Julius Caesar: military genius or mass murderer?

Julius Caesar, most likely born on 12 July 100 BCE into the ancient but less powerful gens Julia, grew up surrounded by stories of noble ancestry and public service.

His father was Gaius Julius Caesar, who held the rank of praetor and is thought to have governed Asia, though this is not definitively attested in surviving sources.

However, he died unexpectedly when Caesar was still in his teens, leaving the young boy under the guidance of his mother Aurelia and influential relatives.

Aurelia had been widely admired for her intelligence and influence in Roman society, and must have played a key role in shaping her son’s early character. 

Following a childhood set during the turmoil of civil conflict between the Marian and Sullan factions, Caesar aligned himself with the populares by marrying Cornelia, the daughter of Marius’ ally Cinna, which provoked the wrath of Sulla and nearly cost him his life.

After securing a pardon, Caesar had launched his military career in Asia Minor, where he acquired his first experiences of campaigning and command, and he distinguished himself during the Siege of Mytilene, after which he earned the corona civica, one of Rome’s highest honours for bravery. 

In his early political career, he demonstrated an exceptional talent for winning public favour.

He brought charges against Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella for corruption in Macedonia, spent heavily on public entertainment, and relied on borrowed funds to finance grand spectacles, all of which increased his popularity among the urban masses and positioned him as a rising force in Roman politics.

During his service in Hispania Ulterior as propraetor in 61 BCE, he carried out aggressive campaigns against local tribes, such as the Lusitanians and accumulated spoils to pay off debts. 

Caesar’s drive to secure personal glory, often at the expense of traditional Roman traditions and laws, became increasingly evident as his career progressed.

After forming the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Crassus in 60 BCE, he used this informal alliance to get around Senate resistance and gain a five-year proconsulship in Gaul, where he intended to win fame and wealth by securing military distinction. 

Earlier in his life, around 75 BCE, he had been captured by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa, while en route to Rhodes to study rhetoric During his captivity.

He acted superior to his captors and he joked that he would return to crucify them, a promise he kept shortly after his release, when he raised a fleet, captured the pirates, and executed them.

The pirates had originally demanded a ransom of 20 talents, but Caesar insisted they raise it to 50.

This episode revealed a cold sense of personal justice and an firm commitment to enforcing his authority, even against minor foes. 

As governor of Hispania Ulterior, Caesar had used violence to solve political and financial problems, and he carried out quick and ruthless operations against rebellious tribes.

These early campaigns pointed to the methods he would later use on a much larger scale.

Every action, whether in the courts of Rome or the hills of Spain, displayed a willingness to use planned brutality to remove obstacles in his path. 

Between 58 and 50 BCE, Caesar waged the Gallic Wars, a series of campaigns that brought the whole of modern-day France, Belgium, parts of Switzerland, and areas west of the Rhine under Roman control.

These operations were conducted under the legal reason of protecting Roman allies and securing the frontier, which quickly became full-scale conquest. 

According to Caesar’s own account in Commentarii de Bello Gallico, he had claimed to have killed over one million Gauls and enslaved as many more, although modern historians such as Adrian Goldsworthy argue that these figures were highly exaggerated for political effect.

Regardless, his methods relied on overwhelming force, repeated displays of terror, and the systematic destruction of tribal opposition.

The Helvetii migration in 58 BCE, which ended in a disastrous defeat for the tribe, involved the death or enslavement of tens of thousands, with surviving women and children sold into slavery, though whether the proceeds directly funded further campaigns is still unclear. 

Also, Caesar showed no mercy to tribes such as the Eburones under Ambiorix, whom he had attempted to wipe out completely after a revolt in 53 BCE.

He ordered his legions to burn villages, destroy crops, and kill civilians without distinction.

He also defeated the Belgae in 57 BCE and the Veneti in a naval campaign in 56 BCE.

His Siege of Alesia in 52 BCE, where he defeated Vercingetorix, ended in the capture and enslavement of thousands, with many prisoners either sold or distributed among his troops as war spoils.

Throughout these campaigns, Caesar used small incidents to justify large invasions, which turned diplomacy into pretext and warfare into theatre.

He had used the Gallic Wars not only to expand Rome’s frontiers, but to elevate his standing at home by sending written accounts of his victories for public consumption that he carefully crafted to present him as both saviour and conqueror. 

After completing his campaigns in Gaul, Caesar had refused to relinquish command and return to Rome as a private citizen because he knew that prosecution and political ruin awaited him.

On 10 January 49 BCE, he crossed the Rubicon with a single legion, and he openly defied the Senate, which threw the Republic into civil war.

The decision set Roman against Roman and turned Italy into a battlefield. 

During the deciding confrontation at Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Caesar’s smaller force outmanoeuvred and defeated Pompey’s army in Thessaly.

Although he instructed his troops to spare fellow Romans where possible, the realities of civil war left no room for mercy on the field, and thousands of casualties resulted from the engagement.

Earlier, at Dyrrhachium, Caesar had suffered a significant setback, and he had barely avoided disaster before he regrouped for his eventual victory.

After Pompey had fled to Egypt and had been assassinated on the orders of Ptolemy XIII on 28 September 48 BCE, Caesar pursued his own interests there by siding with Cleopatra in her dynastic fight, and he used military force to secure her position and Roman influence. 

Later campaigns in North Africa and Hispania, where resistance had continued among Pompey’s remaining allies, included battles such as Thapsus and Munda, which caused the deaths of tens of thousands of combatants, including many Roman citizens as well as allied and auxiliary troops.

Though Caesar declared clemency his guiding principle, he removed enemies from public life, stripped them of property, and ruled through appointments rather than elections, effectively weakening the Senate. 

Under his dictatorship, opposition became a dangerous stance. He accepted extraordinary honours, wore purple robes, and allowed statues and titles that mimicked those of monarchs.

He was even offered a crown by Mark Antony during the Lupercalia festival in early 44 BCE.

He publicly refused the crown, but the offer increased fears of kingship. What is more, his image appeared on coinage, making him the first living Roman to receive such an honour, a privilege previously reserved for gods and symbolic figures, and a statue of him was placed among the former kings of Rome.

His control over the military, courts, and administration grew absolute, while the traditional mechanisms of Roman liberty disappeared behind the appearance of restored order. 

Caesar’s policy of clementia, which he promoted widely in the aftermath of civil war, allowed him to present himself as a benevolent ruler who forgave his enemies and offered reconciliation.

Senators such as Brutus and Cassius, who had fought against him, received pardons and regained positions in public life, becoming symbols of Caesar’s so-called mercy.

Other prominent beneficiaries included Cicero and Gaius Cassius Longinus. 

Yet the use of clementia served strategic ends. By pardoning defeated opponents, Caesar removed their political power while making them dependent on him.

His mercy appeared generous on the surface, but it also reinforced the idea that all power flowed from him alone.

His former enemies, now indebted to his goodwill, owed their status and safety to his personal favour rather than to law or tradition. 

This arrangement created resentment. Many of those he spared believed they had been humiliated rather than honoured.

The Senate no longer exercised real authority, and elections became formalities.

The Republic’s defenders saw his clementia not as a virtue, but as a tool for soft tyranny, hiding coercion beneath a veil of forgiveness.

Plutarch and Suetonius both noted the unease such mercy created among Roman elites. 

Eventually, his assassins, some of whom had once benefited from his pardons, chose to kill him because he had replaced the Republic with a system where survival depended on personal loyalty to one man, rather than because he punished his enemies.

On 15 March 44 BCE, during a Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey, a hall within the larger Theatre of Pompey complex, Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times by a group of conspirators who called themselves the "Liberators." 

Julius Caesar combined military brilliance with political calculation to achieve what no Roman before him had dared pursue so openly: total power.

His campaigns, especially in Gaul, displayed an extraordinary capacity for command and organisation, together with notable innovations in warfare, yet they also caused terrible death and destruction for aims that served his private interests rather than the public good. 

His decision to cross the Rubicon triggered civil war and brought devastation to the Republic he claimed to defend.

His dictatorship centralised power and removed the limits that had previously protected citizens from arbitrary rule.

Though he offered clemency to enemies, that mercy served as a political instrument, not a moral stance. 

Caesar’s reputation as a military genius remains deserved. However, that genius produced mass killing and widespread enslavement, and it eroded Rome’s most valued institutions.

He fought to be remembered as a liberator, yet his rise depended on war and fear.

His reputation was influenced in part by his own writings and polished by later historians such as Appian and Cassius Dio, but it has hidden the price paid by those who resisted him or stood in his way.

His story cannot be separated from the bodies that littered the roads behind his triumphs.