About The Death of Caesar

Translations

Français | La Mort de César. (Éditions Albin Michel).

Deutsch | Die Iden des März. (wbg Theiss).

Ελληνικά | Ο ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΙΣΑΡΑ. (Εκδόσεις Φανταστικός Κόσμος).

Italiano | La morte di Cesare. (Editori Laterza).

Español | La muerte de César. (Ediciones Palabra).

Svenska | Mordet på Caesar. (Natur & Kultur).

Türkçe | Jül Sezar'ın Ölümü. (Say Yayınları).

中国人 | Kaisa Zhi Si. (Beijing: Beijing United Publishing Co., LTD)

Thanks to William Shakespeare, the death of Julius Caesar is the most famous assassination in history. But what actually happened on March 15, 44 BC is even more gripping than Shakespeare’s play. In this thrilling new book, Barry Strauss tells the real story.

Shakespeare shows Caesar’s assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals’ plot, put together by Caesar’s disaffected officers and designed with precision. There were even gladiators on hand to protect the assassins from vengeance by Caesar’s friends. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, as Shakespeare has it, but they had the help of a third man—Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar’s entourage, one of Caesar’s leading generals, and a lifelong friend. It was he, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar.

Caesar’s assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and the power of senators. The assassins rallied support among the common people, but they underestimated Caesar’s soldiers, who flooded Rome. The assassins were vanquished; their beloved Republic became the Roman Empire.

An original, fresh perspective on an event that seems well known, Barry Strauss’s book sheds new light on this fascinating, pivotal moment in world history.

What Others are Saying

"Although he’s an academic, Strauss has, like Caesar, the common touch: he conveys the complexity of late republican Roman politics while keeping up a lively pace … He’s also a deft portraitist. Roman history can read like an endless parade of marble statues, but in The Death of Caesar, the players are all vibrant individuals, and none more so than Caesar himself."
TIME Magazine

"The last bloody day of the Republic has never been painted so brilliantly."
Greg WoolfThe Wall Street Journal

"Strauss then goes on to give one of the most riveting hour-by-hour accounts of Caesar’s final day I have read, perfectly capturing those tantalising twists and turns of fate that continued up to the very last moments of Caesar’s life.” and “an absolutely marvellous read."
Catherine NixeyThe Times of London

"Strauss’s account of the world’s most famous assassination is as thrilling as any novel."
Robert Harris, best-selling author

"…a fascinating murder mystery with some nice twists and turns, and [it] sheds light on one of history’s great tragedies, the fall of the Roman republic."
Fareed ZakariaCNN

Barry Strauss © 2024