Julius Caesar

I came of age under Sulla's knives. Ordered to put away Cornelia, I refused, lost my inheritance, and slipped from Rome until the storm passed. In Asia I won the civic crown, and, sailing home, pirates seized me. I joked with them, raised their ransom myself, and, once freed, kept my word: I hunted them down and had them crucified — after I cut their throats to hasten the end.

Allies and office followed: pontifex maximus, consul, and an understanding with Pompeius and Crassus. Gaul gave me my stage. I wrote my campaigns in the third person and let the facts persuade. I threw a bridge over the Rhine in ten days, crossed the Oceanus to Britain twice, and ringed Alesia with double walls until Vercingetorix yielded.

When the Senate moved to strip me, I led a single legion over the Rubicon rather than accept exile. Pompeius fled; at Pharsalus his army broke. I followed him to Egypt and found instead an Alexandrian war and Cleopatra, whose cause I made my own as we pushed my ships through burning harbors and up the Nile.

As dictator I preferred order to purges. I enlarged the Senate, relieved debts, settled veterans, opened citizenship, and spared defeated foes — clemency that did not spare me. With the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes I reformed the calendar. In the Forum at the Lupercalia I refused the diadem, yet accepted the title dictator perpetuo to finish what I had begun. On the Ides of March, in Pompey's theatre, senators I had forgiven drove their blades into me. Speak to me of power, mercy, and the price of both.