The Roman general and politician who conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon to trigger civil war, became dictator of Rome, and was assassinated on the Ides of March — ending the Roman Republic while claiming to restore it, and becoming one of the most potent symbols in Western political history.
Caesar spent ten years conquering Gaul — killing perhaps one million people and enslaving another million. He crossed the Rubicon with one legion against the laws of Rome and destroyed the republic his assassins claimed to be saving. He was stabbed twenty-three times by men who called themselves liberators. His death triggered the civil wars that produced the empire, and his name became a title — Kaiser, Czar — that lasted two thousand years.