Customer Reviews

The Young Caesar

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Book Description:

Novelist and scholar Rex Warner's extraordinary biographical novel, THE YOUNG CAESAR, resounds with the tumult and savagery of the last years of the Roman Republic. Through the cold, measuring eye of the mature Caesar, who narrates the story of his youth and his rise to power, the world of Rome comes to life.

The great consuls, senators, and commanders are seen as they struggle for control and then one by one go down in the violent currents of civil war: the formidable general Pompey; the legalistic orator and self-made man Cicero; the narrow-minded prig Cato; Caesar's tyrannical uncle, Marius; the financial manipulator Crassus; the cold, heartless Sulla; and a gallery of other notable and lesser Roman figures. Rex Warner's canvas is a broad one, and we see the way democracy functioned in Rome, its excesses and strengths, and the conflict between the reactionary senators and public heroes.

"Fiction in the form of a memoir, Caesar looks back on his life on the eve of the Ides of March. We meet major characters and events leading up to his governorship of Gaul, but stops just before his great conquests that led to his crossing the Rubicon and to a Roman Dictatorship. Warner successfully captures the turbulent events of Caesar's youth and how they may have shaped him, and overall paints a believable portrait of a young, ambitious Caesar." ~ reviewed by Blaze

This novel has Julius Caesar reflecting on his youth, and the political intrigues and leading to his rise to power.

Full of wry observation on people's characters, and political philosophy.

Caeasar narrates the story of his life, to he close of his first consulate, and the eve of his departure to Gaul.

We get to see Caesar's world of enquiry experience and survival, and the intrigues of the Rome of that time. Revealed are the lives of Rome's leading men and and women, such as Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Catiline, Julia and Clodia.

It depicts the political struggles and civil wars and Rome at that time and the violence, brutality and political intrigue. Caesar's brilliant mind and instinct for survival are depicted here, revealing a man of letters and a man of action, a gambler, lover, populist politician and one of history's greatest generals.