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Questions to ask Julius Caesar

8 min read

Good questions for Julius Caesar (100 to 44 BC) ask about events his own Commentaries or the ancient biographers describe: being captured by pirates, conquering Gaul (58 to 50 BC), crossing the Rubicon in January 49 BC, his policy of mercy in the civil war, the new calendar of 45 BC and whether he wanted to be king. Remember that most of his famous sayings are reported by writers born a century after he died.

Caesar's career in dates

Date (BC)Event
100Born in Rome, 12 July (some scholars argue for 102), to an old patrician family
about 75Captured by pirates in the Aegean and ransomed
63Elected pontifex maximus, Rome's chief priest; speaks against executing the Catilinarian conspirators without trial
59Consul, in alliance with Pompey and Crassus
58 to 50Conquers Gaul; crosses into Britain in 55 and 54; defeats Vercingetorix at Alesia in 52
49Crosses the Rubicon in January, starting civil war with Pompey and the Senate
48Defeats Pompey at Pharsalus; Pompey is murdered in Egypt
47Wins at Zela, the victory of “veni, vidi, vici”
46 to 45Victories at Thapsus and Munda; four triumphs; new calendar starts on 1 January 45
44Named dictator for life; killed in the Senate meeting in Pompey's theatre complex on 15 March

For an interview, the Caesar of 46 BC works well: 54, dictator, celebrating four triumphs in Rome and launching the calendar reform. That Caesar does not know about the Ides of March.

Know which source is talking

Caesar is one of the few ancient generals whose own account survives. He wrote seven books of Commentaries on the Gallic War, describing himself in the third person, and three on the Civil War. They are clear, fast and carefully self-serving. The eighth book of the Gallic War was added by his officer Aulus Hirtius, and the accounts of the Alexandrian, African and Spanish wars, printed with his works, were written by other officers. Do not quote those as Caesar's own words.

His letters survive only where Cicero kept them. Almost everything personal, including the jokes and last words, comes from Plutarch's Life of Caesar (about AD 100) and Suetonius's Life of the Deified Julius (about AD 121), written more than 140 years after his death. In your project, say “according to Suetonius” and give the chapter number.

Questions about his youth and the pirates

What the sources say: Suetonius (chapter 1) says the young Caesar refused the dictator Sulla's order to divorce his wife Cornelia and had to go into hiding. Plutarch (chapter 2) tells how pirates captured him and asked for a ransom of twenty talents; he told them to ask for fifty, joked that he would crucify them, and after his release came back and did.

  1. Why did you defy Sulla over your marriage when it could have cost your life?
  2. Is the pirate story true, and did you really promise to crucify them?
  3. What did your mother Aurelia teach you about Roman politics?
  4. Why did you borrow so heavily to win elections?

Questions about Gaul

What the sources say: the Gallic War opens with its famous line that all Gaul is divided into three parts. Caesar's campaigns lasted eight years. Plutarch (chapter 15) says he fought three million people, killed a million and enslaved another million; ancient numbers are unreliable, but the scale was vast. After he massacred two Germanic peoples, the Usipetes and Tencteri, in 55 BC, Cato proposed in the Senate that Caesar be handed over to the Germans (Plutarch, chapter 22). Vercingetorix surrendered at Alesia in 52 BC and was executed in Rome after Caesar's triumph in 46.

  1. Why did you write about yourself as “Caesar”, in the third person?
  2. Why did you go to Britain twice, and what did you find?
  3. How did you trap Vercingetorix at Alesia?
  4. Was conquering Gaul worth what it cost the Gauls?
  5. What do you say to Cato, who called the massacre of the Usipetes and Tencteri a crime?

Ask the last two plainly. Let him defend himself as a Roman general would, and in your notes give the cost to the Gauls.

Questions about the Rubicon and the civil war

What the sources say: the Rubicon was the stream marking the edge of his province. Bringing an army across it into Italy was treason. Suetonius (chapter 32) has him say “let the die be cast”; Plutarch (chapter 32) says he said it in Greek, quoting the playwright Menander. In the war that followed he pardoned many enemies. A letter he sent to his agents Oppius and Balbus in 49 BC, preserved among Cicero's letters (To Atticus 9.7C), calls mercy and generosity a new way of conquering, unlike the cruelty of Sulla.

  1. What went through your mind at the Rubicon?
  2. Why did you pardon enemies who fought you, such as Brutus?
  3. Pompey was your son-in-law and ally. How did you become enemies?
  4. How did you feel when Pompey's head was brought to you in Egypt?

Questions about Egypt, power and reform

What the sources say: in Egypt in 48 to 47 BC he took the side of Cleopatra VII in her war with her brother, and she later had a son, Caesarion, whom she said was Caesar's. Back in Rome he replaced the old lunar calendar with a solar year of 365 days and a leap day, advised by the astronomer Sosigenes (Suetonius 40; Pliny, Natural History 18.211); the year 46 BC had to be stretched to 445 days to fix the seasons. In February 44 BC, at the Lupercalia festival, Mark Antony offered him a royal diadem and he refused it in public.

  1. What was Cleopatra like, as a ruler and as an ally?
  2. Why did Rome need a new calendar, and why did 46 BC last 445 days?
  3. Did you want to be king? Why refuse the crown at the Lupercalia?
  4. What does “dictator for life” mean if not king?
  5. Why did you choose your great-nephew Octavian as your heir?

Questions about his death, which only an older witness can answer

What the sources say: Suetonius (81) reports the soothsayer Spurinna's warning about the Ides of March; Suetonius (82) counts 23 stab wounds and says some wrote that his last words, to Brutus, were in Greek, “You too, child?”, while others say he said nothing. “Et tu, Brute” comes from Shakespeare's play of 1599. Plutarch (63) and Suetonius (87) say that at dinner the night before he said the best death was a sudden one.

  1. Did you ignore warnings about the Ides of March?
  2. Why did you dismiss your Spanish bodyguard?

Your Caesar cannot answer questions about his own murder unless you stage the interview as a ghost or as history looking back, and you should say so in your introduction.

Sample answers from the sources

Question: Why spare your enemies? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: in his letter to Oppius and Balbus (Cicero, To Atticus 9.7C, 49 BC) he says he will win people over by mercy and generosity rather than by Sulla's cruelty, a new way of conquering.

Question: Should Rome have executed the Catilinarian conspirators in 63 BC? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: in Sallust's version of his speech (The War with Catiline 51), he argued against killing Roman citizens without trial and proposed imprisonment instead. Sallust wrote the speech himself, so it gives Caesar's argument, not his exact words.

Question: Why did you divorce Pompeia? A sourced answer, in paraphrase: after the Bona Dea scandal he said his wife must be above suspicion (Plutarch, Caesar 10; Suetonius, Julius 74).

Question: Whom do you distrust? Plutarch reports this answer:

“It is not the well-fed long-haired man I fear, but the pale and the hungry looking.”
As reported by Plutarch (Life of Antony 11; compare Life of Caesar 62), referring to Brutus and Cassius

Shakespeare turned the same anecdote into Caesar's lines about Cassius's “lean and hungry look”.

What Caesar could not know

  • That “Caesar” became a title for emperors, and later Kaiser and Tsar.
  • Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, or the month of July named after him (renamed after his death, in 44 BC).
  • Christianity, born a generation after him.
  • If set in 46 BC: the Ides of March, Octavian's victory, or the end of the Republic.

Where to read Caesar and his biographers

Project Gutenberg has his Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars and Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Bill Thayer's LacusCurtius site at the University of Chicago has the Loeb translations of Suetonius and Plutarch with chapter numbers. The Perseus Digital Library has the Latin with English.

If you want to rehearse, Yuga's Julius Caesar is an AI recreation built from his Commentaries and the ancient sources. It is not Caesar and can be wrong, so cite the texts. Compare him with his heir in Julius Caesar and Augustus compared, and see ancient Rome's key figures.

Questions people ask

What are good questions to ask Julius Caesar?
Ask about the pirates who kidnapped him, why he wrote his Commentaries in the third person, what the conquest of Gaul cost, what he thought at the Rubicon in 49 BC, why he pardoned enemies, why the year 46 BC lasted 445 days, and whether he wanted to be king. Give the source chapter for each answer.
Did Julius Caesar say “Et tu, Brute”?
There is no ancient evidence for it. The line comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599). Suetonius (Julius 82) says some writers reported that Caesar said to Brutus, in Greek, “You too, child?”, and that others said he died without a word.
Did Julius Caesar write his own books?
Yes. He wrote seven books of the Commentaries on the Gallic War and three on the Civil War. The eighth Gallic War book was written by his officer Aulus Hirtius, and the Alexandrian, African and Spanish War accounts printed with them are by other authors.
What did Julius Caesar change about the calendar?
He replaced Rome's lunar calendar, which had drifted out of step with the seasons, with a solar year of 365 days and a leap day every four years, advised by the astronomer Sosigenes. To realign it, 46 BC was stretched to 445 days. The new calendar began on 1 January 45 BC.
What could Julius Caesar not know?
Anything after 15 March 44 BC: his heir's rise as Augustus, the empire, his name becoming a title for rulers, Christianity and Shakespeare's play. An interview set before his death should also avoid the assassination unless it is staged as a look back.

Sources