Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator

If you are going to have a load of actors whose words we never hear, an obvious question is: do we need them at all? Actually, it works really well. The casting is excellent, with distinctive individuals characterising each of the protagonists.

The mix of expertise, combining classical scholars with experienced political commentators, is really effective. We end up with two things: a vivid and memorable depiction of the political struggles of Caesar's time, and a timely warning against the dangers of populism in our own day. That trick of advancing one's own faction and personal interests by pretending to be on the side of the masses has come back to bite us just as Cato and Cicero feared.

'Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator' presents us with (dialogue-free) dramatic reconstructions of the great Roman's life, accompanied by modern experts telling us what they deduce he was really thinking and feeling. It's the same approach recently used in 'The Rise of the Nazis'. That series was marred by its need to tell us at every instant that the Nazis were bad; this one is similarly didactic, and its message is that Caesar overthrew Roman democracy. But the Roman republic was never democratic, and had endured not because it was a platonic ideal of government, but rather that the political system existed as part of a set of broader societal norms that aligned its leaders and the people. Moreover, by the time of Caesar's ascent, it had been in a state of near-continuous crisis for almost a century, as the patricians of the senate enriched themselves and no longer respected limits to their power. The story of Caesar's rise and fall is a good one, but Caesar was a symptom of the republic's demise, rather than it's cause. When eventually Octavian became the first Roman emperor, he spoke of having restored the Roman "res publica", which was one part cheap rhetoric but one part true. You don't have to admire Caesar to realise the republic was rotten (which was why his death did not lead to its recovery, but rather to its final fall). But this series gives us none of this complexity. It's a wasted opportunity to shed some real light on history.

Most of us are familiar with Caesar's achievements and demise. At school, I was seriously turned off by Shakespeare. The melodrama and archaic English did nothing for me. I hated Latin and dropped it as soon as I could. But Caesar's life and death are fascinating.

This documentary style series fleshes out what really went on as Caesar emerges as the most successful Roman ever. He puts himself on a pedestal (tyrant/dictator) and undermines the 500 years of Roman democracy. Ultimately the only way the senate could cope was to murder him in full view of all the senior Romans. Lots of lessons for modern democracy!

This is a program that attempts to apply modern values to ancient history in an effort to paint Gaius Julius Caesar as a tyrant and demagogue, ultimately making the show feel like a thinly veiled propaganda rather than a history lesson. Caesar was beloved by the Roman population and his desire for dictatorial power was driven by the need to integrate a rapidly growing empire into one cohesive unit without getting hung up in the politics of a bloated and increasingly corrupt Senate. Given the growth, stability and peace Rome saw during Augustus' reign following Caesar's death, it's hard to argue otherwise. He was a visionary, not a villain.

My understanding of Roman history is fairly limited but this short series without speaking characters but a range of speaking heads blends nicely the facts, so far as they go, and a feel for the harsh Roman times. There are clearly parallels to be drawn with later political events although it would be stretching it to say the moral is clear. Caesar was an ambitious man and his way forward was helped by other ambitious but less capable men.

That the Roman republic lasted so long was itself amazing and that the dictatorial system which followed was also pretty successful is a commentary on both systems, but we should be cautious in applying more than some general principles to modern democracy or to modern self appointed demi-gods.

Overall, informative and entertaining. Ideal television.