The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination

by Barry Strauss

Overview

The exciting, dramatic story of one of history’s most famous events—the death of Julius Caesar—now placed in full context of Rome’s civil wars by eminent historian Barry Strauss.

Thanks to William Shakespeare, the death of Julius Caesar is the most famous assassination in history. But what actually happened on March 15, 44 BC is even more gripping than Shakespeare’s play. In this thrilling new book, Barry Strauss tells the real story.

Shakespeare shows Caesar’s assassination to be a slapdash and amateur affair with a heavy dose of idealism. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation. It was a generals’ plot, put together by Caesar’s disaffected officers and designed with precision. There was even a troupe of gladiators on hand to protect the assassins from vengeance by Caesar’s friends. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, as Shakespeare has it, but they had the help of a third man—Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar’s entourage, one of Caesar’s leading generals, and a lifelong friend of Caesar. It was Decimus, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar.

Caesar’s assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and in the power of senators. The assassins rallied a great deal of support among the common people, but they underestimated Caesar’s soldiers, who flooded Rome. Armed force, not public opinion brought down the assassins and their beloved Republic and inaugurated the Roman Empire.

An original, fresh perspective on an event that’s been so widely memorialized, Barry Strauss’s book sheds new light on a fascinating, pivotal moment in world history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451668827
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/03/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	92,008
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University, is a leading expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, and The Spartacus War. Visit BarryStrauss.com.