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No Other Caesar

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Two historical novels on Julius Caesar were recently released, Vincent Panella's first-person account, Cutter's Island: Caesar in Captivity (Academy Press, Chicago, 2000, 197 pages, ISBN 0-89733-484-1), and Patricia Anne Hunter's omniscient third-person narrative, No Other Caesar (Authors Choice Press, 2001, 224 pages, ISBN 0-595-15778-5. Short but rewarding is Panella's first-person account of a small but critical stage in the life of Julius Caesar, the time he spent in 75 BC as a captive of the pirates on their secluded island. Hunter attempts to cover all of Caesar's recorded life, beginning with Caesar's famous intereview with Sulla in 81, when the dictator tried, unsuccessfully, to get Caesar to divorce Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, and she follows him through the rest of his political and military career, right up to the closing scene in the hall of Pompey's theater on March 15, 44. The penultimate line of the novel is "Even you, boy?" - rendered by Shakespeare as "Et tu, Brute?". Panella shows Caesar flashing back to earlier events, including his marriage to Cornelia and his affair with Servilia. Whereas Panella concentrates on character, Hunter emphasizes historical events. Both novels are well worth reading. Choose Panella's lively work if you prefer more depth and, through Caesar's experiences with the pirates, a foreshadowing of Caesar's character as it will eventually be revealed. Choose Hunter's tightly-packed account, if, instead, you wish to follow the development of that character all the way from the bold defiance of Sulla's wishes that could have gotten him killed, through the full realization of that very boldness and decisiveness in the heat of battle and chill of politics, right up to the careless indifference about his own death that led him to ignore all the portents and warnings and on the very Ides of March to make himself the object of "the most senseless crime in history" (Hunter quoting Theodor Mommsen). A cautionary note: neither book is overly violent or pornographic, but both contain sexual passages (auto-erotic in Panella) that might warrant a PG-13 rating. Be sure to read them first before assigning them to a high school class. Fred Mench, Professor of Classics, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey