Cultural depictions of Julius Caesar

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Gāius Jūlius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader and one of the most influential men in world history. He has frequently appeared in literary and artistic works since ancient times.

Contents 1 Ancient literary works 2 Medieval works 3 Renaissance and early modern works 3.1 Theatre 3.2 Opera 4 Modern works 4.1 Theatre 4.2 Fiction 4.3 Film 4.4 TV 4.5 Comics 4.6 Games 5 Placenames

[edit] Ancient literary works

• Caesar is referred to in some of the poems of Catullus (ca. 84-54 BC)
• He is depicted in Virgil's Aeneid (ca. 29-19 BC), an epic poem about the foundation of Rome
• He appears as a character in Lucan's Pharsalia (AD 61), an epic poem based on Caesar's civil war

[edit] Medieval works

• A legendary account of Caesar's invasions of Britain appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (ca. 1136)
• Caesar was considered one of the Nine Worthies, first written of in the early 14th century
• Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, and his lover, Cleopatra, are seen in hell in Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy (ca. 1308-1321)
• Caesar's civil war and assassination are recounted in Geoffrey Chaucer's Monk's Tale (ca. 1385, one of his Canterbury Tales)

[edit] Renaissance and early modern works

[edit] Theatre

• William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar (1599) depicts Caesar's assassination and its aftermath, and has been adapted for the cinema several times

[edit] Opera

• Handel's Giulio Cesare (first performed 1724)

[edit] Modern works

[edit] Theatre

• Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a play by George Bernard Shaw

[edit] Fiction

• Masters of Rome, a series of six novels by the Australian writer, Colleen McCullough
• Emperor Series, a series of four novels by the writer, Conn Iggulden
• Roma Sub Rosa, a series of historical mysteries by the American writer, Steven Saylor
• Ides of March is an epistolatory novel by Thornton Wilder dealing with characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assasination of Julius Caesar.

[edit] Film

• Played by Fritz Leiber, Sr. in Cleopatra (1917)
• Played by Claude Rains in Caesar and Cleopatra (adapated from Shaw's play, 1945)
• Played by Louis Calhern in Julius Caesar (adapted from Shakespeare's play, 1953)
• Played by John Gavin in Spartacus (1960)
• Played by Rex Harrison in Cleopatra (1963)
• Played by Kenneth Williams in Carry on Cleo (1964)
• Played by John Gielgud in Julius Caesar (adapted from Shakespeare's play, 1970)
• Played by Klaus Maria Brandauer in Druids (2001)

[edit] TV

• Cleopatra (1999 mini-series) played by Timothy Dalton
• a 2002 TV movie called Julius Caesar, which depicts his active life
• Rome (TV series), played by Ciarán Hinds
• Julius Caesar (2002) TV, played by Jeremy Sisto
• Wayne and Shuster's comedy sketch Rinse the Blood off My Toga is a spoof of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in the form of a Dragnet episode
• Xena: Warrior Princess highlighted Julius Caesar as a major protagonist, as played by actor Karl Urban
• Histeria!, where Caesar's appearance is based on Frank Sinatra

[edit] Comics

• Asterix comics, written by the French writer René Goscinny and drawn by Albert Uderzo.
• Caesar appears in Neil Gaiman's Sandman #30, "August" (collected in The Sandman: Fables and Reflections)

[edit] Games

• Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego features Julius Caesar in one of its stages.

[edit] Placenames

• The Romanian capital, Bucharest, was named in honour of Caesar. Bucharest (Romanian, Bucharesti) comes from the Latin Buxis Kaesaresti, meaning "Caesar's Bastion."^{[citation needed]}