Caesar [Paperback]

... As anybody who's ever actually read about TRUE ancient history will tell you, she makes glaring mistakes throughout this story,especially with concerns to the Druids and the Celtic peoples. This is not history; this is McCullough's version of it,with Caeser as some arrogant, vainglorious conquistador(megalomaniacal to boot!)that somehow is still loved and worshipped by all....please! Let us not forget that it is the winner in war that always writes history, much distorted to fit his own viewpoint. Caeser brought some "progress" (but what was that really? certainly not moral nor societal, merely economic-to a point) but he enslaved whole nations, agressed against peoples who were in their own rightful territories, set women back for countless centuries(shame on you,Colleen-you should know better-a roman patrician matron was never a citizen of Rome, yet the lowest Celtic female was by right of birth) and set about teaching slavery and moral corruption to Hairy Gaul. As for Romans not ascribing to human sacrifice....wrong again. They willingly sent thousands to their deaths in the coliseums,and all for the sake of "sport",not even as messengers to the spirit world,which was the usual reason for Druidic human sacrifice, which did not occur,we all know now, nearly as much as the lying Caeser made out in his writings about the Celts. Of course,he had to turn them into less than human for the Senate and the easily gullible back in Rome. No; there was much wrong with Rome and with Julius Caeser,just as there is much wrong with the fawning, overly-sentimentalized version of him this author would like to feed us! Caeser the man has been wrought into a sort of demi-God in her hands, which, rest assured,he most definitely was not. Caeser seemingly can do no wrong, which in fact makes him a rather dull and boring topic for a book. ...

I'm not really sure why this particular book in the series is not easy to come by (Toronto), but I didn't at all mind the condition I rec'd the book in from this seller. Came with spine in great condition and only very minor evidence of any age at all. Would recommend to anyone in need of a hard to find title.

Irene Frain ,a French novelist,recently has noticed a tendency to disparage the images of the ancient world and its people.And she is right.Also Colleen Mccullough is following this tendency.Some reviewers have already interceded for Cato,Cicero,Brutus,Pompey,Antony.All they,with the exception of Julius Caesar,had lost in the novel their many-sided personalities.Perhaps it is only a reaction to their previous excessive romanticization,perhaps it is difficult to believe that such gifted and brilliant individuals did really exist.Of course "Caesar" is merely a novel.Still an author however fertile his fantasy may be cannot show us a cowardly Nelson,a good-hearted Hitler,an ugly Princess Diana without inevitably entering the domain of the alternative history.In this novel history may take an alternative course when young Pompey and Antony ,exactly those who in reality had admired the Egyptian Princess,find her appearance provoking nothing but mockery.We know how highly beauty was estimated in the Ancient world.Were Cleopatra such as represented in the novel,she would never become an object of the legend,her subjects would have given her an insulting nickname,the enemies would have used her deformity in their propaganda.Caesar and Antony were not only ambitious men of large scale but also very vain.Never would they tolerate such a mistress.Their attitude to the Queen perhaps would have been restricted merely to a political and financial alliance .Egypt was already a Roman ally and was obliged to support every enterprise of Rome.Were there on the throne of Egypt instead of Cleopatra a man,a child,an old woman,an unattractive woman the politics of Caesar and Antony would have been the same but their fate could turn out differently.Octavian would have lost the trump card of his propaganda.There exist only symbolic pictures of the Egyptian Queen.On the tiny coins her profile is engraved almost identical to the profile of Marc Antony,thus symbolizing their political,spiritual and family unity.These images have nothing to do with the appearance of the real Cleopatra.Only few historians perceive their symbolic./Prof.Paul Martin,Prof.Manfred Clauss,Irene Frain,Mary Hamer,Susan Walker/.The heroine of Colleen Mccullough is a plain girl dreaming of a love for a god.It is a very interesting conception but it has nothing in common with the real Queen of Egypt.We may believe Plutarch.He does not give us the evidence of the court flatterers.All these doctors ,cooks and Roman militaries gossipping of their lords were simply incapable to become creators of myths.