Early life and career
Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
Bust of Caesar from the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Caesar was born into a patrician family, the gens Julia, which claimed descent from Iulus, son of the legendary Trojan prince Aeneas, supposedly the son of the goddess Venus.[7] The cognomen "Caesar" originated, according to Pliny the Elder, with an ancestor who was born by caesarean section (from the Latin verb to cut, caedere, caes-).[8] The Historia Augusta suggests three alternative explanations: that the first Caesar had a thick head of hair (Latin caesaries); that he had bright grey eyes (Latin oculis caesiis); or that he killed an elephant (caesai in Moorish) in battle.[9]
Caesar issued coins featuring images of elephants, suggesting that he favored this interpretation of his name. Despite their ancient pedigree, the Julii Caesares were not especially politically influential. Caesar's father, also called Gaius Julius Caesar, governed the province of Asia,[10] while his mother, Aurelia Cotta, came from an influential family. Little is recorded of Caesar's childhood.[11]
Caesar's formative years were a time of turmoil. There were several wars from 91 BC to 82 BC, although from 82 BC to 80 BC, the dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla was purging Rome of his political enemies. Domestically, Roman politics was bitterly divided. In 85 BC, Caesar's father died suddenly[12] so at sixteen Caesar was the head of the family. The following year he was nominated to be the new high priest of Jupiter.[13]
Since the holder of that position not only had to be a patrician but also be married to a patrician, he broke off his engagement to a plebeian girl he had been betrothed to since boyhood, and married Lucius Cinna's daughter Cornelia.[14] Then, having brought Mithridates to terms, Sulla returned to Rome and had himself appointed to the revived office of dictator.[15]
Sulla's proscriptions saw hundreds of his political enemies killed or exiled. Caesar, as the nephew of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, was targeted. He was stripped of his inheritance, his wife's dowry and his priesthood, but he refused to divorce Cornelia and was forced to go into hiding. The threat against him was lifted by the intervention of his mother's family, which included supporters of Sulla, and the Vestal Virgins. Sulla gave in reluctantly, and is said to have declared that he saw many a Marius in Caesar.[11]
Caesar left Rome and joined the army, where he won the Civic Crown for his part in an important siege. On a mission to Bithynia to secure the assistance of King Nicomedes's fleet, he spent so long at his court that rumors of an affair with the king arose, which Caesar would vehemently deny for the rest of his life.[16] Ironically, the loss of his priesthood had allowed him to pursue a military career, as the high priest of Jupiter was not permitted to touch a horse, sleep three nights outside his own bed or one night outside Rome, or look upon an army.[17]
Hearing of Sulla's death in 78 BC, Caesar felt safe enough to return to Rome. Lacking means since his inheritance was confiscated, he acquired a modest house in a lower-class neighborhood of Rome.[18] Instead, he turned to legal advocacy. He became known for his exceptional oratory, accompanied by impassioned gestures and a high-pitched voice, and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption.
On the way across the Aegean Sea,[19] Caesar was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner.[20] He maintained an attitude of superiority throughout his captivity. When the pirates thought to demand a ransom of twenty talents of silver, he insisted they ask for fifty.[21][22] After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and imprisoned them. He had them crucified on his own authority, as he had promised while in captivity[23]—a promise the pirates had taken as a joke. As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut. He was soon called back into military action in Asia, raising a band of auxiliaries to repel an incursion from the east.[citation needed]
On his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, a first step in a political career. He was elected quaestor for 69 BC,[24] and during that year he delivered the funeral oration for his aunt Julia. His wife, Cornelia, also died that year.[25] After her funeral, in the spring or early summer of 69 BC, Caesar went to serve his quaestorship in Spain.[26] While there he is said to have encountered a statue of Alexander the Great, and realized with dissatisfaction he was now at an age when Alexander had the world at his feet, while he had achieved comparatively little. On his return in 67 BC,[27] he married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla, whom he later divorced.[28]
In 63 BC, he ran for election to the post of Pontifex Maximus, chief priest of the Roman state religion. He ran against two powerful senators. There were accusations of bribery by all sides. Caesar won comfortably, despite his opponents' greater experience and standing.[29] When Cicero, who was consul that year, exposed Catiline's conspiracy to seize control of the republic, several senators accused Caesar of involvement in the plot.[30]
After his praetorship, Caesar was appointed to govern Spain, but he was still in considerable debt and needed to satisfy his creditors before he could leave. He turned to Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's richest men. In return for political support in his opposition to the interests of Pompey, Crassus paid some of Caesar's debts and acted as guarantor for others. Even so, to avoid becoming a private citizen and thus be open to prosecution for his debts, Caesar left for his province before his praetorship had ended. In Spain, he conquered two local tribes and was hailed as imperator by his troops, reformed the law regarding debts, and completed his governorship in high esteem.[31]
As imperator, Caesar was entitled to a triumph. However, he also wanted to stand for consul, the most senior magistracy in the republic. If he were to celebrate a triumph, he would have to remain a soldier and stay outside the city until the ceremony, but to stand for election he would need to lay down his command and enter Rome as a private citizen. He could not do both in the time available. He asked the senate for permission to stand in absentia, but Cato blocked the proposal. Faced with the choice between a triumph and the consulship, Caesar chose the consulship.
CLAUDIUSThe penultimate Julio-Claudian emperor, Claudius, is familiar to many of us through the BBC production of Robert Graves' I, Claudius series, starring Derek Jakobi as a stuttering Emperor Claudius. Ti. Claudius Nero Germanicus was born on August 1, in the year 10 B.C., in Gaul. His parents were the son of Augustus's wife Livia, Drusus Claudius Nero, and Mark Antony's daughter, Antonia. His uncle was the emperor Tiberius. Claudius suffered from various physical infirmities which many thought reflected his mental state. As a result, he was secluded, a fact that kept him safe. Having no public duties to perform, Claudius was free to pursue his interests and read much, including material written in Etruscan. He first held public office at the age of 46 when his nephew Caligula became emperor in 37 A.D. and named him suffect consul.
Claudius became emperor shortly after his nephew was assassinated by his bodyguard, on January 24, A.D. 41. The tradition is that he was found by some of the Praetorian Guard hiding behind a curtain. The guard hailed him as emperor. After adopting his fourth wife's son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero), in A.D. 50, Claudius made it clear that Nero was preferred for the succession over his own son, Britannicus. Tradition has it that Claudius' wife Agrippina, now secure in her son's future, killed her husband by means of a poison mushroom on October 13, A.D. 54.
Source: Claudius (41-54 A.D.) - DIR
The term Viking (from Old Norse víkingr) is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.[1]
These Norsemen used their famed longships to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, and as far south as Al-Andalus.[2] This period of Viking expansion – known as the Viking Age – forms a major part of the medieval history of Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe in general.
Popular conceptions of the Vikings often differ from the complex picture that emerges from archaeology and written sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as Germanic noble savages began to take root in the 18th century, and this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival.[3] The received views of the Vikings as violent brutes or intrepid adventurers owe much to the modern Viking myth which had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations are typically highly clichéd, presenting the Vikings as familiar caricatures.[3]
The
Celts (usually pronounced
/ˈkɛlts/
but sometimes /ˈsɛlts/,
see pronunciation
of Celtic)
or Kelts were an Indo-European
and ethno-linguistically
diverse group of tribal
societies in Iron
Age and Roman-era
Europe
who spoke Celtic
languages.[1]
The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered as Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe from the last quarter of the second millennium BC.[2] Their fully Celtic[2] descendants in central Europe were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (c. 800-450 BC) named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria.[3] By the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded over a wide range of regions, whether by diffusion or migration: to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls)[4] and following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).[5]
The earliest directly attested examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions, beginning from the 6th century BC.[6] Continental Celtic languages are attested only in inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic is attested from about the 4th century in ogham inscriptions, although it is clearly much earlier. Literary tradition begins with Old Irish from about the 8th century. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), survive in 12th-century recensions.
By mid 1st millennium AD, following the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations (Migration Period) of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic had become restricted to Ireland, to the western and northern parts of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and the Isle of Man), and to northern France (Brittany). Between the fifth and eighth centuries the Celtic-speaking communities of the Atlantic regions had emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. In language, religion, and art they shared a common heritage that distinguished them from the culture of surrounding polities.[7] The Continental Celtic languages ceased to be widely used by the 6th century.
Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels (Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Brythonic Celts (Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern "Celtic identity" was constructed in the context of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Galicia.[8] Today Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton remain spoken in parts of their historical territories, and both Cornish and Manx are currently undergoing revival.
Norman Conquest of England—(Sept. 28, 1066-1072): William, the Duke of Normandy, invaded England in the autumn of 1066, beginning a campaign of conquest leading to his crowning as the King of England and the establishment of Norman rule over England.
The story of The Conquest, as it is known in England, began with the death of the old king of England, Edward the Confessor. King Edward had no sons to inherit his throne, a four-way conflict developed over who would become the next King of England. The English Witanagemot, the traditional council of nobles, chose Harold Godwinson as the new king. The other claimants included; King Harold's half-brother, Tostig Godwinson, Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, and William, Duke of Normandy, a region in northwest France.
Both Tostig and Harald Hardrada invaded England to unseat King Harold, but both attacks failed. The third invasion, by William of Normandy, proved successful. William landed his invasion force of nearly 7,000 Normans and assorted European mercenaries on Sept. 28, 1066 at Pevensey. Following this landing, he built a base near Hastings.
Harold marched toward Hastings after defeating and killing Harald Hardrada and Tostig at Stamford Bridge, a victory which left his army tired and weakened. On Oct. 14, 1066, the Anglo-Saxon army of England battled the invading Normans. The battle ended with Haroald dead and William of Normandy as the sole living claimant to the throne. William then marched his forces northward toward London, defeating the English at Southwark. Journeying toward the capital city, William received the surrender and submission of several important Anglo-Saxon nobles, and was crowned as King William (the First) on December 25, 1066. This ended the first phase of the Norman Conquest of England.
William still had to consolidate his power, and over the next several years, he and his Norman followers defeated several Anglo-Saxon rebellions, including an invasion by Harold Godwinson's surviving sons. The Anglo-Saxon rebel, Hereford the Wake, was defeated at the Battle of Ely Isle in 1070, and a final campaign in 1072 finally brought northern England under William's control.
The Norman Conquest is significant for several reasons. William was the new King of England, but he was also still the Duke of Normandy in France, which put him and his successors in the awkward position of ruling one counrty, while still serving as a vassal (underling) of another country's ruler, in this case, the King of France. This dilemma set up England and France for hundreds of years worth of warfare as the ruling families of each kingdom battled for control of both countries. (See the History Guy page on the Anglo-French Wars).
Also, The Conquest created an ongoing link between the island of Great Britain (which includes England, Scotland, and Wales) with the European Continent through the connection of England and French Normandy. This connection can be seen in the development of English culture, language, history, and economics.
See also: Wars and Conflicts of Great Britain