Peter Jones

Julius Through The Ages

Caesar: A Life in Western Culture

By

Granta Books 279pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

I did warn the Editor that I have, on principle, little time for books like this, but she insisted. This review, therefore, may not be up to LR’s typically cool and Olympian standards of objectivity.

Maria Wyke, Professor of Latin at University College London, has written a ‘metabiography’ of Julius Caesar. Using ancient sources to pick out certain aspects of Caesar, she matches them with accounts of later ages’ use of them for their own, usually political, purposes. 

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