Word: duggan
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Julius Caesar, by Alfred Duggan. An absorbing new portrait of the biggest Roman of them all, with fascinating sidelights on the pols and politics of ancient Rome (TIME, June...
...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...
...Author Duggan describes it, his tactical genius was speed and surprise, his psychological genius was knowing the breaking point of his own men. In a tight spot, he could pick up a broadsword and lead a charge with the doughtiest of his centurions. He never killed for fun, but he killed wholesale. Many Romans were shocked when his legions slaughtered 430,000 Germanic tribesmen in one day, when their envoys were actually in Caesar's camp seeking peace. Five years later, the Senate, pushed by Pompey, ordered Caesar to lay down his command; instead, Caesar crossed the Rubicon...
...days he was master of all Italy. As his troops swaggered into Rome, they sang: "Home we bring the bald adulterer. Romans, lock your wives away." A cowed Senate voted him dictator-for-life. Caesar was supreme and lorded it over his social peers, showing what Author Duggan considers his "one weakness, a contempt for the self-respect of his fellow men." "Why don't you make me restore the old constitution?" he taunted a venerable Senator who failed to rise in his presence. For such taunts he paid at the base of Pompey's statue...
...great merit of Duggan's Caesar is that he is not a tailor's dummy draped in a thesis. Professional historians from Tacitus to Mommsen have cloaked Caesar in dissertations about one-man power, the Roman constitution, and the pros and cons of emperors and empires. On the other hand, Duggan feels no need to give Caesar a coating of grease paint so he can strut the stage. Author Duggan has grasped the elusive obvious, that great men are measured by heritage, not histrionics. As Duggan sees it, Caesar's enduring heritage was divided into three parts...