Julius Caesar a fictitious composite
“The
main body of Livy’s history, through book 45,
mentions
neither the name nor the character of Julius Caesar”.
We read at: Livy Only Proves that
Julius Caesar is Fake
Livy Only Proves that
Julius Caesar is Fake
Oct 05, 2024
Last week I published a thorough historiography of
“Julius” Caesar, tracing the literary evolution of the title Caesar, the name
Gaius, and the name Julius back through the ancient sources that shape their
characters. One of the most surprising and fruitful discoveries came from Livy,
a Latin author who is one of the founders of Roman history. Livy offers my case
in point, showing that the character of Julius Caesar is partly ripped off of
lesser characters named Gaius Julius.
The main body of Livy’s history, through book 45,
mentions neither the name nor the character of Julius Caesar. The character of
the “great” Caesar eventually shows up in a series of very brief fragments,
comprising “books” 46-140, beginning in book 103. Even in these sorry
fragments, Livy does not refer to Julius Caesar, only to Gaius Caesar.
Yet Livy does mention two different
individuals named Gaius Julius who lived in two different time periods long
before Caesar, and the biographical details of both were later integrated into
the official biography of Gaius Julius Caesar.
Livy writes “In the three hundred and first year after
Rome was built, the form of the government was a second time changed” (5th
century BC). A dead body was found in the house of a patrician named Publius
Sestius, causing a scandal. Then a decemvir named Gaius Julius “appointed a day
of trial for Sestius, and appeared before the people as prosecutor (in a
matter) of which he was legally a judge; and relinquished his right [to judge]”
(Livy 3.33). The fate of Publius Sestius in Livy is unclear.
Some 400 years after Livy’s “Gaius Julius” declined to
judge Publius Sestius, Julius Caesar also pardoned a Publius Sestius. This
second Sestius was a friend and ally of Cicero who fought for Pompey, but after
Pompey’s defeat, Caesar pardoned him. Thus we see not only the proper names
from Livy, but also the themes of judgment and pardon, have been mashed
together in the biography of Caesar.
There is a second example of this, because Livy
mentions another Gaius Julius in one of the first fragments. This text
describes the events of 143 BC, when “Gaius Julius, a senator, writes the
history of Rome in the Greek language” (Livy 53). Julius Caesar also became
known as a Roman historian with his “memoir” of the Gallic wars. Thus two
different characterizations of two Gaius Juliuses from two time periods in Livy
were rolled into the eventual character of Gaius Julius Caesar.
For more on
the subject of Julius Caesar, and Rome, see e.g. my (Damien Mackey’s) articles:
Julius
Caesar legends borrowed, in part, from life of Jesus Christ
(2) Julius Caesar
legends borrowed, in part, from life of Jesus Christ
Horrible
Histories. Retracting Romans
(2) Horrible
Histories. Retracting Romans
Time
to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the
census emperor Augustus
Rome
surprisingly minimal in Bible
(2) Rome
surprisingly minimal in Bible
Comments