a god. He didn't have an supernatural powers or abilities. He was just a man who excelled in the areas of his life.