Julius Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but an unusually successful republican leader who was measured against the Republic's traditions and its greatest heroes of the past. Catastrophe befell Rome not because Caesar (or anyone else) turned against the Republic, its norms and institutions, but because Caesar's extraordinary success mobilized a determined opposition which ultimately preferred to precipitate civil war rather than accept its political defeat. Based on painstaking re-analysis of the ancient sources in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the participatory role of the People in the republican political system, a strong emphasis on agents' choices rather than structural causation, and profound scepticism toward the facile determinism that often substitutes for historical explanation, this book offers a radical reinterpretation of a figure of profound historical importance who stands at the turning point of Roman history from Republic to Empire.

Winner, 2022 PROSE Award for Biological Anthropology, Ancient History and Archaeology

‘Highly recommended.’

R. T. Ingoglia Source: Choice Magazine

‘What Morstein-Marx attempts here is nothing less than a reset of earlier thinking about the end of the Republic and Caesar’s role in its downfall.’

Michael Fallon Source: Classics For All

'Morstein-Marx is a splitter, and an excellent one. His command of the details is marvelous. The book offers many powerful reinterpretations of oft-told tales, such as Caesar’s march across the river that served as a boundary between Rome and its northern territories, the Rubicon.'

Barry Straus Source: Claremont Review of Books