Word: caesarize
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Author Duggan has come to unbury Caesar, not to praise or blame him. It takes some digging. Shakespeare casually sketched in the great Roman in his tragedy and pivoted his play around the character of the tormented liberal, Brutus...
...JULIUS CAESAR (205 pp.)-Alfred Duggan-Knopf...
Casting Shakespeare in modern dress, Orson Welles sleight-of-handed Caesar the role of a fascist. Hollywood's Joe Mankiewicz saw his Caesar as a kind of tired, pompous stockbroker. Shaw's hero in Caesar and Cleopatra is a worldly-wise but disenchanted superman whom power has made not mad, but sad. Front-rank Historical Novelist Duggan (The Little Emperors) throws dirt on these literary ghosts by spading straight for the facts and unearthing many a fascinating shard from ancient Roman political life...
Nailing Up Heads. Like most of the Roman ruling class, Caius Julius Caesar was a somebody at birth. He liked to trace the family tree right to Rome's legendary founder Romulus, and even claimed kinship with Mars and Venus...
...Optimates, under the generalship of Sulla, ran him out of town and nailed the heads of his leading followers up in the Forum. Later Sulla was to spare young Julius, but warned, "One day this man may destroy the cause that you and I uphold. For this Caesar is worth six of Marius." Caesar went off to soldier in Asia, at 18, and won both honor and disgrace. For saving the life of a fellow soldier in combat, he was decorated with the cherished Civic Crown. Flawless in courage, he also showed a streak of sordid opportunism...