![]() ![]() Crisply described battle scenes give the reader a good sense of what happened and why, whether against the Gauls at Alesia or Pompey at Pharsalus. His lively writing style paints an engaging portrait of Caesar (much more so than Anthony Everritt's 'Augustus', for example). The reader gets the sense of Caesar as a man who strove to succeed above all else, but could have failed. He repeatedly cautions the reader not to regard the events of Caesar's life as inevitable. Goldsworthy succeeds admirably in this regard. ![]() They are the 'marble men' in Shelby Foote's phrasing. Writing a biography of Caesar presents the formidable challenge of humanizing the subject - much like writing about Napoleon or Robert E. Goldsworthy specifically cautioned at the beginning that he intends to stay focused on Caesar and Caesar alone and that is what he does. ![]() ![]() The author shows remarkable discipline in not wandering off down the many enticing pathways offered by the late Roman Republic. Some who have sniffed that Goldsworthy's treatment is not comprehensive enough miss the point - this is supposed to be a one-volume biography of Caesar and the book is 519 pages as is without chasing after the disputes between Crassus and Pompey. Goldsworthy's Caesar is an extraordinarily well-written one-volume biography. ![]()
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