Julius Caesar is one of the most recognizable names in history, yet much of what the average person believes about him comes from Shakespeare, rumor, or outright myth. The real Caesar spent most of his 30s drowning in debt, was once kidnapped by pirates he later had crucified, and by his own written count, was responsible for the deaths of more people than many modern wars. One of the most persistent myths is that Caesar was born by cesarean section and that the procedure is named after him. The Roman procedure did exist, but it was only performed on women who had died or were dying in childbirth, and it did not allow the mother to survive.
Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, lived well into her 40s, which makes the story impossible. The name more likely came from an ancestor’s nickname, possibly meaning “thick hair” or derived from a word for cutting, though Romans themselves disagreed on the origin. Caesar’s early political career was a financial disaster. The Julian family had ancient patrician status but very little money, and Caesar grew up in the Subura, one of Rome’s poorest and most crowded neighborhoods.
As aedile in 65 BC, he staged gladiator games on an unprecedented scale and spent heavily on public works, going deep into debt. By 61 BC, he owed so much that creditors blocked him from leaving Rome to take up a governorship in Spain. The richest man in Rome, Marcus Licinius Crassus, paid off a portion of Caesar’s debts, an investment that shaped the next two decades of Roman politics. Around 75 BC, a young Caesar was kidnapped by Cilician pirates while traveling to Rhodes.
When they demanded 20 talents for his release, he insisted they ask for 50. During nearly 40 days in captivity, he treated the pirates as staff, made them listen to his poetry, and repeatedly told them he would return and crucify them all. After his ransom was paid, he hired ships, captured them, and carried out his promise. For the details of that episode, historians disagree on the exact sequence, with sources differing on whether they were actually crucified or sold into slavery.
During his early military service in Asia, Caesar’s personal reputation suffered. In 80 BC, he was sent to King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia to collect a fleet and lingered there longer than anyone could explain, producing a rumor that he had been the king’s lover. The gossip followed him for decades, and even at his own triumph in 46 BC, his soldiers sang songs about it. Caesar’s legions also teased him about his receding hairline.
Suetonius noted that Caesar was extremely sensitive about his hair and combed it forward in a desperate attempt to hide the bald spot. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul between 58 and 50 BC was stunning in both scale and brutality. He fought an estimated 3 million people according to Plutarch and Appian, with roughly one million dead and another million enslaved. He also claimed to have wiped out 430,000 Germanic tribesmen, including women and children, after their leaders had come under a truce.
That caused a scandal in Rome, with Cato proposing in the Senate that Caesar be handed over to the tribes to face prosecution for violating the truce. The motion failed, but it shows that his campaign was considered extreme even for a society that celebrated conquest. Modern historians doubt the numbers themselves, noting that he records almost no Roman casualties anywhere in his writing. During that same war, Caesar wrote his famous Commentarii de Bello Gallico, a history of his campaigns that he published yearly to great public relations effect.
The writing is famously plain, which is precisely what made it so persuasive. The victories are always Caesar’s; the setbacks are blamed on weather, subordinates, or Gallic treachery. The work became a standard textbook for Latin students for centuries, with very few questioning the motives of an author who was simultaneously a general on campaign. While Caesar was in Gaul, Rome’s civil calendar had drifted so badly that harvest festivals were being held before the harvest.
As Pontifex Maximus, he fixed the problem in 46 BC by adding 67 extra days to the year, bringing its total length to 445 days. Romans called it the year of confusion. He introduced the solar calendar, based on an Egyptian system, which survived for over 1,600 years until it was refined in 1582. Caesar’s defining political trait, and the one that led to his death, was mercy.
After defeating Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 BC, he pardoned nearly all his opponents, including Brutus and Cassius, who had fought against him. He restored their property and even gave them high offices. Cato saw what this meant and killed himself specifically to avoid accepting a pardon. Pardoning was not a power that a republic granted to one man, and when Caesar alone decided who lived and who kept his property, the constitution was effectively over.
His honors soon became strange. He was made dictator for life, his face appeared on coins, and he was given a gilded chair in the Senate House. At the Lupercalia festival in February 44 BC, Mark Antony offered him a royal diadem and he publicly refused it. Historians still debate whether this was a staged rejection.
Caesar also had royal decorations removed from statues, and two tribunes who dared to pull them down were stripped of office. Rome noticed. The warning signs were everywhere. A soothsayer told him to beware the Ides of March.
His wife Calpurnia dreamed of his death and begged him not to go to the Senate. A Greek teacher pushed a written warning into his hand. Caesar kept it unread. About 60 men joined the plot, and on the Ides of March 44 BC, in a hall built by his rival Pompey, they surrounded him and attacked.
Caesar carried no bodyguard, having dismissed his Spanish escort. Tillius Cimber grabbed his toga, and Casca struck the first blow at his neck. Caesar caught Casca’s arm and stabbed back with a writing stylus before the others closed in. He fell at the base of Pompey’s statue.
His physician Antistius examined the body and counted 23 wounds but concluded that only one, a thrust to the chest, was actually fatal. That examination is considered the first recorded forensic autopsy in history. As for the famous last words, Plutarch said Caesar pulled his toga over his head and said nothing. Suetonius mentioned a report that he said “You too, child” to Brutus, but Suetonius himself doubted it.
“Et tu, Brute” appears in no ancient source. Shakespeare wrote it in 1599. The conspirators marched into the forum declaring that Rome was free, but the crowd did not respond as they had hoped. Caesar’s will, read aloud at his funeral, left 300 sesterces to every male citizen, his gardens to the public, and named his 18-year-old great-nephew Octavian as his adopted son and heir.
Antony also displayed a wax effigy of the body, rotated to show all 23 wounds, and Rome burned the forum as a funeral pyre. Four months later, a comet appeared in the sky for seven days, and Octavian put it on coins as the Julian star, claiming it as proof of Caesar’s divinity. In 42 BC, the Senate officially declared Caesar a god. Within three years, nearly every conspirator was dead.
Brutus and Cassius lost at Philippi and took their own lives. The republic they killed Caesar to save lasted another 13 years before Octavian, now Augustus, turned it into an empire. The name outlived the man, with German emperors later calling themselves Kaiser and Russian rulers Tsar, both derived from Caesar. As for the salad, it has nothing to do with him.
It was invented in 1924 by an Italian restaurateur in Tijuana named Caesar Cardini, who improvised a dish when he ran out of food on the 4th of July.