Caesar in a few minutes: from the Subura to Gaul

The youth of Julius Caesar in a hundred seconds: pirates, Marius and Sulla, proscriptions, Rhodes, Gades, debts and games, the First Triumvirate and the march into Gaul.

Transcript

Kaiser in German, tsar in Russian. Both from one name: Caesar.

Pirates kidnap a young debtor. He laughs in their faces.

He was born in one hundred BC into a poor family.

The Julii descend from Venus. From the gods they got no money.

His aunt is the wife of Marius, idol of the people.

Marius’s enemy Sulla leads his legions against Rome. Civil war breaks out.

Sulla issues proscription lists. Whoever is on the list dies.

Eighteen-year-old Caesar gets an order: divorce the daughter of my enemy.

That is what Pompey did. Caesar chose differently.

Exactly.

No. Caesar does not serve Sulla.

He refuses, loses everything and flees, sick with malaria.

His mother saves him. Sulla reportedly warns: in him there are many Mariuses.

He studies oratory on Rhodes under Cicero’s teacher.

He weeps at the statue of Alexander, who conquered the world at his age.

He has debts, so he buys popularity: he puts on games.

He becomes pontifex maximus. Then scandal hits his house.

Crassus, the richest Roman, guarantees his debts.

At last a secret pact: Caesar, Crassus and Pompey.

Thanks to it he becomes consul.

He leaves for Gaul. He is forty-two.

The real story is only beginning.