All language subtitles for Julius.Caesar.Revealed.2018.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG_English

(dramatic music)

- He is perhaps the most famous
ancient Roman of them all.

When his name is mentioned,

we think of power, victory, and betrayal.

Julius Caesar changed his own
world in unimaginable ways,

and he's left a pretty big mark on ours.

Julius Caesar, as the story
goes, was born by C-section.

The C in C-section is
actually short for Caesarean.

The whole story's almost certainly a myth,

but out of the millions of
mums who give birth this way,

very few realize that the whole procedure

is named after Julius Caesar,

the most famous, probably
the most notorious

ancient Roman of the lot of them.

(crying)

There you are, gosh.

- [Nurse] 10 pounds.

- The name Caesarean section

is just one of the many ways
Julius Caesar is still with us.

I'm gonna find out how and why.

I'm about to come face-to-face
with Julius Caesar.

Caesar was never called Emperor of Rome

but in a way he was the first one,

and he took all the powers
that the emperors had

over the next hundreds of years,

and his impact has lasted
a lot longer than that.

This old Roman is still part
of our everyday language.

- For the first time, we
went across the Rubicon.

- He has given us some
wonderfully grabby Latin phrases.

Veni, vidi, vici.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

Getting that punch and simplicity

that still marks the
modern political soundbite.

- Yes, we can.

- Take back control.

- Make America great again.

- I will track down the evidence

to show how Julius Caesar rose to the top.

We call it conquest, but
it was really genocide.

Uncover his tricks of the trade,

like countless men over
the last 2,000 years,

he became a master of the comb-over,

and reveal how our modern leaders,

from dictators to elected politicians,

have used tactics and methods

he first perfected 2,000 years ago.

Hail, Caesar, come on, hail, Caesar.

Yes.

Modern Rome.

A city where loads of people still come

to catch a glimpse of a lost world,

and one Roman stars in more
selfies than any other,

Julius Caesar.

A conqueror, a populist leader,

the biggest power-grabber of the lot.

The man who turned Rome from a democracy

into a dictatorship.

He would no doubt be thrilled to know

that we still recognize
him, 2,000 years later.

Can you tell me who this guy is?

- Yeah, it's Julius Caesar.

- Julius Caesar.

- That is Julius Caesar, it is.

- But how much do we
really know about him?

Can you tell me anything
that happened to him?

- It's been a long time
since I was at school.

- Do you know? Oh, no.

- Emperor of Rome?

- He was the boyfriend of Cleopatra?

- [Mary] He was indeed.

- I know that he came over
here for a certain reason.

He wasn't meant to cross the river.

- [Mary] Did he come to a good end?

- No, he came to a bad end,
and I can't remember why.

- Ooh, um, stabbed.

Was he stabbed? Was he assassinated?

- Didn't his brother
kill him, or something?

- Murder.
- Murder?

- He was murdered.

- He took it in the neck, as they say.

- I guess we have to start with a spoiler,

because if there's one thing
most of us half-remember

about Julius Caesar, it's the ending.

So, if you don't want to know
the result, look away now.

It was the 15th of March, 44 BC.

According to contemporary accounts,

Julius Caesar was going to work.

Very little of Caesar's Rome still exists,

but we can get a glimpse of
the ruins of the Senate House,

the building where he died.

When he gets to where
the Senate is meeting,

somewhere around here,

everybody's chatting and gossiping

until Caesar takes his seat.

At that point, one of his friends,

apparently wanting to ask him a favor,

goes over to his chair
and pulls on his toga.

That's the signal.

Suddenly, 20 or more of them,

friends, colleagues,
politicians, surround him.

Out come their daggers,
and everyone has a go.

Into Caesar's face, his thighs, his chest.

Caesar fights back with
the only weapon he's got.

It was his pen, and it's hopeless.

There's mess and panic everywhere,
and everybody scarpers.

That's what everybody
knows about Julius Caesar,

he gets killed.

He wasn't the only famous
Roman to meet a bloody end,

but no other has captured our imagination

in quite the same way.

The scene of Caesar's
murder has been immortalized

in hundreds of paintings,

and in William Shakespeare's
tragedy, Julius Caesar.

It was, in fact, Shakespeare
who coined the famous phrase,

Et tu, Brute? You too, Brutus?

that Caesar is supposed to have cried out

when he saw one of his dearest
friends wielding a dagger.

Words we still use today

as a shorthand for
disloyalty and backstabbing.

Maybe something we hear a bit
too often in modern politics?

But how and why did Julius Caesar end up,

literally and metaphorically,
stabbed in the back?

How could a rich,

but frankly not A-list
aristocrat gain such power

that the only way to get
rid of him was to kill him?

The Rome that Caesar
was born into in 100 BC

wasn't a bit like the ancient
Rome we see in the movies.

It was super-powerful all right,
but there was no Coliseum,

no gleaming white marble,
all that came later.

Caesar's Rome was home to
about a million people.

Most of them living in pretty squalid,

low-rise brick buildings.

It was a sort of democracy.

That's to say, everybody had a vote,

apart from the women and the slaves,

but real power was in
the hands of a few rich,

aristocratic families like Caesar's.

How very different from now, eh?

So this was not yet the
Rome ruled by emperors.

It was a democracy,

where power was never in the hands

of one person for too long,

but Caesar would change all that.

Looking back on it, you can
almost see his rise to power

as a brilliantly executed strategy game.

A masterclass in how to be top,

and engineer the ultimate power grab.

One that would become a manual
for leaders, right up to now,

and step one was simple,
rewrite your own history.

Caesar wasn't always
marked out for success,

but like all so-called great men,

almost every aspect of his early life

was eventually spun to
suggest that he was.

In Caesar's case, right back to his birth,

C-section or not.

It's a kind of creation myth.

The truth is that his early career

was actually pretty ordinary.

Playing by the rules.

Like all Roman posh boys, he
does a bit of military service,

he stands for a few political offices,

and we really don't know
much about the details.

What we do know for sure

is he pretty soon becomes
rather good at the gambits

and the strategy,

and he makes some really clever moves.

Eventually, he starts to
change the rules themselves.

And if he starts out as
a little chap like this,

he turns out to be
pretty much like a king.

According to a later legend,

there was a dramatic,
life-changing turning point.

In 69 BC, Caesar was sent to Spain

as an elected official
of the Republic of Rome.

Like dozens of other young administrators,

he was taking his first big step

on the Roman political ladder.

By this time,

through a combination of
conquest and alliance,

the power of Rome extended
through the whole of Italy,

into North Africa, the Middle East,

southern France, and most of Spain.

It was on a tiny island off
the coast of Spain, near Cadiz,

that Caesar was later said
to have had the encounter

that changed the course of his life.

It was with the most glamorized,

or to me the most murderous

ancient Greek general of them
all, King Alexander the Great,

who by the age of 33, had
conquered half the known world.

The story goes that,
somewhere around here,

Caesar actually came face-to-face

with a statue of Alexander the Great,

and he started to cry.

"Isn't it terrible,"
he said to his friends,

"that at my age,

"Alexander was already king
of so much of the world."

"But look at me.

"I've done nothing at
all remarkable," yet.

Nothing survives of the temple
that once housed the statue.

We don't even know if
the whole story's true,

but it became a key
chapter in Caesar's legend.

This is a much later attempt
to capture the scene.

There's the statue of Alexander here,

and Caesar's admiring it,

in his rather splendid red outfit,

and some particularly natty shoes.

In fact, ever after,

artists and writers have
re-imagined this encounter

as a turning point in Caesar's life.

We all do it.

If you wanted, I guess I could
give you the turning point

when I decided to become a classicist.

In reality, of course,
it's all much more complex,

for me, and certainly for Caesar.

All the same, people have
often fixed on this occasion

as the moment when Caesar became Caesar.

True or not, this is the symbolic moment

when Caesar the ordinary administrator

turned into Caesar the wannabe top dog.

(dramatic music)

If step one in Caesar's rise to power

was mythologizing his early life,

step two was winning the loyalty,

and devotion of the military.

It's something that he,

and later leaders would come to rely on.

And 10 years after that defining encounter

with Alexander the
Great, he got his chance.

After a series of political
trade-offs and backstage deals,

Caesar was elected consul,

the highest political office
there was at the time.

Only two were appointed each year,

and that made him

one of the principal
power brokers in Rome,

and with that kind of political power

came a big military command.

Caesar left Italy to lead
the conquest of Gaul,

a vast territory that included

modern-day France,
Belgium, and Luxembourg.

It was in Gaul that Caesar
got to lay the foundations

on what all his later successes
in some way would be built.

A loyal army.

One man who can help us
see how he managed this

is Admiral Lord West,

who understands Caesar's campaigns

from a rather different
point of view to mine.

I met him, fittingly, I guess,

in the shadow of a Roman
military memorial in Gaul.

- Julius Caesar, I think,
was a brilliant strategist.

He understood how he should
divide and split up his enemies,

not fight too many at once.

He understood the political background

that he was working against,

he had a very clear concept
of what his aim was.

- But what he manages to do,
he manages to get those guys,

I mean, first of all, to
slaughter the enemy, nastily.

How do you get people to do that?

Because that must be part of the secret.

- Basically, they felt
he was part of them.

He took the same risks,
he led from the front,

he understood about the fighting,

and you're right, it was visceral
and unpleasant and nasty.

Killing 10,000 people in those days meant

you had to kill with
a sword or a stabbing.

He right out killed 10,000 people,

but he made each one of them feel

that they were individuals.

He won, he won.

There's nothing like having a man who wins

to be your commander.

If you have a man who is your
commander who keeps winning,

you jolly well like that,

and when you look at that totality,

then it's a cohesive unit,

and they felt part of something bigger.

- [Mary] Is that what generals do now?

Is it always the same?

- Well, the morale and the
focus on the individual

is as important today as it was then.

I mean, that actually is crucial.

If you don't do that, you will not win.

I want you to be absolutely
frank on this one.

You've got scruffy prof here, do you think

you could turn her into
a good soldier, and how?

- I think, because you have
a belief in certain things,

and a focus, I think I could make you

be quite unpleasant on the
battlefield to somebody else.

- There goes my pacifist
credentials at a stroke.

But what was it like

for the ordinary squaddie
to fight for Caesar?

There's one curious museum treasure

that offers us an unexpected glimpse

of the world of the Roman
battlefield from the bottom up.

I've waited for ages

to get my hands on these
strange little things

because they give us one of
the few glimpses we can get

of what life was like
for the ordinary soldier

in an army camp in Caesar's day.

Because what these are

are the ancient equivalent of bullets.

They're called sling-bolts,

and you put them at the end
of a cord, you whirl the cord,

let the bullet go, and
it does its deadly work,

but what's really interesting about them

is that they've got,
either scratched on them,

or more often molded
actually into the lead,

they've got messages
to take to your enemy.

We're in a way familiar with that.

Bombs in World War II often
had rather rude messages

scrawled on the side, run,
Adolf, run, that kind of thing.

These Roman ones are
actually rather ruder.

This one says pathice.

The only way you could
translate that I suppose is

you're buggered.

From a very academic point of view,

this one's the most interesting.

It's aimed at one of the women,

one of the prominent women on
the other side, called Fulvia.

You can see her name there very clearly,

and it says, Peto, I'm going
for the landicam of Fulvia.

That is the first example in Latin

of the use of the word clitoris.

I'm going for Fulvia's clitoris.

Now, it's blokeish, it's rude.

I think we also have to remember

that these were really deadly weapons.

Deadly is right.

In less than five years,

Caesar and his men had
marched and fought their way

some 1,500 kilometers
to gray Northern Gaul.

We know about this
campaign in minute detail,

because in one of the
most amazing survivals

from the ancient world,

we still have Caesar's
own step-by-step account.

One description above all

underlines the brutality
and the obedience of his men

as they fought a battle
against native tribes.

Caesar describes this battle in detail.

He talks about his own lightning speed,

and how he met the enemy, ad confluentem,

at the confluence of two rivers.

He hemmed them in

so that they despaired of
being able to flee away.

Fuga desperata.

And a large number of them,
magno numero, were killed.

The rest threw themselves, in flumen,

into the river.

Goes on to say that this tribe

had once numbered over 400,000 people,

and he implies that there
were not very many left.

Archaeologist Nico Roymans

has identified the location of the battle,

and its grisly legacy.

- Caesar describes the
dramatic massacre here

taking place in 55 BC,

and we indeed have this kind
of archeological material

in huge quantities.

- You can really see just how
deadly Caesar's campaigns were

when you look at the finds
that you've got here.

- [Nico] It's a human skull
of an adult male, about 60.

- This man has actually had
his face cut off with a sword.

- Yeah, indeed.

With a single sword blow.

This is part of a female skull,

and there's a hole here
above one of the eyes

caused by a spearhead or a sword point.

- So the casualties include,
then, women and children?

- We have, also, bones of children.

It was described as a battle by Caesar,

but, in fact, it was one large massacre.

It was an attempt to massacre
the complete population here.

- It tends to make real

some of the claims that people now make,

that what Caesar was doing in Gaul was

we call it conquest, but
it was really genocide.

- Yeah, I think we can use that term.

This was a landscape of
terror, more or less.

- Yeah, killing fields.

- Yeah, yeah, killing fields
in that mid-first century BC.

- Julius Caesar has always had

the number one reputation
as great conqueror.

He's a towering hero among
generals ancient and modern,

but my problem is,

it's such a sanitized
view of ancient warfare.

It's easy enough to glorify
a conquering general

like Caesar 2,000 years ago,

when you don't see the collateral damage,

when you don't see the innocent victims,

you don't hear their voices,

you don't even know their names.

Now, we watch the maimed
children in hospital

on our televisions,

and that makes it a lot
harder to glorify conquest,

but leadership isn't only about conquest

it's about commanding the
unquestioning loyalty of your men.

Caesar's men would follow
him to the ends of the earth.

In 55 BC, Caesar decided to
cross the Channel and check out

what the land he could see on
the other side was all about.

Almost 100 years before Roman armies

actually conquered Britain,

Caesar became the first Roman we know

to have set foot on British soil.

He landed here, in Kent.

This wasn't conquest, it was exploration.

More like a moon landing,
really, because for the Romans,

Britain really was beyond
the final frontier,

and when they got here,

they did actually find themselves

face-to-face with little blue men.

Now, it was, in fact, Julius
Caesar who has given us

the first surviving
eyewitness account of us.

There's good news in it
for the people of Kent.

This is some of what he's got to say.

Out of all the people there,

by far the most sophisticated humanissimmi

are those who inhabit Kent,

which is a seaside region,
not very different from Gaul,

but all the Britons dye
themselves with woad,

which gives them a blue color

that makes them really awful to look at,

horridiores, in battle.

They let their hair grow long,

and every part of their body is shaved

except their head and their upper lip.

They're moustachioed.

Now, I don't really recognize
myself in that description,

but that really is the first time

that the British enter real history.

Caesar's writings didn't
just record events.

His accounts cast him as a Roman hero,

a kind of soldier-adventurer,

and that's where their
true purpose comes in.

They are propaganda for a
contemporary Roman audience.

It was, if you like, step three

in Caesar's handbook for would-be leaders,

set the news agenda.

Caesar had the problem
all politicians have.

How do you keep yourself
in the public eye?

How do you get your message across?

Today, that's done by Twitter,

24-hour news, and the Internet.

Caesar had none of that,

but that's where those
step-by-step accounts

of his conquests come in

because I don't think
that they were written

just to help out historians
2,000 years later.

Those accounts actually
make pretty odd reading now

because he didn't write, I
did this, and then I did that,

and then I did the other.

What he wrote was,

Caesar did this, and then Caesar did that.

That could be because he
was frightfully pompous,

but much more likely
is he wrote this stuff

to be read out in Rome,

directly to the Roman
people, by one of his staff,

when he was hundreds of miles away.

Let's give it a try.

Friends.

Romans.

Countrymen.

I am bringing you dispatches from Gaul.

Caesar as always, hurries ahead

to be in the very midst of the battle.

You can spot him from the
distinctive color of his uniform,

but Caesar, again, as always,

goes ahead to harass the enemy.

He sends them packing.

Impressed?
- [All] Yes.

- Triumphant stuff,

and I'll bring you more news soon.

Hail, Caesar.

Come on, hail, Caesar, hail, Caesar.

(applause)

In his written accounts,

Caesar gave the Romans in the streets

something and somebody to celebrate.

You might say he whipped
up national pride,

and never more successfully

than in one particular
report of a later victory.

Writing the story down and
reading it out isn't enough.

Caesar absolutely grasped the
value of a good soundbite.

Veni, vidi, vici.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

These must be the most famous
words that Caesar ever wrote.

They're probably the most famous words

in the whole of the Latin language.

They've got tremendous zing, rhythm,

and they're really to the point, I won.

I kind of think of them

as the forerunners of
some of our best slogans.

Yes, we can.

Education, education, education.

Even Caesar's contemporaries

were impressed with the
punch and the genius brevity.

It's all a lot less
than the average tweet.

Come to think of it, I
might actually send it

to the world's most famous tweeter

@Potus.

There you are, Donald, Mr.
President, please enjoy.

Caesar knew exactly how important it was

to get your message across
directly to the people.

It's something that Robert Harris,

who has written about
ancient and modern politics,

gets very well.

Caesar, also, he didn't
write quite as much as you,

but he wrote a huge amount.

It was very unusual in the
ancient world in surviving,

and what do you make of them?

- Well, I think they show

that he was a master of propaganda.

So if one imagines what
it must have been like

when the herald or whoever
appeared in the forum,

the crowd gathering,

people going, come and look,
let's see what he's done now,

and the things that he
was doing, of course,

were, as someone said,

landing in Britain was
like the trip to the moon.

It was astonishing

that one of their citizens was doing this.

So a lot of ordinary people,
they really like to hear that,

you know, they really
like to see their leaders

are cutting it out there,

and anyone who gets in their way gets it.

You know, make Rome great again

seems to be the kind of message

that's coming through these commentaries.

Of course, you know, it's
quite a common phenomenon

for politicians to refer to
themselves in the third person,

you know, look at President Trump,

he often refers in
tweets to President Trump

has done this, that, or the other.

- And Caesar's appealing
to the socially excluded,

just like some modern
populist politicians.

- Exactly, and that the
more outrageous he was,

the more people he killed,

the more he flaunted his own misdemeanors,

the better they liked him.

- So one of the things you ought to do

if you're in either
Caesar or Trump's position

is kind of bypass the rest
of the political structure,

and speak to the citizens directly.

- Yes, what he did, which
I think is very modern,

is that although he was
himself immensely wealthy,

he nevertheless managed to appeal

over the head of what he called
a rotten and corrupt elite.

All great dictators, in a
way, or charismatic leaders,

I think addressed their
followers directly,

and they stage manage very carefully

the form in which they do it.

Obviously, Hitler with his
rallies, Caesar the same.

- And would our world be
different without him?

- Yes, I think that Caesar

is one of the architects
of the modern world.

I have no doubt that the world

would have been a different place

if Julius Caesar hadn't been born,

and there aren't many figures in history

of whom that can be said.

- By 50 BC, Caesar could
say that the job in Gaul

was more or less done.

He had the love of the people at home,

and the loyalty of his army,

a dangerous combination.

It made his fellow
politicians back in Rome

increasingly nervous.

Victory in Gaul brought
new problems for Caesar.

The metropolitan elite in Rome,

who were a pretty conservative bunch,

decided that his military job was over.

They thought that he'd gone
altogether too far, too fast,

and that his appeals to the
Roman people were dangerous.

They had in mind to get
him back and to impeach him

for legal irregularities,
real or imagined,

committed years before.

Caesar had been backed into a corner.

Either he went home to face prosecution,

or he stayed in Gaul against
orders, a rogue general.

It was catch-22.

Faced with that dilemma,

and to protect what he was
always calling his dignitas,

his dignity, he decided
to lead his loyal troops

across the border between Gaul and Italy,

and to march on Rome.

It was effectively the start of civil war.

The border lay on the line of
a river, the River Rubicon.

For a Roman general to cross this border,

and march his troops on
Rome was almost unthinkable,

like some commander-in-chief

rolling his tanks onto Parliament
Square or Capitol Hill.

That was Caesar's make-or-break moment.

He chose to gamble everything,

and take on the political establishment.

It's really step four
in getting to the top,

spot your opportunity for
the power grab and take it.

Oddly enough, Caesar doesn't say a word

about this moment in his own writings.

There's a rather guilty
silence, I suspect,

but there were loads of Roman stories

about what was going on
in his head at the time.

The anxieties, the dreams,
the godly apparitions.

Should he? Shouldn't he?

But, ultimately, Caesar gave us the phrase

crossing the Rubicon to
mean taking a daring gamble,

and going past the point of no return.

"Alea iacta est," he's
said to have declared.

The die is cast, or I rolled the dice,

and it's all up in the air now.

The funny thing is that no one knows

exactly where the river was.

It was Benito Mussolini,

the Italian dictator who
came to power in the 1920s,

who decided that this
slightly underwhelming stream

was the Rubicon.

In his march on Rome, he
was trying to reconstruct

exactly the route taken by Julius Caesar,

in a way to cast himself
as the new Caesar,

but in reality, Mussolini took the train.

Caesar's crossing of the
Rubicon has long been seen

as a symbol of single-minded
determination and risk-taking,

and not just by Mussolini.

For Caesar's fellow politicians,

it was, of course, an act of
aggression, a coup d'état,

and it plunged Rome into civil war.

The fighting dragged on across
the Roman world for years,

but to all intents and purposes,

Caesar had control of the city itself

within a matter of months.

He was elected dictator,

a perfectly traditional
office in ancient Rome

reserved for times of crisis,

which placed power in the
hands of a single individual

for a short time.

Caesar took that power for a year,

and now effectively ruled Rome.

It's easy to imagine

that Caesar crosses
the Rubicon one minute,

and gets assassinated the next,

but, actually, it's what
happens in the five years

in between that's so crucial,

and he's facing all the problems

that victors in civil wars always face.

What do you do with those you've defeated?

What do you do with your supporters?

Because you've no doubt
promised them loads,

and you've now got to deliver.

And how do you make
sure you stay in power?

Some of the strategies he uses

are easily recognizable to us.

He invests in infrastructure,
or at least he promises to.

So there's walls, bridges,
he drains the swamps,

and he has a program of slum
clearance and new towns.

He looks out for the ordinary
Roman with food rations,

and he takes some measures

to deal with what we'd
call the credit crunch.

The bottom line of all this
is strength and stability,

but he's also flooding the
city with his own image.

The idea is that there
should be a statue of him

in every single temple,

and what he's doing is
making Rome his showcase.

Caesar was turning into a
dictator in the modern sense,

and by that, I don't
just mean winning power

by killing people and commanding fear,

I mean he was changing the
world in which he lived,

putting himself at the center of it,

and he understood the importance

of getting his image out there.

It's a technique we recognize well,

the face of the beloved leader

pasted across every available surface

from newspapers to flags and billboards.

It was pioneered by Caesar,

who had his bust sent everywhere.

It's true that we do still
see his face everywhere,

but actual portraits done from life

are almost impossible to find.

Perhaps the orders had not been completed

by the time of his death.

Perhaps they were thought
to be hot property,

and destroyed after his assassination,

but then, in 2007,

archaeologists in France
found something intriguing.

It was one of those discoveries
that made the headlines.

It was only a few years ago,

an archaeologist was diving right here,

searching for remains on the riverbed.

He's down there, and he
spots a bit of marble.

He brings it up to the
surface, still dripping,

takes a closer look and then shouts out,

Putain, mais c'est Cesar,

which can only be translated
as (bleep) me, it's Caesar.

(solemn music)

I'm about to come face-to-face
with Julius Caesar.

Today, the bust is on display

in the archaeological museum in Arles.

Hello, or bonjour.

This is about as up close
and personal to Julius Caesar

as you can get.

The question is, what kind
of image in this portrait

is Caesar trying to project of himself?

I think one thing's for
sure, is it's not glam.

He's got a really wrinkled,
furrowed brow, kind of saying,

I'm working terribly hard
on behalf of the state,

on behalf of Rome,
thinking through politics.

His neck is really craggy and wrinkly,

with a big Adam's apple.

This is not the kind of youthful idealism.

This is sort of middle-aged,
elderly bloke style,

but, yes, as a sculpture,

the Holy Grail of classical archaeology.

For centuries and centuries,

archaeologists have tried to track down

a portrait of Caesar done in his lifetime,

and here you are.

Or are you?

The problem is it's very hard to tell

whether this really is Caesar.

After all, there's no name on him.

If we want to pin down his portraits,

all we can do is what the
archaeologists at Arles did,

match them up with portraits of him

that are very clearly labeled,

and guess what?

We have hundreds of those.

Bonjour, Madame.
- Bonjour, Madame.

- Verre de vin blanc, s'il vous plait.

- Oui, voila.
- Merci.

There's actually only one way of knowing

what Julius Caesar looked like,

and that's by looking

at the tiny little images on his coins,

which are named,

but these coins were much more
revolutionary than they seem.

We take it absolutely for granted

that we'll find the Queen's
head on all the currency,

and we assume that one obvious
type of political propaganda

is seeing the mugshot

of the dear leader plastered everywhere,

but Julius Caesar was the
first person to get into that.

He was the very first person
in the West systematically

to put his head on the coinage.

It must have been actually quite shocking.

Every time you went to
pay for a glass of wine,

or for a takeaway,

or for the ancient equivalent
of a cup of coffee,

you were paying with him.

That's to say,

Romans went around with Julius
Caesar in their pockets.

Madame, l'addition, s'il vous plait.

- Deux euros quatre-vingts.

- [Mary] Voila.

- Je regrette, je ne prends pas le Cesar.

- I did try.

Voila.

- [Woman] Merci, merci.
- Merci.

Some people may have
found the idea of carrying

Caesar's face around in their
pockets a bit big-headed,

but ordinary Romans loved him.

He was seen as the
anti-establishment candidate,

not part of the Roman metropolitan elite,

and he knew the value of
keeping the people happy,

what a later Roman satirist would describe

as bread and circuses.

Caesar was generous to the Roman people

on a spectacular scale.

It was 100 years before
the Colosseum was built,

so he gave his gladiator
shows here, in the Forum,

but the point was that Caesar's shows

were on a bigger and better scale

than anyone had ever given before,

and so, too, were his public banquets.

Once, he gave a free
feast to the Roman people,

with some frightfully
posh fish on the menu,

all laid out on 22,000 tables.

It must have made the Forum
feel like it was a vast,

free outdoor restaurant all
courtesy of Julius Caesar,

but in the Forum,

you could find more
than fights and feasts.

This was the seedy city
center of Caesar's Rome,

where you came to grab a
takeaway, pick up a prostitute,

or simply hang out and
watch the world go by.

The Forum was also the place

where Rome put itself on display.

It was here that big
Roman funerals happened.

In fact, Caesar was
cremated just over there,

and it was through here

that the soldiers marched
with their generals

after some particularly
big or bloody victory.

My guess is that Caesar's squaddies

must really have enjoyed
taking the mickey out of him

when they passed this way.

Romans, lock up your wives, they sang,

the bald adulterer is back in town.

(upbeat jazz music)

I'm sorry to say, gentlemen,

but most Romans thought that
baldness was rather silly,

and a little bit embarrassing,

so when Caesar began to thin on top,

he was awfully keen to cover it up.

Like countless men over
the last 2,000 years,

he became a master of the comb-over,

but he had other tricks up his sleeve.

When he was granted the
right to wear a laurel wreath

on any occasion he fancied,

Caesar was absolutely delighted,

not so much because it
was a very special honor,

but because it allowed him
to cover up that bald patch.

- Grazie.

- Perfetto.
- Grazie.

- Caesar may have been
embarrassed by his baldness,

but my guess is he'd be quite flattered

to be called an adulterer.

Rome was certainly a macho culture.

It was full of willy-waving,

and the locker-room chat must
have been decidedly unsavory,

but even in Rome, Caesar was
a bit of an extreme case.

Was there anyone in the
city he hadn't slept with?

Women, men,

not just in Rome.

He had an affair with Cleopatra

long before her dalliance
with Mark Antony.

Makes me think of big men ever since.

They can't keep their hands
off women or off power.

It wasn't long before
Caesar decided that a year

perhaps wasn't a long
enough term as dictator.

Perhaps 10 years would be better,

and with that kind of time
span, he began to think bigger.

What strikes me is how Caesar's virtues

came to reinforce his power.

One of the qualities
he always boasted about

was his mercy, or clemency.

He had a history of
surprising acts of kindness,

but there's more to
that than meets the eye.

As for his defeated
enemies in the civil war,

they must have expected

that they'd be strung up in the Forum.

Instead, they found
themselves publicly pardoned

in what was almost a general amnesty,

but, of course, that kind of
mercy is always authoritarian,

and it's only the powerful
who could issue pardons,

but more to the point,

it tells us something
about Caesar himself.

Not that he was kind,

but that he was colossally self-confident.

It was this colossal self-confidence

that was to leave a
permanent mark on our world.

You see, we think of dictators
as people who rule by fear,

state terror, secret
police, mass killings.

In fact, dictators have
much cleverer strategies.

The most successful of them
change the natural order,

so that what wasn't natural
before now seems it,

and Caesar was the master.

I bet that not many people
know that our month of July

takes its name from Julius Caesar.

The Romans decided to rename
the month that had been called

rather unsexily Quintilis
as Julius, or July,

and so it's been ever since,

but that is as nothing
to Caesar's real legacy

the modern Western calendar.

Before Julius Caesar,

the Roman calendar year had
weirdly been only 355 days.

That wasn't actually long
enough, so every few years,

they had to add another month in.

The problem was they were pretty hopeless

at doing the calculations,

so the months of the calendar

got increasingly out of sync
with the natural seasons.

What I mean is that it would be

what you thought was September,

and you'd want to celebrate
your harvest festival,

but the vines would only
just be coming in to leaf,

or it would be in the middle
of apparently wintry December,

and there'd be bunches of
grapes all over the vineyard.

Caesar solved this.

With the help of a few tame scientists,

he pulled the plug on the old system,

and he launched the 365-day
year that we now have.

In all kinds of ways,

it was a really useful
and practical reform,

but it also reveals something

that only dictators can do change time.

As one of his friends wryly observed,

he'll be bossing the stars
in the sky around next.

Caesar was becoming a dictator
in our sense of the word,

a man who puts himself
above the political process,

a man who reorders the world around him,

a man who can change time,

and he used public celebrations
to reflect his status,

though, we can detect certain anxieties.

This is a version of a
15th-century painting

which shows just how preoccupied
later ages were, too,

with the image of the triumphant Caesar.

What you've got here is Julius
Caesar thinning a bit on top,

sitting on his elaborate,
triumphal chariot,

and there's placards and spoils and loot

being processed through the
streets in front of him,

but there's a moral here, too,

in these figures, Caesar on the chariot,

and this slave standing behind him,

who's about to crown him
with a laurel wreath.

We know from Roman writers
that what this slave did

throughout the procession
for every victory parade

was he whispered into the ear
of the general all the time,

remember you're a man,
remember you're a man,

remember you're a man.

The idea was that
anybody who had this kind

of lavish ceremonial would
be very likely to forget

that they were just an
ordinary human being.

So this, in a way,

is a reminder to Julius Caesar
not to get above himself.

All the same,

Caesar was aware of the popular power

of a good military parade,

something later leaders
have been quick to adopt.

Even in the democratic West,
displays of military might

have long been part of
our national tradition,

from Trooping the Colour to Bastille Day.

Caesar's power over Rome by
now seemed almost absolute.

His military image only
strengthened his popular appeal.

He was central to almost
every aspect of Roman life.

Statues put up later

would emphasize this power, and authority.

Like this one, still
standing in Rome's City Hall,

overhearing traffic regulation
and planning disputes,

but it's what's written underneath

in this modern inscription
that's even more to the point,

because it gives Caesar his official title

dictator perpetuus.

He's dictator forever.

Now, the Romans wouldn't
have found the word dictator

remotely shocking.

It was a title given

to an entirely traditional
short-term office

that was used for coping
with particular emergencies.

What they would have found shocking

is the idea that Caesar
took that power forever.

It's a bit like how we
would feel about someone

being elected prime minister for life,

and it's in that way
that Caesar has given us

the modern sense of the word dictator.

What happened is that Caesar made sure

that his term as dictator was extended,

not just from one year to
10 years, but to forever.

The dictatorship was only one way

in which Caesar disrupted Roman politics.

Roman democracy was
based on free elections,

but Caesar managed to make sure

that you knew the outcome in advance,

and he found all kinds of ways

of putting himself above the
rest of the political class.

It wouldn't have made a
blind bit of difference

to the women and men in the Roman street,

but his fellow politicians
got very worked up

when he couldn't be bothered
to rise from his chair

when they came into the
room, and, anyway, that chair

was beginning to look
suspiciously like a golden throne.

For Caesar's enemies,

his appointment as dictator
perpetuus effectively,

well, crossed the Rubicon.

It was a watershed,

the point at which leader became tyrant,

a subversion of the ideals
of freedom and democracy.

He may have been popular with the people,

and he may have commanded
the loyalty of the army,

but for Caesar,

the price of tyranny was paid in blood,

here in the Senate House.

Perhaps this should be the
real lesson for modern leaders.

Be careful what you wish for,

too much power comes at a cost,

and there's always somebody
waiting in the wings.

The version that we have of
Caesar's assassination makes it

a heroic and successful fight
for freedom against tyranny.

In reality, it was nothing of the sort.

For a start, if it was freedom for anyone,

it was for a few privileged politicians.

Ordinary Romans wept at Caesar's death,

but you also can't really
call it successful.

The problem of assassinations always

is that it's easy enough
to take the guy out,

it's a lot harder to know what to do next.

Assassins always risk bringing about

the very thing they thought
they were fighting against.

In this case, once the deed was done,

the conspirators turned out
to have no forward plan.

What they got was civil war,

which ended up producing one-man rule,

emperors, or, if you like,
dictators forever after.

So Caesar's assassination
only served to strengthen

the very thing it meant to destroy.

The upshot was that Rome fell under

the absolute rule of one man,

Caesar's heir and great-nephew Octavian.

The Republic of Rome was
now ruled by an emperor.

What I'm interested in
is that people come,

and they still leave these offerings on.

This is where Julius Caesar was cremated,

so what they do is around here

is the temple of Julius Caesar,
they put up after his death,

so you've got flowers and occasional...

Look, there's coins.

Caesar would forever after

be celebrated as the originator
of the imperial dynasty.

All later emperors took his name.

From that moment on, Caesar
wasn't just a surname anymore,

it became synonymous with leader,

and not only in Roman times.

The term tsar and kaiser go back to,

you've guessed it, Caesar,

and leaders ever since

have done more than just take his name.

For good or bad, they have
used the template he created

to ground their own rule even now,

and more than 2,000 years
after his bloody assassination,

Julius Caesar is still with us

in all kinds of surprising ways.

So every time you put
your hand in your pocket

for some loose change,
or have a party in July,

each time you consult the calendar,

or hear a snappy political slogan,

when you next think about
a caesarean section,

or hear a political betrayal
described as backstabbing,

spare a thought for the man
who inspired all this and more.

I've always been a bit
allergic to the idea

of Julius Caesar, the great conqueror,

but if you have to choose just one Roman

who's still absolutely
embedded in the way we think,

talk, act and judge,

then it's got to be Gaius Julius
Caesar, dictator perpetuus.

You can kill him, but
you can't get rid of him.

(dramatic music)