Customer Reviews

Caesar Against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War

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Most of us are familiar with some aspect of Julius Caesar's life- his military reputation, his affair with Cleopatra or his eventual assination. Jimenez has created a readable account that explains the relations of these events, focusing particulary on the confusing period of the Roman Civil war, where Caesar fought for control of the Roman goverment against Pompey. Jimenez produces a fine portrait of Caesar and his motivations in this period. Military events are given excellent summary, balanced with an account of the internal intrigues in the empire, and the astonishing developments of Caesar's campaigns against the Pompeian forces. Careful reference is made to the historical sources that survive, as well as archaelogical finds from modern times.

My own sketchy knowledge of Caesar was considerably expanded. I felt a certain admiration for Caesar that entwined with the narrative to create a vibrant and fascinating story. It's always a good book that leaves you excited and wanting to know more when your done. Jimenez has achieved that task.

This is an excellent short work on the Roman Civil War for the general reader. It is written in such an easily read style that, at times, it reads like a novel. It's quite linear, and so all of the many convolutions of this distant and confusing conflict appear to be made clear. Where there are contadictions in the historical record the author notes them, and then gives his best idea of what he feels is correct. I found the work very interesting, and learned quite a bit about this period of

Roman history that I had never known before reading this work. That is a high compliment to the author.

I read this book after completing a book by Barbara Tuchman, and was immediately discouraged by the differences in writing style. Jimenez lacks the twist of phrase and economy of words that makes Tuchman such a pleasure to read, and I came close to putting the book down. However, as I continued to read, these concerns fell by the wayside. True to Jiminez's words in his preface, he lets the facts tell the story, laying them bare for the reader to absorb, and interjecting well labelled speculation from time to time when the facts weren't clear. Whether Jiminez improved his writing style as the book went on, or I simply got used to it, he sythesizes a very readable account of one of the great conquerers in history.

I picked up this book to augment my weak understanding of the late roman republic and the specific things Caesar did to form the empire. I was well served by Jiminez in this regard. Anyone who wants to know how Caesar's life was intertwined with a whole host of other household names from the same time period (Cicero, Mark Antony, Brutus, Pompey and Cleopatra) ought to read this book. Jiminez also gives context to many of Caesar's well known, but little understood exploits such: crossing the Rubicon, the Gallic wars, and Veni, Vidi, Vici.

All in all, an adequately written book with loads in information presented interestingly enough to make you want to continue to read.

This book is awesome!!! Dude I love ancient history and this book is like getting a history IV right in your veins, oh yeah that's the stuff!! Seriously though this book is so easy to read that I would say it is hard to put down, and it still manages to give some awesome info about the Roman Civil war that ultimately led to Caesar's complete domination of the Roman World. So if you like ancient history, especially Roman History(and who doesn't?), or if you just like an action packed story I would highly recommend this book.

This book by Ramon Jimenez is limited to Caesar and his participation in the Civil War against Pompey The Great's republican forces between 49-45 B.C. Although the book may at first appear to be informative to those who are just beginning to learn about Roman history and Caesar, don't be fooled! Ramon Jimenez has absolutely no credentials in classical studies, history, or anthropology: his background is as a civil servant in California. Mr. Jimenez didn't even begin to undertake any studies in antiquity until his later adult years and such studies amounted to nothing more than his personal pursuit of a private hobby, not a Masters or Ph.D. There's also no indication that Mr. Jimenez has any background in Ancient Greek or Latin which would be prerequisites to presenting one's self as any sort of established authority in the field of classical studies. Even disregarding his lack of academic qualifications to present any thesis or dissertation on Roman history, his lack of knowledge as to the Late Roman Republic is made plainly obvious by his cursory summaries of Roman society and politics that are nothing but amateurish and misleading oversimplifications at best. The problem with Mr. Jimenez' work is that he focuses on Julius Caesar far too narrowly because he has no competent knowledge of the society, culture, and political environment Julius Caesar lived in: his study is almost in a complete void. One cannot understand Julius Caesar without knowing much about the Roman Republic any more than one could understand Alexander The Great without knowing any significant details about Ancient Greece, Macedonia and Persia. This book is therefore fundamentally unreliable as an authority on the Roman Republic, the Civil War, or even Caesar specifically.

His broad summaries of Roman society and politics demonstrate poor academic research and ignorance of the subject matter. For example, in the first chapter of the book, he oversimplifies Sulla's motives in securing his command in Asia Minor by labeling him as a simple tyrannical autocrat. Jimenez fails to provide even a brief concise overview of the Social Wars or how its aftermath affected Sulla's politics and those of his opponents: as a result, the reader also gets a poor overview of the events and politics that influenced Caesar's later political career. The book significantly overlooks the impact of Marcus Licinius Crassus and his patronage of Caesar, on the formation of the First Triumvirate, and, how his death was essentially the single most important cataclysm to the Civil War. The rest of his text is also very general barely touching only the surface of the dynamic socio-political developments of the time. The information being so bare, one wonders why the book is so long in the first place as other more competent authors have condensed even more detail in fewer pages. These types of generalizations are rampant in this book as well as his other book, "Caesar Against The Celts." This type of analysis shows only the author's ignorance of the broad context of the Roman Republic and his failure to grasp the significance of events and persons that influenced Caesar and ultimately led to the Civil War.

These types of incomplete summaries and false facts are rampant throughout the book and clearly indicate the author's lack of knowledge as to his subject. Mr. Jimenez' poor research is indicative of a tunnel-vision approach to only a very limited segment of Roman history that is inevitably dependent on a thourough and broad understanding of the Roman Republic specifically and antiquity in general: an understanding which Mr. Jimenez clearly lacks and results in his painfully evident demonstration of poor scholarship. I have no credentials in classical studies either and even I can see the gross inaccuracies in this work. The difference with me is that I wouldn't be so arrogant as to publish a book claiming to be authoritative when it's based only on loose knowledge I obtained on my spare time as a hobbyist. This book should be shunned as an authoritative text as to anything dealing with Rome: the only thing it's clearly authoritative on is its author's ignorance of the subject. Indeed, this book does a gross disservice to all true scholars who have committed years of schooling and dilligent work to the study of antiquity to dispel the very same misconceptions Mr. Jimenez ignorantly propagates as sound research in this poor work. Ignore this pitiful work and read Caesar's Commentaries directly or the work of qualified scholars of classics such as Gruen, Syme, Millar, or others who clearly know what they're writing about before they publish their work.