Caesar and his Reception

Julius Caesar is a captivating figure in the Western political and literary imaginary. Consummate general, admired stylist, lover of Cleopatra, winner of the civil war against Pompey, and dictator for life, Caesar seems to have it all until his assassination by some of his closest friends. Did he have the ambition to control the state from the beginning or did he react in response to provocation? Did he have a just cause for waging civil war? Was he a figure of consummate cruelty or did he do atrocious things to forward a progressive political agenda? How are we to interpret his vaunted clemency? To address these questions, we will read Julius Caesar’s extant works and examine the rich variety of representations of this charismatic figure in imperial Greek and Roman literature (Appian, Plutarch, Suetonius, Lucan) and beyond (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Richard Nelson’s 2008 play, Conversations in Tusculum).