The Ides of March are upon us again. *waits for vaznetti to cry Cicero et libertas* Now, I already posted my favourite on screen depictions of the actual event and ensuing consequences two years ago, so this year you get some comments about fictional Caesars in general, before his (timely? untimely? well deserved? pointless?) demise. Book-wise, the biggest disappointment to me was what Colleen McCullough did in her Masters of Rome series. The first two novels, which deal with Marius and Sulla, are highly recommended by yours truly, but then the decline starts. Why? Because Ms McCullough gets into serious hero worship overdrive when it comes to Gaius Julius Caesar and proceeds to make him positively repulsive in a hilariously unintentional way. Now, say what you want about Caesar, but dull he was not, so basically to Gary-Stu him into infinity, imo as always, is worse than to write him as evil!rapist!Caesar who shows up in the occasional novel from the Gallic or non-Cleopara-Egyptian pov (and in Neil Gaiman's Sandman). And it's not that Colleen McCullough can't write captivating morally ambiguous characters - her version of Sulla is a case in point. But her Caesar is a picture book illustration of why falling in love with a character can be worse than writing said character from a neutral or even mildly hostile pov.

Going back to the acknowledged classics, we have Thornton Wilder's Caesar in The Ides of March. Wilder's novel, which consists of fictional letters, pulls off the amazing feat of finding credible voices for everyone (and considering "everyone" includes Cicero, of whom we actually have plenty of real letters to compare, that's no mean feat). He also proves you can write Caesar as highly intelligent without Gary Stu'ing him, and as efficient without ignoring the death-knell he dealt to the republic. (Because Wilder handwaves various death dates and lets Catullus survive within the last two years of Caesar's life, he lets Catullus make an interesting comparison between Caesar and Clodia Pulcher which I highly suspect was the author's attitude towards both.) Probably my favourite depiction of the man shortly before his death.

Meanwhile, depictions of the younger Caesar are harder to find (which is a shame because between being on Sulla's Most Wanted List for a while, that stint in Bithynia his opponents taunted him with later involving his relationship with the king, the pirates story and whatever his still debated role in the Catalina conspiracy was, he had a colourful life), aside from various Romam mystery series', such as Steven Saylor's starring Gordianus or Ford's starring Decius Metellus, where he lurks morally ambigiously in the background and increasingly comes to the foreground as the series go on. My favourite depiction of Caesar as a young man is a novel by Waltraut Lewin about Servilia (as in, Caesar's long-term mistress and the mother of Marcus Iunius Brutus). Set during Sulla's regime, it starts shortly after Servilia has married Brutus and makes her a crucial part of Caesar's escape from and eventual pardon by Sulla. Written for young readers, but never in a downtalking way. It's an engaging coming of age novel about Servilia who starts as a somewhat naive girl and ends up as a up-and-coming power player, while Lewin's version of the young Caesar is plausibly charismatic, bright, but also with the potential of being incredibly ruthless. Also? At one point, there's a threesome, and she pulls it off in a completely unsensationalistic way. Alas, I don't think an English translation exists.

Sidenote: one of my favourite anecdotes from history involving the younger Caesar and Servilia hails from a later time, the Catiline Conspiracy. When the Senate debated on the fate of the conspirators, and Cicero demanded the death penalty, Caesar held a speech arguing for life imprisonment instead, the Senate was deeply divided, and then Cato held a speech calling for the death penalty which saved the day for Cicero. While Cato was at it, Caesar received a note which he read and put away again. Cato demanded that the note be read in public, implying that obviously it must be from the conspirators and that Caesar's earlier speech was really because he was secretely in league with them. Caesar first refused, then handed the note over to Cato with a shrug. Cato read it, yelled "lecherer!" at Caesar and stormed off, because it was a letter from Servilia, who was Cato's half sister. Brecht, in his unfinished novel Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar, uses that anecdote with the twist that Caesar was in league with the conspirators and Servilia wrote the note to distract Cato, as she knew he'd throw a fit, and thus save Caesar from direct accusation.

Back to fictional Caesars: film and tv show wise, there's a more recent leaden version in a tv two parter starring Jeremy Sisto, Klaus Maria Brandauer in a tv movie about Vercingetorix (not exactly type casting, but interesting; sadly, the film itself is not), Karl Urban as a young villain!Caesar in Xena: Warrior Princess (not historical, but entertainingly dastardly evil), Rex Harrison in Cleopatra (bringing in a nice Shavian wryness as well as rising hubris towards the end), Claude Rains in the actual Shavian Caesar and Cleopatra (great casting!), and Ciaran Hinds in Rome (one of the morally ambiguous Caesars, with a good mixture of moments where he's engaging and moments where he's chilling). I can't say any of them is my definite mental image of the man, but obviously I like some more than others. Which is good, because I'm sure popular media aren't done with the man in any age.