Caesar, Julius

Julius Caesar, in full Gaius Julius Caesar, (born July 12/13, 100? bce, Rome [Italy]—died March 15, 44 bce, Rome), celebrated Roman general and statesman, the conqueror of Gaul (58–50 bce), victor in the civil war of 49–45 bce, and dictator (46–44 bce), who was launching a series of political and social reforms when he was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate House on the Ides of March.

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Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-Roman world decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society has been extinct for so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the average, educated modern person. But Caesar’s name, like Alexander’s, is still on people’s lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nothing of Caesar as a historic personality are familiar with his family name as a title signifying a ruler who is in some sense uniquely supreme or paramount—the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in the Slavonic languages, and qayṣar in the languages of the Islamic world.

Caesar’s gens (clan) name, Julius (Iulius), is also familiar in the Christian world, for in Caesar’s lifetime the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed “July” in his honour. This name has survived, as has Caesar’s reform of the calendar. The old Roman calendar was inaccurate and manipulated for political purposes. Caesar’s calendar, the Julian calendar, is still partially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, and the Gregorian calendar, now in use in the West, is the Julian, slightly corrected by Pope Gregory XIII.