The Ides of Marsh
Jon’s arc in A Dance with Dragons has the character as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch dealing with many issues like maintaining neutrality vs desired political outcomes, trying to bring together old foes, the wildlings and the Night’s Watch and carrying out reform with resistance from reactionaries.
Reading Jon’s arc, there is one person Jon is clearly modeled off of:
Gaius Julius Caesar, the Roman consul and dictator who is a staple in the history of Western Europe who even got the Shakespeare treatment, and whose assassination marked the fall of the Roman Republic just as Jon’s assassination attempt might mark the end of the Night’s Watch. Yes, Jon and Caesar do share the fate of being assassinated by conspirators, but it actually goes deeper than that. I admit when I read about Julius Caesar’s story, I increasingly found how much George R.R. Martin modeled Jon’s story after Caesar’s.
Rise to Power
In A Storm of Swords, Jon had been a commander in the war against the wildlings north of the Wall led King-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder. Jon led the Battle of the Wall for a time as he held off the wildling forces for days with a successful defensive strategy against their overwhelming numbers until Stannis’s cavalry arrived unexpectedly from the east to rout them. Mance Rayder had been captured only to ceremonially executed by being burned alive (actually Rattleshirt). After demonstrating his abilities along with some political machinations by Sam, Jon is made Lord Commander by the Night’s Watch.
Julius Caesar likewise, prior to crossing the Rubicon, had been leading a victorious campaign against the Gauls up north in modern-day France. The Gallic king, Vercingetorix, led an alliance against Caesar at the Battle of Alessia, where Caesar held off the Gallic relief force that he stated was four times the size of his own (though modern historians put the relief force at slightly larger than Caesar’s) through makeshift fortifications. Like with the Battle of the Wall, it was largely a battle where Romans fought from defensive fortifications for days and the battle ended when a Roman cavalry routed the Gallic relief force from the rear. Vercingetorix, like Mance, had been captured, and publicly paraded before Rome to be ceremonially executed, though by choking rather than being burned alive. A few years after his successful campaign in Gaul, Caesar was made imperator by the senate, which has often been translated as “dictator,” when it actually means “commander,” and in Caesar’s case, something along the lines of “commander-in-chief” or “supreme commander (or lord commander?).” Caesar was later made imperator perpetuus, “perpetual commander,” extending his term for life.
Bowen Marsh: The Obstinate Optimate
Around the time of Caesar, for years there had been a conflict in the Senate between the two factions of the Optimates and the Populares, which was basically conservatives vs reformers. The Optimates (literally “best ones”) were reactionaries that supported the ancestral Roman laws and customs that firmly supported the interests of the landed aristocracy that dominated the Senate, and fought any attempts at reform, even resorting to murder with many reformers being assassinated from the Gracchi brothers onward. The Populares (literally “favoring the people”) starting with the Gracchi brothers, were pushing for reforms like the grain dole that provided a lifeline for the city’s poor, and more equitable distribution of conquered lands, the ager publicus, amongst other policies that were favorable to the plebians. Caesar was the leader of the Populares who once in power, enacted a number of reforms that had been on the Populares’ wish list, and were long opposed by the Optimates.
