Volume 55, Number 20 · December 18, 2008
Cruising with Caesar
By Mary Beard
Caesar: A Life in Western Culture
by Maria Wyke.
University of Chicago Press, 287 pp., $25.00
Julius Caesar
by Philip Freeman
Simon and Schuster, 405 pp., $30.00
Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History
by Denis Feeney
University of California Press, 372 pp., $29.95; $18.95 (paper)
In the spring of 47 BCE, Julius Caesar took a Nile cruise. The civil wars that would make him sole ruler of Rome were drawing to a close. His main rival and erstwhile ally, Pompey the Great, had been decapitated—and Caesar had even managed to produce some tears when the head was brought to him. The internecine fighting in Egypt, which was in effect another civil war between the young queen Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, had been crushed. Caesar himself had safely escaped from the palace in Alexandria where he had been besieged by Ptolemy's forces.
Review, 3753 words
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