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Title: Caesar by Christian Meier ISBN: 0-465-00895-X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (23 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Praise for Meier's Caesar
Comment: This was a comprehensive and well written biography of Gaius Julius Caesar. It was an introduction to Roman Society for me, and details that others found needless, I found helpful and interesting. It is an excellent guide to Caesar and the events of his life. Admidittly, it was a long read and could have done with a little less straying from the main topic to the author's musings. Also, I found several event missing, such as Caesar's marraiges, children's births, and far less personal infromation about Caesar the Man. But, overall, I enjoyed it, and place it among my favorite books.
Rating: 3
Summary: Dense but often illuminating
Comment: Having some familiarity already with Roman history, I probably did not suffer as many may do reading this book if they do not know already the outlines of the era. Meier has the weaknesses of the Germanic intellect: he is longwinded, dense, and fuzzy at the edges, sometime rhapsodizing incoherently for pages about Some Big Concept he has contrived to explain Caesar's force and character. On the other hand, some of his ideas are compellng, especially his elaborate (and thematic) treatment of The Outsider as exemplified by Marius and Sulla, both of whom later served as models for Caesar.
But certain things are just fudged over, and left unclear. I only discovered by reading at the same time in Finley Hooper's "Roman Realities" (o.p.; get it out of the library) that Clodius, who was a wild man and sometime ally/enemy of Caesar, as well as Cicero and others, was the same Clodius who forced Caesar to divorce his wife Pompeia when Clodius allegedly tried to seduce her by dressing as a female slave and infiltrating Caesar's house. This is only symptomatic. The whole Catilinarian conspiracy is similarly befogged with intrigue, which of course it was at the time; but it is the duty of the historian to clarify such events.
All in all, I much prefer Michael Grant's book on Caesar, which is now o.p. too. However, it was shorter, more succinct, and not as rich in speculation as Meier's. This book is very thought-provoking at times, but don't rely on it to give you a coherent picture of this time. For Caesar's remarkable personality, though, it's probably the best.
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't Buy This Book
Comment: I thought this was a very dull and boring book. In short don't waste your time or money. (...) There is a reason it was that cheap. This book should not be called CAESAR: A Biography. It should be called Rome and the Life of Caesar or Rome: At The Time of Caesar. I felt like the book was more about Rome than Caesar himself. ***Hardcover***
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Title: Caesar: Politician and Statesman by Matthias Gelzer, Peter Needham ISBN: 0674090012 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1985 List Price(USD): $20.50 |
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Title: The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, S. A. Hanford ISBN: 0140444335 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: February, 1983 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Emperor: The Death of Kings by CONN IGGULDEN ISBN: 0385336624 Publisher: Delacorte Press Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Cicero : The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt ISBN: 037575895X Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme ISBN: 0192803204 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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