![]() ![]() ![]() The crowds went absolutely berserk: that’s what it meant to be Roman. Pompey himself rode in a gemstone-encrusted chariot, wearing a cloak taken from Mithridates and said to have been worn by Alexander the Great. As Adrian Goldsworthy demonstrates admirably in Caesar: Life of a Colossus, the real Julius Caesar was a much more complex character, and the Republic he. In this definitive biography, Adrian Goldsworthy places Caesar within the broad canvas of the Mediterranean world in which he lived, describing the rich but. Three hundred kings, queens, princesses, chieftains and generals, all wearing national costume, walked ahead of Pompey as hostages. ![]() As might be expected from the historian of the Roman army, it offers particular insight into Caesar’s military campaigns and operations. ![]() His Caesar is exciting, readable, and balanced. At his celebratory triumph on 28 and 29 September 61 BC, Pompey had placards made to inform the crowds of precisely what he had achieved: 12,183,000 people killed, captured or defeated 846 warships taken or sunk 1,538 towns surrendered every soldier given a bounty of 1,500 denarii (more than ten years’ pay) 20,000 talents of gold and silver paid into the state coffers and Rome’s annual revenue nearly trebled from 50 million to 135 million denarii a year. Goldsworthy does a marvelous job of exploring and explaining this strange mental universe, at once misleadingly familiar and dumbfoundingly exotic. In December 62 BC, Pompey returned to Rome after clearing the Mediterranean of pirates and defeating the Eastern potentate Mithridates, thus laying the groundwork for Roman control of the East up to the Parthian border (roughly Iraq). ![]()
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