"JULIUS CAESAR"

Julius Caesar was a general, a statesman, a lawgiver, an orator, an historian, and a mathematician. His government endured for centuries. He never lost a war and fixed the calendar. He also created the first news sheet, Acta Diurna, which was posted on the forum to let everyone who cared to read it know what the Assembly and Senate were up to.

Julius Caesar traced his ancestry to Romulus, putting him in as aristocratic position as possible, but his association with his Uncle Marius' populism put Julius Caesar in political hot water with many of his social class.

Under the Roman king era, Servius Tullius, the patricians developed as the privileged class. The patricians then took over as the ruling class when the Roman people, who were fed up with kings, drove out Servius Tullius' murderer and successor. This Etruscan king of Rome was referred to as Tarquinius Superbus 'Tarquin the Proud'. With the end of the period of kings, Rome entered into the period of the Roman Republic.

At the start of the Roman Republic, the Roman people were mainly farmers, but between the fall of monarchy and the rise of Julius Caesar, Rome changed dramatically. First it mastered Italy; then it turned its sights to the Carthaginian hold on the Mediterranean, to gain primacy over which it needed a fighting naval force. Citizen fighters left their fields prey to land speculators, although if all went well, they returned home with ample booty. Rome was building its remarkable empire. Between slaves and the conquered wealth, the hard-working Roman became the luxury-seeking compulsive shopper. Real work was carried out by slaves. A rural lifestyle gave way to urban sophistication.

Rome needed powerful leaders whose terms would not end mid-battle. Such men were called dictators. They were supposed to step down after the crisis for which they were appointed, although during the late Republic, Sulla had put his own time limits on his term as dictator. Julius Caesar made himself dictator for life (literally, perpetual dictator). Although Julius Caesar may have been permanent dictator, he was not the first Roman "emperor".