Why is Julius Caesar so famous?

Everywhere I look, people call him one of the greatest military generals in all of history, but what did he actually accomplish on the battlefield? Beat some barbarians? Any Roman general at that time could have done the same. His most long lasting accomplishment was getting stabbed, which led to events that led to the end of the Roman Republic, though it was already heading in that direction to begin with, especially due to Sulla's faggotry. Why is Caesar such a household name, when he realistically isn't that noteworthy of a historical figure?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar's_Rhine_bridges
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zela
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He walled a bunch of Gauls in their own city and waited.

Ever heard of the civil war against Pompey? Beating a fellow Roman who has considerably more resources to fling into the kettle than you do isn't easy.

Although, to be fair, he does have something of an exaggerated reputation as a purely military man. I'm not even sure I'd put him in my top 5 Roman generals, let alone tops of everywhere.

Because Octavian won the civil war.

Yeah, that is his only noteworthy military achievement, but it isn't nearly enough to be considered literally the most famous Roman of all time.

He's the most famous because of the manner of his assassination and the imperial transition that took place in its wake. Also Shakespear helped.

I disagree that his manner of assassination was that noteworthy, demagogues were killed left and right. I do agree that Shakespeare is a big reason why he is so famous though.

But he's not the most famous solely because of his military feats. He's primarily most famous because of how he declared himself Dictator for Life, and while not officially taking the title of Imperator, was the one who ushered in the era of the Roman Empire as distinct from the Republic.

Furthermore, he was a prolific writer, and especially to Latin students, Caesar's campaigns as literature were hugely impactful.

The military career fueled the reasons for his fame, which had to do with his lasting impact as a literary man and a political figure. The guys who were better generals, the Belisariuses and the Sullas of the world, generally didn't do as much outside the battlefield.

I must admit, I know nothing of his writings or literature he wrote. I have an issue of him being known for his contributions to the start of the Roman Empire, since he merely set the precedence of what should happen, as he got stabbed so early on after winning the civil war. If we were going to talk about people that actually implemented what he wanted, his successor should, for all intents and purposes, be more famous.

The popular image of Caesar is one that is a brilliant general, and often is mentioned in the same breath as Napoleon, Alexander, and Hannibal (by the masses, at least), who all had amazing feats of generalship, but I can't think of anything that Caesar has done that can compare to other popular generals in history. That is probably my biggest issue with Caesar, in reality, he is in my mind a Lenin figure for the Roman Empire, just a figurehead of the start of the government, but died extremely early on, and did little to shape the actual empire.

He beat Pompeii and was outnumbered. When he defeated the Gauls he was at a numerical disadvantage supposedly. One thing that gave him credit in the eyes of the Roman people was pacifying the Gauls, which Rome had dealt with for centuries. He did so in pitched battles, but mostly through terrorizing and slaughtering them. Not really sure if he's a great military man or not.

The battle of Alesia was a fair feat. His gallic campaign subjugated an impressive amount of territory for the amount of troops he had, and he beat a larger, equally trained and equipped force though the civil war.

Gaius Marius, who is only a generation or two away from Caesar, smashed those presumably Germanic invaders number around 300,000. His battles with Pompeii are relatively impressive, as the soldiers are more or less the same, so the difference really is in the commanders, and Pompeii was a pretty good general as well. I'm just not sold on the fact that he did nearly enough to be such a famous figure.

Shakespeare.

It's his work as a statesman that solidified his fame, whether the masses know that or not.

His most notable act is the way he built an image of himself as one of the greatest generals of all time off mildly impressive feats.

/thread.

>I'm just not sold on the fact that he did nearly enough to be such a famous figure.

I think the overemphasis on his military achievements is an extension of his importance politically/historically in the fall of the Republic

>Beat some barbarians?
He literally slaughtered almost the entire Gallic male population of fighting age with only a few thousand men by playing them off of each other. He completely mind-fucked the Germans by building a gigantic bridge over the Rhine just to tear it down again as a giant fuck you. He didn't just beat them, he completely and permanently fucked over Celtic culture.

And against well drilled Greek rebels he curbstomped him so quickly that he wrote a letter back to the senate describing his victory like this: veni vidi vici.

>Any Roman general at that time could have done the same
But Pompey Magnus wasn't just any general, he was the finest military mind of his day and his army outnumbered Caesar's by a comfortable margin. Julius crushed him handily and left him disgraced and humiliated.

>His most long lasting accomplishment was getting stabbed,
His most enduring legacy was the personality cult built by Octavian after his death which set the tone for the next 400 years of European history.

user tell me more about this bridge.

>slaughtering barbarians
Not noteworthy
>played gallic people against each other
Pretty smart, but Rome had a history of operating in that way, so it wasn't exclusively Caesarian
>veni vidi vici
A quote isn't really evidence of historical accomplishment
>crushed Pompey handily
He was getting slapped around, which is to be expected, for most of the civil war. It was only until Pompey was reluctantly pressured into fighting by the senators and other important folks when he could just starve out Caesar did he throw his advantage. Pompey wasn't really outsmarted or anything, he and Caesar both knew that if Pompey just maintained his position before the Battle of Pharsalus, Caesar would have lost.
>cult personality
Agreed.

If you're gonna brush aside his conquest of Gaul by just saying "lol barbars" then you really have no business to get into a historical debate about this in the first place.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar's_Rhine_bridges

TL;DR version: Caesar wanted to show the Germans massing on the far side of the Rhine that he could hit them any time he wanted with his entire army of hardened vets, and he showed them this by building the single largest man-made structure yet seen north of the Alps marched enough of his army across it to scare the Germans back into the hills, then marched back across the bridge and tore it down just to make his point

>Not noteworthy
Seriously fuck off with that contrarian bullshit. The Celts were a martial culture and were some of Rome's most relentless enemies and he literally wrote the book on divide and conquer to describe how he wiped them out.
>Pretty smart, but Rome had a history of operating in that way, so it wasn't exclusively Caesarian
But nobody did it on the scale or degree that Caesar did, and nobody else had thought to write it down
>A quote isn't really evidence of historical accomplishment
Jesus Christ, can't you do a fucking google search?
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zela
He was literally outnumbered 2:1 by professional Greek soldiers
> for most of the civil war
It doesn't matter which race car wins the first lap. Pompey outnumbered Caesar like, 45,000 to 22,000 at Pharsalus and still got outmaneuvered and crushed utterly. And Pompey's troops were hardened Roman veterans just like Caesar's.

This is a bait thread, but here I go

Caesar was the greatest general of the roman republic,yes other generals like Marius did great deeds, but what makes Caesar the top dog was how his soldiers faught for him-as Wellington would say, he was worth an additional legion.

>>veni vidi vici
You should look up the battle, his army was attacked while setting up camp and slaughtered the attackers, the quote doesnt sound like much, but you need to appear humble when dealing with the senate

Romans led by any noteworthy person at that time were just destroying barbarians left and right. Prime example was one I noted earlier, where 300k invaders were destroyed by Marius.

All I'm seeing at the Battle of Zela is that Romans could crush whatever the leaders of Pontus could cobble together. In fact, Mithridates was seen as such an easy mark that the civil war between Marius and Sulla was over who could have the opportunity to fight Pontus. Sulla already proved that Roman legionaries could crush Pontus forces, and there wouldn't have been any more Mithridatic Wars if Sulla just continued forward instead of becoming dictator of Rome.

Read what I actually said, Pompey was smashing Caesar over and over, trapped him in a little fucking area, and was starving him out. It was only because of the non-military minds of the Senate pressuring Pompey to attack, instead of just holding position like Pompey wanted to, that allowed Caesar to come back, as Caesar was desperately trying to sue for peace before this foolish move.

His sheer force of personality and achievements as an individual against all odds. That's why Napoleon is so often compared to him.

Not many people have a CV as impressive as Caesar's.

He was extremely accomplished but two other things are more important. He had a great publicist called Julius Cesar and those that followed him both achieved great things and stood to benefit from glorifying him.

>Pompey was smashing Caesar over and over,
Hahahaha
Pompey lost Pharsalus because of Pompey, caesar won because he was the overman and his willpower caused Pompey to flee

>Pompey fucks up at Pharsulus outnumbering Caesar 2-1
>I-it's the Senate's fault! Caesar's not that great!
>Optimates still hold more land, more wealth, and more troops
>Lose to Caesar at Thaspus
>Lose again at Munda

Give it a rest.

2000 years has passed and people are still butthurt

The only ones still butthurt are the conservatives mad that they got their asses handed to them by a populares who went on to become one of the most recognizable and iconic figures in western history.

Wasn't vvv humble bragging? I've always understood that he had the habit of sending dispatches to Rome detailing his conquests, which was part of the reason why he was popular with the masses.cin that instance his entire dispatch was just
>
>
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Making out that wiping a kingdom off the map was nothing.
OR am I mistaken?

>Why is Caesar such a household name, when he realistically isn't that noteworthy of a historical figure?
plutarch

also the gallic wars is a standard text for teaching schoolboys latin

>Beat some barbarians?
You now realize that european barbarians were considered by Rome to be a much greater threat than the eastern potentates from a military point of view.
In fact, those very same easterners fully agree with the romans, and hired gallic mercs all the fucking time.

>Romans led by any noteworthy person at that time were just destroying barbarians left and right.
But that's wrong you fucking retard. You mention Marius (also one of the most celebrated generals in roman history btw), but if you actually knew his career, you'd know that for every battle he won, Rome lost another two led by lesser men. Aquae Sextiae and Campi Raudii are so impressive specifically because they came in the aftermath of Noreia, Agen and Arausio, in which Rome got rekt by the very same barbs that Marius slaughtered. Rome's worst enemy, from the earliest times to the end of the western empire, were the barbs, there's nothing unimpressive in rekting them.

Caesar got into the battles rather than sitting on the sidelines which made him a popular general
He personally killed multiple gauls in battle during his campaign, and was an inspiration to his troops despite being an elderly epileptic

/thread

He wrote 8 books on his wars in Gaul alone that all survived to the modern day. Thus, he gets a ton of attention from historians because we actually have things to talk about.
That's probably the biggest single reason he's so prominent.

Yeah, that's a good point. People always vastly overestimate how many surviving texts we have from antiquity. Anything that survived is worthy of discussion simply through virtue of it existing. I've read like five articles written about the same 5th century Roman army troop roster for a cavalry vexillation. If something so mundane can attract so much attention, imagine how significant it is to have the memoirs of a figure like Julius Caesar.

Pompeius Magnus was a great general. Caesar beat him.

The hardline Republicans who murdered Caesar never really had a chance against the combined forces of his heirs.

The choice was between Octavian and world hegemony based in Rome or Mark Anthony and world hegemony based in Egypt. Both would have continued the practice of lionizing Caesar