Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator

This series feature a number of scholars of Roman History to comment on the life of the most famous Roman of them all. Nevertheless, it was terrible. The reason I awarded it even 2 stars is that it does get the chronology correct and manages to name the leading figures of the era, but it goes out of its way to denigrated one of history's great men.

Julius Caesar was probably one of Rome's greatest generals. His conquest of Gaul gave Rome a buffer that protected the Empire for 300 years. He wrote one of the greatest war commentaries in history and ,within the context of his time, he was a humane individual. Of course his time was quite brutal and like all of us he was a person of times. For some reason this series seeks to portray as Attila the Hun.

At his time the Roman Republic was collapsing of its own weight. It had just been governed by two brutal dictators, Marius, and Sulla who had cruelly slaughtered their political enemies. The Roman Senate was corrupt and self serving and dominated by strongmen such as Pompey, or Crassus or by incompetents such as the fanatic Cato or the ungrateful Brutus.,Caesar was assassinated because he did not slaughter his enemies. His intention was to spare Pompey, and Cato. He did spare his surviving enemies: Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, et al. He chose the most qualified Roman, his nephew Octavian to be his successor.

In short the depiction of Caesar is senseless. It seems almost as if they were going after chose to view Caesar as a Latin Donald Trump. Love Trump or hate him it's safe to say that Mr Trump is no Julius Caesar.